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Re:Solar-driven water splitting at 13.8% solar-to-hydrogen e... by dragontamer on Thursday November 18, 2021 @04:25PM (#29270782)
> You're describing hydrocarbons.

Well yes. But I'm also aware that H2 is a component in the synthetic production of those hydrocarbons. Using the H2 directly could prove beneficial. But if not, then we can always convert it into some combination of C and H and burn that instead.

Either way: producing H2 from clean sources (like this weird chemical solar panel thingy) is a good thing.

Re:Solar-driven water splitting at 13.8% solar-to-hydrogen e... by pfdietz on Thursday November 18, 2021 @06:39PM (#29272041)
Hydrogen also should enable more hydrocarbons to be produced from biomass, by hydrodeoxygenation: (CH2O)n + n H2 --> (CH2)n + n H2O.
Re:Solar-driven water splitting at 13.8% solar-to-hydrogen e... by jabl on Friday November 19, 2021 @01:59AM (#29274536)
IIRC traditional Fischer-Tropsch synthesis of liquid hydrocarbons from coal or biomass is about 30-40% efficient. Partly because the C:H ratio of the source material is not the same as the end product (the excess goes up the smokestack), but also because part of the energy embodied in the source is needed to run the reaction itself.

Adding hydrogen can fix both of these problems, enabling efficiency up to 150% (compared to the energy in the source material, not including the hydrogen). This is kind of a big deal, since for large-scale carbon-neutral production of synthetic hydrocarbons the bottleneck is the source of carbon. Hydrogen can be produced (nearly) carbon-free in unlimited quantities, but barring a breakthrough in DAC technology where is your sustainable source of carbon? And no, we don't want to replace pristine rain forests with biomass plantations.

Re:Solar-driven water splitting at 13.8% solar-to-hydrogen e... by jl6 on Friday November 19, 2021 @05:14AM (#29275622)
What's wrong with biomass plantations as a source of renewable carbon, assuming you don't build them on rainforests?
Re:Solar-driven water splitting at 13.8% solar-to-hydrogen e... by VBprogrammer on Friday November 19, 2021 @05:43AM (#29275854)
From a biodiversity point of view. Everything.
Re:Solar-driven water splitting at 13.8% solar-to-hydrogen e... by pfdietz on Friday November 19, 2021 @06:54AM (#29276285)
The generic problem with biomass is the low overall efficiency of photosynthesis. It doesn't work well when it gets too cold or hot, and can use huge amounts of water.