I always love the stupidity of this idea: You were able to generate pure hydrogen at high costs… Now what should we do with it? Well lets just do what we did since the middle ages and burn it!
If you’re launching a rocket, sure. If cost or difficulty matters in any way compared to raw mass, not really.
It was talked about for cars where density kinda matters, but you could put them in a fuel cell that way instead of just burning it, and I’m not sure if it was ever anywhere close to economical.
The cost probably will go down, and with any luck the cost of polluting will go up, but electricity is going to be more practical for most things.
Electricity has gotten dramatically more expensive too. It is no panacea. In all likelihood, most of transportation will shift over to either green fuels (e-fuels) or hydrogen. Those are one-to-one replacements for fossil fuels.
I mean, to make e-fuel you still need the e (which stands for electricity). It’s ~guaranteed to have lower round-trip efficiency and higher cost in a car than just a battery. Ditto for green hydrogen. Theoretically blue hydrogen or white hydrogen could be used instead, but it’s not certain how much white hydrogen there is, and blue hydrogen needs carbon capture and storage which will add a lot to the cost.
Gas generators are pretty much the same as ever, while renewables have gotten much cheaper than them. If your power bill went up, it’s some local issue doing it.
(Air-breathing aviation is the other application I didn’t mention. Battery planes work but not well, so it’s closer to rockets. I don’t know if anyone has tried hydrogen, but that’s where e-fuel comes up a lot)
Round-trip efficiency is not that important. If it really was as important as claimed, we wouldn’t be talking about cars at all. It would all be about bikes, buses, trains, walkable neighborhoods, etc., instead. But in the real world, we will need to accept less-than-perfect solutions. So as long as the idea is green, it should be tolerated.
We also have far more renewable energy available to us than we could ever hope to use. It is orders of magnitude more plentiful than fossil fuel energy. As a result, there will be an overabundance of green energy in the long run. It is fine to use that excess of energy to make stuff e-fuels or hydrogen.
Okay, but then why not just go with battery cars? You’re the only person I’ve heard say hydrogen cars will make a comeback, if that is what you’re saying.
As far as I can tell like a million people use them no problem. They need less maintenance and drive better. The limits they have only come up in niche cases, like “I need to cross the Australian outback”.
There was the one commercial hydrogen car, but I only remember hearing about it from southern California where the gas stations were, and I’m not sure if it’s still being made or they gave up.
I always love the stupidity of this idea: You were able to generate pure hydrogen at high costs… Now what should we do with it? Well lets just do what we did since the middle ages and burn it!
Craziest implementation? Burn the hydrogen in your home. But not in a furnace. Burn it in a mechanical combustion-powered heat pump!😁
Hydrogen has one of the highest energy densities by mass. It’s a very reasonable energy storage
If you’re launching a rocket, sure. If cost or difficulty matters in any way compared to raw mass, not really.
It was talked about for cars where density kinda matters, but you could put them in a fuel cell that way instead of just burning it, and I’m not sure if it was ever anywhere close to economical.
The cost probably will go down, and with any luck the cost of polluting will go up, but electricity is going to be more practical for most things.
Electricity has gotten dramatically more expensive too. It is no panacea. In all likelihood, most of transportation will shift over to either green fuels (e-fuels) or hydrogen. Those are one-to-one replacements for fossil fuels.
I mean, to make e-fuel you still need the e (which stands for electricity). It’s ~guaranteed to have lower round-trip efficiency and higher cost in a car than just a battery. Ditto for green hydrogen. Theoretically blue hydrogen or white hydrogen could be used instead, but it’s not certain how much white hydrogen there is, and blue hydrogen needs carbon capture and storage which will add a lot to the cost.
Gas generators are pretty much the same as ever, while renewables have gotten much cheaper than them. If your power bill went up, it’s some local issue doing it.
(Air-breathing aviation is the other application I didn’t mention. Battery planes work but not well, so it’s closer to rockets. I don’t know if anyone has tried hydrogen, but that’s where e-fuel comes up a lot)
Round-trip efficiency is not that important. If it really was as important as claimed, we wouldn’t be talking about cars at all. It would all be about bikes, buses, trains, walkable neighborhoods, etc., instead. But in the real world, we will need to accept less-than-perfect solutions. So as long as the idea is green, it should be tolerated.
We also have far more renewable energy available to us than we could ever hope to use. It is orders of magnitude more plentiful than fossil fuel energy. As a result, there will be an overabundance of green energy in the long run. It is fine to use that excess of energy to make stuff e-fuels or hydrogen.
Okay, but then why not just go with battery cars? You’re the only person I’ve heard say hydrogen cars will make a comeback, if that is what you’re saying.
I did not say you can’t have battery cars. It is just a limited technology and would likely shrink to a niche market without subsidies.
As far as I can tell like a million people use them no problem. They need less maintenance and drive better. The limits they have only come up in niche cases, like “I need to cross the Australian outback”.
There was the one commercial hydrogen car, but I only remember hearing about it from southern California where the gas stations were, and I’m not sure if it’s still being made or they gave up.
Well, there are useful appliances for hydrogen, where you just burn it. Burning it to heat your own home isnt one if them.