Hypx
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1·4 months agoHindenburg wasn’t even the deadliest zeppelin disaster. But nevermind, since modern storage tanks are much safer. Thousands of people die from gasoline fires every year BTW. This figure will go down if we switched to hydrogen.
Hydrogen is lighter than air, so any fire is brief. Gasoline is nearly as flammable but burns in place.
Hydrogen is safer to store than gasoline.
Storage cost will come down too.
Charging a battery is the same thing as making hydrogen. Using a battery is the same thing as using a fuel cell. It is using electrochemistry to store and release energy.
Both processes have the same number of steps. Electrolysis directly converts electricity and water into hydrogen and oxygen. Fuel cells do the same but in reverse.
You use renewable energy to make green hydrogen.
Yes, green hydrogen refers to hydrogen from green energy sources.
As renewable energy gets cheaper, we will be flooded by cheap excess energy. It will drive the price of hydrogen to nearly zero in time.
Breakthrough innovation is happening in fuel cell technology outside of traditional sectors like cars. BEVs are weirdly turning into a legacy business, and the car industry is becoming an innovation laggard. As of now, it seems likely that hydrogen fuel cell technology will be revolutionary in surprise sectors, such as forklifts, drones, VTOLs, ships, etc., bypassing cars.
It also means that existing car manufacturers are becoming increasingly out of date with their understanding of the technology. We could have millions of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles running (or flying) around before many car manufacturers build their first ones.
Hydrogen exists naturally in the environment. These are silly claims likely originating from the fossil fuel industry.
That particular argument is just a conspiracy theory. And one that was originally created by the fossil fuel companies. If you actually dig deep into what they’re really saying, they saying that fossil fuels will always be cheaper than green energy. A fully defeatist argument.
If they are BEV advocates, then they have failed to ask why that doesn’t apply to electricity production too. Or why fossil fuel electricity doesn’t just outcompete renewable energy on cost, if they truly believe that. In fact, they have failed to realize that it is the same argument as saying “BEVs will just coaled powered cars!”
In truth, these people are either working for the fossil fuel companies, or people whose egos have gotten in the way of their rational thinking. That they would rather spread a fossil fuel propaganda argument against a competing technology, than to admit that BEVs are not the only possible solution.
The problem is that at some point, you’re saying the equivalent of “advances in vacuum tube technology will ensure that transistors will never catch on!” Or “it doesn’t matter how good flat panel displays of the future get, they will have to compete with CRTs of the future too!”
If you said the former in the 1950s, or the latter in the 1990s, you could’ve found a significant audience that would’ve believed you. But the problem is that all technologies have limits. Once a technology approaches that limit, it could be replaced by completely new ideas.
And this is the same situation. Li-ion batteries have about 1/100th the energy density of hydrogen. There is no prospect of them ever powering commercial airliners, or transoceanic shipping, or any other long distance forms of transportation. They are also immensely resource intensive, and there are environmental reasons to abandoned them with that argument alone.
And believing that batteries could ever overcome those limits, or that hydrogen doesn’t have fundamental advantages over batteries, is part of that delusional I am talking about. Some people acknowledge that hydrogen has fundamental advantages, but insist that it could never happen, while others pretend that those advantages don’t exist. Either way, its part of the same form of denial.
The solution would be to use solar power or wind to make hydrogen. If the cost is nearly zero, then so will hydrogen. After all, it is just a combination of electricity and water.
This is what I mean by saying that the critics cannot imagine hydrogen technology getting better. They are stuck believing that it must be made from fossil fuels, but in reality it can be the cheapest way of capturing renewable energy.
It is also cheaper to store and transport hydrogen (or any chemical fuel) than electricity: link. People don’t actually understand how expensive the grid actually is.
Just recently, Honda announced that they were able to radically improve the capabilities of their fuel cells: https://carbuzz.com/honda-halves-hydrogen-fuel-cell-cost-triples-power-density/
Honda Just Halved The Cost Of Hydrogen Fuel Cells With Triple The Power Density
Honda is not the only one. It seems that many companies have announced significant improvements in their product lines. This all suggests that we are seeing major breakthroughs in hydrogen related technologies. It also that suggests rapid reductions in price is happening too.
The critics of hydrogen are repeatedly claiming that hydrogen is “not necessary” because batteries are going to be so much better or cheaper. But they are not accounting for the possibility of hydrogen being much better or cheaper. There will come a crossover point, where it becomes time to question the rationale for BEVs and their limitations, once hydrogen vehicles get really good.
Eventually, we will see a day when hydrogen vehicles are fully competitive with gasoline/diesel vehicles, even without subsidies. Something that seems unavoidable if hydrogen technologies keep improving in an exponential way. At which point, society will simply pivot towards hydrogen vehicles as the transportation technology of the future, regardless of what critics think.
It was recently announced.
At 60% efficient, it would be about the most efficient ICE engines ever. So it is worth a look. And yes, people do like noise.
It takes the same amount of electricity in theory. Even in practice it is not a major issue since an all renewable grid needs energy storage, such as hydrogen based energy storage.
Use hydrogen instead, and you can go to 100% green energy.