Featured Hydrogen fuel a strong possibility?

Economical production is the only first step. Still need safe distribution and infrastructure to supply the end users. I think it's still a long way to go.

 

i have an outlet already in my garage. start everyday with a full tank.

might be good for large scale transport?

 

It is reforming the hydrocarbons in the ground, and leaves the undesirables there.
They are claiming it is a quarter of the cost of reforming natural gas, but that cost is a fraction of the price of hydrogen for a car at the pump. In California a kg of hydrogen runs from $13 to $16. Granted, the renewable requirement does push the price up, but reducing the cost of fossil fuel hydrogen from $2 down to 50, or even 10 cents, isn't going to change the costs of getting the hydrogen into a car.

Their cost estimates rely on using existing natural gas, maybe even oil, lines in getting the hydrogen from the well to market. That is not going work out long term.

The comments have some examples(this has been used with coal before) in which the bad by products didn't stay were they were suppose too.

 

If you were making spaghetti, a colander to separate pasta from the water is helpful... But if you are making highly explosive Hydrogen, everything you put the lightest and smallest element on the periodic table in will leak and no amount of engineering will prevent that, just delay it. But what if we found a way to "sustainably" power our vehicle with nuclear bombs instead? Maybe the engineering challenge wouldn't be as hard?


What could possibly go wrong?

 

That's right. Do we really want this dangerous, explosive, thermonuclear fuel stuff leaching into our drinking water?

 

(That being ... said ... though, I haven’t read the article you pointed to yet. Will do...)

 

Wow, that video says 30K watts of power per kilogram of Hydrogen compared to less than 200 watts per kilogram for lithium batteries... And in the US we won't even ban assault rifles no matter how many mass shootings happen. Think of what the next mass shooter can do once they can start stockpiling Hydrogen?

 

HFC may have potential for airplanes.

 

"Experts also found concentrations of hydrogen in the soil at explosive levels..."
Linc Energy: Secret report reveals toxic legacy of coal gasification trials near SE Queensland town of Chinchilla - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
But it is Australia, where they once used a herbicide that lead to farmers' overalls spuntaneously combusting. Cancer or bursting into flames? That's a tough choice.
Exploding trousers - Wikipedia

On serious note, it sounds like this process has all the environmental risks of fracking. I don't expect it to be handled well.

The same thing if they stockpiled natural gas, propane, acetylene, gasoline, diesel and fertilizer, etc.

Maybe, but I think that has larger hurdles than for cars. The high pressure tanks are heavy, and airports have more distance to cover in order to get the fuel from the tanks to the planes. It would probably have to be liquid hydrogen to overcome those obstacles. Which takes more energy to produce, and means more loses from venting.

A hybrid plane and lighter-than-air-craft would benefit from a cheap supply of hydrogen.

 

You misread or misheard, and are confusing power vs energy.

It says hydrogen has a specific energy (or energy density) of 40kWh/kg, vs 278 Wh/kg for lithium batteries.

The rest of your comment belongs in FHoPol. I'll just note here that we don't ban gasoline either, despite even greater numbers of deaths in vehicle fires each year.

 

There’s definitely a reason why liquid-hydrogen/liquid-oxygen is very commonly used for rockets!

A lot of that stat is just that hydrogen is so freakishly light. If I calculated it out correctly, a Kg of hydrogen at sea-level temperature and pressure has a volume of ~11,200 liters!

 

I don’t disagree, but that penalty is dropping quickly now that carbon-fiber overwrap vessels are becoming more common and more-economically manufacturable.


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(Not super-important, but just for the record, strictly speaking, energy density is energy per unit volume, whereas specify energy is energy per unit weight. It’s pretty common to use “energy density” in place of “specific energy,” because (at least arguably) it’s a more-intuitive term, but strictly speaking, it’s not correct.)

 

Except that SpaceX spent 1/2 billion dollars and 24 months waiting on a precision tool to spin carbon fiber into 30' diameter fuselages and then chopped it up and hauled it to dump because stainless steel with micro pores that sweat to keep steel from melting on re-entry was a much more viable option than carbon fiber... SpaceX goes all-in on steel Starship, scraps expensive carbon fiber BFR tooling

 

But if you're talking about vehicles the weight measure is probably more interesting than the volume measure... Of course I had no idea their was so much volume in a kilogram of Hydrogen...

 

The hydrogen part must have been picked out and emphasized by a nontechnical reporter. Other text and links lead to mentions of methane, volatile organic compounds, syngas, carbon monoxide, benzene, toluene and "other substances that are potentially toxic or carcinogenic".

It does sound as if they fracked the containment overburden around their underground coal seam combustion zone.

 

Carbon fiber tanks are heavy for the pressures needed to carry a usable amount of hydrogen in a FCEV anything. The tanks in the Mirai are over 200 pounds empty, and bulky to boot. Carbon fiber tanks are just less bad than other choices. Cheaper tanks are good for many things, but they aren't the main cost in a FCEV. For liquid hydrogen, the weight and bulk is in the insulation as most tanks make use of venting to keep the pressures inside low. Since planes get fueled up before taking off, trading insulation for less weight and more venting, might be a possible path for a commercial plane.

Current batteries are worse, but they can be made to the shape of an airfoil without increasing weight. There are potential battery chemistries that could make BEV planes feasible; flouride ion has three times the energy density of Li-ion, it needs to be at 100C to work at this time.

I quoted what I did because I found it amusing. It is the other elements and compounds that are more concerning. The process relies on the existing bedrock to contain the waste products as the hydrocarbon source is being pressurized and heated.

 

Hmmm... Actually, that’s not as insanely huge a volume as it initially seemed to be: Again, if I’m calculating correctly, 11,200 liters works out to the volume of a cube 2.24 meters by 2.24m by 2.24m. So, it’s not quite as ludicrous as it initially seems.

Still, two and a quarter meters is ... actually a pretty-fair distance when you stop to visualize it: the height of a way-tall basketball player (7’4”)!

And, just as a comparison, remember that a Kg of water occupies a volume of 1 liter (a cubic decimeter). So hydrogen is still pretty freakishly light when you stop to visualize it, although, arguably at least, that 11,200-liter number makes it sound bigger than it really is.


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