Featured H2Go Power Stores Hydrogen as a Solid?

Looks like a person in a lab just did way better than Toyota did at advancing hydrogen fuels...

 

It sounds like a variation on metal hydride storage systems that have been out for some time. There is a company selling a recharger and small cells for powering hand held electronics.

H2GO Power
Application of hydrides in hydrogen storage and compression: Achievements, outlook and perspectives - ScienceDirect

 

iirc - doesn't hydrogen have to be (heat pumped out) cooled down below ~ -420°f just to go from gas to liquid? .... and even then, it has to be pressurized to ~190psi ? Now you need more energy to go solid? And that doesn't count the cost of maintenance on the massive chillers/compressors? In the article, she suggests reforming hydrogen through electrolysis (TONS of electricity) because clean power is getting cheaper ... meaning instead of 3 or 4x the cost of conventional power - maybe some day, it will only be 2x as expensive. Or ... to put in her own words;

If the hydrogen auto lobby has been promising, "in 10 years" - tons of affordable hydrogen cars running across the US - and it's been since the 1970's that the promises began, & continually reset ... i shudder to think how long 20 or 30 years will really be for THIS science project. i hope our tax dollars aren't funding this cash sink, on top of the run-of-the-mill hydrogen sink.
.... another nit to pick - the researcher gal makes a disingenuous statement when she says;

she fails to mention the power of varying fuels has a limiting factor - the size & shape of the fuel storage medium. Hydrogen often require over 15x as much space to store. When adjusted for THAT little bit of truth (same size containers), hydrogen suffers a bit of lost benefit;

of course - in the make believe world of solid hydrogen ... maybe it's as good as dino juice, some day. Of course, in 30 years (discounting the NEXT solid hydrogen clock getting reset again)? Just think how powerful battery storage will be per pound & per cubic foot by then.

.

 

I've seen this "store hydrogen as a solid" idea come up several times in the past two decades and, while I don't have access to it anymore, believe its well situated in the scientific literature as a legitimate thing. However, before anyone touts this as a breakthrough, realize that there are enormous challenges of getting something that works in the lab to work outside of it. In fact, there is a term called the innovation "valley of death" to describe exactly this problem:



This is why you often don't see these "breakthroughs" turn into final products very often.

If Dr Enass Abo-Hamed can find a way through this barrier, then more power to her. Hydrogen fuels cells are dumb for cars, but do have a legitimate place for making aircraft sustainable.