People have been telling me that hydrogen gas is a "good" way to store power for a long time. When I ask them about the problems, and how those have been solved, they don't want to talk to me, and walk away. That's fine, and it isn't so fine. Not when you are spending some tax money on a pipe dream.
This Sabine Hossenfelder's video Hydrogen Hype is Dying, And That's a Good Thing
Using hydrogen to store energy sounds good at first. Combined with oxygen, hydrogen simply creates water plus energy. Zero pollution. Zero guilt. But not zero problems.
First, there’s the obvious, that hydrogen is a gas, and when mixed with air it’s highly explosive. To be useful as energy storage, it needs to be kept under pressure. That’s technically not all that difficult, but it’s inconvenient and can be dangerous. Though this is the least of the problems.
A bigger problem is that hydrogen, because it’s such a small atom, creeps into pretty much all materials and quickly degrades them. This affects everything from storage tanks to pipes to electronics and makes maintenance costly.
The effect hydrogen has on things like storage tanks is called Hydrogen Embrittlement in the video. It is also known as hydrogen-assisted cracking or hydrogen-induced cracking. Do you see why this might be a problem?
If you have a tank of hydrogen in your car, and the hydrogen causes it to crack, while it is sitting in your garage, or it is getting ready to crack right before you have a car crash, the resulting fire and/or explosion could be bad. Couple that with the fact that hydrogen flames are invisible, and you have the making of some big problems.
If the storage tanks, and transport lines out near your production facilities keep cracking, that probably doesn't do much for profitability either.
The video is 7 minutes.
Sabine Hossenfelder is a theoretical physicist. Her videos are usually quite interesting.
If magic hydrogen were just lying around to be scooped up, that would be a help. But the energy to liberate it has to come from "somewhere" first.
ReplyDeleteThe pipe dream is to use wind/solar to create the hydrogen. As if oil isn't needed to build wind turbines.
DeletePeople who know little or nothing of physics or engineering always underestimate the problems. How many people have heard of Embrittlement or Hydrogen-induced cracking, or have spent more then 5 minutes thinking about all the implications.
Sealing hydrogen storage is such a problem that people who need it, create it right before they need it. Imagine parking at the airport for a week-long business trip and coming home on Friday to discover your fuel tank is empty.
The list of problems goes on from there.
But it sounds good. If you don't know anything about engineering or hydrogen storage.