
A viable pathway for hydrogen as fuel - SpuriousSignals
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/2/16/16926950/hydrogen-fuel-technology-economy-hytech-storage
======
Animats
Something is wrong with his numbers.

 _" Johnson boasts that his electrolyzer can produce hydrogen at about three
or four times the rate of electrolyzers with similar footprints, using about a
third the electrical current. That represents a stepwise drop in costs._"

Three or four times? Current efficiencies are 65-70% for larger plants.[1]
There's a theoretical maximum here; it takes a known amount of energy to break
down water into oxygen and hydrogen. This isn't magic or perpetual motion.
Electrolysis is energetically uphill. You can get most of the energy back
recombining oxygen and hydrogen in a fuel cell or by combustion.

The "with similar footprints" is very suspicious. His demo unit is small.
Little electrolyzers are known to be inefficient. Industrial units are bigger
and more efficient.

As an emissions control measure, it might work out.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water#Industri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water#Industrial_output)

~~~
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
Considering the smaller footprints are less efficient, then perhaps that makes
room for a 3-4 fold improvement. Whether that's true is another issue, but at
least it appears somewhat consistent.

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foxhop
I think using it as a safe battery is a neat idea. I understand there are
significant losses as compared to li-ion batteries, but the fact that the
system has a longer lifespan is really interesting.

It's a way to preserve energy during surplus. As a gardener I'm constantly
balancing inputs and outputs. A huge tomato harvest eaten raw off the vine is
the most efficient use.

But during a huge glut, I cannot eat the tomatoes fast enough so I start
freezing tomatoes and produce sauce.

I trade energy, and human time and labor to extend the shelf life of the
tomato.

In this sense, from my naive perspective, A hydride fluid battery if cheap
enough to build/install would be a great way to store surplus energy from
solar / wind / etc.

~~~
asgeirn
Love the tomato analogy - exactly why you need to convert energy, even with
the efficiency loss.

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_ph_
The article names it, but then does not dive deeper into it: the hydrogen
chain has huge energy losses. First, electrolysis unfortunately has not a high
efficiency - I have read numbers around 70%, but then the compression of the
produced hydrogen takes a lot of energy, as compressing gases heats them up.
Then the hydrogen has to be transported and stored, requiring further energy.
Finally, you have to use the hydrogen, there the efficiency varies between 60%
(fuel cell) or as proposed in the article with a combustion engine as low as
30%.

At the same time, there are less and less applications which cannot be powered
by electricity directly, having only a fraction of losses compared to the
equivalent hydrogen chain. So as long we do not have more than 100% reneweable
electricity generation, we should be very concerned about the efficiency of
our energy usage.

~~~
sebazzz
How does that compare to using batteries? Batteries are re-usable of course,
but also degrade over time and need to be replaced.

~~~
ekun
It mentions this in the article Li-ion go have a life cycle of roughly 1,000
recharges whereas these have 10,000.

~~~
parametrek
Depends on the li-ion. There are chemistries out there right now that are good
for 20,000 cycles like LTO. And a substantial amount of li-ion research is
extending cycle life.

It doesn't matter how good hydrogen becomes. Battery tech will continue to
improve faster than hydrogen tech. H2 will never catch up.

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georgecmu
It's a puff piece (who's his PR firm? I want to talk to them!)

Those interested in the topic should acquaint themselves with the policy
context and the state-of-the-art.

[1] [https://energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/doe-technical-targets-
hydr...](https://energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/doe-technical-targets-hydrogen-
production-electrolysis)

[2]
[https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy14osti/60528.pdf](https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy14osti/60528.pdf)

The DOE goal for cost of distributed / dispensed hydrogen is $4/kgH2. Cost of
centralized production is estimated at half that even with electrolysis. I
find it suspicious that there aren't any specific production cost estimates
cited; just vague comparisons to unspecified existing technologies.

Also, methane is a far better source of hydrogen than water (less energy
required to break down the molecule for the yield of twice as much hydrogen).
Steam-methane reforming (95% of industrial hydrogen production) gets you
hydrogen from both methane and water, but is a huge CO2 emitter (9-10
kgCO2/kgH2).

I'm personally a big proponent of thermal decomposition of methane [3].
Theoretical energy consumption is only 1.29 kWh/kgH2. if you can use a non-
emitting source of energy, there's no CO2 emission. Carbon falls out as a
solid and capture and sequestration is free. If you can make a valuable carbon
(e.g. graphene) along the way, then you're set and there's no way electrolysis
will ever be competitive.

[3]
[https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy02osti/31351.pdf](https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy02osti/31351.pdf)

~~~
aaron_m04
One thing about methane, though, is that it's a nonrenewable fuel. Unless
you're talking about it as a storage intermediary (for example, if it's
synthesized from CO2 and H2O using renewable energy).

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camgunz
I'd really (honestly) like for all this to be true, but the innovations here
are that Johnson figured out some secret sauce in the electrolyzer's
electrocatalyzer mix, and some more secret sauce in the fuel cell's hydrides.
It's possible this happened, but I'm pretty skeptical.

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asgeirn
Most counterarguments related to Hydrogen refer to the poor efficiency of
converting (electric) energy to Hydrogen and back.

True, directly using that electric energy from wind or solar is definitely the
best option.

However, that is not always possible, since there is no place to consume,
transport or store that electric energy.

Furthermore, scrapping all ICE vehicles for BEVs is most likely the end goal.
But replacing the worldwide fleet of vehicles will take decades.

HyTech seems to be on to something for these two scenarios.

If for instance you can capture some of the excess solar and wind energy in a
metal hydride for some hours, weeks, or even months, you will on a larger
scale reduce the load of the electric grid.

And if some of that Hydrogen can be burnt instead of Diesel, the car or truck
in your driveway is both cleaner and less dependant on fossil fuels.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
I really don't understand why the debate on H2 is so focused on electrolysis.
Even today, 95% of all hydrogen is produced not by electrolysis, but from
natural gas through steam methane reforming (SMR).

SMRs can be easily scaled up to meet all H2 demand, and they are easily fitted
with carbon capture technology (since it's a single large emission point).
Then you have zero-emission H2 in quantities as large as oil and gas today.

I'm entirely convinced it will be the future, and that we'll never be able to
scale pure BEVs beyond 10-15% of all cars in any large country, simply due to
electricity production and distribution constraints.

~~~
VLM
The problem with nifty solutions to removing carbon from raw fuels resulting
in carbon free hydrogen, is the best engineering solution to the remainder of
the task list of transport, store, and burn the resulting carbon-free
hydrogen, is to modify the hydrogen by synthesize up some carbon containing
hydrocarbons to make some delicious hyper optimized liquid fuels, which
coincidentally we have massive infrastructure to use.

Not as snarky as might sound. Given infinite fusion energy via the real thing
or solar panels, truly pure synthetic fuel opens up some interesting ideas WRT
catalysts and efficient burn designs to squeek out another percent or two of
performance. Inherently zero (not low, but ZERO) sulfur diesel is interesting,
for example. And no one says the carbon thats added has to come from
underground; go harvest some trees that sucked the carbon right out of the
air, then when you put it back in the air after a couple months of storage,
nothing bad happened.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
> the best engineering solution to the remainder of the task list of
> transport, store, and burn the resulting carbon-free hydrogen, is to modify
> the hydrogen by synthesize up some carbon containing hydrocarbons

If that's the case, it's equally true for H2 from renewables, no?

And I don't think it's true. LPG vehicles today are common enough, and they've
solved very similar transport and distribution problems.

~~~
nine_k
Not really. Hydrocarbons are much easier to store and handle. Cars may not
need it so much, but as a jet fuel, kerosene is much easier than hydrogen.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Easier, sure. But Tupolev built and flew 100 flights with the Tu-155, a
cryogenic H2 fueled narrow-body airliner, in the 1980s. So it's very far from
impossible, it's just a matter of time IMO. Currently aviation is pushing
biofuels to kick the can down the road, but they can't do that forever.

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lovemenot
Hydrogen does have a lot of problems which other commenters here point out.

But if HyTech is to be believed, some of these problems are solved. Probably
their most significant claim, is hydride storage at ordinary temperature /
pressure with safe, practical, cost effectiveness in recovering that stored
energy.

~~~
phkahler
HyTech doesn't solve the main problem with hydrogen - that there isn't any
available as fuel, and it takes more energy to extract the hydrogen than you
get back from burning it or even using it in a fuel cell.

The idea of injecting small amounts of hydrogen into a combustion engine to
improve fuel economy is not new, but congrats if they can bring that concept
to market. That would be a win, but is not the same as hydrogen as a primary
fuel.

~~~
nine_k
It takes more energy to charge a battery than can be had back discharging it.

Does it make the battery in your mobile phone useless?

~~~
dpark
No one cares about the efficiency of the tiny battery in your phone. But if
charging and discharging a Tesla used twice as much energy as burning gasoline
directly then people would probably care.

At some level of inefficiency, an energy solution can indeed become useless at
scale.

~~~
noir_lord
That depends though on a bunch of factors including base price of electricity,
renewable potential and how easily hydrogen can be shipped.

There are a few developed countries I can think of that have vast renewable
capacity but the distances between the optimum location for renewables make it
impractical at present.

Also modern nuclear plants are an option if you want to produce vast amounts
of electricity with a smaller carbon footprint than coal/gas.

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ncmncm
The hydrogen fuel pathway has already been solved, and much more elegantly.

Hydrogen produced by direct, catalytic hydrolysis from sunlight, in water, is
taken up by microbes in the water that absorb CO2 and excrete hydrocarbons --
oil -- that floats to the surface, and is directly usable in existing fuel
tanks and engines, no further processing needed.

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MechEStudent
Hydrogen has hard risks, and high costs. Density. Corrosion.
Tunneling/leaking. A new trillion-dollar distribution infrastructure to
replace the fluid-version we use for petrol.

What about methanol? We can convert hydrogen to hydrocarbon. Liquid is dense,
much less dangerous, less acidic, less leaky, and our current trillion-dollar
infrastructure already uses it as a substantial additive.

~~~
dpark
Methanol isn’t a common additive is it? Most (all?) gasoline in the US has
ethanol added.

~~~
DesertVarnish
Methanol is commonly sold as "octane booster". It's definitely around.

~~~
dpark
Is it in common use as such? Meaning 92 octane is 88 buffered with methanol?
If it’s just in those little octane booster bottles, I would not consider that
a “substantial additive“ in the context of the trillion dollar petroleum
industry.

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Y_Y
Hydrogen can't be a fuel until we find a load of it underground. Until then we
spend more energy making it, so it's only as good as a battery.

~~~
_ph_
And due to the inefficiency of the components, it is a very bad battery. That
is the main problem, as attractive it would be to produce hydrogen via solar.

~~~
cornholio
But wait, a "tall, rangy, blond, inveterate maker and builder whose eyes light
up when he talks engineering" claims he's solved all efficiency and and
storage problems with super-secret technology. Incidentally, he's also the CEO
of the company and probably paying for the piece:

>To date, most hydride fluids have been less energy dense than compressed
hydrogen, and far short of fossil fuels. They weigh too much for the energy
they provide. Johnson thinks he’s cracked both problems. He won’t reveal the
details of the hydrides involved, but he’s got the power-to-weight ratio high
enough to beat lithium-ion batteries (which are very heavy) and the hydride
bond weak enough that it can be broken using only the redirected waste heat
from the engine (no added heat or pressure required).

~~~
monkeycantype
I'm curious about his early career in video compression. I'm thinking of a
friend whose first job was working with a video compression startup whose
secret algorithm was to hide ethernet cables inside the power cord.

~~~
teraflop
Did your friend work for Zekko, by any chance?

[https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/1999/03/08/st...](https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/1999/03/08/story1.html)

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jaimex2
Is there anything of substance here or did Mr Johnson pay Vox a ton of money
to run a fluff piece?

