Yeah, it blew my mind that the Toyota Mirai’s hydrogen tanks are pressurized to 10,000 psi. To store a decent amount of hydrogen you need compress it to crazy high pressure or cool it with liquid helium or some other exotic extreme cooling. The thing about hydrogen that always confused me is that hydrogen is very energy dense but it physically not very dense.
It’s not really energy dense. It’s the single lightest atom in the universe, meaning it stores the lowest amount of energy. But it’s very reactive chemically.
In the future please be more clear you’re introducing a whole new step of conversion of hydrogen to ammonia, and then yet another step of conversion from ammonia back to hydrogen for use again. That’s not quite the “easy long term storage” your comment described.
It’s easy compared to the alternatives and time span for energy storage.
You can de-couple production of energy with consumption. You can transport energy by help of hydrogen either by frozen, compressed gas, cold ammonia or through pipelines. That’s easy and hands on.
Try to transport energy through batteries. Duh. Or fusion energy (somewhen). Or nuclear energy. You always need a power grid.
You can transport energy by help of hydrogen either by frozen,
CRAZY energy intensive to freeze hydrogen into a solid, and keep it stored below (–434 ºF; –259 ºC) in a storage container to prevent boiloff. Even cryogenic liquid hydrogen (at -400 ºF or -240 ºC) is a pain in the butt to deal with and store, again for boiloff reasons
compressed gas
Hydrogen is a horrible compressed gas to store. Thats the part that everyone is jumping on you about in this thread. It has to be at very high pressure, is still very low density, and leaks out of all but the best fittings and valves because of how small the H2 molecule is.
cold ammonia or through pipelines.
Ammonia may be the best form to convert hydrogen to, but that doesn’t make it good for the general use cases we’re looking to replace, meaning energy generation. You’re also handwaving away the entire infrastructure needed to convert excess hydrogen into ammonia, and then back again into hydrogen if you’re not using it as ammonia directly (which I haven’t seen you suggest yet).
That’s easy and hands on.
That’s far far from easy, and its destroying your argument of a hydrogen intense future if you keep doubling down on it.
Hydrogen is the future of nothing but energy scams.
It has the big advantage of easy long term energy storage. You can store power made by PV in summer and use it in winter.
The water is cheap but the hydrogen requires special pressurized containers which in turn makes it lose its advantage over normal batteries.
Yeah, it blew my mind that the Toyota Mirai’s hydrogen tanks are pressurized to 10,000 psi. To store a decent amount of hydrogen you need compress it to crazy high pressure or cool it with liquid helium or some other exotic extreme cooling. The thing about hydrogen that always confused me is that hydrogen is very energy dense but it physically not very dense.
It’s not really energy dense. It’s the single lightest atom in the universe, meaning it stores the lowest amount of energy. But it’s very reactive chemically.
Aren’t there significant challenges with storing the smallest molecules in the universe?
https://www.umsicht.fraunhofer.de/en/greenhydrogen/ammonia-hydrogen-storage-medium.html
Except anmmonia is incredibly dangerous if it leaks…
Citation needed. Hydrogen leaks in spaceflight (where hydrogen is often used as a rocket fuel) is incredibly common because H2 is so freakin’ tiny.
https://www.umsicht.fraunhofer.de/en/greenhydrogen/ammonia-hydrogen-storage-medium.html
In the future please be more clear you’re introducing a whole new step of conversion of hydrogen to ammonia, and then yet another step of conversion from ammonia back to hydrogen for use again. That’s not quite the “easy long term storage” your comment described.
It’s easy compared to the alternatives and time span for energy storage. You can de-couple production of energy with consumption. You can transport energy by help of hydrogen either by frozen, compressed gas, cold ammonia or through pipelines. That’s easy and hands on.
Try to transport energy through batteries. Duh. Or fusion energy (somewhen). Or nuclear energy. You always need a power grid.
CRAZY energy intensive to freeze hydrogen into a solid, and keep it stored below (–434 ºF; –259 ºC) in a storage container to prevent boiloff. Even cryogenic liquid hydrogen (at -400 ºF or -240 ºC) is a pain in the butt to deal with and store, again for boiloff reasons
Hydrogen is a horrible compressed gas to store. Thats the part that everyone is jumping on you about in this thread. It has to be at very high pressure, is still very low density, and leaks out of all but the best fittings and valves because of how small the H2 molecule is.
Ammonia may be the best form to convert hydrogen to, but that doesn’t make it good for the general use cases we’re looking to replace, meaning energy generation. You’re also handwaving away the entire infrastructure needed to convert excess hydrogen into ammonia, and then back again into hydrogen if you’re not using it as ammonia directly (which I haven’t seen you suggest yet).
That’s far far from easy, and its destroying your argument of a hydrogen intense future if you keep doubling down on it.