Science

3231 readers

45 users here now

General discussions about "science" itself

Be sure to also check out these other Fediverse science communities:

https://lemmy.ml/c/science

https://beehaw.org/c/science

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Sal@mander.xyz

fossilesque@mander.xyz

MIT design would harness 40 percent of the sun’s heat to produce clean hydrogen fuel (news.mit.edu)

submitted 1 year ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science@mander.xyz

5 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The impact of real, clean, cheap hydrogen would be substantial. I hope they can scale this quickly and it doesn’t remain vaporware like everything else hydrogen related.

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Storing hydrogen is a bitch. It readily ionizes and the H+ ion is just a single proton. It gets inside metal lattices easily, finds a stray atom to combine there and boom - suddenly it's 100 times the size it was. That's what's called hydrogen pitting.

So right now, if hydrogen storage was good and cheap, we could use hydrogen as a battery for supply regulated energy sources (solar, wind) and burn it in a turbine to generate electricity and water. You don't even need the storage to be mobile or miniaturized for that. And even that isn't a reality.

So I'll perk up when news of a cheap reliable hydrogen storage technology comes around.

[–] quixoticWoodpecker@mander.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

Personally, I think methanation may be promising, since you can use the existing infrastructure.

load more comments (1 replies)