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mancinedinburgh OP t1_je0l9z4 wrote

I’m still not convinced of the merits of hydrogen as an effective, eco-friendly fuel source but could it be any worse than the current fuel used by long haul carriers to fly aircraft halfway across the world? We’re moving towards futuristic aircraft like this (perhaps not for several decades) but by the time it’s in service, we may have found a better fuel source.

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Sagybagy t1_je0v30v wrote

How is hydrogen a bad fuel source? Just out of curiosity is why I ask.

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wheelontour t1_je105fr wrote

hydrogen contains a lot of energy per kg but its density is extremely low, so you need a huuuge and heavy high pressure container to hold it. That mostly negates all its advantages, at least for the aeronautics industry and the contemporary space industry.

It would be a different story for spaceflight if one had the capability to fuel up a hydrogen rocket in orbit. In that case one could (mostly) take full advantage of all the benefits of hydrogen over other propellants.

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D_Ethan_Bones t1_je1wpg0 wrote

In spaceflight there's a conflict between delta-V and thrust to weight ratio - solid rocket boosters give a lot of thrust or 'muscle' so they are used for getting things off the ground while the lighter fuels would be in a later smaller stage that thrusts to get you in transit from Earth to Mars.

Refueling could be a thing, but without space manufacturing it won't be much of a useful thing. The staged design we use will get you to the moon and back because blasting off from the moon isn't nearly as hard as blasting off from Earth.

Getting to Mars and back could hypothetically be done by parking a huge orbital fuel tank around Mars, but getting it there would be an unprecedented achievement. Payload is expensive and it takes a lot of heavy fuel to provide enough thrust for an earth->mars or mars->earth transit. If you want a human crew and a ship capable of holding them then the fuel tank is going to be ridiculous, and the heaviest stage to get it off earth's surface would be terrifying.

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Shot-Job-8841 t1_je2i86v wrote

It does make sense if battery costs don’t drop as much as we hope. Really, I view Hydrogen Fuel Cells as the backup to if battery tech doesn’t have a major breakthrough.

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Xeroque_Holmes t1_je4gazv wrote

Plus there's a lot of inefficiency in generating, transporting and storing hydrogen.

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DrMux t1_je0x9x9 wrote

It depends on how it's generated. There are a few methods, each with its benefits and drawbacks. These are referred to as the "colors" of hydrogen generation.

  • Green Hydrogen is produced by electrolysis. Obviously for this to be eco-friendly it needs to be powered by renewable sources - currently, as renewables are a growing sector, some argue that those sources would be better used for directly powering the grid, or other uses like carbon capture, etc. I'm not here to say which is actually the best use of renewables, just what some of the arguments are.

  • Blue Hydrogen and Grey (or brown or black) Hydrogen are produced from fossil fuel sources like natural gas (grey) or coal (brown/black). This process produces CO2 as a byproduct and can either be captured and sequestered (blue) or not (grey, brown, black).

  • Other methods include "turquoise" hydrogen which uses pyrolysis, and produces solid carbon which can easily be sequestered, and "pink" hydrogen which uses a nuclear power source to perform electrolysis.

EDIT: It may also be considered a bad fuel source because it needs to be stored at high pressure, which presents engineering challenges and can be dangerous (obviously, hydrogen is highly combustible. The Hindenburg used hydrogen to stay afloat and look how that worked out). I think there are also concerns about its energy density vs other fuel sources but I don't know as much about that.

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Changleen t1_je39abs wrote

It doesn’t ‘need’ to be stored at high pressure at all. It just often is for convenience. Actually when under consideration for seasonal storage, using old salt mines or other mines with less permeable rock has been proposed and tested as a really cheap way to store a lot of H2.

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Xeroque_Holmes t1_je4gfa6 wrote

> It doesn’t ‘need’ to be stored at high pressure at all.

Just to circle back to the original topic, in airplanes it does. Otherwise you won't have very much of it.

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chatte__lunatique t1_je6ilsa wrote

To add, green hydrogen accounts for a very small percentage of hydrogen production. The majority (afaik) is black/brown hydrogen, with a a smaller amount of grey hydrogen. Green is like a percent or two.

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Regnasam t1_je3yugg wrote

Crazy the lengths that people will go to to discount nuclear as a “green” power source.

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Changleen t1_je42ap9 wrote

I’m not discounting nuclear at all, I particularly think these small modular reactors look amazing, and while we’re still talking fission rather than future fusion (let’s go!) then these molten salt reactor designs look great. They’re basically impossible to meltdown. Essentially the reaction situation is hard to maintain and any failure results in the reaction stopping rather than going critical. Good stuff. However it still comes with the problem of long (loooonnnnnggg) lasting radioactive waste. I can’t wait for fusion to get going.

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D_Ethan_Bones t1_je1vi1k wrote

It's not a matter of "hydrogen bad" so much as it's a matter of "hydrogen not gonna do what Hype Science Magazine says it will do, at least not yet."

Promising faster cheaper easier transit is today's incarnation of the boy who cried wolf. Replacing what we have with something better is what vast many claim and scarce few deliver.

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DonQuixBalls t1_je32ri7 wrote

It's less of a "source" of fuel and more of a storage method. If you're using electrolysis to make it, you're taking electrical energy and using it to convert water into a store of energy. That has inefficiencies at each step (generation, transportation, storage, and finally in its use.)

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South_Cheesecake6316 t1_jecp55k wrote

Currently the cheapest way to obtain hydrogen is by extracting it from petroleum products, the process releasing carbon dioxide and other byproducts.
Ultimately you'll get less useful energy out of it than if you just used the fossil fuels outright.

Hydrogen is already somewhat expensive compared to other fuel sources, so getting most buisesses to obtain it in environmentally friendly ways would be a challenge.

There's also the issue of storage. Gaseous hydrogen requires large pressurized storage tanks, and ends up being less energy dense in terms of volume than other fossil fuels. Liquid hydrogen of course can be much more energy dense, but requires a lot of energy to cool it to the point where it becomes a liquid state, and further cooling to keep it there.

Although liquid hydrogen has its use as a specialized high energy density fuel, at the current moment, I don't see hydrogen as an economicaly viable fuel.

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South_Cheesecake6316 t1_jecrjv9 wrote

Currently the cheapest way to obtain hydrogen is by extracting it from petroleum products, the process releasing carbon dioxide and other byproducts.
Ultimately you'll get less useful energy out of it than if you just used the fossil fuels outright.

Hydrogen is already somewhat expensive compared to other fuel sources, so getting most buisesses to obtain it in environmentally friendly ways would be a challenge.

There's also the issue of storage. Gaseous hydrogen requires large pressurized storage tanks, and ends up being less energy dense in terms of volume than other fossil fuels. Liquid hydrogen of course can be much more energy dense, but requires a lot of energy to cool it to the point where it becomes a liquid state, and further cooling to keep it there.

Although liquid hydrogen has its use as a specialized high energy density fuel, at the current moment, I don't see hydrogen as an economicaly viable fuel.

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mancinedinburgh OP t1_je0w2kr wrote

It’s not that it’s a bad fuel source but it seems to be very hyped and currently not very economical nor is it as safe as other fuels (highly flammable etc). In order to accommodate it, other prototype aircraft have had to remove space for passengers because of the size of the fuel cell required, for instance.

I would be the first to say that I am open to persuasion and am by no means as well educated on it as I could be so always happy to be directed to reliable sources of info.

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Sagybagy t1_je19zlw wrote

Thank you for your response! I appreciate it.

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Ethanator10000 t1_je0wrhz wrote

Generating hydrogen with electrolysis (using electricity to decompose water into Hydrogen and Oxygen) is energy intensive, and most is created with fresh water, and this could create another resource scarcity issue. However, seawater electrolysis is being researched and it looks like a breakthough was achieved at the end of last year.

If the electricity used for this does not need to be stored for later use (unlike an EV), then it is more efficient to use it immediately (solar and wind farms often need to store the energy they generate during off peak hours for peak usage hours).

If the electricity used for this process is generated with fossil fuels, then it is more efficient to just use fossil fuel combustion directly for energy instead of first generating electrical energy, then storing that energy in hydrogen through electrolysis, and then re-releasing it with hydrogen combustion. Or, if hydrogen gas is really needed for some reason then it can be synthesized with processes that use the fossil fuels directly.

TLDR is energy is lost from the inefficiency of energy transformation which is needed to generate hydrogen.

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garlicroastedpotato t1_je14lug wrote

This is false. You no longer need fresh water to make hydrogen. There are a lot of hydrogen facilities coming up around the world with desalination as part of their plant.

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Ethanator10000 t1_je1i9rp wrote

> You no longer need fresh water

> desalination as part of their plant

???

Desalination turns salt water into desalinated (fresh) water, but is also energy intensive. The process in the link I shared does not require the salt water to be desalinated.

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Botlawson t1_je1es5k wrote

For a Hypersonic craft hydrogen has some small advantages that don't apply to most others vehicles. First it burns exceptionally fast. This shrinks the engines. Second it has an extremely high specific heat so pound for pound you can dump a lot more heat from the frame and engine into the fuel before burning it.

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MightyH20 t1_je4bktn wrote

Third, using Hydrogen cools down various propulsion systems due to pressure difference when distributed to the combustion engine.

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