TL&DR Summary: poor cycle efficiency, low energy density per unit volume, and the poor use of capital which plagues all long term energy storage means, more or less kills the use of hydrogen as an energy storage medium One of the few uses of green hydrogen as a fuel that remains on the upper tiers […]
Tag: hydrogen
Popular Myths I’ve Never Believed (and which you shouldn’t, either)
Castle in the Pyrenees- one of my favorite Rene Magritte paintings. I often felt that many of my customers were asking me to build them such a castle. My recent article about things I’ve gotten wrong and had to change my mind about, got me thinking about things that other people seem to believe and […]
Blue Hydrogen Reconsidered?
TL&DR Summary: blue hydrogen will be cheaper than green hydrogen for the foreseeable future. But the risk remains that the product will be much cheaper if we ignore the fact that it’s not blue, but rather blackish-blue and bruise coloured due to methane and uncaptured CO2 emissions. But that can also be said about green […]
Wrecking Stuff to Make Hydrogen
A Coke can that has been dissolved in sodium hydroxide, revealing its internal plastic liner (photo credit- YouTube) TL&DR: destroying reduced metals/metalloids like aluminum and silicon is a really, really dumb way to make hydrogen. It is energetic vandalism, and generates unnecessary toxic emissions to generate a low value product. A shorter, more perfunctory version […]
Green Hydrogen as a Fuel is a Zombie Meme Idea
TL&DR summary: hydrogen as a fuel is a zombie idea. Thermodynamics and the properties of the molecule ensure that it will never be alive in economic terms. Hydrogen’s dirty present hasn’t meaningfully changed over the last 20 years, and hydrogen as a fuel isn’t a real decarbonization idea. However, while it will never be alive, […]
Green Steel = Green Iron
Image credit: Google Gemini What is “green steel”? Simple. It’s a misnomer. Iron in nature is rarely found alone. We mine its oxides as iron ores. These oxides need to be chemically reduced (gaining electrons = reduction) to take the Fe+2 and Fe+3 ions in the iron oxides, to Fe metal. And the oxygen needs […]
Can You Put Hydrogen in Natural Gas Pipelines? Ya, but…
Ya-but the rabbit, courtesy of Google Gemini TL&DR Summary: sure, you can re-use an existing gas pipeline to carry some quantity of hydrogen at some pressure, and do so safely. How much pressure and under what circumstances and operating conditions, and how much energy can be delivered via that repurposed pipe, and whether or not […]
Where Does Green Hydrogen Fit?
Image credit: Google Gemini If you know my writing even a little, you’ll know where I stand on this issue. It’s as simple as my meme, but my many articles (especially this one) explain why, in detail. Those articles come with analysis and references and the comments of many experts in the field as an […]
How Green is Green Hydrogen on a Lifecycle Basis?
Image source: Google Gemini. Gemini won’t draw people, i.e. sketchy looking men in business suits, so I asked it to draw “a robot similar to Bender from Futurama”, and that did the trick. Worried about copyright? Suggest you talk to Google. TL&DR summary: a recent paper published by Dutch researchers in the journal Nature Energy […]
The Case Against Hydrogen Trucks
This article is a companion to my recent article about why I think battery electric trucks are the future of freight: Electric Trucks- the Future of Freight TL&DR: hydrogen trucks are largely just a retreat position for people who previously thought hydrogen cars were going to be a thing. They won’t be. There is no […]