Is hydrogen, rather than electric, the future for big-engined machinery?

roundthebend

Ddigger said:

Splitting water to make hydrogen requires more energy than you get back when you recombine it, doesn't it?

Almost certainly. But, it's about convenience and storage. If you generate electricity from solar power during the day, you can split water into hydrogen to store that energy. You could argue the same with charging batteries.

ToneControl

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200603104547.htm

roundthebend

ToneControl said:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200603104547.htm

"..using aluminum-doped strontium titanate"

Hmmm.....

crunchman

ToneControl said:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200603104547.htm

Looks good, but even if you go the brute force electrolysis approach it can still work.

I'm pretty sure that PV solar is now the cheapest form of electricity generation, and we could add 30GW or more to our electricity generation capacity with a concerted effort to put it on every available building.  Our current capacity is less than 100GW, so that's a significant increase.

The problem is that solar is intermittent, and not available overnight, when most will want to charge their cars.  We need to store that energy.  We could build very expensive banks of batteries that will need replacing every few years.  Charging and and discharging those will lead to losses, and they will probably require active cooling which will use more energy.

With the cost of the batteries, replacing them every few years, and the losses from charging/discharging and cooling, it will probably work out cheaper in the long term to store the solar energy by using it to split water - even if it's not the most efficient process.  It would also save a lot of money on installing and maintaining millions of car charging points.

Nitefly

We need somebody to reinvent the Sinclair C5.

Ddigger

This was on the Scottish news, not sure if it was on national news.

Tidal power generator, transmitting to an onshore electrolyser station.  Based in the waters north of Shapinsay, in Orkney

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-scotland-57991442

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/28/worlds-most-powerful-tidal-turbine-starts-to-export-power-to-grid-.html

Sounds great, but the marine structure is 680 tonnes!

The Pentland Firth has currents up to 16kts, so plenty of potential there.  There are some parts of the UK that get 4 tides a day instead of two (Isle of Wight and some spots in the Inner Hebrides).

grungebob

Stupid draft won’t delete.