TamilTechNews
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECrVfEV2r4s
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06247-6
Aug 25, 2023 4:59 PM
TamilTechNews
2037
45
4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECrVfEV2r4s
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06247-6
PowerPedant
Can we stop throwing "breakthrough" around for everything? They found a phenomenological explanation for an already known observation. It involves protons. Directly connecting this to the "hydrogen economy" is nothing but a university PR department's fever dream.
CaldariBob
Someone tripped on a cobblestone?
thisplaceisjustanothernewssitenow
Unfortunately we live in a word of depressing repetitive capitalism. Hype trains get peoples attention. If we lived in a scientific auttuistic society. The headline would read more accurately
KnifeKnut
Basic research like this can give you ideas for new things to try. That said, the hydrogen economy thing is a bit of a reach, and itself is questionably flawed. All that hydrogen has to come from somewhere, getting it from oil misleadingly called "blue hydrogen"
KnifeKnut
Is not sustainable, and will take a lot of nuclear or renewable power to get it from water. Perhaps someone is looking at how to get it from biologically derived hydrocarbon feedstocks.
KuldFyt
There's a fair number of places in the world that have an excess of solar radiation for their population's power needs, relatively ready access to non-potable water, and workforces that have experience with fuel gasses. Right now fossil fuel subsidies & externalities make the $ math look bad, but that's a problem for everything. No one thing's gonna be the magic bullet, but dropping the energy barrier on salt water hydrolysis is not *that* crazy of a path to try.
KnifeKnut
Your mention of fuel gases gives me a thought, methane is a lot easier to store and use though you do need further conversion from hydrogen, but it might be worth the trade off for many applications. It definitely is worth the trade off for rocketry, and fuel cells are catching up.
PowerPedant
Burning methane emits CO₂, which would have to come from the atmosphere to remain climate neutral. That extraction takes A LOT of additional energy.
KuldFyt
Depends so much on the numbers. H2->CH4 is going to be an efficiency loss, and joule for joule CH4 is heavier. Does the easier handling make up for that? Maybe it does on a truck but not in a pipeline? Maybe H2 makes sense to run generators but CH4 for engines? It's all so speculative, I'm loathe to discount any non-fossil pathway.