I wish I got to do fun little projects like this at my job. Anyway, this proof of concept shows that hydrogen would be a great alternative to propane and natural gas for cooking. Hat tip to @hypx@mastodon.social.
Sooo just cooking gas with more steps.
Oil industry loves pushing hydrogen but it’s nearly all made from fossil fuels, so what benefit is there?
Blue hydrogen is made by stripping the hydrogen from fossil fuel hydrocarbons (chains of hydrogen and carbon, hence the name), and sequestering the carbon. It produces a fuel that contains enough chemical energy to be burned as fuel, but without the carbon atoms that would turn into greenhouse gases.
Most hydrogen currently produced though, is gray hydrogen (made from natural gas, but without sequestering the carbon, so that CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere).
The biggest use-case I see for hydrogen is more of an energy storage and transfer mechanism. With the world switching to renewables that generate power inconsistently, some countries are looking at putting the extra power into hydrogen generation via electrolysis, which can then be used at night/low-wind days to keep the power grid stable.
If we ever get to the point that we’ve got a surplus of renewably generated hydrogen, then it could make sense to start using to power cars, heating, cooking, whatever.
Fossil fuels, including coal, are also used to produce electricity. They simply need to be prohibited or at least strictly rationed. Fortunately, hydrogen can be produced without emitting greenhouse gasses because it is still necessary for processes like steel and fertilizer production. It’s also a practical replacement for fossil fuels in transportation and, as Toyota demonstrated, food preparation. As I replied to someone else, sometimes we need portability and/or a flame when it comes to cooking. Electricity just doesn’t cut it in those cases.
If the process to make hydrogen is clean, burning h is way way way cleaner. That’s the math, not the source. The source can become an economics problem rather than necessarily an environmental one (imagine like 45 footnotes for where we do stuff that makes this not true, I’m just trying to capture the goal)
I think Japan is pushing it, because they import most of their kJ. They don’t like nuclear for obvious reasons and there’s a few reasons they probably don’t like renewable projects like a lack of land and being a natural disaster prone country. So they are left with importing energy and hopefully value adding to it enough that it’s worth while
Toyota hopes you’ll buy a hydrogen-powered car after grilling with a hydrogen barbecue
It will be the same as with lithium EVs. Hydrogen may be safer than IC, but once any explodes media will paint them as bombs driving on our roads
That depends on how easy it is to deal with the explosion when it happens. The issue with lithium-ion is that they can’t just be smothered like an ICE fire, so there’s really nothing you can do once it starts. Also, ICEs don’t spontaneously catch fire when parked in your garage, they tend to catch fire when you’re driving, which means you’re immediately aware when it starts to happen.
An EV catching fire while it charges at night is extra scary because I’m likely to be asleep, and therefore I’ll have a smaller chance to react properly (especially if I need to run up/down stairs to round up small children). So even if it’s less likely, it’s potentially worse because I’m less likely to be able to get away from it safely.
I don’t know much about what a practical hydrogen failure looks like, but my understanding is that it’s quite violent. But maybe they have controls around that now, idk.
They’ll do anything not to build EVs /s
TBH I respect Toyota for being realistic more than grifters like Musk. The fact is that car will never be a sustainable replacement for cars. They’re here to save the auto cartels, not the planet.
But on the other hand public transit and LEVs are much more realistic. I would very much like to see a Toyota e-bike.
Fun project! But replacing gas with hydrogen seems really tricky. Hydrogen is much harder to transport without leaks because it’s such a tiny molecule. Electric seems better than trying to still burn hydrogen.
Electric is far more efficient too, thus cheaper. Electricity you can transit over distance over wire and generate however you like. We’ve done it a long time, far and wide.
Turning electricity into hydrogen, distributing it, and then turning it back into electricity to move a vehicle, is so wasteful/expensive.
Just use a big battery.
For some applications like spacecraft where weight is critical, it does make sense to use hydrogen fuel cells as a battery. But usually it doesn’t make sense.
The best way to store and transport hydrogen is to combine it with carbon so that it becomes a convenient liquid fuel. As a bonus, then you don’t even need fuel cells to make electricity from it, but can instead simply burn it in something called an “internal combustion engine”
Nah, combustion engine is just one step up from the steam engine, such a wasteful technology, should long be in a museum.
First thing i think about in using a hydrogen-carbon fuel, is fuel cell (no better word for “Brennstoffzelle”?) to create electricity. Next up a steam turbine.
Tons of experts believe the only way hydrogen based transportation makes sense is by using it to fuel heavy transport right at the source instead of trying to transport it via pipeline.
As Toyota has demonstrated (and speaking from my own experience), it’s not that tricky. As for cooking with the stuff, sometimes you just need portability and/or a flame. Electric is a poor choice in those cases.
Portability is hard for hydrogen since you hadn’t liquify it without huge pressures and cryogenic temps, so you need big tanks. But cooking stoves does seem like a pretty good use case.
Compress it to 10,000psi and it gets portable enough.
I think the experts who believes in this technology know a bit more than you and me who only read a few wiki pages.
If money is going into this, they also have a believable plan. But big oil certainly want you to think otherwise.
Just need to waste a ton of energy extracting it then liquifying it then hoping that transport doesn’t face any issues (and I mean, considering our track record with petrol which doesn’t corrode everything it touches I sure as hell wouldn’t worry about it [/s if it wasn’t clear]) and then fill up your personal car that could have simply been powered by electricity from the beginning…
Also, ever heard of energy density? Because hydrogen won’t win prizes on that front!
Wait wait wait, you’re telling me that taking electricity, sending it along wires, generating hydrogen with it via hydrolysis, packaging it, compressing it to an extreme degree, physically transporting it, putting it in pumps, pumping it into your car, then doing reverse hydrolysis to charge a battery that then powers an electric motor…
Is less efficient than sending electricity along some wires to your car battery, to then drive an electric motor?
I’m shocked!
Back in the early days of gas infrastructure, before wide-spread electrification, you know gas street lights and everything, the gas was produced by gasifying coal, resulting in gas that was often over 50% hydrogen, with only ~20% methane. Rest nitrogen and CO.
Natural gas has a methane content upwards of 75%, which meant that everyone had to switch out their burner nozzles but the rest of the infrastructure stayed intact.
All this is to say: Nothing about is really new or rocket science. Europe is certainly creating a backbone pipeline network for hydrogen, parts of it new pipes, other parts re-purposed natural gas pipes, many were built to a standard that allows them to carry hydrogen though some valves etc. might need upgrading. Some of those were originally built for hydrogen in the first place, and checking Wikipedia there’s actually a 240km segment in the Ruhr area, built in 1938, still in operation, which always carried hydrogen. Plain steel but comparatively low-pressure so it works.
Oh and have another number: According to Fraunhofer, Germany’s pipeline network can store three months of total energy usage (electricity, transportation, everything). Not in storage tanks, but just by operating the pipelines themselves at higher or lower pressure.
And we need that stuff one way or the other: Even if tomorrow ten thousand fusion plants go online that doesn’t mean that the chemical industry doesn’t need feedstock, or that reducing steel with electricity would make sense. Both of those things need hydrogen.
Fusion is still in the future so the plan is to import most of that hydrogen, mostly from Canada and Namibia, in tankers carrying ammonia which is way more efficient that trying to compress hydrogen also ammonia is needed for some processes anyway.
Hydrogen is so much smaller than natty light that on a Continental scale the losses could be significant, but that’s neat history. It’s fun how long stuff has been around like gasification.
From all that I’ve seen electricity lines (also HVDC) have higher transmission losses by a magnitude. With hydrogen and modern material science you’ll probably have the choice between higher losses and embrittlement, but that’s just another economical equation: Do you want to eat the higher losses, or replace the pipeline in a couple of decades or a century.
At least environment-wise hydrogen leaks aren’t an issue: Some atoms diffusing through the wall don’t constitute a fire hazard and the end result is water. Methane, OTOH, is a nasty greenhouse gas.
Speaking of nature: Ammonia is nasty, but nature produces it itself (just not at those concentrations) and can deal with it. The site directly surrounding a leak would be dead, a bit further downstream (literally) there’s going to be over-fertilisation. Not nice but definitely better than an oil leak and fixing it quite literally involves waiting until grass has grown over it as rain dilutes it and microorganisms migrate back in to eat it. Similar things apply to ethanol which I’d say would be a better choice for general use such as hybrid cars, camping stoves and whatnot because it’s not going to burn your lungs away. Can’t rely on people being conscious enough to get up and flee the ammonia stench when they’re in a car accident.
At least environment-wise hydrogen leaks aren’t an issue:
Hydrogen is a strong indirect greenhouse gas.
The climate impact of hydrogen is about 34 times higher than CO2 when measured over a 20-year period. Looking at the impact over 100 years, the global warming potential reduces to between eight and 13 times.
Hydrogen causes this by stabilising methane in the atmosphere and creating tropospheric ozone and stratospheric water vapour.
