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.
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.
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.
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.
Compress it to 10,000psi and it gets portable enough.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Add a hydrogen generator and all you need is water and electricity to make the hydrogen. You don’t even have to transport it.
I’d much rather transport a bottle of hydrogen to a cookout than an electrolyzer. What if a power outlet isn’t available?
Hydrogen is very difficult to bottle. It tends to just slip out of anything you put it in because of how small the atoms are.
And also incredibly low density. So your bottle would likely be on a trailer.
If hydrogen is so difficult to bottle then how are there self-serve refuelling stations in operation?
Yes, there is a volumetric penalty, but it’s not that bad. At 10,000psi a 1 gallon hydrogen bottle has roughly the same energy as a 1lb bottle of liquid propane for camping.
And I’d rather transport a cheap and widely available propane tank instead of an ultra high pressure hydrogen canister that can only be refilled at 3 places in the entire state.
Yes, but imagine a world where propane and other fossil fuels are no longer available. You’re going to lug a big battery around for an electric grill instead?
For what it’s worth hydrogen stations currently dispense at 10,000psi, which is considered “medium” pressure in the field. “Ultra high” pressure is considered an order of magnitude greater.
Surely an oven that inherently steams everything it cooks is quite a different tool to a regular oven? It probably works well with breads and similar products, though, so I guess that’d work as a pizza oven
Burning methane also produces steam. Methane produces 891 kJ/mol, hydrogen 286 kJ/mol, methane has four hydrogen atoms that’d be 1144 kJ per what should the unit be in any case: Methane produces less heat per unit of produced water than hydrogen (the hydrogen first needs to get ripped off the carbon). Those ovens burn dryer than your current gas oven.
Never used steam when making pizza, they’re not in there long enough for steam to make a difference. For bread it’s indispensable to get a proper crust, though.
EDIT: Did I get moles right? It’s been a while and I am no chemist.
Steam may be okay for the wheat crust, generally when baking bread steam is applied in the initial rise period, but is generally turned off at the end for a dry final bake. The cheese is another matter. Ideally the cheese has to do more than melt, it should develop a partly caramelized appearance on the top (slightly brownish in places). Whether that would happen with this kind of oven is unknown.
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.
That’s cool and all…but hydrogen isn’t an energy source, not the way we use it…it’s more like a battery. And we have battery powered ovens now.
The hard part of current tech is making recharging the battery economical given that there will be a significant loss.
The even harder part of hydrogen, though, is storing and transport. Hydrogen atoms are real small. Anything you put it in will leak, and that impacts the recharge efficiency, as well.
There is promising research into mixing hydrogen with existing natural gas pipelines at low concentration (<2%). It doesn’t leak any more than gas pipes do already and the low concentration prevents embrittlement. And you don’t have to go through the horrendous efficiency of a fuel cell, you just burn it with the gas
.png){kind=link}
