Comments on: Every kilogram of hydrogen needs nine kilograms of tank to hold it

By: TRX

TRX — Sat, 28 May 2022 10:15:54 +0000

There’s also the widely ignored problem that hydrogen sucks as a motor fuel. Its knock limit is low, which means overall engine efficiency most be less than gasoline, and it has a high combustion temperature, which raises NOx emissions. NOx is normally countered by large amounts of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), which lowers engine output and efficiency even more.

Most of the idiots bloviating about how “clean” hydrogen exhaust is seem to be living in a fantasy world where air is 100% oxygen. Here in this world, air is 78% nitrogen, which is highly reactive at combustion temperatures, and almost every compound formed is evil and unclean in the eyes of the EPA.

By: Pseudo-Chrysostom

Pseudo-Chrysostom — Thu, 12 May 2022 03:23:01 +0000

The useful niche of hydrogen in economical transportation was solved a long time ago, which is floating airships. The Hindenburg accident infelicitously stoppercapped the technology unfortunately. Fatality rates in plane crashes are virtually 100% with few exceptions, and more than a few have taken place, but that doesn’t ‘stick’ in people’s minds the same way. Great balls of fire trigger neuron activation in the monkey brain.

https://www.sparringmind.com/supernormal-stimuli/

By: Goober

Goober — Wed, 11 May 2022 22:00:29 +0000

Bob, it’s really not that big of a deal, when you think about it. It’s just a liquid that’s so cold that it will freeze organic material instantly, unless it finds an ignition source, at which point it will incinerate the previously frozen materials, all under so many atmospheres of pressure that a tiny leak would dismember a human that was unlucky enough to get in the way.

So, essentially no biggie.

By: Goober

Goober — Wed, 11 May 2022 21:57:32 +0000

Gavin,

You see, we need to create solar energy via photovoltaic panels that are super resource intensive and don’t last long enough to pay for themselves, and then use the energy generated from those panels to electrolysis-erate some water that we’ve run through RO filtration to purify it (I’m sure that process is easy, right? No big deal?), so that we can pump it into tanks with valves and structures that are slowly destroyed by the hydrogen (but not really that slowly) so that we can put it in tanks pumped up to like several hundred atmospheres worth of pressure with cryogenically cold liquid that makes any tank it goes into that much more brittle, and then send them up to 30,000 feet above sea level where it’s cold and atmospheric pressure is even lower so the differential between outside and the tanks is even greater, all with them mounted in the struture of the wings of a machine carrying several hundred people through the sky at 500 miles per hour.

Why are you questioning this obviously sound technology?

By: Bob Sykes

Bob Sykes — Wed, 11 May 2022 12:08:33 +0000

Does anyone think regular airport ground crews will be able to handle cryogenic liquid hydrogen? The SpaceX team just had a catastrophic failure in their cryogenic liquid HELIUM fueling system that destroyed the launch rocket on the pad.

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 11 May 2022 05:41:09 +0000

Bruce, lol.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Wed, 11 May 2022 04:56:05 +0000

Gavin, it sounds like you have some sort of problem with a fuel that embrittles its valves while being such a small molecule that it oozes out of any container made of other molecules.

By: Gavin Longmuir

Gavin Longmuir — Tue, 10 May 2022 21:16:42 +0000

Closest source of naturally-occurring hydrogen is our Sun — although collection of hydrogen from the Sun on a commercial basis is not within our current technological capabilities.

What we can do is burn fossil fuels in one way or another to manufacture hydrogen from hydrocarbons and/or expensive scarce ultra-pure water.

Remind me what the advantage of hydrogen is, please.