Hydrogen is a low density gas. To make it energy-dense enough to be viable for energy storage, it needs to be liquified. That requires energy in-put in the form of refrigeration.
Hogwash. Toyota Mirai has a range of 400 miles with a pressurized tank. It's somewhat bigger than a gasoline tank, but 400 miles is okay and point being it's not liquified H2. It leaks about the same as a li-ion self-discharges.
We might wish we could distribute liquified H2, but like you said it's not cost effective. Luckily there's not really any need to do so, as pressurized H2 is fine for cars, off-grid houses, and grid storage in caves and such. And there are alternatives like distributing ammonia and turning it into H2 on site.
Other common misconceptions are that it takes a lot of energy to pressurize H2, but for example it can be created from electrolysis while already under pressure for a minor 1%-2% overhead; the idea that you have to first create the H2 at atmospheric pressure and then compress it is junk bunk. Or that it embrittles metals - which is true - but they use carbon fiber and other materials instead. Or that it takes a lot of rare materials, but H2 cars already use less platinum than a catalytic converter.
Really there's only a few open questions: can the total cost get cheaper than batteries (car H2 tank plus fuel cell are well below $2k, but energy cost is higher), how much explosions will be a problem, and whether gasoline will be banned by policy.
Even then, pressurized hydrogen gas has a lower energy density than wood chips!
A reaction that converts ammonia to hydrogen occurs at about 600 degrees C, and is very slow. Even the most recent metal catalyzed reactions only bring that down to 500 degrees C. Lets say they halve that number and get a scalable process that operates at 250 dgrees C; that still is a major use of energy to produce the gas.
Industrial Conversion of Ammonia to Hydrogen in a nutshell:
Fossil Fuel -> Ammonia using the Haber–Bosch process at 550 degrees C.
Ammonia -> Hydrogen using a metal catalyzed reaction at about 500 degrees C.
All of those nice, high temperatures are supplied at the moment by burning fossil fuels. I'd bet that the whole process, plus shipping to your Toyota Mirai has a woeful energy efficiency.
As for catalytic reactions; Last time I checked Polymer Electrolyte Membrane cells were both expensive and ablative. That is, they were used up in the process of making hydrogen gas. As a result there was not yet a scalable process for industrial scale electrolytic hydrogen production, and there are no other serious contenders for a process right now, AFAIK.
The only way that I can see Hydrogen energy storage as having a future is if it is required by the government by outlawing everything else.
At which point we will still be using fossil fuels, just at very, very big an inefficient industrial plants far away from the point of consumption.
Energy for vehicles will cost four times as much, and the world will not be any greener.
So are you acknowledging that you don't need to have liquified H2, or are you pretending Mirai and other hydrogen cars don't exist? Sealed caverns can't store grid levels of hydrogen at pressure, it has to be liquified?
Energy density of wood chips is a red herring; does the Mirai have 400 mile range or not? The temperature of the reaction doesn't really matter at all to the efficiency; there are high temperature processes that are also efficient. Your comments are just long lists of these false premises, like that H2 has to be liquified.
What's great about H2 as chemical energy storage is that it's a common denominator that can be more easily converted to or from than other fuels. Ammonia is one of many ways hydrogen can be transported and there's no physics reason why it can't be efficient.
I asked you a question. How will the Hydrogen get transported from the very large, inefficient hydrogen production plant to your fueling station? Are you going to run a pipeline? Cart it in trucks? Convert it on site? How will it get there?
Lets pick trucks. You want to run 700 bar hydrogen in Carbon Fiber tanks on trucks? Okay, that will require (something like) fifty times more trucks than are currently used to cart petrol.
You want to pick Ammonia carted in trucks? Sure! At double the energy density of Hydrogen, it is still the lowest energy density fuel on the table (see figure 1, previous post) that isn't hydrogen. It is still lower energy density than Wood Chips. It still takes vastly more trucks and drivers and tire rubber than any other. Except now you have to add huge amounts of energy at the other end to turn it back into Hydrogen.
Let us draw a comparison. Natural Gas (mostly methane) is more than three times the energy density of Hydrogen. Moving it by trucks and ships isn't economical without liquifying it first. Low pressure natural gas is run through pipes or not at all.
To manufacture Ammonia you will require hydrogen (made from methane at 3 to 1) and nitrogen in the presence of intense heat and huge pressures. So next to your hydrogen plant you will have a second, industrial scale plant that heats thousands of tons of gas to 500 degrees, boiling it to a pressure of 200 atmospheres, where it will react with an iron catalyst.
Even if the reaction were very efficient, it takes a known quantity of energy to heat the reactants to temperature. You know how heating water for your home costs money? Well heating thousands of tons of gas also requires energy and costs money. Right now the process is only economically viable with access to low cost, low quality natural gas, a lot of which is burned for heat to bring the reactants up to temperature and pressure.
The Toyota Mirai is advertised as being 'zero emission' and 'clean'. It absolutely isn't. Current industrial hydrogen production is dirty as hell.
Even if low pressure hydrogen is the prefect energy storage method for cars, manufacturing it is eye-wateringly expensive, and not at all clean. Transporting the hydrogen is a damn nightmare, and more to the point, vastly expensive.
If we imagine a totally free source of hydrogen (sunlight falls on a genie that waves a wand in a factory) the logistics considerations to get that energy to your car would cost several times the costs of your current energy storage method.
The point I am making, isn't that it can't be done, or that it shouldn't be done. The point is that it will cost a lot more. Three quarters of the world will be riding bicycles because they can't afford hydrogen.... which is still made from natural gas and dirty as hell.
Cart it in trucks? Convert it on site? How will it get there?
Think about it for more than half a second. People are paying for usable energy - miles of range. Mirai shows roughly the same usable energy per volume and how does gasoline get there? By truck, so H2 could be delivered the same way.
Of course with H2 there are other alternatives, like if power is very cheap it could be made on site whereas gasoline that's not really possible because it's not as simple chemically.
The Toyota Mirai is advertised as being 'zero emission' and 'clean'. It absolutely isn't. Current industrial hydrogen production is dirty as hell.
It's just constant red herrings and nonsequiturs with you. Who's arguing whether it's putting CO2 into the air or not? It'll be made from cracking natural gas for a long while until electricity is very cheap. Could be made in many other ways though.
With high temperature reactions you use the output to heat the input. You're not using energy to heat all the material from scratch and then throwing that energy away. The reaction temperature has some bearing on efficiency, but not in the simplistic way you talk about 'it's 500 decrees C dude!'.
You started off with your thesis that it has to be liquified and kept at near zero temperatures to be useful. That's false so your conclusions based on it are false. End of story.
Hogwash. Toyota Mirai has a range of 400 miles with a pressurized tank. It's somewhat bigger than a gasoline tank, but 400 miles is okay and point being it's not liquified H2. It leaks about the same as a li-ion self-discharges.
We might wish we could distribute liquified H2, but like you said it's not cost effective. Luckily there's not really any need to do so, as pressurized H2 is fine for cars, off-grid houses, and grid storage in caves and such. And there are alternatives like distributing ammonia and turning it into H2 on site.
Other common misconceptions are that it takes a lot of energy to pressurize H2, but for example it can be created from electrolysis while already under pressure for a minor 1%-2% overhead; the idea that you have to first create the H2 at atmospheric pressure and then compress it is junk bunk. Or that it embrittles metals - which is true - but they use carbon fiber and other materials instead. Or that it takes a lot of rare materials, but H2 cars already use less platinum than a catalytic converter.
Really there's only a few open questions: can the total cost get cheaper than batteries (car H2 tank plus fuel cell are well below $2k, but energy cost is higher), how much explosions will be a problem, and whether gasoline will be banned by policy.
Not Hogwash!
How do you produce industrial scale quantities of Hydrogen and get it to where you fill up your Toyota Mirai?
Put it in a tanker truck at 700 PSI?
http://www.olicognography.org/graph/energydensity.jpg
Even then, pressurized hydrogen gas has a lower energy density than wood chips!
A reaction that converts ammonia to hydrogen occurs at about 600 degrees C, and is very slow. Even the most recent metal catalyzed reactions only bring that down to 500 degrees C. Lets say they halve that number and get a scalable process that operates at 250 dgrees C; that still is a major use of energy to produce the gas.
Industrial Conversion of Ammonia to Hydrogen in a nutshell:
Fossil Fuel -> Ammonia using the Haber–Bosch process at 550 degrees C.
Ammonia -> Hydrogen using a metal catalyzed reaction at about 500 degrees C.
All of those nice, high temperatures are supplied at the moment by burning fossil fuels. I'd bet that the whole process, plus shipping to your Toyota Mirai has a woeful energy efficiency.
As for catalytic reactions; Last time I checked Polymer Electrolyte Membrane cells were both expensive and ablative. That is, they were used up in the process of making hydrogen gas. As a result there was not yet a scalable process for industrial scale electrolytic hydrogen production, and there are no other serious contenders for a process right now, AFAIK.
The only way that I can see Hydrogen energy storage as having a future is if it is required by the government by outlawing everything else.
At which point we will still be using fossil fuels, just at very, very big an inefficient industrial plants far away from the point of consumption.
Energy for vehicles will cost four times as much, and the world will not be any greener.
So are you acknowledging that you don't need to have liquified H2, or are you pretending Mirai and other hydrogen cars don't exist? Sealed caverns can't store grid levels of hydrogen at pressure, it has to be liquified?
Energy density of wood chips is a red herring; does the Mirai have 400 mile range or not? The temperature of the reaction doesn't really matter at all to the efficiency; there are high temperature processes that are also efficient. Your comments are just long lists of these false premises, like that H2 has to be liquified.
What's great about H2 as chemical energy storage is that it's a common denominator that can be more easily converted to or from than other fuels. Ammonia is one of many ways hydrogen can be transported and there's no physics reason why it can't be efficient.
Read my post again.
I asked you a question. How will the Hydrogen get transported from the very large, inefficient hydrogen production plant to your fueling station? Are you going to run a pipeline? Cart it in trucks? Convert it on site? How will it get there?
Lets pick trucks. You want to run 700 bar hydrogen in Carbon Fiber tanks on trucks? Okay, that will require (something like) fifty times more trucks than are currently used to cart petrol.
You want to pick Ammonia carted in trucks? Sure! At double the energy density of Hydrogen, it is still the lowest energy density fuel on the table (see figure 1, previous post) that isn't hydrogen. It is still lower energy density than Wood Chips. It still takes vastly more trucks and drivers and tire rubber than any other. Except now you have to add huge amounts of energy at the other end to turn it back into Hydrogen.
Let us draw a comparison. Natural Gas (mostly methane) is more than three times the energy density of Hydrogen. Moving it by trucks and ships isn't economical without liquifying it first. Low pressure natural gas is run through pipes or not at all.
To manufacture Ammonia you will require hydrogen (made from methane at 3 to 1) and nitrogen in the presence of intense heat and huge pressures. So next to your hydrogen plant you will have a second, industrial scale plant that heats thousands of tons of gas to 500 degrees, boiling it to a pressure of 200 atmospheres, where it will react with an iron catalyst.
Even if the reaction were very efficient, it takes a known quantity of energy to heat the reactants to temperature. You know how heating water for your home costs money? Well heating thousands of tons of gas also requires energy and costs money. Right now the process is only economically viable with access to low cost, low quality natural gas, a lot of which is burned for heat to bring the reactants up to temperature and pressure.
The Toyota Mirai is advertised as being 'zero emission' and 'clean'. It absolutely isn't. Current industrial hydrogen production is dirty as hell.
Even if low pressure hydrogen is the prefect energy storage method for cars, manufacturing it is eye-wateringly expensive, and not at all clean. Transporting the hydrogen is a damn nightmare, and more to the point, vastly expensive.
If we imagine a totally free source of hydrogen (sunlight falls on a genie that waves a wand in a factory) the logistics considerations to get that energy to your car would cost several times the costs of your current energy storage method.
The point I am making, isn't that it can't be done, or that it shouldn't be done. The point is that it will cost a lot more. Three quarters of the world will be riding bicycles because they can't afford hydrogen.... which is still made from natural gas and dirty as hell.
Think about it for more than half a second. People are paying for usable energy - miles of range. Mirai shows roughly the same usable energy per volume and how does gasoline get there? By truck, so H2 could be delivered the same way.
Of course with H2 there are other alternatives, like if power is very cheap it could be made on site whereas gasoline that's not really possible because it's not as simple chemically.
It's just constant red herrings and nonsequiturs with you. Who's arguing whether it's putting CO2 into the air or not? It'll be made from cracking natural gas for a long while until electricity is very cheap. Could be made in many other ways though.
With high temperature reactions you use the output to heat the input. You're not using energy to heat all the material from scratch and then throwing that energy away. The reaction temperature has some bearing on efficiency, but not in the simplistic way you talk about 'it's 500 decrees C dude!'.
You started off with your thesis that it has to be liquified and kept at near zero temperatures to be useful. That's false so your conclusions based on it are false. End of story.