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   goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 07:44:40 JST goatsarah

   Thing I don’t get is people believing that hydrogen is going to be a useful automotive fuel. Are they all oil company shills?

   Hydrogen is an objectively terrible fuel for pretty much any use with the possible exception of aviation.

   It has abysmal energy density for a given volume, even if you liquify it (compare Falcon heavy to Delta IV heavy: similar lift capacities but the latter is fucking enormous because hydrogen takes up stupid amounts of space and the former runs on kerosene).

   It doesn’t stay where you put it, ever. It’s literally impossible to keep hydrogen in a container. A hydrogen molecule is so small that it will fuck off through the gaps in soils iron. You cannot store it long term.

   To get ANY kind of sensible energy density from it, you have to liquify it (where it’s still shit compared to pretty much any other energy source in the same volume), and that’s cold. Seriously, seriously, mind bendingly cold. It makes liquid nitrogen look like lava.

   Oil companies like it because atom for at, crude oil is mostly hydrogen. Go figure.

   But it’s an objectively dreadful fuel. Stop trying to make hydrogen a thing. It’s never going to be (again, planes maybe excepted).

   • Embed this notice
     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 07:58:33 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Mark vW
     @markvonwahlde Demanding it for what? What do you want to burn this pointless gas for?
   • Embed this notice
     Mark vW (markvonwahlde@mastodon.world)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 07:58:34 JST Mark vW

     in reply to

     @goatsarah Why is hydrogen on demand not ever going to be feasible?

   • Embed this notice
     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 08:02:21 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Mark vW
     @markvonwahlde if you’re that desperate to make steam, you can just turn the kettle on.
   • Embed this notice
     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 08:11:33 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Alex Holst

     @holsta there isn’t going to be progress because it’s fucking stupid.

     Gonna explain why I think aviation is an exception. Planes NEED to get off of kerosene. It’s filthy.

     Planes are about, first and foremost, weight. Batteries are no good. They are heavy and they stay heavy even when flat. A plane that’s burned all its jet fuel is a light glider. A plane full of flat batteries is a flying brick.

     So the fact that you’re chucking out the back is a benefit. Planes also have a lot of empty space inside the fuselage so the fact that hydrogen has shite energy density by VOLUME is not so important as it having pretty good energy density by MASS.

     And finally, they fly from airport to airport quickly. Airports have economies of scale to handle large quantities of the stuff in deep cryo and the planes are not sitting around fuelled up for days on end, so the fact that it fucks off by itself doesn’t matter so much.

     But for automotive and domestic use? Forget it. Batteries are objectively superior for automotive and always will be. For domestic use, you have to change all your appliances anyway because if you try using hydrogen in methane burning appliances they fucking explode.

     And air source heat pumps are about 3x more efficient at producing hot water even in cold climates.

     And cooking over a naked flame is filthy and inefficient. We are not fucking Bronze Age cave dwellers and induction hobs are a thing.

   • Embed this notice
     Alex Holst (holsta@helvede.net)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 08:11:34 JST Alex Holst

     in reply to

     @goatsarah Yes! If you start digging you will find almost all hydrogen projects are (under)funded by shell companies that protect oil interests.

     They only get enough funding for headlines, not for progress.

   • Embed this notice
     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 08:21:14 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Mark vW

     @markvonwahlde Water is what you get when you burn hydrogen.

     So your “catalyst” is gonna need to procure energy to crack it, so you can then use (40% of) it to produce propulsion in an internal combustion engine.

     The second law of thermodynamics wants a word.

   • Embed this notice
     Mark vW (markvonwahlde@mastodon.world)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 08:21:15 JST Mark vW

     in reply to

     @goatsarah Hydrogen that is produced as you need it. NFW people are ever going to drive Hindenburg cars with hydrogen tanks. But if there is a catalyst that can extract hydrogen from water as the car requires, that would be most excellent. I just wondered whether you were up on that technology's future potential.

   • Embed this notice
     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 08:24:01 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Mark vW
     @markvonwahlde in fact, all the laws of thermodynamics want a word.
   • Embed this notice
     Alex Holst (holsta@helvede.net)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 08:52:12 JST Alex Holst

     in reply to

     @goatsarah (Happy to shit all over the industry about their funding. Everything else is under NDA.)

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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 09:10:16 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Mark vW
     @markvonwahlde Still, be nice if it worked, because you could capture the steam from the exhaust and pass it back over the catalyst to get the hydrogen back and never have to put fuel in your car!
   • Embed this notice
     Mark vW (markvonwahlde@mastodon.world)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 09:10:17 JST Mark vW

     in reply to

     @goatsarah Thanks.

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     Katie Fenn (katiefenn@front-end.social)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 10:11:58 JST Katie Fenn

     in reply to

     @goatsarah I found this episode of Real Engineering to be pretty inspiring.

     Rethinking the air liner using the latest composite materials and advances in aeronautics could transform the internal volume for hydrogen too.

     I only wish we had the Boeing that designed the 777, and not the mess that designed the 737 MAX.

     https://youtu.be/59A8-rKRs-0?si=Yuq_r1n-1EqNPqK0

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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 10:16:48 JST goatsarah

     in reply to
     I honestly expected a lot more people arguing strongly back, but I guess the shouty weirdoes are more drawn to Facebook.
   • Embed this notice
     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 10:20:24 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Katie Fenn
     @katiefenn They could make it so much more pleasant than the cramped bus in the sky of today too.
   • Embed this notice
     Andrew Hickey (andrewhickeywriter@mstdn.social)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 11:22:53 JST Andrew Hickey

     in reply to

     @goatsarah The thing is, I figured this out literally when I was twelve. I read Ben Elton's Gridlock, with a character who invents a hydrogen-fuel system for cars, thought about it for *two seconds* and said "that's fucking stupid"

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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 11:27:34 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Andrew Hickey

     @andrewhickeywriter “but you can get it on a large scale by cracking seawater”

     Yeah. You can do a lot of things, but no fucker is going to.

   • Embed this notice
     Andrew Hickey (andrewhickeywriter@mstdn.social)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 11:27:35 JST Andrew Hickey

     in reply to

     @goatsarah (In that book, incidentally, the hydrogen-fuel system is deliberately kept down by a shady conspiracy of evil oil-company people, because Ben Elton gets things very wrong)

   • Embed this notice
     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 20:29:10 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Ed Davies
     @edavies for storage, I’m a big fan of pumping water uphill into big lakes. This may be an issue for the Dutch government in particular. They have many lakes, but not doing so well in the hills department!
   • Embed this notice
     Ed Davies (edavies@functional.cafe)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 20:29:11 JST Ed Davies

     in reply to

     @goatsarah 99% agree with you - hydrogen for any consumer application is stupid - electricity (via batteries were required) will always make more efficient use assuming the bulk of our energy is coming from renewable electricity in some form or other.

     No opinion one way or the other on hydrogen in aviation. Maybe alcohol or ammonia? Dunno.

     Hydrogen for grid-scale semi-interseasonal energy storage does seem to make some sense to me, though. L²/L³ is on your side if you're storing enough of the stuff. OK, the round-trip efficiency isn't great but I don't really see any other way of storing multiple TWh over weeks or months.

     The Dutch government seems to have big plans in that direction. They must make at least a bit of sense, even if they're over-affected by the proximity of Shell or whoever.

     A reminder for me to re-read Chris Goodall's The Switch, I think.

   • Embed this notice
     User name cannot be blank 🇪🇺 (happy@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 20:33:05 JST User name cannot be blank 🇪🇺

     in reply to

     @goatsarah

     Not a lot of point in arguing when you are essentially correct, however if you are really looking for argument I'd say that your potential userbase of just aviation is slightly narrow as there are other areas I can see it being used though I am in full agreement on its not really going to be a mainstream energy source. In terms of other uses I am thinking things like some heavy plant, some heavy haulage (this more to do with max weight limits and current battery tech being heavy).

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   • Embed this notice
     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 20:36:06 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • User name cannot be blank 🇪🇺
     @happy Weight is it’s one saving grace as far as I can see. This is why it’s not awful as a rocket fuel because it gives high specific impulse, but methane is looking like a better bet for the future there.
   • Embed this notice
     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 20:39:02 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Hen Gymro Heb Wlad
     @hengymrohebwlad wait until you hear about kerosene and TWA800
   • Embed this notice
     Hen Gymro Heb Wlad (hengymrohebwlad@mstdn.social)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 20:39:03 JST Hen Gymro Heb Wlad

     in reply to

     @goatsarah Am I the only person who hears "hydrogen as fuel for aviation" and thinks "Hindenburg"?

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     Katie Fenn (katiefenn@front-end.social)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 20:41:42 JST Katie Fenn

     in reply to

     @goatsarah They could, but I’m sure they’ll find a way to wring the joy out of it somehow.

     Maybe we’ll enjoy a brief renaissance like the dawn of the 747 era, where they had no idea what to do with all the new space before realising “let’s shoehorn more bodies in here”.

     goatsarah likes this.
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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 20:44:50 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • TeflonTrout
     @TeflonTrout the gliding thing was me being a bit flippant. It’s notable, however, that the safe landing weight of many jetliners is lower than the safe takeoff weight and whereas a plane that’s been aloft 10 hours on kerosene weighs a lot less than when it took off, one that uses batteries weighs exactly the same and has to cope with being just as heavy on landing.
   • Embed this notice
     TeflonTrout (teflontrout@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 20:44:51 JST TeflonTrout

     in reply to

     @goatsarah TANSTAAFL is a real bitch!

     About aviation though: Hydrogen is a shit fuel source for flight for all the reasons it blows everywhere else- especially energy density by volume and weight.

     Free space in aircraft is actually incredibly limited, and hydrogen containers are both fuck-off heavy and very constrained in shape. Wing fuel tanks work fine for liquids, but pressure vessels won't fit well between the rigid structures of wings and fuselages.

     1/2

   • Embed this notice
     TeflonTrout (teflontrout@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 20:44:51 JST TeflonTrout

     in reply to

     @goatsarah You are 100% correct about the issue of dead battery weight, hydrogen tanks have the same problem to a lesser extent, but lack the flexibility batteries have in form factor-you can wedge those bastards in all sorts of convenient places.

     As for gliding? Well, most powered aircraft, particularly all jets that I know of, are *terrible* gliders. The aerodynamic rules that make them efficient at high speed also dictate that they float like rocks, so that's not a major consideration. 2/2

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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 20:47:34 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • argv minus one

     @argv_minus_one Ok, so when referring to hydrogen as a fuel, I’m talking about burning it.

     Fusion is a different beast, and nearly all hydrogen on the planet is useless for it because any feasible design we can build or envisage uses deuterium and tritium. The former it extracts from seawater. The latter it breeds by bombarding lithium with neutrons.

     Anyway, different issue. I do happen to think that trying to build fusion reactors is largely pointless too, but for entirely different reasons: the economics will never compete with a shitlaod of solar panels and a big-ass battery.

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     argv minus one (argv_minus_one@mstdn.party)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 20:47:35 JST argv minus one

     in reply to

     @goatsarah

     This is not awesome, because hydrogen is also the fuel for the fusion reactors we're hoping to eventually build…

     Energy density would be a fair bit higher, though, at least.

     Maybe we can store it as water, and electrolyze it from the reactor's own energy output to feed it more hydrogen?

   • Embed this notice
     Jan Adriaenssens (verbeeld@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 20:50:11 JST Jan Adriaenssens

     in reply to

     @goatsarah I always thought especially transcontinental shipping and heavy industry would be the hydrogen users?

   • Embed this notice
     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 20:50:11 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Jan Adriaenssens
     @verbeeld yeah, that I could see working.
   • Embed this notice
     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 20:53:45 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Hen Gymro Heb Wlad

     @hengymrohebwlad hindenburg (Dirigible hydrogen fire): 97 people on board. 35 of them died.

     TWA800 (Boeing 747-100 kerosene explosion): 230 people on board. 230 died.

   • Embed this notice
     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 20:56:27 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Jono Ferguson
     • Kincaid
     @kincaid @jonoabroad yeah. Trains are absurdly easy to run on grid electricity.
   • Embed this notice
     Kincaid (kincaid@mendeddrum.org)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 20:56:28 JST Kincaid

     in reply to

     • Jono Ferguson

     @jonoabroad @goatsarah overhead wires, and big bastard batteries where not feasible. Weight is not really an issue for trains

   • Embed this notice
     Jono Ferguson (jonoabroad@mastodon.nz)'s status on Sunday, 18-Feb-2024 20:56:29 JST Jono Ferguson

     in reply to

     @goatsarah I'm open to there being uses for it, but I'm not seeing any in conventional land transport.

     Trains maybe? ( no I haven't thought this through, and am likely in the pocket of big electron)

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     Jono Ferguson (jonoabroad@mastodon.nz)'s status on Monday, 19-Feb-2024 03:25:23 JST Jono Ferguson

     in reply to

     • Kincaid

     @goatsarah @kincaid

     look, it was late and I did say I didn't put any thought into it.

     I was thinking of the ass end of Australia, but you are, rather cruelly using my own argument against me that electrons are easier to move than explody gas

     I'll go back to my previous position of "I'm open to ideas, but cant' think of any" and this time not offer half ass, clearly not thought through ones :)

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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Monday, 19-Feb-2024 05:21:30 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • spmatich :blobcoffee:
     • argv minus one
     @argv_minus_one @spmatich The easy way to hang on to deuterium is to burn it. Water is very easy to keep for as long as you want.
   • Embed this notice
     argv minus one (argv_minus_one@mstdn.party)'s status on Monday, 19-Feb-2024 05:22:09 JST argv minus one

     in reply to

     • spmatich :blobcoffee:

     @spmatich

     Sounds good, but even small amounts of heavy hydrogen need to be stored somehow. Unless the extra neutrons remove its ability to escape from any container?

     Side note: how many neutrons the reaction produces depends on the reaction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion

     @goatsarah

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     spmatich :blobcoffee: (spmatich@ioc.exchange)'s status on Monday, 19-Feb-2024 05:22:10 JST spmatich :blobcoffee:

     in reply to

     • argv minus one

     @argv_minus_one @goatsarah the kind of hydrogen used for nuclear fission is tritium and deuterium, heavy isotopes, which are byproducts of nuclear fission power (at present). Fusion Power stations, when they are up and running in 30y time, will only need tiny amounts. They will likely be able to breed their own fuel because fusion produces a lot of neutrons (which aren’t radioactive in the way the byproducts of uranium fission are). The neutrons can be used to make heavy water, which when split gives heavy hydrogen. At least that was the plan 30y ago when I studied plasma physics.

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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Monday, 19-Feb-2024 05:26:18 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • argv minus one

     @argv_minus_one That upper limit is orders of magnitude more than humankind's entire energy use of all forms put together.

     We don't need fusion power on earth, and probably never will, and of the people experimenting with it, the only ones making significant process are just using as a cover for thermonuclear weapons research (National Ignition Facility).

   • Embed this notice
     argv minus one (argv_minus_one@mstdn.party)'s status on Monday, 19-Feb-2024 05:26:19 JST argv minus one

     in reply to

     @goatsarah

     Solar has a hard upper limit on how much power it can produce. If you want any more than that, you'll have to look elsewhere. Fusion is an obvious candidate, assuming it can be made economical.

     Pretty big assumption, I realize, but note that fusion doesn't have the huge safety and liability problems that make fission power plants obscenely expensive, so it may yet work out.

     I know they're using heavy hydrogen, but I assume it has the same storage problems as light hydrogen.

   • Embed this notice
     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Monday, 19-Feb-2024 06:23:27 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • argv minus one

     @argv_minus_one I mean, the following text literally appears verbatim on their website. It's not like they're trying to hide it.

     Because it is the only facility that can create the conditions that are relevant to understanding the operation of modern nuclear weapons, NIF is a crucial element of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program.

     NIF can repeatedly simulate those conditions inside the Target Chamber’s controlled environment, giving dedicated teams of scientists and researchers the ability to reconstitute and improve upon the capabilities of underground testing.

     NIF’s high energy density and inertial confinement fusion experiments, coupled with the increasingly sophisticated simulations available from some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, increase our understanding of weapon physics, including the properties and survivability of weapons-relevant materials.

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     argv minus one (argv_minus_one@mstdn.party)'s status on Monday, 19-Feb-2024 06:23:31 JST argv minus one

     in reply to

     @goatsarah

     We already have thermonuclear weapons of apocalyptic power. I very seriously doubt that NIF is a weapons program. It would be pointless.

   • Embed this notice
     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Monday, 19-Feb-2024 06:29:39 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • argv minus one
     @argv_minus_one BTW, the Space Shuttle and its stupid obscenely eye waveringly expensive bastard child, the alleged "space launch system" was/is also, in a very large part, nuclear weapons programmes. There's a reason that government "space" programmes use solid rocket boosters and commercial space programmes don't: it gives their ICBM engineers something to do.
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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Monday, 19-Feb-2024 07:50:19 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • argv minus one

     @argv_minus_one Their bombs are old as fuck.

     And they aren’t allowed to set them off by treaty.

     So they do this instead. Even if they don’t know why, it keeps the talent trained, I guess.

   • Embed this notice
     argv minus one (argv_minus_one@mstdn.party)'s status on Monday, 19-Feb-2024 07:50:20 JST argv minus one

     in reply to

     @goatsarah

     Wow. What the hell for?