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The world is undergoing an energy transition to reduce CO2 emissions and mitigate climate change. The COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war have further increased the interest of Europe and Western countries to invest in the hydrogen economy as an alternative to fossil fuels. Hydrogen can significantly reduce geopolitical risks if the diversity of future hydrogen energy suppliers is increased.
Hydrogen is a particularly challenging product to transport safely. One option is to liquefy hydrogen, which requires cooling to 20 Kelvin (-253 °C). This is an expensive process and requires around 30% of the energy stored within the hydrogen.
A pioneering approach developed by IIASA researchers and colleagues proposes solid air (nitrogen or oxygen) as a medium for recycling cooling energy across the hydrogen liquefaction supply chain. At standard temperature and pressure, air is a gas, but under certain conditions, it can become a liquid or solid. Solid Air Hydrogen Liquefaction (SAHL) consists of storing the cooling energy from the regasification of hydrogen, by solidifying air, and transporting the solid air back to where the hydrogen was liquefied. The solid air is then used to reduce the energy consumption for liquefying hydrogen. The process is divided into four main steps: hydrogen regasification, solid air transportation, hydrogen liquefaction, and liquid hydrogen transportation.
[...] In their paper, the authors also address the ongoing debate in industry and academia to find the best alternative to transport hydrogen by sea:
"Compared to ammonia or methanol, liquefied hydrogen is the best option for several reasons. Transporting hydrogen with ammonia and other molecules would require around 30% of the energy transported to extract the hydrogen. The hydrogen is liquefied where electricity is cheap. Also, SAHL can lower energy consumption for hydrogen liquefaction by 25 to 50%," Hunt concludes.
Journal Reference:
Hunt, J., Montanari, P., Hummes D., et al. (2023). Solid air hydrogen liquefaction, the missing link of the hydrogen economy. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2023.03.405
(Score: 2) by esperto123 on Tuesday May 23 2023, @10:32PM
Unless we discover a (or several) free H2 deposits on earth, the hydrogen economy is a gimmick, it pops up every now and then just as 3D movies and when the backers realize that there is no way to make it feaseable, it dies out again.
Hydrogen, the way it operates now, is only found in molecules that require quite a lot of energy and expensive catalyst to be isolated, it is EXTREMELY hard to keep stored, as it has the nasty habit of going between molecules on solid stuff, leaking out and making it brittle, and liquid nitrogen is a bitch to make and transport.
Fuel cells are not that efficient either, the round trip efficiency for a hydrogen vehicle considering the inefficiencies of spliting water (if you at least care for the environment that should be the method, otherwise to get it from fossil fuels would be better to just burn the fossil fuel directly), compressing, transporting, and using a fuel cell to get the energy out is on the order of 35%, compare to just straight battery (which a hydrogen car still needs because fuel cells can't produce high on demand currents) is on the order or >80%, using the same energy source, and you don't need to create a completly new delivery infrastructure technology.
Hydrogen fuel cells are cool but niche application.