Hydrogen really really doesn’t want to be solid, so doing that requires extremely low temperatures. Incidentally, they specifically said that their applications didn’t use super low temperatures, which doesn’t really leave that many options.
Comment on Solar energy storage breakthrough could make European households self-sufficient
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 8 months agoThe article is light on details, but it claims they’re storing the hydrogen as a solid - not as a gas.
Solids (including hydrogen) are generally about a thousand times more compact than their gas form.
Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
First@programming.dev 8 months ago
They don’t? When the Toyota hydrogen cars were introduced here around 2015, one of the issues were that a full tank of gas would dilute through the tank walls within a week. From the marketing material of the latest Toyota Mirage, it seems that they still use Hydrogen stored in gas form, boasting improvements in a 3-layer tank that is tested for 235% of the pressure that the gas is stored at, compared to 150% for regular gas containers.
philpo@feddit.de 8 months ago
They don’t. They use hydrogen fuel cells to generate electric power.
First@programming.dev 8 months ago
Yeah and what does that have to do with the Hydrogen being stored in gas form? The fuel cell converts it, it isn’t a storage mechanism. Hydrogen has a boiling point of -253C, are you saying that Hydrogen powered cars are fitted with a power hungry cryo chamber to cool down the fuel to a liquid form?
aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
They are not storing the hydrogen at atmospheric pressure