It's no more of a problem than dealing with LPG, surely? Pressurise it for storage.
Comment on Hydrogen-powered planes almost ready for takeoff
roguetrick@kbin.social 1 year ago
You'd need huge cryogenic tanks due to the volume density of hydrogen over kerosene. I just don't see it ever being practical for aviation over just creating our own hydrocarbons out of something else. Either catalyst based or otherwise. That's potentially carbon neutral as well.
Naich@kbin.social 1 year ago
notapantsday@feddit.de 1 year ago
The difference is the ‘L’ in LPG. It turns liquid at a relatively low pressure and takes up much less space then. Hydrogen does not do that, so it has to be stored at a much, much higher pressure. For example, a medical oxygen bottle or a scuba tank has around 200 atm of pressure. For cars, hydrogen is usually stored at 700 atm. And the pressure inside an LPG tank is around 8 atm at room temperature.
roguetrick@kbin.social 1 year ago
You can't liquify hydrogen by pressure alone.
CapeWearingAeroplane@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
A couple issues have been mentioned, but what hasn’t been mentioned is that hydrogen is difficult to store, because the molecules are small enough do migrate through most containers and escape. If your container is made of metal, you also get something called hydrogen embrittlement which breaks your container over time.
Tibert@compuverse.uk 1 year ago
Even if it takes more space, there are still benefits over biofuels.
The hydrogen can be created using electricity. Currently it is not very efficient, but only uses electricity and water. Electricity can come from de carbonated (/low carbon) sources.
And a fuel cell will use that hydrogen to generate electricity by combining the hydrogen into water with outside oxygen.
For the biofuel, it’s a big climate hoax. The issue with bio fuels, is that the energy required to produce them is huge. It required bacteria producing carbon emissions, and the fuel also produced carbon emissions. Whatever entered that plan, will get out, and even more because of the transformation. (i don’t remember which video from Undecided with Matt Ferell was about biofuels). Tho maybe it could be used for something. To get slightly less carbon emissions than with normal fuel.
soEZ@lemmy.world 1 year ago
CO2 to syngas to hydrocarbon fuels is probably a better carbon zero process, considering we will need to do a ton of cdr anyway…although doubt energetics and economics would be great. Hydrogen, just like biofuels today are anything but carbon neutral, and efficient electrolysis might never happen. Hydrogen production will also face water shortage issues and in general electrolysis requires pretty low tds water which is not trivial to source…not sure what’s best way to get carbon zero airplanes honestly…
PupBiru@kbin.social 1 year ago
i think the important thing to consider is that not EVERYTHING has to emit no carbon… it’s perfectly acceptable (IMO) to make air travel carbon neutral by eg carbon capture, etc… sometimes it’s just not efficient to either carry around carbon neutral but not dense fuel, or capture and carry your waste with you
it’s shit that carbon offset programs have been hijacked :(
thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 1 year ago
If we’re able to make hydrocarbon-synthesis from CO2 efficient… we’re still going to need to source the hydrogen somewhere.
But if we do that using electrolysis (with renewables), and are able to create more energy efficient CO2 capturing processes, I could see synthetic hydrocarbons as a viable fuel option in the future. The thing is: They’re stupidly good at being stable, energy dense, energy carriers. We also have a lot of infrastructure in place to handle hydrocarbons already.
In principle, synthetic hydrocarbons could be part of a zero-emission cycle, where we capture CO2 and electrolyse hydrogen with renewable energy, and use the hydrocarbons as an energy carrier. But if we go that way, we’re definitely going to have to research efficient hydrogen production, and probably storage as well.
30mag@lemmy.world 1 year ago
What type of biofuel requires bacteria to produce carbon emissions?