Mitsubishi recently announced a joint demonstration for a new-generation data center, a plant designed to use a stationary fuel cell (FC) power station as its main energy...
Anything to further fuel cell development as well as hydrogen storage is a win.
Whoever figures out how to store hydrogen easily will be the next energy megacorp, hydrogen engines and fuel cells are reliable, proven tech, we just haven’t figured out how to store it and transport it without cryogenics and/or insanely high pressures.
Problem with hydrogen is that it can pass through solid materials, because it’s just one proton, keeping it under high pressure makes the problem worse.
It’s unwise to say something is impossible, because people tend to find solutions, but AFAIK there is no known way to store Hydrogen efficiently.
Apart from that hydrogen production is very wasteful, meaning the complete system waste about 45%, before actually producing useful energy from fuel cells.
Seems to me this is not just an engineering problem, it’s a problem we simply don’t know if a solution even exist.
Fuel cells have been heavily researched for 30 years now, and it seems like they are getting nowhere. In the mean time Tesla was started “just” 20 years ago, and progress on batteries and EV is very strong.
Leaked hydrogen (H or H2) also binds to oxygen (OH or O) to create water vapor, which is a problem because GHG also binds to oxygen or OH and becomes neutralized. Some studies peg Hydrogen leakage at scale as being 100x worse, in the short term, than CO2 for warming due to this impact.
Thank you, very interesting article, I’ve always claimed Hydrogen isn’t a benefit, because it’s to wasteful so it may be actually detrimental over just using the original fuels used to make hydrogen directly. But I never even considered the hydrogen itself would be a problem. But reading the article, it’s actually quite obvious, that at scale it’s absolutely a problem that it “occupies” oxygen that is used to break down greenhouse gasses.
Problem with hydrogen is that it can pass through solid materials, because it’s just one proton, keeping it under high pressure makes the problem worse.
Heard about that issue in a YT video from a specialist about extreme vacuum devices and atoms leaking into it.
This concept is still absolutely wild to imagine for me. Atoms passing through solid stuff…
It’s recent because EV simply weren’t practical with older batteries, the new tech is Lithium batteries, that have been improved significantly since the first Lithium based cars.
The interesting part IMO is that the fuel cells were massively researched despite obvious problems with no solution, when lithium batteries were already in existence.
And despite Lithium is an OLDER technology, it has made better progress since fuel cells were massively hyped.
we just haven’t figured out how to store it and transport it without cryogenics and/or insanely high pressures.
And we won’t.
To compress a gas to that level, it either has to be under a lot of pressure, or chilled to the point it becomes a liquid. There’s no getting around physics.
I mean… unless we invented something truly insane like TARDIS technology, but I imagine if we had the capability of doing that, we’d have moved past hydrogen for energy storage anyway.
All we can do is try to find energy efficient ways of chilling/insulating it, and ways of safely and cheaply pressurising it.
Especially for data centers, it’s absolutely a waste of money.
DCs consume very high amounts of power, but in a pretty predictable way. There is no reason whatsoever to use hydrogen in that context. Hydrogen is extremely expensive and will stay expensive more or less forever. Why would a fuel cell ever be economically viable here?
Anything to further fuel cell development as well as hydrogen storage is a win.
Whoever figures out how to store hydrogen easily will be the next energy megacorp, hydrogen engines and fuel cells are reliable, proven tech, we just haven’t figured out how to store it and transport it without cryogenics and/or insanely high pressures.
Problem with hydrogen is that it can pass through solid materials, because it’s just one proton, keeping it under high pressure makes the problem worse.
It’s unwise to say something is impossible, because people tend to find solutions, but AFAIK there is no known way to store Hydrogen efficiently.
Apart from that hydrogen production is very wasteful, meaning the complete system waste about 45%, before actually producing useful energy from fuel cells.
Seems to me this is not just an engineering problem, it’s a problem we simply don’t know if a solution even exist.
Fuel cells have been heavily researched for 30 years now, and it seems like they are getting nowhere. In the mean time Tesla was started “just” 20 years ago, and progress on batteries and EV is very strong.
Leaked hydrogen (H or H2) also binds to oxygen (OH or O) to create water vapor, which is a problem because GHG also binds to oxygen or OH and becomes neutralized. Some studies peg Hydrogen leakage at scale as being 100x worse, in the short term, than CO2 for warming due to this impact.
https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/publications/hydrogen-leakage-potential-risk-hydrogen-economy/
Thank you, very interesting article, I’ve always claimed Hydrogen isn’t a benefit, because it’s to wasteful so it may be actually detrimental over just using the original fuels used to make hydrogen directly. But I never even considered the hydrogen itself would be a problem. But reading the article, it’s actually quite obvious, that at scale it’s absolutely a problem that it “occupies” oxygen that is used to break down greenhouse gasses.
Heard about that issue in a YT video from a specialist about extreme vacuum devices and atoms leaking into it.
This concept is still absolutely wild to imagine for me. Atoms passing through solid stuff…
EV’s have been around since the dawn of ICE cars pretty much I wouldn’t say it’s recent tech.
It’s recent because EV simply weren’t practical with older batteries, the new tech is Lithium batteries, that have been improved significantly since the first Lithium based cars.
The interesting part IMO is that the fuel cells were massively researched despite obvious problems with no solution, when lithium batteries were already in existence.
And despite Lithium is an OLDER technology, it has made better progress since fuel cells were massively hyped.
And we won’t.
To compress a gas to that level, it either has to be under a lot of pressure, or chilled to the point it becomes a liquid. There’s no getting around physics.
I mean… unless we invented something truly insane like TARDIS technology, but I imagine if we had the capability of doing that, we’d have moved past hydrogen for energy storage anyway.
All we can do is try to find energy efficient ways of chilling/insulating it, and ways of safely and cheaply pressurising it.
Never say never. Lol
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, innovation can wildly subvert expectations.
Well yeah but I make exceptions when it comes to the laws of physics
It’s not like we’ve made any advancements in the speed or light or the Earth’s gravitational constant, either.
Especially for data centers, it’s absolutely a waste of money.
DCs consume very high amounts of power, but in a pretty predictable way. There is no reason whatsoever to use hydrogen in that context. Hydrogen is extremely expensive and will stay expensive more or less forever. Why would a fuel cell ever be economically viable here?
Hydrogen has its uses. This is not one of them.