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earthman34 t1_j57pjtc wrote

Reply to comment by stivo in The race to make diesel engines run on hydrogen by FDuquesne

And they dropped it as pointless, since there's no hydrogen infrastructure, and hydrogen is cracked from hydrocarbons. Hydrogen has poor energy density, it's way cheaper and more efficient to just burn the hydrocarbon.

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stivo t1_j57s02u wrote

You can also crack it from water. Using free replaceable electricity. So if there's no waste product to make it, and no waste product to burn it, is it really inefficient?

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earthman34 t1_j588dl0 wrote

Hydrogen requires much more energy to extract from water than you get from it...which makes it inefficient by definition. There is no infrastructure to power huge cracking operations. The vast majority of hydrogen is currently extracted from methane, which emits more carbon than just burning the methane. Solar/wind infrastructure is going to be needed for the general use grid. Hydrogen requires massively thick tanks and huge compressors to compress it. It's extremely explosive and burns with no flame. It's far more dangerous to handle and store than liquid fuels like gas or diesel.

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stivo t1_j58qwhx wrote

That's all correct. But none of it is a show stopper.

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neglectedselenium t1_j5f5fpt wrote

So are methane and propane and butane. But hydrogen has an advantage in that it instantly evaporates instead of sinking. It's actually less of a fire hazard than other hydrocarbons

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