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Undernown t1_ja9itjm wrote

Reply to comment by KourteousKrome in This “Climate-Friendly” Fuel Comes With an Astronomical Cancer Risk: Almost half of products cleared so far under the new federal biofuels program are not in fact biofuels — and the EPA acknowledges that the plastic-based ones may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health or the environment. by nastratin

The best thing about hydrogen is that it requires very litle adjusment to convert natural gas combustion over to hydrogen. Already some succesfull converdion projects done for home heating. Omly hurdles are compact/save storage and clean generation.

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Necoras t1_ja9os4f wrote

Hydrogen is clean (assuming it's green and not blue), but it's remarkably inefficient. For home heating, you need almost 6 times as much renewable energy with a hydrogen furnace compared to an electric heat pump. And that's with a middle of the road heat pump (COP 3). The newer high end ones can reach a COP of 4 or 5, which is more than twice as efficient as a COP 3.

Hydrogen may very well be our best bet for air travel, but for things on the ground it's not a very good solution.

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SenorHat t1_ja9w7ot wrote

Only problem is that it's also stupidly dangerous, especially in a confined area with a lot of people like a plane

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Necoras t1_ja9zrye wrote

I mean... jet fuel is highly combustive. Jets explode when they crash. Any highly concentrated storage of energy (fuel tank, battery) is basically just another name for a bomb.

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HexicPyth t1_jaaxxet wrote

Except unlike batteries or gasoline, hydrogen is also colorless and odorless like carbon monoxide. So it's more like an invisible bomb that expands to the size of its container.

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Undernown t1_jaantse wrote

Straight electric is always gonna be better, it's more of an in-between solution and a way to make use of excess green power that might be overloading the net at certain times.

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hsnoil t1_jaaslxj wrote

It isn't clean to burn regardless of what color. It gives off a lot of NOx.

As for air travel, the low energy density by volume makes it a pretty big barrier

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TheInfernalVortex t1_jaaj1st wrote

And the worst thing is you have to store it under high pressure in big tanks and its extremely flammable. TANSTAAFL.

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hsnoil t1_jaasfpx wrote

Uhm, no. First of hydrogen doesn't have the energy density by volume, you can convert it into methanol and use methanol fuel cells, but it still less energy dense than jet fuel.

And heating with hydrogen is a dumb idea, it outputs a ton of NOx.

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