• partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Which is why hydrogen is so interesting to me, especially solar-generated hydrogen. It’s a pain to store, but if it’s used relatively quickly, the losses should be small enough to make it worthwhile.

    The pain with hydrogen storage isn’t just leakage (which is a huge problem because of how small the molecule is), but energy density. Gaseous hydrogen needs either extremely large containers or really extreme pressures (meaning thick, heavy, expensive) and even then its not very much energy storage. To get even higher density requires liquification, which means which is only reached at −253°C (−423°F), and that also requires large expensive machinery and energy to run it.

    Unless you’re changing hydrogen into something else (like ammonia), hydrogen isn’t a great solution for energy storage or transportation.