I wish I got to do fun little projects like this at my job. Anyway, this proof of concept shows that hydrogen would be a great alternative to propane and natural gas for cooking. Hat tip to @hypx@mastodon.social.
That’s cool and all…but hydrogen isn’t an energy source, not the way we use it…it’s more like a battery. And we have battery powered ovens now.
The hard part of current tech is making recharging the battery economical given that there will be a significant loss.
The even harder part of hydrogen, though, is storing and transport. Hydrogen atoms are real small. Anything you put it in will leak, and that impacts the recharge efficiency, as well.
There is promising research into mixing hydrogen with existing natural gas pipelines at low concentration (<2%). It doesn’t leak any more than gas pipes do already and the low concentration prevents embrittlement. And you don’t have to go through the horrendous efficiency of a fuel cell, you just burn it with the gas
Burning hydrogen with natural gas without special equipment creates NOx which is 300x worse than CO2 (but released in smaller quantities).
We can put it in the containers they stored FOOF in.