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.
Toyota builds Phillip Jeffries and found he doesn’t want to talk about Judy. He doesn’t want to talk about Judy at all
Back in the early days of gas infrastructure, before wide-spread electrification, you know gas street lights and everything, the gas was produced by gasifying coal, resulting in gas that was often over 50% hydrogen, with only ~20% methane. Rest nitrogen and CO.
Natural gas has a methane content upwards of 75%, which meant that everyone had to switch out their burner nozzles but the rest of the infrastructure stayed intact.
All this is to say: Nothing about is really new or rocket science. Europe is certainly creating a backbone pipeline network for hydrogen, parts of it new pipes, other parts re-purposed natural gas pipes, many were built to a standard that allows them to carry hydrogen though some valves etc. might need upgrading. Some of those were originally built for hydrogen in the first place, and checking Wikipedia there’s actually a 240km segment in the Ruhr area, built in 1938, still in operation, which always carried hydrogen. Plain steel but comparatively low-pressure so it works.
Oh and have another number: According to Fraunhofer, Germany’s pipeline network can store three months of total energy usage (electricity, transportation, everything). Not in storage tanks, but just by operating the pipelines themselves at higher or lower pressure.
And we need that stuff one way or the other: Even if tomorrow ten thousand fusion plants go online that doesn’t mean that the chemical industry doesn’t need feedstock, or that reducing steel with electricity would make sense. Both of those things need hydrogen.
Fusion is still in the future so the plan is to import most of that hydrogen, mostly from Canada and Namibia, in tankers carrying ammonia which is way more efficient that trying to compress hydrogen also ammonia is needed for some processes anyway.
Hydrogen is so much smaller than natty light that on a Continental scale the losses could be significant, but that’s neat history. It’s fun how long stuff has been around like gasification.
From all that I’ve seen electricity lines (also HVDC) have higher transmission losses by a magnitude. With hydrogen and modern material science you’ll probably have the choice between higher losses and embrittlement, but that’s just another economical equation: Do you want to eat the higher losses, or replace the pipeline in a couple of decades or a century.
At least environment-wise hydrogen leaks aren’t an issue: Some atoms diffusing through the wall don’t constitute a fire hazard and the end result is water. Methane, OTOH, is a nasty greenhouse gas.
Speaking of nature: Ammonia is nasty, but nature produces it itself (just not at those concentrations) and can deal with it. The site directly surrounding a leak would be dead, a bit further downstream (literally) there’s going to be over-fertilisation. Not nice but definitely better than an oil leak and fixing it quite literally involves waiting until grass has grown over it as rain dilutes it and microorganisms migrate back in to eat it. Similar things apply to ethanol which I’d say would be a better choice for general use such as hybrid cars, camping stoves and whatnot because it’s not going to burn your lungs away. Can’t rely on people being conscious enough to get up and flee the ammonia stench when they’re in a car accident.
Probably true since transmission loses come after engine losses. Ammonia is also pretty cool though, I’ve read about the idea of using it in big engines since it’s also easy to store/make.
At least environment-wise hydrogen leaks aren’t an issue:
Hydrogen is a strong indirect greenhouse gas.
The climate impact of hydrogen is about 34 times higher than CO2 when measured over a 20-year period. Looking at the impact over 100 years, the global warming potential reduces to between eight and 13 times.
Hydrogen causes this by stabilising methane in the atmosphere and creating tropospheric ozone and stratospheric water vapour.
We shouldn’t be having methane in the atmosphere in the first place. Sure, if you produce the hydrogen from natural gas then you have a problem because that stuff comes with plenty of methane which won’t suddenly stop leaking.
We shouldn’t be having methane in the atmosphere in the first place.
Ha. So we are banning farmers from owning livestock
Sure, if you produce the hydrogen from natural gas then you have a problem because that stuff comes with plenty of methane which won’t suddenly stop leaking.
Also if you inject hydrogen into the existing natural gas pipeline.
The point here is that hydrogen leaks are very much an issue. Your previous statement was false.
Noone here is planning to inject hydrogen into existing pipelines. If anything, synthesising methane during the transition so that consumers only have to switch their burners once, from nat gas to hydrogen, and not first to nat gas + more hydrogen and then to pure hydrogen. Gotta switch whole municipalities at once doesn’t make sense to duplicate the last-mile gas pipes. If, and that’s not even clear yet, hydrogen pipes will even be a thing for private consumers.
Noone here is planning to inject hydrogen into existing pipelines.
Ok. Not you. But lots of people elsewhere in this thread.
If anything, synthesising methane during the transition so that consumers only have to switch their burners once, from nat gas to hydrogen, and not first to nat gas + more hydrogen and then to pure hydrogen.
Agree. Burning hydrogen has to be done carefully to avoid NOx and other side effects.
And that’s not even clear yet, hydrogen pipes will even be a thing for private consumers.
Agreed.
Industrial green hydrogen is a necessity to remove fossil fuels. Residential hydrogen I am very sceptical about. Even 100% clean fuel cells burn too hot for domestic heating.
Toyota hopes you’ll buy a hydrogen-powered car after grilling with a hydrogen barbecue
It will be the same as with lithium EVs. Hydrogen may be safer than IC, but once any explodes media will paint them as bombs driving on our roads
That depends on how easy it is to deal with the explosion when it happens. The issue with lithium-ion is that they can’t just be smothered like an ICE fire, so there’s really nothing you can do once it starts. Also, ICEs don’t spontaneously catch fire when parked in your garage, they tend to catch fire when you’re driving, which means you’re immediately aware when it starts to happen.
An EV catching fire while it charges at night is extra scary because I’m likely to be asleep, and therefore I’ll have a smaller chance to react properly (especially if I need to run up/down stairs to round up small children). So even if it’s less likely, it’s potentially worse because I’m less likely to be able to get away from it safely.
I don’t know much about what a practical hydrogen failure looks like, but my understanding is that it’s quite violent. But maybe they have controls around that now, idk.
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.
Sooo just cooking gas with more steps.
Oil industry loves pushing hydrogen but it’s nearly all made from fossil fuels, so what benefit is there?
I think Japan is pushing it, because they import most of their kJ. They don’t like nuclear for obvious reasons and there’s a few reasons they probably don’t like renewable projects like a lack of land and being a natural disaster prone country. So they are left with importing energy and hopefully value adding to it enough that it’s worth while
If the process to make hydrogen is clean, burning h is way way way cleaner. That’s the math, not the source. The source can become an economics problem rather than necessarily an environmental one (imagine like 45 footnotes for where we do stuff that makes this not true, I’m just trying to capture the goal)
Burning hydrogen is 10x cleaner but not pollution free.
Using a fuel cell creates electricity and heat without pollution, but is a source of heat enough to call something a BBQ?
Blue hydrogen is made by stripping the hydrogen from fossil fuel hydrocarbons (chains of hydrogen and carbon, hence the name), and sequestering the carbon. It produces a fuel that contains enough chemical energy to be burned as fuel, but without the carbon atoms that would turn into greenhouse gases.
Most hydrogen currently produced though, is gray hydrogen (made from natural gas, but without sequestering the carbon, so that CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere).
Fossil fuels, including coal, are also used to produce electricity. They simply need to be prohibited or at least strictly rationed. Fortunately, hydrogen can be produced without emitting greenhouse gasses because it is still necessary for processes like steel and fertilizer production. It’s also a practical replacement for fossil fuels in transportation and, as Toyota demonstrated, food preparation. As I replied to someone else, sometimes we need portability and/or a flame when it comes to cooking. Electricity just doesn’t cut it in those cases.
The biggest use-case I see for hydrogen is more of an energy storage and transfer mechanism. With the world switching to renewables that generate power inconsistently, some countries are looking at putting the extra power into hydrogen generation via electrolysis, which can then be used at night/low-wind days to keep the power grid stable.
If we ever get to the point that we’ve got a surplus of renewably generated hydrogen, then it could make sense to start using to power cars, heating, cooking, whatever.
Generate hydrogen at night from nuke plants.
Key words being “current supply”. There are major moves being made to change this. Supply and demand need to grow at the same time if this is to work though.
The combustion product isn’t likely to be a carcinogen. Safer to use indoors.
They’ll do anything not to build EVs /s
TBH I respect Toyota for being realistic more than grifters like Musk. The fact is that car will never be a sustainable replacement for cars. They’re here to save the auto cartels, not the planet.
But on the other hand public transit and LEVs are much more realistic. I would very much like to see a Toyota e-bike.
What is this lighting called and why does it make my brain immediately think this image is AI?
I would call this “harsh” and indirect lighting with a shallow depth of field. It seems like a relatively low-light room, and there’s tons of shadows making the images noisey. On cameras, the more you open the aperture to let more light in, the narrower your focus becomes. That’s why there’s so much blur or “bokeh” in the images.
Surely an oven that inherently steams everything it cooks is quite a different tool to a regular oven? It probably works well with breads and similar products, though, so I guess that’d work as a pizza oven
Dry steam? Steam is water my dude
Burning methane also produces steam. Methane produces 891 kJ/mol, hydrogen 286 kJ/mol, methane has four hydrogen atoms that’d be 1144 kJ per what should the unit be in any case: Methane produces less heat per unit of produced water than hydrogen (the hydrogen first needs to get ripped off the carbon). Those ovens burn dryer than your current gas oven.
Never used steam when making pizza, they’re not in there long enough for steam to make a difference. For bread it’s indispensable to get a proper crust, though.
EDIT: Did I get moles right? It’s been a while and I am no chemist.
Huh, fair enough!
Steam may be okay for the wheat crust, generally when baking bread steam is applied in the initial rise period, but is generally turned off at the end for a dry final bake. The cheese is another matter. Ideally the cheese has to do more than melt, it should develop a partly caramelized appearance on the top (slightly brownish in places). Whether that would happen with this kind of oven is unknown.
Fun project! But replacing gas with hydrogen seems really tricky. Hydrogen is much harder to transport without leaks because it’s such a tiny molecule. Electric seems better than trying to still burn hydrogen.
The best way to store and transport hydrogen is to combine it with carbon so that it becomes a convenient liquid fuel. As a bonus, then you don’t even need fuel cells to make electricity from it, but can instead simply burn it in something called an “internal combustion engine”
Nah, combustion engine is just one step up from the steam engine, such a wasteful technology, should long be in a museum.
First thing i think about in using a hydrogen-carbon fuel, is fuel cell (no better word for “Brennstoffzelle”?) to create electricity. Next up a steam turbine.
we do call them fuel cells
This is just synthetic fossil fuel with extra steps. Lol.
Exactly.
Hydrogen is mostly a greenwashing scam; it isn’t any better than what we already have.
Electric is far more efficient too, thus cheaper. Electricity you can transit over distance over wire and generate however you like. We’ve done it a long time, far and wide.
Turning electricity into hydrogen, distributing it, and then turning it back into electricity to move a vehicle, is so wasteful/expensive.
Just use a big battery.
For some applications like spacecraft where weight is critical, it does make sense to use hydrogen fuel cells as a battery. But usually it doesn’t make sense.
Certainly not the way we lunch right now. The energy used, that focused, in that short a time, is insane.
Tons of experts believe the only way hydrogen based transportation makes sense is by using it to fuel heavy transport right at the source instead of trying to transport it via pipeline.
Yup. Produce it with wind or solar at the warehouse, then load it onto trucks or forklifts or whatever. It’s a nice little closed ecosystem.
As Toyota has demonstrated (and speaking from my own experience), it’s not that tricky. As for cooking with the stuff, sometimes you just need portability and/or a flame. Electric is a poor choice in those cases.
Just need to waste a ton of energy extracting it then liquifying it then hoping that transport doesn’t face any issues (and I mean, considering our track record with petrol which doesn’t corrode everything it touches I sure as hell wouldn’t worry about it [/s if it wasn’t clear]) and then fill up your personal car that could have simply been powered by electricity from the beginning…
Also, ever heard of energy density? Because hydrogen won’t win prizes on that front!
Wait wait wait, you’re telling me that taking electricity, sending it along wires, generating hydrogen with it via hydrolysis, packaging it, compressing it to an extreme degree, physically transporting it, putting it in pumps, pumping it into your car, then doing reverse hydrolysis to charge a battery that then powers an electric motor…
Is less efficient than sending electricity along some wires to your car battery, to then drive an electric motor?
I’m shocked!
Portability is hard for hydrogen since you hadn’t liquify it without huge pressures and cryogenic temps, so you need big tanks. But cooking stoves does seem like a pretty good use case.
I think the experts who believes in this technology know a bit more than you and me who only read a few wiki pages.
If money is going into this, they also have a believable plan. But big oil certainly want you to think otherwise.
Huh? It’s big oil and the like who are pushing hydrogen over electricity.
And the problem with hydrogen is largely to do with the laws of physics, so it’s unlikely to change soon.
I don’t understand this suspicion. It’s easier to burn fossil fuels for electricity than to reform them into hydrogen.
Well yeah but they know their days of selling that are numbered, at least for lots of markets. If they can get people onto hydrogen they’ve got more money coming in for decades.
Their days aren’t numbered until governments actually say so. In the meantime, non-GHG emitting sources supply less than half of the world’s electricity as is, nevermind the hypothetical demand of a predominantly electrified vehicle fleet.
But they can still sell hydrogen, they can’t really sell solar panels. Even encouraging people to keep burning things (like hydrogen) benefits gas since it slows down electric alternatives to gas heating.
They don’t have to sell hydrogen or solar panels. They’ll just keep selling fuel to power plants.
That’s an appeal to authority fallacy if I’ve ever seen one.
They’re doing proof of concepts, not mass production. They’re at best answering is it possible, not is it a viable alternative.
Compress it to 10,000psi and it gets portable enough.
As I said, huge pressures. You’ll need super heavy or super exotic tanks.
What’s so exotic about a composite pressure vessel? They’re already used in scuba and paintball.
Scuba tanks only go up to 5.5ksi. I think you’d need more like composite over wrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) for 10ksi. Those are relatively new even in spaceflight. SpaceX discovered some new physics when their AMOS-6 mission exploded on the launch pad in 2016 due to oxygen freezing inside the composite layers.
Here’s some more info on carbon fiber tanks vs COPVs https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/taibc7/in_our_experience_copv_gainpain_flattens_out/
Add a hydrogen generator and all you need is water and electricity to make the hydrogen. You don’t even have to transport it.
I’d much rather transport a bottle of hydrogen to a cookout than an electrolyzer. What if a power outlet isn’t available?
And I’d rather transport a cheap and widely available propane tank instead of an ultra high pressure hydrogen canister that can only be refilled at 3 places in the entire state.
Yes, but imagine a world where propane and other fossil fuels are no longer available. You’re going to lug a big battery around for an electric grill instead?
For what it’s worth hydrogen stations currently dispense at 10,000psi, which is considered “medium” pressure in the field. “Ultra high” pressure is considered an order of magnitude greater.
Yeah batteries would probably work. A large battery bank can have 1kwh of capacity, and induction stoves are about 1.5kw. Which means you could run a stove for about 40min. You could bring more for longer. I’m sure by the time you can’t get propane, batteries will have gotten much better too.
That’s a lot of future e-waste to lug around just for cooking.
As opposed to a lot of super compressed gas to haul around? I didn’t think this super niche use case justifies a whole different technology.
Hydrogen is very difficult to bottle. It tends to just slip out of anything you put it in because of how small the atoms are.
And also incredibly low density. So your bottle would likely be on a trailer.
If hydrogen is so difficult to bottle then how are there self-serve refuelling stations in operation?
Yes, there is a volumetric penalty, but it’s not that bad. At 10,000psi a 1 gallon hydrogen bottle has roughly the same energy as a 1lb bottle of liquid propane for camping.
An industrial machine designed to handle 10,000 psi gas is a little different from a tank you’d take to a BBQ.
A fuel station will also get resupplied regularly, so any small leaks are no big deal, as there will be a shipment of fresh fuel coming in a regular schedule. Your BBQ tank of hydrogen likely will need to be refilled regularly even if you don’t use it, as any valve that would be cheap enough to mass produce is not going to be able to keep hydrogen in for months while it sits in the garage.
Then there’s also the fact that most uses for gaseous hydrogen require the above 10,000 psi storage pressure. This allows a useful amount of hydrogen to be stored in a non-comically large container. 2 problems I see with this:
1.) a 10,000 psi container is fucking terrifying. If that things bangs into something and ruptures, it going to send shrapnel through a house.
2.) a propane like tank can be opened to the Atmosphere and does not have a regulator built into the tank because most people don’t know how to actually use a regulator. So a 10,000 psi tank with just a hand valve between the user and a jet of gas that can send the tank into the stratosphere does not sound like something that should be available at your local hardware store.
If the tank were made of a carbon fiber composite it would make it a little less scary. CF’s high strength and brittle failure mode mean that the tank would “open up” on a seam when ruptured, but would stay mostly intact. Additionally CF’s low density would mean that any small pieces of shrapnel that were created would have limited penetrating power and range.
Still I’m not sure I would want to stand next to it. At 10,000 PSI a small hole (or opened valve) in such a tank would produce a gas stream with enough energy to seriously injure or kill you (leaks in 4000 PSI steam lines can cut your flesh and create gas pockets inside you). The entire tank letting go all at once would surely create a shockwave that would obliterate you.
If these are serious concerns for you, I’m sure you will always be able to find plug in electric grills on the market.
I don’t think you really grasp how much pressure 10,000 psi is.
A typical car tire is like 35 psi
A propane tank for a grill is like 200 psi.
Have you ever seen a car tire burst? Or a propane tank? Big booms, they can easily hurt or kill people already.
A hydrogen tank would be 50 times more pressure than a regular tank of fuel, and 300 times more pressure than a tire. If those burst, people will die, and have their bits spread around the neighborhood.
Unfired pressure vessels are already pretty common common in industrial, commercial, healthcare, transport, and recreational settings. I am comfortable with continuing to trust the engineers as the portion of these vessels that contain hydrogen increases.
.png){kind=link}