'Bath sponge' breakthrough could boost cleaner cars
bbc.com
bbc.com
This is a teeny tiny problem for a hydrogen cars. It doesn't really address the problem that fuel cells are ridiculously expensive, or that there's no filling network, or that there's no good way to fill them at home, or that fuel cells are themselves only 50% efficient typically.
This is a particularly high surface area MOF (>7300 m^2/g). I recently picked up a MOF project (not related to hydrogen storage) with derivatives of a popular MOF and it’s closer to 1000 m^2/g. Zeolites (a much more established class of porous material) are about a quarter of that (<200-300).
An actual metal sponge (what I thought the article was talking about) is <~20 m^2/g.
Driving to Los Angeles from San Francisco is extremely difficult for either a fuel cell or ev vehicle (that’s not a Tesla, and it’s also true for cng vehicles). This is admittedly not a daily use case, but highlights the issues with refueling.
It’s hard to see either technology being our primary transportation mode without solving some of this. EVs have an advantage for fuel availability, but issues around fueling time.
That was for a crown victoria/lincoln town car though. I don't know if the civic's get more miles per tank.
The mistake is to assume that we would use "alternative fuel" vehicles the same way we would our petrol cars.
Source: I own a Tesla Model 3 Performance. For efficiency, the worst of them. Love the car, but saying it has 300 miles of range feels pretty dishonest.
Your response seems to be, “then rent for those occasions.” But that means the customer has to change their mindset, break long established habits. That’s a big ask.
If you’re Tesla you build a car that is better in every way than an old car EXCEPT mildly less convenient on range. Clearly that has legs, but lots of Tesla owners have a house/garage, and lots have another car, it’s not viable for a lot of people.
Hopefully alternative vehicles will improve to the point where there are no compromises, but until then I think it’s a fools errand to argue customers should just change how they think. They won’t unless forced to by outside pressures such as regulation or a massive change to the pricing structure of owning a regular car.
Circle-K seems to see what's on the horizon, I'm guessing the others have plans as well.
https://www.dinbedrift.no/forste-i-verden-circle-k-erstatter...
Maybe true for hydrogen, not so true for BEVs. There are plenty of CCS charging locations in the US and California in particular has many of them:
https://www.electrifyamerica.com/locate-charger
https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html#/fi...
You can try out routes using Plug Share and A Better Route Planner:
https://abetterrouteplanner.com/
San Francisco to Los Angeles is an easy drive in a Chevy Bolt, for example.
This is basically the same kind of argument that BEVs are “secretly powered by coal.” These are backwards looking statements that are going to be wrong in the near future.
Shell builds EV charging stations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nst2RGtgzfk
BP builds EV charging stations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaSRn6hYOwc
Petro-Canada builds EV charging stations: https://www.petro-canada.ca/en/personal/fuel/canadas-electri...
They're in the energy business. They don't really care what form it takes.
hence their push for hydrogen, where everything remains essentially the same (and they keep their vertically integrated business)
large companies disappear all the time, or are swallowed by by others that outcompete them
"9 of every 10 Fortune 500 companies in 1955 are gone": https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/fortune-500-firms-1955-v-2017...
Many more than 1/10 of those names are still dominant companies/brands, but some have gone through mergers or restructures, meaning the 1955 entity no longer exists but the business lives on and remains very strong.
BP and Shell are on that 1955 list, and are obviously still very strong companies.
According to the Lindy effect [1], the longer a company has existed, the longer it is likely to continue to exist.
Both BP and Shell have long been diversified companies (even in the 1950s, Shell had vast business activities outside of petroleum), and have long been investing heavily in various forms of alternative energy.
They're not likely to disappear in any foreseeable timeframe.
Beyond that, the best case efficiency for such a hydrogen production process in an industrial setting is 80% (using a process which feeds waste heat back into the electrolysis reaction). From the hydrogen back to energy moving the wheels is at most 50% efficient, so a total plug to wheels efficiency of less than 40%. In the real world, it will be far less efficient than that (probably 25% at best), and very expensive to achieve in a practical car for sale, for the same reason that hydrogen fuel cells in cars are expensive today.
That vs the typical plug to wheels efficiency of around 60% in today's electric vehicles.
And such regenerative hydrogen fuel cells do not even exist for automotive applications today.
This paper has several lifecycle efficiency graphs that explain aspects of this in some detail:
The best case scenario like you described is about 98%. FYI, 80% is already being hit by real world normal electrolysis reactions.
It’s very likely we’re in the same position with fuel cell cars that solar was back in the late-2000s. Arguments that it is “too expensive” are really falling apart, especially considering that green hydrogen is around $2-3/kg today, and that platinum loading has dropped to around 10 grams for a car sized fuel cell.
Not in a fuel-cell running in reverse in a car, though, which is what the GP was referring to.
> especially considering that green hydrogen is around $2-3/kg today
More like $3-7 per kg today [1]. And as that article (which is less than 1 month old) points out, producing green hydrogen would require an absolutely massive buildout of renewables, which would better be put to direct use without the conversion penalty to hydrogen. Hydrogen energy storage will still have its niche applications on the margins, but it is unlikely to catch up to the cost and availability advantages of batteries for cars in places where the existing electric grid reaches.
1. https://www.rechargenews.com/transition/a-wake-up-call-on-gr...
It would make more sense to have a separate electrolyzer. This way, you can have a tank of hydrogen sitting around that can refuel your car in minutes, not hours. The original scenario is actually a bad idea.
> More like $3-7 per kg today [1]
You're rounding up to $3-7. It specifically refers to $2.50-6.80. Those higher figures aren't really going to stand for long as cheap green hydrogen displaces expensive green hydrogen.
> producing green hydrogen would require an absolutely massive buildout of renewables,
But we are massively building out renewables. In fact, we're building too much. During peak production times, renewable energy is literally just grounded since there is no use for it all.
> Hydrogen energy storage will still have its niche applications on the margins,
Hydrogen can be stored in salt domes in extraordinary quantities.[1] A single cavern can store 150,000 MWh of energy, and one formation in Utah can contain 100 caverns. That's something like 200 million BEVs worth of energy storage! As a niche, it's dominant one, and frankly hydrogen is easily going to be bigger in absolute metrics on that fact alone.
> but it is unlikely to catch up to the cost and availability advantages of batteries for cars in places where the existing electric grid reaches.
This is not a race. Fuel cell technology will still advance regardless of what happens of battery powered cars. Furthermore, nothing is close to the internal combustion engine in terms of marketshare. If it were a race, ICEVs are way ahead and neither BEVs nor FCEVs are anywhere close to winning.
1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mitsubishiheavyindustries/2020/...
A separate electrolyser and hydrogen storage at the household level just to fill up your car? It's doubtful that will make financial sense anytime in the near future, vs a plug.
> It specifically refers to $2.50-6.80.
You quoted $2-3 - in whole dollars - which are undoubtedly rounded figured themselves. How else would express $2.50-6.80 in whole dollars than $3-7?
> But we are massively building out renewables.
Not nearly enough to power ground transportation on green hydrogen, which was the point of the article I linked. On top of that, the tank-to-wheels efficiency of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is 1/2 that of BEVs, which implies double the renewable electricity needed for green hydrogen vs directly using electricity in BEVs. It's better to keep ground transport as efficient as possible by using BEVs, and use the remaining electricity to synthesize fuels for applications like aviation that don't lend themselves to batteries due to weight constraints.
> A single cavern can store 150,000 MWh of energy, and one formation in Utah can contain 100 caverns.
There's a lot of "can" in that, similar to initiatives pushing carbon-capture from coal plants. I applaud it if it eventually works, but that article is a paid marketing release (note the "Mitsubishi Heavy Industries BRANDVOICE| Paid Program" at the top).
> This is not a race. Fuel cell technology will still advance regardless of what happens of battery powered cars
It is a race to which tech has a market viable product for cleanly fueled road transportation. Battery tech isn't sitting still either, especially on the rapid charging and range front. It's totally possible that hydrogen tech will come through with a series of breakthroughs that mitigate its current issues with cost, lack of distribution infra, but projections like the one in the article I shared put that out 10-20 years, and predicting anything past 10 years is a crapshoot anyways.
> If it were a race, ICEVs are way ahead and neither BEVs nor FCEVs are anywhere close to winning.
It's a race for the transportation tech of the future. Obviously ICEs are the majority of vehicles now, but that's hardly interesting to the debate about FCEVs vs BEVs, except in the matter of how much the gap between either of the new technologies and ICEs closes on the consumer price level.
It will likely be akin to those people who put solar panels on their roofs and have backup power storage. Probably not for everyone, but for some groups of people it could make sense for them.
> Not nearly enough to power ground transportation on green hydrogen, which was the point of the article I linked. On top of that, the tank-to-wheels efficiency of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is 1/2 that of BEVs, which implies double the renewable electricity needed for green hydrogen vs directly using electricity in BEVs. It's better to keep ground transport as efficient as possible by using BEVs, and use the remaining electricity to synthesize fuels for applications like aviation that don't lend themselves to batteries due to weight constraints.
If we’re already hitting majority renewable energy at their on peak on the grid, then we’re already on the verge of making too much. There are still huge solar and winds projects still being built, so it’s a guarantee we’ll make too much. Furthermore, we need backup energy storage to smooth out the intermittency. This is already being developed on using hydrogen.
Finally, I do hope you understand what synfuels are. They’re basically made from H2 and CO2, and having a huge H2 economy is a prerequisite to making them.
> There's a lot of "can" in that, similar to initiatives pushing carbon-capture from coal plants. I applaud it if it eventually works, but that article is a paid marketing release (note the "Mitsubishi Heavy Industries BRANDVOICE| Paid Program" at the top).
We were already storing hydrogen in this way for decades. This is a definite certainty that it can work. The question is whether there will be enough renewable hydrogen to fill the facility, not that it can’t work.
> It is a race to which tech has a market viable product for cleanly fueled road transportation. Battery tech isn't sitting still either, especially on the rapid charging and range front. It's totally possible that hydrogen tech will come through with a series of breakthroughs that mitigate its current issues with cost, lack of distribution infra, but projections like the one in the article I shared put that out 10-20 years, and predicting anything past 10 years is a crapshoot anyways.
> It's a race for the transportation tech of the future. Obviously ICEs are the majority of vehicles now, but that's hardly interesting to the debate about FCEVs vs BEVs, except in the matter of how much the gap between either of the new technologies and ICEs closes on the consumer price level.
The point being that BEVs can succeed, and still be displaced when FCEVs reaches a certain point. Moreover, neither are in any position to displace ICEVs yet. The most economical car you can by is some kind of ICEVs, especially if it is a hybrid of some sort.
I want to add that there are many sectors, such as large trucks, trains, ships, etc., that we are quite certain that batteries will never make sense in all likelihood. This pretty much requires we go the hydrogen route on them. That also makes refusing to invest in hydrogen equivalent to just giving up on reducing GHG in those sectors. So fuel cell technology is a necessary investment and not really optional.
> That vs the typical plug to wheels efficiency of around 60% in today's electric vehicles.
1) Just to add a point of comparison, current ICE engines have an efficiency of around 25-35%, so while 25% sounds bad, that's the technology we've been putting up with for a century. But obviously, new technologies ought to be more efficient.
2) Speaking of efficiency, here we are talking about plug-to-wheel efficiencies. The true useful efficiency of a car is the ability to move you to your destination.
So adding in the "weight efficiency" of 5-10%, given a 1-2t car and a 100kg charge (based on average 1.5 people occupancy in a car), the efficiency drops to ~1% for ICE/hydrogen cars and ~3% for electric cars.
Please consider using lighter cars, a lot more gains can be achieved that way.
I was real confused by this. Wiki says Prius is in the range of 3,000 lbs. Much lighter than a truck of any sort.
Perhaps you meant to say Tesla Model X instead of Prius? That the closest comparison to an SUV. It weighs in at well over 5,000 lbs, which closer to the range of a light truck.
2005 Tacoma: 3,140 to 4,4100 lbs
2005 Ranger: 3,028 to 3,606 lbs
2003 S-10: 3,016 to 4,039 lbsIt’s been something of a blind spot among tech workers that they are completely oblivious to the gains made in fuel cells. For all the hype about us being forward thinking, a lot of us are seriously stuck in the past.
Those ideas aren't at odds.
BEVs are nearly 80% efficient already [1], are comparatively widely deployed, and the infrastructure for them exists in everyone's home. For long distance travel, there are far more fast chargers than hydrogen stations, and far more investment in building more of them.
Also, most independent real-world tests I've seen of hydrogen cells reported much lower efficiency in practice than claimed — often between 30-40%. The only tank-to-wheel 60% claim I could find was a statement by Honda of their own car; FWIW, the EPA rating of the latest, most-efficient version of that car (the Honda Clarity Fuel Cell) is actually 68 MPGe [2], which is much lower than most BEVs. In fact, the battery-based version of the same exact car, the Honda Clarity EV, has an EPA rating of 114 MPGe [3], which is nearly 70% more efficient.
Hydrogen fuel cells for consumer cars just don't make sense.
1: https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml
2: https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=40044
And if you don't have a garage? Or park on the street? You're just hand-waving away a very consumer hostile problem. You have to assume that there will eventually be a hydrogen refueling network, at which point refueling is just 5 minutes for 300-400 miles of range.
> Also, most independent real-world tests I've seen of hydrogen cells reported much lower efficiency in practice than claimed — often between 30-40%. The only tank-to-wheel 60% claim I could find was a statement by Honda of their own car;
I doubt those tests you claim really exist. Hyundai claims their car also gets 60% efficiency [1].
> In fact, the battery-based version of the same exact car, the Honda Clarity EV, has an EPA rating of 114 MPGe [3], which is nearly 70% more efficient.
I don't doubt BEVs are more efficient. It's likely just irrelevant as we build out an insane about of renewable wind and solar. Right now, the problem is we are producing too much, not too little, renewable energy. The goal is to use that nearly free electricity to make hydrogen [2].
1. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1119347_2019-hyundai-ne...
2. https://www.governing.com/next/Americas-Largest-Municipal-Ut...
Use a charging network; there are plenty (and there's far more investment in expanding them than hydrogen). Many malls and grocery stores have chargers in their parking lots reserved for EVs; you can charge while you shop.
> I doubt those tests you claim really exist.
Saved you the Google search: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell#In_practice
> The goal is to use that nearly free electricity to make hydrogen
Sure, as an alternative at grid scale (which is what the link you posted references). But BEVs are more efficient, and simpler, for consumer cars. We already have an electrical grid. Even just transporting the hydrogen from the generator to the theoretical thousands of refueling stations would be inefficient and wasteful.
> Right now, the problem is we are producing too much, not too little, renewable energy
Less than 15% of America's energy comes from renewable sources. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewab...
This really kills the convenience argument though. If you must recharge using public stations, it is much less convenient that hydrogen stations that can do it in 5 minutes.
> Saved you the Google search: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell#In_practice
The study was conducted back in 2007, a time where fuel cell cars basically didn’t exist yet. I suppose this does qualify as “existing,” but it is not real world and is clearly wrong as of today.
Fuel cell cars today are at 60% regardless. This is also hard to dispute, since a 35% efficient fuel cell car cannot approach 68MPGe. So it is an outdated study at best.
> Sure, as an alternative at grid scale (which is what the link you posted references). But BEVs are more efficient, and simpler, for consumer cars. We already have an electrical grid. Even just transporting the hydrogen from the generator to the theoretical thousands of refueling stations would be inefficient and wasteful.
It costs very little to pipeline hydrogen around. This is not a problem if we have plenty of cheap hydrogen to go around.
> Less than 15% of America's energy comes from renewable sources.
It is much higher in states that invested in renewable energy. California is at 30% for instance. It’s even higher in some countries in Europe. What we’re finding is that power swings from >80% to less than 20% on a regular basis. This problem is addressed here: https://www.governing.com/next/Americas-Largest-Municipal-Ut...
The first study in the linked article was conducted in 2010. FWIW, Honda's study (which is the only one I can find a source for that claims 60% tank-to-wheel) was conducted in 2008.
> Fuel cell cars today are at 60% regardless.
Source? Ideally to an independent, real-world study. The EPA MPGe ratings have strongly disagreed with you that hydrogen is comparable to BEVs, as have the studies I've linked, so I'm curious where this 60% real-world claim is coming from.
> This is also hard to dispute, since a 35% efficient fuel cell car cannot approach 68MPGe.
EVs are generally able to get up to 77% efficiency in real-world usage, per the link I posted above. The Tesla Model 3, the most-efficient sedan in 2020 according to the US Dept of Energy [1], gets 141 MPGe.
If we assume the Model 3 is 77% efficient, that leaves the Honda Clarity Fuel Cell (which is rated at 68 MPGe) at approx 37% efficient, since MPGe is strictly a measure of average distance traveled per equivalent unit of energy used [2].
Better than pure gasoline, sure, but it's still pretty far from a BEV. Even hybrids get decently close to hydrogen; the Prius, for example, gets 56 MPG. BEVs absolutely smoke both in terms of efficiency.
1: https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/topten.jsp
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_per_gallon_gasoline_equi...
The first study states "greater than 45%." This is pure misdirection here.
> Source? Ideally to an independent, real-world study.
There are vast resources available [1]. Evidence suggests it is around 60% at the stack, and ~55% at the system level [2].
> EVs are generally able to get up to 77% efficiency in real-world usage, per the link I posted above. The Tesla Model 3, the most-efficient sedan in 2020 according to the US Dept of Energy [1], gets 141 MPGe.
That's wells-to-wheels figure. You're comparing very different figures. Also, that 141 MPGe figure is just them gaming the fuel economy test [3]. It is not showing up in real world testing.
Using basic physics (which assumes BEVs are 95% at the wheels vs 55% for FCEVs), the peak difference could only be 72%.
> Even hybrids get decently close to hydrogen; the Prius, for example, gets 56 MPG.
The Prius is a much smaller car than the Clarity. Not really a fair comparison.
1. https://www.nrel.gov/hydrogen/fuel-cell-vehicle-evaluation.h...
2. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/73011.pdf
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynX21N4H8H0&feature=emb_titl...
- a car may need 5 kg of hydrogen for a range of 500km (bbc's claim, I'll take it at face value)
- the new "sponge" material can offer "deliverable hydrogen capacities (14.0 weight %, 46.2 g liter−1) under a combined temperature and pressure swing (77 K/100 bar → 160 K/5 bar)."
- so for 5kg of H2 you need about 100 l of this material, at a weight of about 35 kg. Not too shabby.
- however, note the conditions: you store the H2 at 77k and 100bar. So you need liquid nitrogen and quite high pressure to hold this. That might add substantial weight to the 35kg of sponge
By the way, about one year ago, there was quite some big noise on HN about a different breakthrough from Australia, where some researchers showed economic ways to store H2 in ammonia. Not sure if that got anywhere.
So, for example, you'd build a huge solar farm where it's very sunny, or a huge wind farm where it's windy. And instead of running power lines, you'd ship ammonia.
Power lines are a winner for short distances. Pipelines some longer distances. And ships for the longest distances.
But the Europe and North Africa connection is already a relatively serious proposal precisely because of the efficiency gains. It's definitely an ambitious project, but more from the politics than from the technology. Electrons are just easier than atoms, even underwater. HVDC has made long distances realistic for cables.
China's Anhui to Xinjiang HVDC link will be around 2000 miles. There's a planned HVDC submarine cable from Lincolnshire to Denmark that will be 472 miles.
So for Australia to China, we might be able to pull off Darwin to Jakarta, then Jakarta to Hong Kong within 10-20 years, if you really wanted to. Would break some records, but it's not crazy impractical.
Though with the most efficient transfers you're taking some percentage hit per mile. Closer generation is generally going to be smarter, especially if you're running cables through what would be really viable offshore wind fields.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_super_grid
https://www.power-technology.com/features/chinas-mega-transm...
> there will be (very long) distances that you'll want to ship energy
This is probably the real crux driving the difference in how we see this.
The main reason we have to ship hydrocarbons long distances is because those resources are so concentrated. Wind and solar aren't perfectly distributed, but they are so much more distributed that local generation would be much more efficient than transporting anything much beyond what current HVDC projects can easily handle.
So, sure, we're not going to stretch a cable for 12,000 miles. But we're also not going to build a solar farm in Saudi Arabia to generate hydrogen to ship to Canberra. We're just going to put a solar farm in the outback instead.
[0] "Relative costs of transporting electrical and chemical energy" by Saadi, Lewis, and MacFarland, studies this very question.
Even in that report, you could quibble with a lot of their assumptions that I think bias it against HVDC, project lifespans, ignoring loading and unloading costs for tankers, etc. But it's not a crazy starting place, and HVDC still beats hydrogen on $ per mile per Joule. My takeaway from it was that if we're stuck with a carbon economy, sure, we'll keep using tankers. If we're talking about going carbon neutral, the difficulties of working with hydrogen relative to oil and LNG will probably tip us back towards electrification and local generation, except in the most highly specialized of situations (fueling Antarctica or something).
The report was a good reminder why we have an oil-based economy though. It is so obnoxiously practical and well suited to everything we want to use it for. Ditching carbon will be hard.
If you are seeing stuff that suggests ammonia will get very close to parity with oil, that's really fascinating, I hope it pans out that way. The IAE is more optimistic than I am about ammonia transport, while still listing some significant hurdles:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036031991...
I think it's a good report, and you could read it to be more convinced of either of our positions.
Sorry we're talking past each other. You did actually change my mind a bit, if it's any consolation. Agree it's too hasty to say electrons are always better than atoms, though I'm still optimistic about more supergrids. My main remaining concern is just that, as you change your power mix away from oil to generate more ammonia, or electrolytic hydrogen, or whatever, the case for shipping fuel erodes significantly, because you can just move generation closer instead.
Sorry we couldn't get to ground on this one. Thanks for your points all the same.
Which is exactly how it was pitched in Australia, by the government agency responsible for developing it. It was the reason it was funded.
As I recall, it was "it solar continues current downward trajectory, it will be cheaper make than it is to frack natural gas". They seemed pretty convinced of it.
The only thing holding back the use of ammonia as energy storage is the fact that fossil fuels are still the most efficient feedstock. Once solar is more efficient, ammonia will see widespread production and use.
At any rate, unless Farmer Brown regularly drives his fertilizer sprayer around on the farm at 70 MPH, I'm not convinced your analogy holds much more water than the anhydrous ammonia does.
Hydrogen is best thought of as an energy transfer mechanism -- an extremely lossy one at that -- not an energy source, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. It's hard to believe that ammonia-based storage is the missing factor in the hydrogen equation that we've all been searching for.
No one is proposing hydrogen or ammonia as an energy source. There are no underground deposits. They will only make sense once solar generation is efficient enough that electrolysis becomes competitive with fossil fuels. We'll know that's coming soon when hydrogen hype artists are drowned out by engineers talking about ammonia.
Gasoline spills are not uncommon, but most of them go unignited.
https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/low-carbon-e...
Had they burnt it in an ICE, and come up with those figures then OK. As it is, when using technology that exists now it won't be 5 kg per 500km, it will 25 kg at best, and 500l of this material will be required.
It is about 1kg for 100km range. The Hyundai Nexo Blue has better than 600km range on 6.5kg of hydrogen:
https://www.drivingelectric.com/hyundai/nexo/1005/hyundai-ne...
It’s too bad the story had to be written about car applications rather than the MOF itself.
There's been a lot of progress in cajoling and requiring apartment complexes and workplaces to install chargers, and Tesla has a lot more superchargers (mostly in mall parking lots) than they used to have.
So it sure doesn't seem like there's any insurmountable problem involved that would cause us to stop promoting EVs.
Meanwhile, hydrogen fuel cells haven't fallen in price like Toyota predicted, and so their hydrogen car is both expensive and low performance. Not a winning combination, even if it fuels up in 5 minutes.
Me, I've owned an EV for 6 years, and live in an apartment. 6 years ago the pessimistic estimate was that what has actually happened today is impossible.
> filling network is already in place
when the last mile needs a couple hundred million charging points (with grid to supply them concurrently) and so far building them out has barely started. This is the entire reason I'm still burning gasoline for a couple of years; I can't rely on finding a charger at our next apartment.
p.s. Prediction: Post-pandemic, lock-down aside, look for Whole Foods to add charging stations. It's not a wait to recharge if you're being productive otherwise.
Perhaps WF already does?
The 2021 Mirai using only 10 grams of platinum. Although they haven’t spoken much about pricing, it’s pretty obvious this is going to be a cost effective car to manufacture. Certainly, it’s going to be a lot cheaper to produce than a car with 600kg of batteries.
The upcoming BMW X5 Hydrogen is going to have 370 hp. I’d say that’s plenty.
It was the 2017 Mirai that was supposed to be powerful and cheap. Now it's 2021. The old model had 151 hp. The new one has... ? neither a price nor a performance?
The low end gas X5 has 335-456hp. So far the BEVs that have sold well have much higher performance than the minimum.
They haven't announced those numbers yet. We know BMW is building an X5 with 368hp using Toyota's fuel cell stack: https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/bmws-hydrogen-x5-w...
So we should be reasonably sure the new Mirai is going to be much faster than the first. It's also going to have around 400 miles of range and will be much bigger and more luxurious. We haven't heard about pricing yet, but from a production standpoint Toyota has talked extensively about how much cheaper it is to make.
I expect it will just happen anyway. Meanwhile hydrogen will require all new single-use infrastructure.
That's not a big problem.
If you think the problem through, the hydrogen infrastructure we need is going to dwarf the battery and electricity infrastructure. This is all before we consider hydrogen powered cars.
There's no path to powering a large ship with batteries. I'm not sure if you understand the physics behind it, but it pretty much has to be a hydrogen based fuel. Either liquid H2, or a derivative like methanol or ammonia.
The actual term MOF was apparently first used in 95[0].
While there are a lot of things that can affect the synthesis (metal concentration, metal precursor, metal:linker ratio, solvent choice, presence or absence of water, modulators, synthesis temperature), the synthesis of MOFs is usually about tuning what goes into the pot. Then its shake-n-bake and MOF comes out a day later (solvothermal method). So, it's an easy synthesis if you know what to load into your reaction vessel. While continuous synthesis is a harder, I think it's a lot more immediately scalable than porous aromatic frameworks (PAFs).
This work is combining some of the advantages of MOF (high specific surface area, regular structure, easy synthesis) with some of the advantages of PAFs (even higher specific surface area). You can see the linker they use on PDF page 5 of the supplementary online material[1]. The hexadentate structure is large and is reminiscent of PAFs like PAF-1[2], which are known for having very high specific surface area. This is because the aryl group has a high specific surface area. By making the linker very large and bulky, they're reducing the contribution of the metal nodes to the specific surface area by having a greater volume fraction of (lightweight) aromatic linker. However, while PAFs usually (always? I'm not a PAF person) have an SP3 carbon center (and thus a tetrahedral symmetry), this linker is kind of shaped like a paddle wheel with three paddles (or a trigonal prism, if you access the Science article and see Fig. 1). Thus, while PAFs are typically in a diamond-like net (dia [3]), this MOF is in a acs net[4].
[0] https://www.nature.com/milestones/milecrystal/full/milecryst...
[1] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2020/04/15/...
[2] dx.doi.org/10.1039/C4MH00163J, http://www.rsc.org/suppdata/mh/c4/c4mh00163j/c4mh00163j1.pdf
[3] http://rcsr.anu.edu.au/nets/dia
[4] http://rcsr.anu.edu.au/nets/acs
Fun fact: Most MOFs are named after the research institution that found them first. This one is named NU-1500 for Northwestern University, where Farha is. The UiO-series are named after Universitet i Oslo, the HKUST series is named for Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the MIL series is named for Material Insitute Lavoisier.
They'll still be 100 reasons to favor battery EVs to renewable hydrogen fuel cells. Better storage does not increase its inferior well-to-wheel efficiency.