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Comment by lll-o-lll | Hacker News Reader

Well, many years ago before I switched to software, I was an engineer in real life! Putting on the old dusty engineering cap, I have to say that your explanation there is so underwhelming as to make it hard to take you seriously. The information I have read on this has not been FUD. It’s been careful analysis by actual engineers with experience in the field. Something being “technically possible” is completely different to something being “economically feasible”. Sorry, if you want to make an argument, you’re going to have to do better than that.

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Well even engineers can have seriously incorrect understanding of an issue, especially if it is many years out of date.

You’re argument seems to be based around economically feasibility, not technical issues, right? So then you will also agree that if green hydrogen radically dropped in cost, then you will agree that it will become a viable solution? Furthermore there will be subsidies going on, that will accelerate the process.

In fact, the problem might be that a combination of subsidies and cost reductions will drive the price to below $0/kg, causing market confusion:

https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insight...

That would be an interesting outcome and it will be interest to see how it ends up. But nevertheless, super-cheap green hydrogen should quickly refute the major arguments used against it. It is a process that mirrors what happened to wind and solar energy. They too have years of FUD followed by many skeptics who denied the possibility of cheap renewable energy. But that skepticism simply fell apart because basic economics overrule outdated opinions.

> You’re argument seems to be based around economically feasibility, not technical issues, right?

Economic feasibility due to engineering problems. Just because something can be done in a lab does not mean it can be done at scale. As an example, Musk with his stupid hyper-loop. Sure it is technically possible to evacuate a tube and send a vehicle through it at high speeds. It will never be economically feasible, however. Sometimes the engineers just have to say “not going to work” to an otherwise cool idea.

It’s not the cost of hydrogen production. It’s the engineering problems that pervade the rest of the handling, storage and distribution of hydrogen that look to be insurmountable.

> Economic feasibility due to engineering problems.

The question then becomes, who's actually saying this? It's certainly not real engineers. In fact, real engineers have pointed out that it is much cheaper to distribute hydrogen than electricity:

>BRINK: How do you move the hydrogen from the solar farms?

> AD VAN WIJK: By pipeline. That’s the interesting thing: It is about 10 times cheaper to transport energy by a hydrogen pipeline than by an electric cable. That makes it possible to transport electricity very cheaply from somewhere like North Africa to the demand centers in Europe, for example.

https://www.brinknews.com/could-hydrogen-replace-the-need-fo...

And all of this is happening under the auspices of effectively free hydrogen due to a combination of subsidies and cost reduction. This should really raise the question of how any of the alternative ideas are going to compete with this, not how whether this idea can work.

> The question then becomes, who's actually saying this? It's certainly not real engineers. In fact, real engineers have pointed out that it is much cheaper to distribute hydrogen than electricity:

I struggle to understand why you would say this. Here is one example. Paul Martin is a Chemical Engineer (that’s the right kind of engineering to talk about this topic). https://www.resilience.org/stories/2023-03-31/paul-martin-hy...

If you actually take off the “hopium” goggles and critically evaluate the problems, I think the truth is the hydrogen solution is not only unsolved it also probably can’t be solved.

Paul Martin is not a valid authority on this. He is a known anti-hydrogen skeptic and had made many nonsensical claims about hydrogen. The most notable is perhaps his limited understanding of how fuel cells work, and his claim that fuel cells can never dramatically exceed the efficiency of diesel engines.

This is false, as fuel cells are electrochemical systems that do not follow Carnot's theorem. Which is to say that it is fully possible to build a fuel cell that greatly exceeds the efficiency of diesel engines.

Not to mention that most of his claims are from some years ago, and are becoming obsolete even if they were true. He has not commented on (AFAIK) about the effects of subsidies nor admitted that costs are dropping rapidly. He just sounds like another anti-renewable skeptic similar to those that criticized wind and solar.

It's worth mentioning that all of them are similar in a way: Old, retired or nearly retired, and usually coming from in the fossil fuel industry. And yes, Martin is from the fossil fuel industry, and has no experience with hydrogen beyond its existence as a feedstock for oil refining. He has never had any experience with modern hydrogen-related facilities, equipment and concepts.

Engineers that actually do have experiences with those area do not agree with Paul Martin. So there are alternative viewpoints from knowledgeable people. You can look at recent statements by BMW and Bosch, including what their engineers have said. They are clearly believers of the idea:

https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2022/09/01/bmw-bosch-anno...

Your argument is now “older people are stupid?”. The information is old and irrelevant? The article I linked was from this year.

I just picked a critical engineer at random, but I can see I’m wasting my time here. You are clearly not any kind of expert. I am clearly not any kind of expert. This is just devolving into nothingness, and I’ll leave it here.

You are clearly misrepresenting my point. Your authority is not really an authority for a bunch of reasons. One of which is how he is basically a retired petroleum engineer with very little understanding of the modern state of hydrogen. And yes, this usually implies an old person, something Arthur C. Clarke noticed in one of his writings about elderly scientists. And while your link is from this year, he's been saying the same thing for many years now without change. In fact, the only recent change in tone is his exacerbation, as billions of dollars are being invested anyways and he is upset about that.

You are not picking a critical engineer at random. You picking basically one of the very few credible critics, and they're all basically known to the community. The rest of the engineering community in this sector are certainly not as skeptical. In fact, you completely ignored my link about engineers that are doing real work in this area.

I asked previous about "who's actually saying this?" to the question of engineers that doubt hydrogen. And that question is still relevant, because outside of a tiny minority of scientists and engineers, most of whom are outdated and poorly informed, the rest are just armchair experts and random celebrities.

So the point is that you are simply wrong about your understanding of the issue. The intellectual community fully accepts the possibility of hydrogen as a widespread fuel and a way to solve climate change.

> So the point is that you are simply wrong about your understanding of the issue. The intellectual community fully accepts the possibility of hydrogen as a widespread fuel and a way to solve climate change.

That is terribly naive and wishful thinking, I’m afraid.

For even the smallest-scale industrial applications, hydrogen is almost invariably produced on-site, near or within the manufacturing cell consuming it. Even if Linde charged nothing at all for hydrogen, electrolysis would still win: no 10kpsi (good lord) tank, no inevitable 1% loss per month of high-pressure hydrogen, no extra insurance premium.

If you’d dealt with hydrogen in industry, you might appreciate the problems with it. The static electric discharge from fingertip to ground required to ignite hydrogen is barely perceptible, and a ridiculously low atmospheric hydrogen concentration will burn with a very hot flame invisible in daylight.

The proposition of the public driving high-pressure hydrogen tanks around is brain-damaged. If you want fuel, you should make methanol from your hydrogen - for the same reasons that, if you want hydrogen, you already produce it from water or natural gas or propane.

Hydrogen has been an excellent topic for boastful press releases by car companies, corrupt nations, and fossil fuel producers murderously determined to continue the status quo indefinitely. It’s ideal for that, because there’s no danger of practicality.

Then you are repeating the same mistake as the other person: Who is your source? All of the stuff you said, which engineer or scientist is actually saying those things? And no, some well-known critic like Paul Martin doesn't count. Those are outmoded and outdated people, and are totally clueless about recent developments in the field.

On the other hand, real engineers with real experience in the area are saying the exact opposite: https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2022/09/01/bmw-bosch-anno...

In reality, you are just repeating the claims of some random armchair expert. These days, those seem to be usually battery car fanatics. Though you still see the occasional pro-biofuel or pro-fossil fuel guy. Either way, it is coming from a totally unqualified person.

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