Ask HN: How innovative is the hydrogen industry?

I'm not sure what you're asking, but the market is just about to take off. See this article I submitted recently:

A Breakneck Growth Pivot Nears for Green Hydrogen (bnef.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33609423

There's a YC backed startup building a hydrogen hub and marketplace for the U.S.

https://www.phoenixhydrogen.com/

It's a good question actually.

I think there is a lot of progress for hydrogen in small ways but to change the world there has to be a complete value chain from one end to another and that's been absent.

There are two scenarios for hydrogen: (1) as an energy carrier, (2) as an ingredient in industrial processes.

For (1) it faces stiff competition. For instance you could have a battery electric car instead of a hydrogen car. You could ship power via wires rather than a hydrogen pipeline, you can store energy for the grid in batteries or with hydroelectric storage instead of as hydrogen. Aviation fuel is a special hard case for decarbonization but aviation, particularly in terms of fuels, is one of the slowest innovation parts of the economy. Look at how long it has taken to get the lead out of GA fuels or for US airlines to upgrade their broken radar altimeters. Hydrogen has the advantage of high energy density by mass but very low volumetric energy density so everything from aircraft to infrastructure will be redesigned, I think the industry will be much happier to use synthetic fuels based on Fischer–Tropsch chemistry than change anything, although green hydrogen will be an ingredient of green synthetic fuels.

All of that makes me skeptical about (1).

There is a lot of talk about building electrolyzers and using green hydrogen for (2). The first phase of that is is replacing hydrogen made from fossil fuels.

Hydrogen is used to make ammonia, which is used to make nitrogen fertilizer. Hydrogen is used in oil refining and other chemistry. (Note that by current ESG rules, a company like Exxon Mobil doesn't get charged for the carbon in the fuels they sell, just for the carbon released by their oil refineries and other operations. With a 'green' oil refinery they could ship the same products they do now but still claim to be net zero for better or worse. By adding green hydrogen to a refinery they can ship more product per unit of crude oil and avoid waste CO₂)

There are other processes such as steelmaking, cement making, and glassmaking that require a high-temperature flame and where electric or nuclear heat would not be an option. For those a hydrogen flame fueled by green hydrogen could be an option. For metal production in general, hydrogen can substitute for the carbon monoxide that that is used to reduce iron in blast furnaces.

The cynic in me wonders if hydrogen energy is:

1. Just a spoiler for renewables. Something that big oil and big gas can use to sew confusion and slow the transition to renewables.

2. A way that big oil and big gas can leverage their massive investment in fossil infratructure, even if it doesn't make sense economically or environmentally.

But I'm no expert on this. Just a cynic.

Here is the UK gov Hydrogen strategy that also has a recent update on the market: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-hydrogen-strat...

Hydrogen strategy update to the market: July 2022: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

They (the UK gov) also have a portfolio of companies, they have invested in, that you can have a dig around for if u checkout current and previous Innovate UK funding rounds.

Probably worth checking out similar programmes from other tech focused government investments (US, Germany, etc.)

I'm very skeptical of hydrogen as a general solution for reducing carbon emissions. It feels like greenwashing.

"As of 2020, the majority of hydrogen (∼95%) is produced from fossil fuels" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production

Producing "green hydrogen" is much more expensive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_hydrogen

First and foremost it is important to understand hydrogen is not a source of renewable energy. It is not like the sun or wind where there is an available, renewable, low carbon source of energy we can harvest. Hydrogen is only an energy storage mechanism. And it has efficiency vs weight vs volume tradeoffs compared with other storage mechanisms such as batteries or thermo-sand or hydro-gravity, etc.

Most of what is going on in the hydrogen space right now is that it is being leveraged by the fossil fuel industry to try to spread FUD around batteries and slow EV adoption. This is overshadowing the actual potential use cases for hydrogen, unfortunately.

I heard a CEO of a venture backed "green hydrogen" startup (valued at 1 Billion) say in a talk that they will only be profitable if society changes its habits and is willing to pay more for energy.

Not sure how true that is and with the current increase in energy prices in Europe, the break even point might be closer now than a year and a half ago.

Hydrogen is a mature industry used in many ways with extensive long standing regulations which are plausibly overzealous because of the hindenburg and fear of hydrogen. Nobody will want to get their car's hydrogen tanks inspected several times a year.

95% of hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels. So if the intent is to get away from fossil fuels, which we must do regardless of political movements, then you haven't gotten away. It's a total failure path.

Furthermore, they have produced hydrogen explosion engines but such vehicles will be of low torque and low range. In most actual cases a hydrogen car is actually an electric car with minimal batteries and hydrogen range extension in a non-explosive fuel cell. Why not just put more batteries in your electric car and remove the hydrogen range extension?

If you want to do 'electrolysis' of converting water to hydrogen. It literally has a ceiling efficiency of around 60% depending on how industrial you wish to go. Your at home rig is going to be more like 15% efficient. Batteries are like 95% efficient. Why go hydrogen?

There have been claims of being able to use platinum or something to be more efficient but these have all died on the vine. Not unlike the dozens of new better batteries you will hear about.

In reality, even if they could produce hydrogen at >95% efficiency without fossil fuels. It's still the wrong solution.

My understanding is that Hydrogen has energy-density problems as a fuel source. To have enough energy density to be useful for a vehicle, you need to keep it liquid. To keep it liquid, you need to refrigerate it - which takes energy.

So, I think the innovation in hydrogen is asymptotically limited by the physics of the H2 molecule.

I'm sceptical of hydrogen for the basic reasons that it is low energy density and it is hard to store. It literally leaks through the walls of metal storage tanks. That said, there is work being done on alternative storage methods. If there is a significant breakthrough, there, it could mean hydrogen becomes useful as a store of energy in those few situations where alternatives just won't work.

There are two big markets for hydrogen:

1. It is needed to make fertilizer and in other industrial processes. This need is constant, more or less, and is not going away. We need plants to eat.

2. It can be used as a fuel (for motors, heating, whatever). This need is currently low, but may grow. But so far, this area has been mostly a dud.

As far as innovation, the next big innovation is figuring out less polluting ways of creating hydrogen. Most hydrogen is currently created as a by-product of fossil fuel production. There's a need to figure out a cleaner way to make it that isn't so incredibly energy inefficient. Learn about the "colors" of hydrogen to see what options currently exist: https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/hydrog...

The problem with hydrogen as a fuel is that it is much less efficient (from a pure physics perspective) than just storing electricity directly in a battery. If you generate 1 kilowatt hour of electricity, by the time you send it to a house, charge a car, and use it, about 75%-80% of the power makes it to your wheels. If you instead use hydrogen, only about 30% of the power makes it to your wheels. See: https://www.volkswagenag.com/content/dam/online-kommunikatio...

This creates the paradox that clean hydrogen produced from renewable energy is currently a net loss to meeting renewable energy goals. Any renewable energy you are putting toward creating clean hydrogen would be doubly efficient just used as electricity directly without the hydrogen step in the middle. In a world with infinite green energy, hydrogen would be great. But we aren't in that world.

The advantage that hydrogen has over batteries is that it can work in some circumstances where batteries are not yet practical - places where you need near-instant recharging or where where weight/total capacity is a big factor (i.e. maybe some airline applications, maybe ocean shipping, who knows).

So there are probably places where hydrogen will grow and be profitable. But it has pretty much completely failed in the automotive sector because batteries are just better and more efficient. Also note that a lot of the push for hydrogen over electricity is coming from the major hydrogen producers, which happen to be fossil fuel companies that want to stay in business and who happen to already sell hydrogen.

WRT hydrogen engines: This video explains why using hydrogen to power an internal combustion engine doesn't make sense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJjKwSF9gT8

Lots of more informative responses in this thread than I can explain; just remember that a lot of people are promoting "hydrogen" in situations where it is either economically inferior to traditional batteries, or where the laws of physics make it impractical. (IE, the hydrogen V8 requires tanks so large that the vehicle is impractical.)

In whatever hydrogen space you're getting into, make sure you run the numbers like this video does. (IE, efficiency, volume of compressed hydrogen, energy lost to compressing / refrigerating, ect,) and make sure they make sense. For example, hydrogen might not make sense for day-to-day storage compared to a battery, but it may make perfect sense for a replacement for a standby generator.

It’s a long road for hydrogen.

There isn’t that killer application yet that’ll definitely make hydrogen win out over fossil fuels or electric.

Electric cars have a big lead, and hydrogen cars would require a massive investment in hydrogen fueling stations. Similar story for trucking, though maybe hydrogen trucks would need a smaller web of fueling stations.

Home heat — again, need infra to pipe it to homes or even deliver by truck, there arent hydrogen compatible furnaces out there AFAIK.

Aviation is super interesting, as is cargo shipping.

Don Lancaster has been commenting on the absurdity of the hydrogen economy for over 20 years, saying hydrogen is a "pollution amplifier":

https://www.tinaja.com/h2gas01.shtml

I think this was posted on HN a while back, can't find it, but the energy losses from production, to storage, through transport and delivery are much greater for hydrogen compared to electricity delivered on the grid and stored in lithium batteries. I think that, overall, there are very few applications where hydrogen makes sense. Even in places where the much greater energy density of hydrogen vs. lithium batteries matters a lot (e.g. aircraft), hydrogen is still not a great choice, and seems to me it would be better to just put research into making carbon-based fuels from renewable energy sources.

Hydrogen is a fake green fuel pushed my the petroleum industry. It is 100% not a viable fuel because it’s just oil with extra steps.

The recent astroturfing campaign is funded by petroleum companies.

1) the only reasonable way to make it is to crack it from petroleum 2) it’s hard to contain and ship so the infrastructure needs are substantial 3) nobody who knows about or cares about renewables takes it seriously.

I don't know how practical this is, but I'd really like a hydrogen grill that I can plug into a wall and run a hose to.

I also wonder if the same concept would work for a hydrogen stovetop; perhaps even paired with a dehumidifier to keep my interior humidity under control.

That's an interesting question and it's also an important one because the answer will influence the future of our energy supply.

There are many good comments already so I will share an anecdote that might give an alternative view:

When I studied at the university we had a start-up come over to present their product. It was miniature fuel cells with the idea to use them to power mobile phones. It was the late nineties, mobile phones were all the rage and batteries were terribly bad. Students were pretty excited and the discussion after the presentation was a big hurray on hydrogen and fuel cells. A bright future ahead.

Until our professor wryly remarked: "Yeah, hydrogen is the technology which has been on the verge of a breakthrough for 30 years."

Whenever I hear about innovation in the hydrogen sector I must think of that quote, and that it's now another 30 years later, nothing has changed and we are still on verge of a breakthrough.

Does it mean that breakthrough will never come? Maybe. Maybe it will come, but I wouldn't be surprised if it takes another 30 years.

I'm CEO at a YC-backed hydrogen startup (https://phoenixhydrogen.com/). Here's why I think hydrogen is cool:

1. If you believe in learning curves, you believe that green hydrogen will be cheaper than fossil fuels (per BTU or per kWh) in the foreseeable future. That doesn't mean we should use it for everything -- it will mostly be cheaper to use wind and solar power directly, or through batteries -- but it does mean we're likely to use a lot of it, especially given the following additional points.

2. Hydrogen is one of very few solutions to important classes of decarbonization problems. Basically, hydrogen lets us use electricity to replace fossil fuels in places where direct electrification is difficult. To summarize, this is mostly about contexts where we use fossil fuels as a feedstock (a physical ingredient), eg fertilizers or plastics or steel, or as a high-volume fuel for transportation (eg container ships or transcontinental flights) or energy storage.

3. Speaking of energy storage. Lots of people say hydrogen is a dumb way to store energy; we should use batteries instead. I agree we should deploy more KW of batteries than KW of fuel cells or hydrogen-fired turbines, but I also believe hydrogen is the cheapest solution to seasonal power storage. (NREL also believes this.) Did you know that America uses ~2x as much energy in February vs in October? When we replace gas and coal with wind and solar (or nuclear, whatever) are we going to build enough for February or enough for October? The answer is to build enough for the average load, and to use hydrogen to store the power in vast underground salt caverns. This is much cheaper than the obvious alternatives (overbuild wind+solar+batteries). Basically, a lowest-cost fossil-free system would have more KW of battery energy storage and more KWh of hydrogen energy storage.

4. Hydrogen is transmission, and especially in the US, that means it's a solution to the #1 bottleneck that is preventing the construction of new wind and solar plants. Wind and solar energy are cheap, but there is a literal corrupt monopoly system (power utilities) which prevent it from competing fairly with fossil fuels, or from being transported from resource-rich areas to demand centers. Lots of people don't know this, but "interconnection" (the rules which allow utilities to impose delays, fees, and clandestine sabotage upon new wind and solar projects) is the #1 problem facing renewable energy projects in the US. The "interconnection queue" is like a line that wind and solar projects must wait in for years before they learn if their request will be approved, denied, charged outrageous fees, or simply deferred. In some places (MISO) regulators have approved a "pause" in the interconnection queue, meaning that nobody is allowed to get in line for the next several years. Hydrogen can help clear this up, and isn't subject to the same monopolies in the same way; one hydrogen pipeline can move as much renewable energy as 5-10 giant transmission lines, using one 50' right-of-way and no visible infrastructure (vs transmission towers, 500'-2000' of right-of-way and 100'+ tall towers).

If you're a transmission nerd and you don't already love hydrogen, be aware that we are literally planning a US supergrid today, and it will be operational by 2030. It's just pipes instead of wires; it's arguably jankier (and arguably not https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X2...) but definitely capable of solving the problems that make us talk about supergrids.

5. Final reason hydrogen is cool: it is not innovative. Innovation in the energy sector is very hard! If nuclear SMRs follow the optimal path, it will be 2035 before they are deployed at G...

I had the privilege of talking to a big investor in hydrogen fuel a few months ago so my answer will focus on hydrogen as a substitute for fossil fuels rather than the use of hydrogen elsewhere.

1/ Hydrogen cars and trucks exist but they break down a lot and they are not mass produced. There is no infrastructure to repair them either.

The investor is funding repair points and fuel points but the route has to be carefully planned to make sure the vehicle arrives to those points

2/ Hydrogen fuel distribution is almost non-existent at the moment (which was the main focus of this investor) and they were looking at building distribution points along the major road networks

It's a problem that electric cars don't face as electricity is already everywhere.

In the short term, only islands or otherwise very isolated road networks may convert to hydrogen fuel. And that's optimistic.

Hydrogen is a very hard gas to use. If you talk to anyone who has shipped products using it (most likely in military/space applications), the fundamental behaviors of it in materials science are very difficult. It’ll make your nice fancy metal pipes flake apart. Good luck with any sort of gaskets. Being the smallest molecule means it will escape in a moment’s notice.

It likes to recombine with oxygen at the slightest provocation.

Ignition energy in optimum concentration with O2 (or air) is 1.2J, the same as a ten cent piece falling on it's face from edge.

I've worked near a cold vent for hydrogen (eg disposed of to atmosphere, not deliberately flared) and you could hear when it used to ignite at the hint of any atmospheric electricity that was even over the horizon and not visible on a clear blue day.

Just looking at energy storage/transmission, the experts I've heard that aren't clearly pushing hydrogen seem to think that it's going to be mostly a niche product.

Might be used for aircraft, ocean shipping, and other places where batteries don't have the requisite energy density and the refueling infrastructure can be installed in a limited number of places (ie, not for passenger vehicles).

Might be used for seasonal energy storage. Although there are relatively few places (salt caverns) in which to store it. Interestingly the same study concluded that natural gas + carbon capture is the next most economically feasible option. https://environment-review.yale.edu/power-127-hours-economic...

Might be stored in an easier-to-handle form - eg make hydrogen, turn it into ammonia, and store that. Of course that lowers the round-trip efficiency even more.

Some utilities have talked about injecting 5-10% hydrogen into the existing natural gas infrastructure to partially de-carbonize domestic heating.

It's the thing that comes after the wind and solar revolutions. Everyone dismissed wind and solar as they happened, usually via a combination of ignoring cost reductions or not grasping what exponential growth is. Hydrogen is following the same cost reduction and growth curves. It's basically history repeating for the third time. Everyone here who hasn't made this realization will be loudly proven wrong in the near future.