Sorry - more 'hydrogen economy' insanity/fraud. It doesn't matter how efficient you make the electrolysis bit, powering a vehicle from H2 via a fuel cell will only *ever* be ~50% efficient! Barely much progress on the best fossil-fuel IC engines. Just store the green electricity and use it in EVs directly, FCOL. All the technology is off the shelf and now, thanks to the advent of mass-produced EVs, affordable.

Interesting article, if they succeeded it could be a valuable contributor to carbon reduction.

The cost of retrofitting the 100s of millions of ICE vehicles could be far lower than a battery plus motor retrofit.

It also solves the intermittency problem quite nicely, even at 50%. The long term, worse case, storage per KWH would allow for smaller generation and battery.

As for efficiency, a combined cycle fuel cell sterling engine should bring the conversion into the 60s.

Now for the thermal issued mentioned, a twin cell device with a counter flow water to water heat exchanger should do the trick nicely. These devices typically run in the 80-95 percent range for capturing waste heat.

Just my USD 0.02 worth

It does not matter how efficiently "green hydrogen" is produced because hydrogen gas is extremely explosively dangerous!
Are we seriously want to fill all roads/streets w/ moving bombs?
Are we really sure there will be never any accidents/mishandling?

All light vehicles could switch to fully electric & all heavy vehicles could switch to biodiesel/biofuel!
There is no need for using extremely dangerous "green hydrogen" (very luckily)!

Have to side with martinwinlow on this one. PEM electrolysis is destined to hit 86% efficiency in this decade,only a few percent less efficient than this new process. For autos,forget it,batteries have a huge lead. For other things like aviation,cargo vessels,this will be good news. Not nearly as efficient as battery storage,but if you use green energy,it would be a clean way to produce H2 for shipping and air travel,which is a major source of CO2 pollution at present.

Even at $2 a kilo there would be substantial incentives for replacing high-carbon-output hydrogen with a renewable-based source.

"it's cheaper per unit of energy than current retail gasoline prices in the United States."

Comparing production costs to retail does not make sense. Retail includes all sorts of taxes and regulatory costs.

I'll believe this when I see it.

If the compressor stage can be taken out this is an advantage, but the improvement from 80% (best current) to claimed 95% doesn't sound like a game changer and it is unclear what the thermal loss will be even with recuperation - is this factored? Even if everything works, the claim of $1/kg implies an electricity cost of around 2.4c/kWh - this doesn't sound likely to me, either now or in the future.

Cheaper H2? Great. But...
How would massive global use/outflow of ocean water affect ocean acidity, mollusks, crustatceans, reef-forming coral, algae, and phytoplankton?

That's a neat trick. Lessee, there are roughly 120,000 kJ in 1 kg of H2 (assuming the energy release is recombination into water). This means that it requires AT LEAST 120,000 kJ in order to split water into 1 kg of hydrogen plus oxygen. If we divide 120000 by 3600 seconds in an hour, we get 33.33 kW-hours. This is the energy required to produce that kg of H2 at 100% efficiency. In order for this to cost only $1, one has to have energy available for 3 cents a kW-hour AND have perfect efficiency. If electrical energy were available for 3 cents a kW-hour, then perhaps this article would be believable. As it is, it is just absurd. CHEAP electricity costs 10 cents a kW-hour, and there are ALWAYS inefficiencies. Just compressing 500 moles of H2 at 1 atmosphere to a size one could put in a tank at a reasonable density would use a rather large chunk of energy.

So no, this fails the simple sanity test -- it doesn't quite violate energy conservation, but it sure as hell violates energy conservation at any price at which one can actually find energy.

@martinwinlow Yeah, I think batteries are the way to go in cars. There are just too many efficiency advantages, even with today's battery tech.


Green, cheap hydrogen is still extremely useful though. It would be great in all sorts of aircraft, from larger drones to commercial planes, and plenty of industrial processes need tons of it.