[HN Gopher] Solar energy storage breakthrough could make househo...
___________________________________________________________________
Solar energy storage breakthrough could make households self-
sufficient
Author : stareatgoats
Score : 43 points
Date : 2023-11-05 21:16 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sifted.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (sifted.eu)
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| Tell me when it's in production and I can see a price listed
| somewhere.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| There are commercial-scale MHHC storage options already. The
| difference here, post vaporware, would be seeing a residential-
| scale one deployed and in use.
| narrator wrote:
| Ammonia is probably the most scalable medium for energy storage.
| It doesn't need to be pressurized, and doesn't leak as easily as
| hydrogen does. You can also turn it into fertilizer, which is a
| huge advantage that gasoline doesn't have. It's going to be the
| go to solution for ocean container ships and many companies are
| already working on large scale marine ammonia engines.
|
| More Discussion of ammonia's potential over here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38053586
| pictureofabear wrote:
| You can also turn it into a bomb. That would be neat.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| As opposed to gasoline, hydrogen, or methane?
| pictureofabear wrote:
| Yes, those are quite flammable too.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| methane/hydrogen/kinda gasoline at least combust into
| relatively benign substances, what happens when ammonia
| burns?
| mhandley wrote:
| The Royal Society produced quite a good policy brief on green
| ammonia a couple of years back. Does sound very promising for a
| number of industries.
|
| https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/green-ammon...
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Sounds like micro-scale MHHC. A press release isn't going to
| reveal their secret sauce and I didn't come across specifics in a
| quick review of the research literature, but I'm curious which
| materials and processes go into manufacturing the substrate.
| rini17 wrote:
| What is MHHC? I only found "Major histocompatibility complex"
| steanne wrote:
| metal hydride hydrogen compressor
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Is there a better/more balanced article that describes this
| company's technology more accurately? This device does not use
| "solid hydrogen", and that absurd misnomer made me discount most
| of this article. They did say elsewhere that it is instead a
| solid-oxide fuel cell [1], but I have no idea if this is in any
| way. significantly better/cheaper option than batteries.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_oxide_fuel_cell
| rgmerk wrote:
| Not an expert but from what scanty technical detail is presented
| in the article, it sounds like they're using:
|
| * metal hydride to store hydrogen.
|
| * a reversible fuel cell that can either split water to extract
| the hydrogen, or combine the hydrogen with oxygen from the air to
| make electricity
|
| * using the "waste" heat as space/water heating (this is another
| variation of "combined heat and power" and is pretty widely
| deployed, though perhaps not with fuel cells).
|
| There's been talk about using metal hydrides for hydrogen storage
| for many decades, and they appear to be commercially available
| [1]. That said, none of the discussion of hydrogen bulk storage
| at commercial scale seems to be talking about hydrides - it seems
| more to be about underground caverns just like natural gas, or
| tanks if you don't have a handy underground cavern. Hydrogen fuel
| cell vehicles all seem to be using cryogenic tanks.
|
| If this company has an approach that can lead to anything
| approximating seasonal storage in a home-friendly form factor at
| anything approximating a reasonable cost (and that reasonable
| cost could be pretty high given the functionality), the world
| will beat a path to their door.
|
| [1] https://www.h2planet.eu/en/detail/MyH2300
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-11-05 23:00 UTC)