Toyota's Fuel Cell R&D And Production Plant Starts Operation In Beijing.

[NNadir]

1. I hear a lot around here about how "dangerous" the other thermodynamic nightmare, batteries, are.

Almost all of these "reports" about battery fires come from advocates of the tiresome, extremely dangerous, and exceedingly old "hydrogen economy" fantasy, which somehow, after half a century of bullshit, refuses to die a well deserved death.

Indeed, stored energy is dangerous, as well we know from the many disasters, included but not limited to fires and explosions, involved in the use of stored solar energy - which is, after all what dangerous fossil fuels are at the end of the day.

The reason that we see more battery fires than we see hydrogen explosions is because after decade after decade of advertising a putative "hydrogen economy" as "green" - much of it by dangerous fossil fuel companies themselves, is that consumer hydrogen - a very, very, very bad idea - remains trivial, whereas batteries are not; batteries now, for better or worse, are a huge industry, with widespread consumer use. I have some myself, including those in my hybrid Toyota Camry, which recovers some of the energy of a dangerous fossil fuel that would otherwise be wasted. About a year ago, my previous hybrid Toyota Camry was totaled in a very serious accident, and though I thought, the battery might catch fire, it didn't.

Of course, dangerous fossil fuels are the main source of even more dangerous hydrogen, the fossil fuel most used being dangerous natural gas, which is actually safer than hydrogen, as it has a much higher critical temperature, higher viscosity, and, unlike hydrogen, is compatible with many more metals than hydrogen is without producing hydrogen embrittlement, a major issue in materials science. The use of coal as a source of hydrogen is dominant in China, which is often advertised here, in a classic bit of "bait and switch" fossil fuel marketing scheme as coming from the useless, trivial and extremely expensive solar industry which has failed miserably to address extreme global heating, which is accelerating under the weight of marketing bullshit.



The caption:

Figure 1. Global current sources of H2 production (a), and H2 consumption sectors (b).

Progress on Catalyst Development for the Steam Reforming of Biomass and Waste Plastics Pyrolysis Volatiles: A Review Laura Santamaria, Gartzen Lopez, Enara Fernandez, Maria Cortazar, Aitor Arregi, Martin Olazar, and Javier Bilbao, Energy & Fuels 2021 35 (21), 17051-17084]

As it happens, the garbage trucks of the Waste Management Corporation around here, advertise themselves as "green" since they run on "clean" natural gas, which is less odious from a thermodynamic perspective than if they reformed the methane to make hydrogen at an energy loss. I'm sure they would like the paper cited above to be promoted.

Big companies often engage in "research" projects marketed as "green" as part of their advertising budget.

As I frequently point out, this includes our friends at Exxon who have decided that their previous marketing efforts including climate denial doesn't play well in their marketing efforts, but the hydrogen fantasy - which will only entrench their products further - does:

Exxon rebranding fossil fuels as hydrogen:

A Giant Climate Lie: When they're selling hydrogen, what they're really selling is fossil fuels.