this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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I'm not sure what you mean. Natural fresh water supplies are stressed in many regions. We need hydrogen to fuel vehicles and for the production GHG-free steel and fertilizer. Oxygen of course is necessary for medical and industrial applications. Safely handling hydrogen and oxygen is a solved problem and these gases are not polluting if you have to vent to atmosphere. It only makes sense from a wasteful, financially extractive perspective to store extra electricity by environmentally questionable means instead of actually using that energy right away.
Hydrogen electrolysis is great, but its something to do with "too much" renewables, and also supports having too much batteries, which are more convenient for daily electricity needs from renewables, but also using up high battery storage capacity every day.
We've been talking about energy and energy storage up till now. You've been mostly 'on track' with said responses up till this point - albeit overly generic and somewhat disconnected from reality... In the last couple responses you've jumped from water care to what I can only imagine was the first two Google results when looking up hydrogen / oxygen paired with energy.
Is the other guy okay or did his shift end?
Look. Here's a sobering bottom line: if it were technologically feasible to "replace batteries" we would have already. Hydrogen powered x isn't functionally acceptable because:
a) It stores like shit.
b) boom (pressure or rapid combustion - take your pick)
c) It is shockingly (hah) hard to get oxygen and hydrogen to split efficiently. Very few sources of hydrogen are actually energy positive or more efficient than what we already have in more convenient, safer, higher density forms.
I'm all for progress... but armchair warriors that claim the "moral high ground" by shitting on what works currently - while not being able to provide a single other suggestion beyond what they got drip fed from their feed and distilled by their echo ~~group~~ chamber need to sit the fuck down. Want to "stick it to big battery?" Go back to landlines. Put a crank back on your car. The list goes on.
I digress. Back to energy storage: if you've got some brilliant solution - get to it. We're waiting.
No to storing joules in environmentally questionable batteries. Use the energy immediately to produce useful, necessary stuff like fresh water and hydrogen.