k wrote:

A team of Korean scientists has developed a new method of storing hydrogen as a solid, easing potential complications associated with the commercialisation of fuel cell technology.

...

Describing the "amazing" breakthrough, PhD student Lee Hoon-kyung said: "The material binds hydrogen with absolutely no energy input and the hydrogen can then be extracted using relatively small amounts of energy."

Color me skeptical.

Then, I'm basically skeptical about the entire concept of hydrogen as fuel. For the billionth time, you need to get hydrogen from somewhere, usually requiring the input of a lot of electricity. The whole thing only works right if we find some clean (e.g. not fucking coal) ways of generating electricity.

Don't get me wrong, there's something to be said for moving the pollution out of the city itself and centralizing it around power plants, but it's not exactly getting the same as eliminating the stuff, is it?

Well, I would definitely be skeptical just cuz this is research that is coming out of Korea. Their track record of reliable and repeatable research is sketchy at best. But who knows.

I will say that hydrogen as an energy source is the way to go. Unfortunately, everyone thinks HYDROGEN CARS! They forget that automobiles and transport account for a relatively small percentage of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Even if you added up all the refining, transport of materials, exploration, and distribution of fossil fuels for automobiles, you still wouldn't equal the energy consumption of commercial and residential power generation and the emissions caused by that process.

Hydrogen will make an ideal fuel for commercial and residential energy needs first. Your house and office building consume far more energy and produce far more 'waste' than your car. The technology needed to transform offices, houses, factories, and schools to using sustainable and ecologically friendly energy systems are available today. The ROI's are probably manageable and will only get better the more people convert. At a certain tipping point, using this same technology and infrastructure will make a LOT more sense for transportation uses. People are attacking the problem backwards.

Hydrogen does need electricity to be harnessed and stored. It needs advanced materials to be stored effectively. But those are problems that are relatively easy to solve. I've been making my own hydrogen in my backyard as a fun project for a couple of years for free using sunshine and rainwater. I don't get a tremendously high yield, but then again, I only used about $400 in parts and everything but my solar cell was bought at home depot and was assembled on a Sunday afternoon. If I had access to advanced materials, high tolerance machining and fabrication, then I could get very high yields. On the order of 80% or better. Imagine if the same design, construction, and delivery mechanism that's used for cell phones and DVRs was applied towards home/business energy systems? Get my drift?