Re: Not hydrogen powered, just hydrogen storage
"Hydrogen is either achieved by electrolysis (very inefficient process from leccy) or by breaking down hydrocarbons (wasting a whole lot of the energy in the hydrocarbons). Both are inefficient."
The Haber process can theoretically be used to directly produce hydrogen from water and air, given enough process heat - but that would require (big scary) noo-cle-ar sources to be viable (the same heat sources would work well in cement kilns and would drop concrete's CO2 footprint by half overnight)
More to the point with all these pie-in-the-sky things, Hydrogen is bloody hard to contain when under pressure, and makes metals (and other materials) brittle and generally needs stupidly high pressures for storing practical amounts(*) in a car, which is a bad idea when coupled with the "brittle" part above.
If you're going to mess around with making portable fuels then move the extra few steps along from producing hydrogen, tack on a few carbon atoms and make something much safer to handle, like propane/butane (LPG) or even..... octane. Keep the hydrogen in low-pressure pipelines or consider producing methane and pumping it into the existing distribution networks. It may be an economic way of ensuring you can run your LFTR nuclear plant at continuous full power instead of load following.
(*) Yes, I know about metal hydrides and their abilities to soak up hydrogen like a sponge, but having to pay £30,000 for the fuel tank would make any car impractical.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
