A stainless steel breakthrough from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) could help solve one of the biggest problems facing green hydrogen: how to build electrolyzers that are tough enough for seawater, yet cheap enough for large scale clean energy.
Led by Professor Mingxin Huang in HKU’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, the team developed a special stainless steel for hydrogen production (SS-H2). The material resists corrosion under conditions that normally push stainless steel past its limits, making it a promising candidate for producing hydrogen from seawater and other harsh electrolyzer environments.
The discovery, reported in Materials Today in the study “A sequential dual-passivation strategy for designing stainless steel used above water oxidation,” builds on Huang’s long running “Super Steel” Project. The same research program previously produced anti-COVID-19 stainless steel in 2021, along with ultra strong and ultra tough Super Steel in 2017 and 2020.
This is quite interesting. Maybe the breakthrough that the “green hydrogen” ideas needed, because so far they have been pretty much dead in the water.
You mean rust in the water.
Badum-tsh! 😄
storage and transport is the bigger issue, along with H being a GHG so the inevitable fugitive emissions are a huge issue.
It’s a stupid thing to do, but that’s why we’ll do it anyway.
I doubt unbound hydrogen would exist long enough in the presence of atmospheric oxygen to cause much problems.
Otherwise, yeah some issues with it exist, but that it is at least partially possible to reuse the huge amount of fossile fuel infrastructure that already exists is a big theoretical advantage.
And it would be hugely beneficial for nitrogen fertilizer production.
Hydrogen is not a GHG.