> That is what makes the finding so striking. Manganese is usually not viewed as a friend of stainless steel corrosion resistance. In fact, the prevailing view has been that manganese weakens it.
> "Initially, we did not believe it because the prevailing view is that Mn impairs the corrosion resistance of stainless steel. Mn-based passivation is a counter-intuitive discovery, which cannot be explained by current knowledge in corrosion science. However, when numerous atomic-level results were presented, we were convinced. Beyond being surprised, we cannot wait to exploit the mechanism," said Dr. Kaiping Yu, the first author of the article, whose PhD is supervised by Professor Huang.
A bonus is that manganese is one of the cheapest metals, so this method for increasing the corrosion resistance of stainless steel in salted water and oxidizing conditions is very inexpensive.
So apart from the clickbait, the reason why this is interesting is because it's a limiter for the often cited idea of clean green hydrogen from electrolyis. The current use of titanium and precious metals is, obviously, really expensive, so it's uneconomical to build something that only runs on "spare" electricity.
I don't think the efficiency or longevity of electrolysis equipment is the limiting factor...
The limiting factor is that natural gas is very cheap and cracking it to make blue hydrogen is really easy at scale, and gives off CO2 which is useful for injection into wells to increase production. That sets a price ceiling of hydrogen.
At the other end of the scale, there are batteries to store 'free' electricity and resell later. That sets a floor price of electricity.
Between the floor price of the input and ceiling price of the output, there is no room for electrolysis, even at 100% efficiency, unless government policies mandate it or restrict batteries or blue hydrogen.
Even without natural gas, hydrogen as a general energy storage medium competes against thermal storage. The round trip for this (elecitrical energy back to electrical energy) can be as good as hydrogen, and the storage medium can be litterally dirt cheap, cheap enough that seasonal storage looks like it makes sense, if the design is brutally focused on cost optimization.
Here, corrosion of steel is also part of the problem, as you are burying steel pipes in piles of hot dirt.
> unless government policies mandate it or restrict batteries or blue hydrogen
Yes, but I think this the most likely outcome. Natural gas is only cheap in certain areas, and the past few years have made everyone very, very aware of the geopolitics involved in getting hold of it. While global warming is not going away, and I question the extent to which CCS actually happens with blue hydrogen.
Batteries are capital equipment in the same way as electrolysers are. They're great at short term storage, but medium-term is still a bit more of an issue. "Restrict batteries" is obviously not on the table except for stupid retail corner cases where utilities have captured the regulator.
There's a potential market for lots of green H2 in Haber nitrogen, metals refining, and synthetic jet fuel etc, but only if the cheap CO2 emitting option is priced out or banned, or H2 electrolysers get comparable capital prices to battery storage.
With CO2 emitting option is priced out or banned, direct hydrogen production using high temperature sulfur–iodine cycle without H2 electrolysers could be economic option. The heat could be supplied from high temperature nuclear reactor.
Processes that involve heating sulfuric acid vapor to decomposition don't sound terribly practical. If you thought seawater corrosion was challenging...
I agree, the experience building nuclear reactors is mixed bag. Some builds failed, like Flamanville 3, Hinkley Point C, Vogtle 3. Some builds succeeded: Barakah nuclear power plant, Fuqing 5,6. It really depends on maturity of supply line and political support.
The real question is: how do we produce hydrogen from the coming massive overbuilding of cheap-but-variable solar. Nuclear reactors are a whole different animal: even if we build them "cheaply" they're not going to approach the costs of overbuilt solar, so those nuclear watts will be better used for other purposes.
There are different kinds of water electrolysis equipment, with different capital expenditure and operating expenses.
"Alkaline electrolyzers are cheaper in terms of investment (they generally use nickel catalysts), but least efficient. PEM electrolyzers are more expensive (they generally use expensive platinum-group metal catalysts) but are more efficient and can operate at higher current densities, and can, therefore, be possibly cheaper if the hydrogen production is large enough."
Reducing the capital cost of electrolysis is extremely good, because it makes plants that only produce when electricity is cheap (midday in sunny climes, when wind is blowing in the Nordics) more feasible.
If this works out at scale (lots of problems can be found between a lab discovery and mass production), this is legitimately a very good thing for renewables.
With solar sometimes producing a lot of energy when you don't need it or can't store it, having a cheap hardware to produce hydrogen from it is quite nice.
Natural gaz may be cheap, but you can't beat free.
For this setup, the price of the hardware was a limiting factor.
There's one case, rural areas often have abundant energy sources (hydro, wind,etc) but few consumers, in Northern Sweden f.ex. a lot is produced but there's a lot of losses in transporting the energy south.
Now, yes, as long as natural gas is cheap(inbetween US or Soviet wars) it'll probably be the core for hydrogen, however batteries won't help much in the north since the transmission rather than usage is the cap even with batteries so excess production could be redirected towards hydrogen production.
Japanese car manufacturers were late to EVs, and in order to prevent a gap in the market where EV-first competitors can steal market share from them, they lobby the government to subsidize and create a new market segment in the form of hydrogen cars. There they have a head start via some latent research and more reuse of ICE car platforms. I'm sure the hydrogen division is well aware that they are doing research on a dead-end technology (at least for the automotive sector).
The exact same thing happened in Germany. In 2020 there was a huge push from politicians to push more hydrogen technology to distract from the fact that German car manufacturers were lagging behind, as well as general missed initiatives for renewable energy. Now, 6 years later those initatives are deader than ever.
Splitting water into free hydrogen and oxygen is important because it is an essential step for using electrical energy in the chemical and metallurgic industries.
For long term energy storage, free hydrogen is not a good solution, but it can be used to synthesize hydrocarbons, which are suitable for long term energy storage or for aerospace transportation.
Even with abundant and cheap dihydrogen, using it for energy storage in vehicles is a bad idea.
How does this refute the comment you replied to? That comment was implying that Toyota Mirai et al are ill-advised, so seems like your "nope" should be a "yep."
Galvanic corrosion typically happens at 0.5V (and as low as 0.15V in salt-water); 1.7V is "ultra high potential" in comparison with normal corrosion thresholds.
I think that may not be the potential used for electrolysis, but the chemical potential of the saltwater-metal boundary. But hopefully someone more knowledgeable will comment.
this kind of headline is bad for our collective souls; I know raging against the clickbait is old hat but seriously, this is ridiculous. Materials science is surely interesting enough to a reader of science direct without being SHOCKED and APPALLED all the time
> "Initially, we did not believe it because the prevailing view is that Mn impairs the corrosion resistance of stainless steel. Mn-based passivation is a counter-intuitive discovery, which cannot be explained by current knowledge in corrosion science. However, when numerous atomic-level results were presented, we were convinced. Beyond being surprised, we cannot wait to exploit the mechanism," said Dr. Kaiping Yu, the first author of the article, whose PhD is supervised by Professor Huang.
This is the Cannot be explained bit
The three stooges effect I see. Too many corrosive elements, they stop each other from getting through the door.
This statement sounds like the type of language one uses when trying to get a patent.
The limiting factor is that natural gas is very cheap and cracking it to make blue hydrogen is really easy at scale, and gives off CO2 which is useful for injection into wells to increase production. That sets a price ceiling of hydrogen.
At the other end of the scale, there are batteries to store 'free' electricity and resell later. That sets a floor price of electricity.
Between the floor price of the input and ceiling price of the output, there is no room for electrolysis, even at 100% efficiency, unless government policies mandate it or restrict batteries or blue hydrogen.
Here, corrosion of steel is also part of the problem, as you are burying steel pipes in piles of hot dirt.
Yes, but I think this the most likely outcome. Natural gas is only cheap in certain areas, and the past few years have made everyone very, very aware of the geopolitics involved in getting hold of it. While global warming is not going away, and I question the extent to which CCS actually happens with blue hydrogen.
Batteries are capital equipment in the same way as electrolysers are. They're great at short term storage, but medium-term is still a bit more of an issue. "Restrict batteries" is obviously not on the table except for stupid retail corner cases where utilities have captured the regulator.
There's a potential market for lots of green H2 in Haber nitrogen, metals refining, and synthetic jet fuel etc, but only if the cheap CO2 emitting option is priced out or banned, or H2 electrolysers get comparable capital prices to battery storage.
Huh?
I’d be interested in hearing about some scenario where this actually costs less, given the cost of building anything nuclear in 2026.
"Natural gas at Texas’s Waha hub is trading at negative $7.05 per million British Thermal Units, hitting a record low of negative $9.52 on April 15."
https://www.barrons.com/articles/natural-gas-texas-negative-...
There are different kinds of water electrolysis equipment, with different capital expenditure and operating expenses.
"Alkaline electrolyzers are cheaper in terms of investment (they generally use nickel catalysts), but least efficient. PEM electrolyzers are more expensive (they generally use expensive platinum-group metal catalysts) but are more efficient and can operate at higher current densities, and can, therefore, be possibly cheaper if the hydrogen production is large enough."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water#Efficien...
Anything using platinum-group metals will be very expensive. Therefor catalytic converters in cars use very little platinum-group metals.
"The amount of palladium in a converter can vary, but it is typically around 2-7 grams." https://vehiclefreak.com/how-much-palladium-is-in-a-catalyti...
If this works out at scale (lots of problems can be found between a lab discovery and mass production), this is legitimately a very good thing for renewables.
Natural gaz may be cheap, but you can't beat free.
For this setup, the price of the hardware was a limiting factor.
Now, yes, as long as natural gas is cheap(inbetween US or Soviet wars) it'll probably be the core for hydrogen, however batteries won't help much in the north since the transmission rather than usage is the cap even with batteries so excess production could be redirected towards hydrogen production.
Japanese car manufacturers were late to EVs, and in order to prevent a gap in the market where EV-first competitors can steal market share from them, they lobby the government to subsidize and create a new market segment in the form of hydrogen cars. There they have a head start via some latent research and more reuse of ICE car platforms. I'm sure the hydrogen division is well aware that they are doing research on a dead-end technology (at least for the automotive sector).
The exact same thing happened in Germany. In 2020 there was a huge push from politicians to push more hydrogen technology to distract from the fact that German car manufacturers were lagging behind, as well as general missed initiatives for renewable energy. Now, 6 years later those initatives are deader than ever.
Splitting water into free hydrogen and oxygen is important because it is an essential step for using electrical energy in the chemical and metallurgic industries.
For long term energy storage, free hydrogen is not a good solution, but it can be used to synthesize hydrocarbons, which are suitable for long term energy storage or for aerospace transportation.
Even with abundant and cheap dihydrogen, using it for energy storage in vehicles is a bad idea.
It's important to always appear to be argumentative, even when in agreement.
Uh, dumb question, how is 1.7 volts "ultra high potential" ? Is that even enough to do electrolysis like they're talking about?
"Hong Kong researchers develop corrosion-resistant steel for seawater hydrogen electrolysis"