Are there any large investments being made to desalinate ocean water and turn the purified water into hydrogen fuel like NASA’s plan to do with lunar ice water? eli5
In: 69
One note on what others are saying:
It takes more effort to split water into hydrogen and oxygen than you get back out due to inefficiencies, that much is true.
It would still be absolutely worth it when using renewables, because that process is clean and as near to free as you can get, you zap water with electricity and get two gasses, both of which are very useful (we do use pure oxygen for more than just breathing).
So the energy loss isn’t really important. It’s something to minimise purely for economics, but it’s not a fundamental problem.
But the other problems are currently deal breakers.
Hydrogen is a real bastard to store, it can leak through solid metal (the molecules are THAT small), it embrittles everything you try to encase it in, it is VERY dangerous due to how explosive it is etc.
That makes any mass utilisation of hydrogen unfeasible until storage can be resolved. The production capacity can follow after. There’s no point in making loads of it if it’s not going to get used.
On the moon they’ll just use it for rocket fuel, so it’s less of a problem, it’ll get used up pretty much as soon as it’s made, and it’s on the moon, i.e. in vacuum. So you’re avoiding like 90% of the issue.
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