• roguetrick@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    You’d need huge cryogenic tanks due to the volume density of hydrogen over kerosene. Good for rockets that you can jettison tanks from, but less so for planes. I just don’t see it ever being practical for aviation over just creating our own hydrocarbons out of something else. Either catalyst based or otherwise. That’s potentially carbon neutral as well.

    Edit: my comment, but with numbers https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/74/9/11/928294/Hydrogen-as-an-aviation-fuel It’s not a problem with how heavy the fuel would be or just how much space they’d take. It’s how heavy the damn tanks would need to be and how much of the aircraft would be devoted to them on long distance flights.

    • Naich@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      It’s no more of a problem than dealing with LPG, surely? Pressurise it for storage.

      • roguetrick@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        You can’t keep liquid hydrogen by pressure alone and even as a liquid it’s volume density it’s very low compared to other liquids.