Hydrogen gas storage question...?

Question

I always read how hydrogen gas storage is inpractical since you need a massive tank to store enough for any amount of miles in a vehicle. I believe the only accepted alternative to that is to store it in a compressed liquid form under intense cold and pressure.

Question (might be a dumb one): Why can't the hydrogen just be partially compressed as opposed to fully compressed and liquified at liquid nitrogen temperatures? What happens if you just keep pumping hydrogen into a gas-tank sized container until you got as much as you want? Does a rip form in the universe or something? So it gets cold... I don't understand why you can't partially compress enough that, when decompressed and released, you have enough for a hydrogen powered vehicle to get 200 or 300 miles out of a reasonable sized tank.

Answer 1

From an engineering standpoint, the higher the pressure you attempt to compress a gas, the thicker the walls of the containing vessel have to be.....at the presssures needed for this line of thought, the containing vessel would have to be so thick that, depending on material used would likely weigh several thousand pounds, offsetting the net gain of energy from the contents.....

Answer 2

Simply put: The higher the pressure, the heavier the tank, and the worse the problems in metering etc.
Google hydrogen storage for other ideas, Hydrides for instance.

Be aware though, Hydrogen is a STORAGE medium.
Hydrogen always costs more, (often a lot more), energy to make than you get out of it by burning.
As a global warming, or efficiency, initiative, it is a dead end, but polititians relatives can make money on the hype, so the beat goes on.

Answer 3

Calculate the number of *paired* hydrogen atoms/cm^3 in an open bucket of diesel fuel, d = 0.84 g/cm^3, C12H24 overall. BTW, you also get to burn the carbon.

Compare with compressed hydrogen with the same molecular density (about 50,000 psi, ha ha ha), or liquid hydrogen (a bad joke - and remember exothermic ortho/para--spin isomerism), or adsorbed hydrogen (a really bad joke), or chemisorbed hydrogen (a really bad joke), or chemically combined hydrogen (and what do you do with the LiOH after LiH is hydrolyzed?).

BTW, git - compression is not free; 101.325 J/liter-atm. Cryogenic cooling is not free either. Unless somebody drastically rewrites the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the H*Y*D*R*O*G*E*N economy is purest bullsh!t.