Article seems a bit confusing on what exactly they mean by "solid hydrogen". It doesn't seem like they mean actual, pure hydrogen frozen into a solid (not that that's surprising, given how insanely cold that would need to be), but they keep mentioning a "solid fuel cell" of some kind without really going into much detail on exactly what that is.

[–] VubDapple@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Its clearly not solid hydrogen, but instead some room temperature stable 'chalk-like substance' that serves as a matrix for the hydrogen. Pretty neat if they can manage it as a battery tech and provided its not too explosive.

[–] Lugh 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They are very cagey about the details of how this works, yet their website says individual components have been validated by SINTEFF, the Norwegian Foundation for Industrial and Technical Research. They have a long list of companies they've spun off from basic research breakthroughs. If they have validated this technology, then it at least works in the laboratory.

Based on a feasibility study undertaken by SINTEF, a leading European science research institute, a team of engineers and scientists at Photoncycle developed and validated individual components for our system in 2022. These were integrated and scaled into a functioning prototype of our core technology at the Photoncycle lab in 2023. A full-scale pilot will be developed in 2024 and a first product will be launched in the residential household market in 2025

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

They claim their volumetric energy density is 3.3kWh/L, which is very good for hydrogen. The 3.5kWh/kg gravimetric energy density is very bad for hydrogen, but good compared to batteries.

Energy densities

Battery Cell Energy Density