Hydrogen Lobbyist Quits, Calls 'Blue Hydrogen' a Distraction Possibly Locking in Fossil Fuel Use (arstechnica.com) 189
Remember that study that found that "blue" hydrogen (produced from natural gas using a carbon-capture technique) may be worse for the planet than coal?
"That study was apparently a tipping point for Chris Jackson, who this week stepped down as chair of the UK Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association..." reports Ars Technica. Jackson wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing his resignation, "while there might not be a single 'right' answer, there are answers that are wrong." Jackson continues by saying that blue hydrogen is "at best an expensive distraction, and at worst a lock-in for continued fossil fuel use" which would derail goals that the country and the world have set for decarbonizing the economy. He takes particular issue with the fact that oil and gas companies have asked the UK government for decades of subsidies while also claiming that blue hydrogen will be inexpensive to produce. "If the false claims made by oil companies about the cost of blue hydrogen were true, their projects would make a profit by 2030," he told The Guardian. "Instead, they're asking taxpayers for billions in subsidies for the next 25 years. They should tell the government they don't need it. The fact that they don't tells you everything you need to know."
"That study was apparently a tipping point for Chris Jackson, who this week stepped down as chair of the UK Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association..." reports Ars Technica. Jackson wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing his resignation, "while there might not be a single 'right' answer, there are answers that are wrong." Jackson continues by saying that blue hydrogen is "at best an expensive distraction, and at worst a lock-in for continued fossil fuel use" which would derail goals that the country and the world have set for decarbonizing the economy. He takes particular issue with the fact that oil and gas companies have asked the UK government for decades of subsidies while also claiming that blue hydrogen will be inexpensive to produce. "If the false claims made by oil companies about the cost of blue hydrogen were true, their projects would make a profit by 2030," he told The Guardian. "Instead, they're asking taxpayers for billions in subsidies for the next 25 years. They should tell the government they don't need it. The fact that they don't tells you everything you need to know."
Green Hydrogen, Not Blue (Score:2)
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Every single study I've seen says that with the expected continued improvement in cost of solar panels, green hydrogen will be cheaper than blue hydrogen in the very near future - possibly as soon as 5-10 years time.
Blue hydrogen will help the transition to a hydrogen economy in the meantime.
Big natural gas companies know this and are already making massive investments into green hydrogen so they don't get left behind - for example the H2Tas project run by woodsi
Re:You're a fool. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hydrogen is not a source of energy. It is a method of storing energy and not a very good one.
The round-trip efficiency is far worse than batteries. The energy density is terrible when the weight of the container is included. There is no infrastructure.
Hydrogen has mostly been pushed by the fossil fuel industry to impede the development of BEVs. It is good to see some of the FF shills finally growing a conscience.
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Yep.
Why waste precious fuel lines and oil stations, when you can repurpose them to carry "green" or "blue" hydrogen instead?
Those pesky commoners charging their EVs from rooftop solar, and completely oblivious to energy prices? We will get them at any (lobbying) cost.
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"commoners"? You mean home owners charging 100k cars?
Most people rent, so they don't HAVE solar panels on the roof of the unit they live in. If they do, they pay their landlord for that too.
You DO realize that even with solar panels on "your" roof, you pay for the physical equipment, the installation labor (generally about 20k... I've seen MUCH higher) and continue to pay the entity known as "the aggregator"... They bill you at a low rate for the energy you use and the grid operator at a high rate for the
Re:You're a fool. (Score:4)
My wife got a Chevy Bolt for around $30K last year. It's been a great car (potential battery recall notwithstanding). A friend currently leases a 2021 Bolt, for $208/month. Electric cars can be expensive, but they don't have to be.
Solar isn't necessary for BEVs to be cost-effective. Where I live, electricity is about $0.16/kWh. There are lower rates for off-peak vehicle charging, something around $0.11/kWh. Since the Bolt gets around 4 miles/kWh, we pay no more than $0.04 per mile. You'd need to get 75 MPG with an ICE car for an equivalent per-mile cost, and that's without factoring in other fluids and services that just aren't needed for BEVs.
That said, we have solar panels on our roof, and I've never heard of the aggregators you're talking about. Our utility does net metering directly (it's a state law actually). We pay a customer charge to be connected to the grid, and we then pay the difference between what we generate and what we use. There are typically credits, which are held for up to 12 months, and are applied as needed if usage is higher than generation. Aside from one bill this spring, after a particularly snowy winter, I haven't had to pay a cent for electricity in the last 5 years.
I'm not sure where you get your information, or if things are actually as you describe where you live, but it's certainly not that bad everywhere.
Re:You're a fool. (Score:4, Informative)
The round-trip efficiency is far worse than batteries. The energy density is terrible when the weight of the container is included. There is no infrastructure.
When people talk about energy storage and shipping via Hydrogen, they mean Ammonia. Every serious proposal I've seen features ammonia as the shipping mechanism.
Therefore the weight of the container is not nearly as high as you think - no one in the field is considering shipping hydrogen directly as an option.
When you say the round-trip efficiency is far worse than batteries, I have no idea what you mean. You can't ship lithium ion batteries across an ocean and have them keep their charge. You can't store Li-ion batteries in the cold and have them store their charge. Batteries are a solution for a completely different problem. They aren't even comparable. And there is no real infrastructure for any of the technologies are going to replace fossil fuels. That isn't an argument at all.
Hydrogen has mostly been pushed by the fossil fuel industry to impede the development of BEVs.
WTF do BEVs have to do with this discussion? The hydrogen power industry has their eye on the prize of providing industrial and residential baseload power - nothing to do with BEVs. They want to ship power from places with lots of sunlight to places without sunlight.
Hydrogen fuel cell cars are a rounding error on what they are after.
Billions have been spent and are continuing to be spent on the development of BEVs. The problem of increasing battery density and subsequently BEV range is hard engineering, not a conspiracy. Take your conspiracies to reddit.
Re:You're a fool. (Score:4, Informative)
When you say the round-trip efficiency is far worse than batteries, I have no idea what you mean.
He means schemes where you take excess solar and wind and convert it to hydrogen and then release it later using a fuel cell. And he is right, that's a terrible scheme.
WTF do BEVs have to do with this discussion?
That's because some of the auto maker's excuses for not making BEVs was that they were waiting for fuel cell cars. Which isn't crazy if you make 20m cars a year worldwide as there isn't enough Lithium in the earth's crust to fulfill that demand. But the zelots want BEVs at all costs, even going so far as to kill off the Volt. Even though the Volt is a better car for the environment in the long run than BEVs and can be scaled to meet market demands as its battery is only 16kwh. It still has 1500lbs of battery in it thought. Better more electric miles than more BEVs but zelots want what zelots want, laws of physics be damned. BTW, the best way to make H2 is from MSRs, not solar or wind. That's also where part of the zealotry comes from.
Re:You're a fool. (Score:4, Informative)
if you make 20m cars a year worldwide as there isn't enough Lithium in the earth's crust to fulfill that demand.
A typical EV uses 10 kg of lithium.
The oceans contain about 200 billion tonnes of lithium.
That is enough for 20 Trillion cars.
Re:You're a fool. (Score:5, Interesting)
That is the same nonsensical argument that is uses for solar cells and silicon.
Of course the material is abundant but it is not lying on fields in clumps, is it?
There's a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere that we rather there wasn't. But getting it out of there (CO2, silicon or lithium doesn't matter, works the same for all of them) isn't as easy to do on that scale. It, too, brings with it question of economy, ecology and engineering.
That's my main beef with the whole discussion around ecology. Somehow many if not most people are very ready to point those issue out about the tech they don't like but act as if the one they do like grew on trees, ready to be plucked.
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Of course the material is abundant but it is not lying on fields in clumps, is it?
Well of course not, that would be silly. It's lying in clumps on beaches.
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Oh, so you just send the kids to grab it, stuff it in your do it yourself Tesla Car Battery Kit, Trademark, and are good to go, right? Right??
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Re:You're a fool. (Score:4, Interesting)
Worldwide lithium reserves are estimated at around 20 million tons. At 10 kg per car, that's enough for 2 billion cars. There are thought to be around 1.4 billion cars and trucks in the world today. So we probably have sufficient lithium reserves to replace all current vehicles with BEVs, as long as we don't want it for anything else.
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So we probably have sufficient lithium reserves to replace all current vehicles with BEVs, as long as we don't want it for anything else.
We'll always be using Lithium for batteries, right? 8^)
These arguments always go off the rails when some person a few posts up assumes that we need to substitute Hydrgen for Lithium because there's only so much Lithium.
Hydrogen is really a rather crappy fuel for cars.Storage of hydrogen by itself is terrible via energy available.
I've seen some schemes for storage in different substances. Some of those are pretty wild, like ammonia storage.
The only storage mechanism that meets the 2015targets for vo
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That is the same nonsensical argument that is uses for solar cells and silicon.
It's pretty nonsensical to believe that Lithium and only lithium will ever be used in EV batteries.
Batteries can be made out of a lot of different substances. Some lack promise, some are stretching the definition of battery - like the iron-air battery which includes a fuel cell.
Every option we have has drawbacks. But Hydrogen has some doozies
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That is enough for 20 Trillion cars.
And all you would have to do is filter the entire ocean.
Re: You're a fool. (Score:2)
Air and water craft (Re: You're a fool.) (Score:4, Interesting)
Hydrogen makes for a good replacement in jet engines and ocean bearing vessels.
Sure, in your opium induced dreams.
I've seen people do the math on what it takes to make a hydrogen airplane fly and it's not easy. Maybe we could use liquid hydrogen and put that in wing tanks but as soon as the plane is tanked up the fuel is boiling off and the wings are icing up, even in Arizona. If there is a crash then the hydrogen will flash into a gas from the sudden shock and release of pressure creating a fireball like that seen from a rocket blowing up on the pad. We can put a rocket escape system for a grew of five but not for 300 passengers, which will not be trained astronauts but Gramma and Little Jenny. Jet fuel burns too but it has to first be atomized and heated, a spilled tank of kerosene is a fire hazard, breathing hazard, and other hazard but it's not going to go up in a fireball like liquid hydrogen. While I don't recommend this but it's possible to put kerosene in a pot on an electric burner and boil it off without it burning. Jet fuel pooled on the ground will extinguish a lit cigarette, again don't try it because there is a small chance it might not depending on the grade of fuel. Most jet fuel is "narrow cut" kerosene, meaning it contains few vapor producing elements, a "wide cut" kerosene might have enough octane in it to be lit with a cigarette.
On large ocean going vessels it would simply be easier to use nuclear power than try any other method of "green" motive power.
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Re:Air and water craft (Re: You're a fool.) (Score:4, Interesting)
Fun fact, octane is inversely proportional to its flash point. Higher octane burns slower, releasing more energy.
Spilled fuel reacts differently than that in a combustion chamber, one being that only the vapors need to ignite, then the heat from the burning vapors boils the heavier elements of the fuel and that burns, etc. In a fast burning and turning engine octane matters a lot, in a fuel spill not so much.
I dont know about commercial air jet fuel, but what we used in the navy is a diesel-type fuel. Its called JP5 and its the standard fuel that powers the jets, feeds the gas turbine frigates, and runs the diesel generators for emergency backup power.
I don't know the exact composition of these fuels either other than JP-5 was specifically formulated to minimize fire risks because a fire on a ship is deadly. This is likely a very narrow cut kerosene closer to rocket fuel than commercial jet fuel or the JP-8 used by the Army and Air Force. It is closer to diesel fuel than the kind of kerosene bought off the shelf for lanterns and stoves, it will not sustain a flame but will ignite under compression like a light grade of diesel fuel. If #2 diesel is "summer fuel", and the lighter #1 diesel is "winter fuel", then JP-5 would be like "#0 diesel". There is no such thing as a #0 diesel, that's kerosene, but it's one way to describe it's properties. To my knowledge anyway.
As far as making all ships nuclear, unfortunately we dont have a large abundance of highly trained engineers to man every ocean going vessel.
This isn't going to happen overnight. We have plenty of former Navy nuclear technicians to fill the first line of commercial nuclear ships. As soon as we start building nuclear powered commercial ships a market is created for more. This means the tiny nuclear engineering programs around the USA will become not so tiny. There's nuclear engineers on staff at the universities I attended, now teaching fluid dynamics of windmills, nuclear chemistry, and/or some related topics. They can teach in an associates degree program for technicians, bachelor programs for engineers, and masters programs for the next generation of professors.
For it to be adopted at the level of your average 'deadliest catch' type fishing vessel, it would have to be simple enough that people had them in their homes.
Who said anything about fishing boats?
In September 2020, Airbus announced plans for three different hydrogen-fuelled concepts, collectively known as ZEROe, with the aim of developing zero-emission aircraft that could enter commercial service by 2035.[20] The aircraft are powered using hydrogen internal combustion (gas turbine) rather than hydrogen fuel cells. Apparently Airbus is working on some ideas.
I remember the Joint Strike Fighter program getting started in the 1990s, only now are the products of that program taking flight and with the usual teething issues. That's a military program where safety margins are smaller. We will not see a hydrogen powered passenger jet carrying passengers in 2035. We might see a prototype fly, and then 5 to 10 years later carrying freight, then another 5 to 10 years until limited passenger service. Then it would take 30 years for the old kerosene burners to wear out and be replaced. We are 50 years from hydrogen aircraft being the predominate form of air travel, if they ever fly at all. We will have carbon neutral hydrocarbons fueling aircraft before that.
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And there is no real infrastructure for any of the technologies are going to replace fossil fuels.
The "infrastructure" needed for my EV is a 220v wall socket in my garage.
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And there is no real infrastructure for any of the technologies are going to replace fossil fuels.
The "infrastructure" needed for my EV is a 220v wall socket in my garage.
What exactly has this to do with Ammonia generated by blue/green hydrogen being used to supply baseload power in the grid?
Did you understand anything I wrote at all?
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What exactly has this to do with Ammonia
TFA doesn't mention "ammonia" a single time.
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What exactly has this to do with Ammonia
TFA doesn't mention "ammonia" a single time.
Poster has been into Gramma's smelling salts again.
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Most talk is about hydrogen is powering transport (not a good idea for small passenger vehicles - only 40% efficient by the time it turns a wheel) and increasingly using it to make steel etc instead of coke/coal.
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I guess it depends on where you get the electricity from. If enough of your electricity generation is from intermittent renewables you need something to store excess energy to supply baseload when your plants are producing, but batteries are a simpler and more efficient way to do this than green or even blue hydrogen.
The usual storage efficiency arguments made against renewables don't hold up because you're dealing with energy that would go to waste if you weren't capturing it. But efficiency does matter
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When people talk about energy storage and shipping via Hydrogen, they mean Ammonia. Every serious proposal I've seen features ammonia as the shipping mechanism.
Automakers have seriously been proposing that we ship hydrogen around in our fuel tanks.
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When people talk about energy storage and shipping via Hydrogen, they mean Ammonia. Every serious proposal I've seen features ammonia as the shipping mechanism.
Automakers have seriously been proposing that we ship hydrogen around in our fuel tanks.
They liked the idea of nuclear reactors to do the same at one point. If you didn't see my post about cryo compressed Hydrogen, here's the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It's a tad disturbing if you ask me. Fortunately, cryo compressed H seems about as impractical as it gets.
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Hydrogen is not a source of energy. It is a method of storing energy and not a very good one.
That's true for green hydrogen but not blue hydrogen. Blue hydrogen is essentially splitting the burning of methane into two steps: the first where the carbon is removed under controlled circumstances allowing most, but not all, of it to be captured and the second where the hydrogen is burnt for energy.
The huge benefit of hydrogen over BEV is the speed of refuelling. The problem is storage: Hydrogen gas is explosive and is extremely good at diffusing out of containers.
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The huge benefit of hydrogen over BEV is the speed of refuelling.
Talk to 100 people who own BEVs.
99 of them will tell you that "speed of refueling" is a non-issue.
My BEV "refuels" while I am sleeping.
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"Talk to 100 of 0.1%ers. Most of them will tell you that they can afford other luxuries that the rest of the people cannot afford as well".
Yes, we know.
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Re: You're a fool. (Score:2)
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I have a plug-in hybrid. It is effectively a BEV for over 90% of the miles it drives. I have no difficulty powering the vast majority of miles I drive with a level 1 charger plugged into an ordinary 120v outlet; I fill up the gas tank only on long road trips.
From my experience with a PEV I'd say with a BEV I'd have no problem getting by with just level 1 charging at home and using public level 2 chargers on road trips. I had *two* BEVs I'd definitely put in a level 2 charger.
I think infrastructure would be
Missing the Point (Score:2)
Talk to 100 people who own BEVs. 99 of them will tell you that "speed of refueling" is a non-issue.
Wow, it's almost like they did some research first and only bought a BEV if it would meet their needs! The point that you are completely missing is that there are lots of people who frequently drive more than a few hundred kilometres in a day who are not buying BEVs because they do not work for them. As they currently stand BEVs are only a partial replacement for ICEs. There is lots of work on technologies to address this - of which hydrogen is just one - but do not fool yourself into thinking that it is n
Re:You're a fool. (Score:5, Informative)
Hydrogen has mostly been pushed by the fossil fuel industry to impede the development of BEVs.
Nope. Only Toyota is pushing hydrogen as a alternative to BEVs. The fossil fuel industry is fully onboard with BEVs in many cases taking ownership and building charging stations for them.
They also realise that batteries aren't the answer to everything, are not effective for long haul heavy transport, can't be used for industrial processes or high heat generation.
The fossil fuel industry is pushing blue hydrogen for everything *other than* BEVs.
But don't take my word for it:
https://www.bp.com/en/global/c... [bp.com]
Heck even evil Exxon's CCS page specifically separates using CCS for hydrogen for industry and CCS for power generation industry for BEVs https://corporate.exxonmobil.c... [exxonmobil.com]
That said, Total is pushing hydrogen for mobility, but they can go fuck themselves with a rake.
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These are facts, but it doesn't mean than green hydrogen doesn't has sense.
First, if renewable energy gets down the price enough, hydrogen will turn cheaper than natural gas, and it's an acceptable replacement.
Second, even if batteries has a better round trip efficiency, hydrogen has a lot cheaper storage cost per energy unit. It will scale cheaper with size, because it's almost tanks, and volume will scale cube while costs is almost square with size, so huge tanks turn cheap storage just like it happens wi
Re: You're a fool. (Score:2)
Re: You're a fool. (Score:2)
Propeller is not the only alternative, there are electrical microwave cavity resonator jet engines in existence. They are just not ready for prime time, mostly just research toys yet. But in 20-30 years, by the time we've phased out fossile fuel, they probably will be.
Re: You're a fool. (Score:2)
Re: You're a fool. (Score:2)
I have this. [popularmechanics.com]
That doesn't say anything about a cavity resonator, though, so maybe I've read it somewhere else, or I just made that up (I used to work with microwave cavity generated plasma for other purposes, so I just automatically that's how they did it, 1000x more powerful).
The idea is simple though: you're using a microwave specifically tuned to a particular frequency of a particular gas (say, oxygen, or nitrogen) to heat up a bunch of that air. Once it's hot, it'll stream out at high speed, pretty much
Re: You're a fool. (Score:2)
(I realize a detail of my post could be misread: I don't mean that cavity reaonance is 1000x more powerful; I wanted to say that these guys are putting 1000x more power - or even more - into their experiment :-) )
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Re: You're a fool. (Score:3)
Chevy Volt (Re: You're a fool.) (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't just take the battery out of the Volt and expect to keep the 50 MPG fuel economy. The battery, or some storage element, is required for that. Maybe someone could use a capacitor instead but even the best capacitors have a lower energy density than a lead acid battery. Adding mass will lower the fuel economy.
I expect the plug-in hybrid to dominate the market because of the fuel economy you describe, the convenience of charging up at home for the daily commute, and the ability to fill up at any gasoline pump on long trips. There's also the "get out of Dodge" ability that PHEVs offer that bit people in the ass when trying to flee Florida hurricanes and California wildfires. When your state is constrained by geography (water, mountains, rivers, etc.) then you will have a lot of people passing through bottlenecks and seeking fuel and/or chargers. PHEVs offer more range on less energy, so likely less need to stop, and should someone need to stop then they know they can get either gasoline or electricity, which ever is in greater abundance on the path out.
Another benefit is "shelter in place". Elon Musk likes to show off a Tesla "party mode" which can keep the cabin comfortable and the music going for hours (days?) on the battery. Put that in a PHEV and the engine can charge up the battery, and warm the cabin, as needed to stay put for as long as there is fuel to pour in the tank.
People have long memories of these things, and they will affect buying decisions. BEVs will not sell to people that remember a week long power outage from 15 years ago. Or even 50 years ago. I know people with BEVs, they still keep their 4WD truck or SUV in case they need to leave on short notice and go a long way away, be that through snow, rain, whatever. For people that can have only one vehicle they might not be comfortable with only a BEV. A PHEV offers an electric commute and abilities the BEV will never have.
Re: You're a fool. (Score:2)
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There is definitely a need for long term energy storage. It is just a matter of a few years for solar panels, offshore wind and onshore wind to produce enough energy to meet demand, averaged over 24 hour period, in summers. Batteries will serve as buffers to even out the fluctuations. This is just a few years away.
Then the panels will be theoretically meet the demand for the whole year by cost. But meeting winter shortfall would be an issue. When you want to make and store e
No solution is "years away". (Re:You're a fool.) (Score:3)
It is just a matter of a few years for solar panels, offshore wind and onshore wind to produce enough energy to meet demand, averaged over 24 hour period, in summers. Batteries will serve as buffers to even out the fluctuations. This is just a few years away.
I've been hearing this bullshit since I was born and now I'm seeing my nieces and nephews get this bullshit in school. Someone needs to make it clear that there is no future without nuclear fission power. Once we crossed that line on harnessing the energy from something so abundant, clean, and actually quite simple, as splitting nuclei it will be very difficult to go back. The USA has depended on nuclear power for 20% of its electricity for decades, and we have yet to find a suitable replacement.
We will
Re: You're a fool. (Score:2)
Not very good storage is better than no storage in a dunkelflaute/polar-vortex if fossil fuel use stops.
Re:You're a fool. (Score:5, Informative)
Where does the Sun (and all the other stars) get its power from?
Hydrogen fusion, which is a totally different energy producing mechanism.
Other stars burn helium (look up Helium flash).
The proton-proton chain reaction uses hydrogen, as well as helium as fuel.
Heavier stars use the CNO cycle, which involves Carbon, Natrium as well as Oxygen.
Violent reactions, such as Supernovae, use a host of elements as fuel, but that's a niche scenario.
At any rate, not "all the other stars" use hydrogen, and fusion is nowhere near in the same league as the subject at hand.
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"Natrium" is sodium. I think you meant nitrogen for the N in CNO.
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Yes, I did. Sorry about that, doing several things at the same time takes its toll on the brain.
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Given that the rest of your comment seemed fine, like you actually know what you're talking about, I figured it was just a brain fart.
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But... I WANT to post...
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Re: You're a fool. (Score:2)
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Big natural gas companies know this and are already making massive investments into green hydrogen so they don't get left behind - for example the H2Tas project run by woodside: https://research.csiro.au/hyre [csiro.au]... [csiro.au]
I'm sorry, but your link doesn't in any way confirm what you are saying.
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However the matter of the fact remains that you need natural gas for blue hydrogen. For green hydrogen you need some water (also electrolyte) and electric energy.
"Green hydrogen" may be a lot more lossy in it's generation, but the main thing here is that it converts electrical energy in a 'more' stable form, storing the energy chemically. This in itself makes it interesting besides of storing energ
Re: You're a fool. (Score:2)
For green hydrogen you need some water (also electrolyte) and electric energy.
Not necessarily. There are concepts to split water using only sunlight and a (yet to be discovered) catalytic material. The physics checks out, and "discovering" that material is essentially just a matter of tedious, but otherwise straightforward thin-film material science, no science-fiction Star-Trek type of stuff required.
I knew research groups who worked on that 10 years ago.
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The point I'm making is that 'green hydrogen' is an energy storage technology.
Blue hydrogen is a chemical conversion technology. Because the source material that is used for the hydrogen production there is already chemically stored energy. They're just adding some more work to it in order to make it 'cleaner'.
And don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that 'cleaning' natural gas is not worth doing in any case.
I'm saying that even though the outcome is hydrogen, it's different enough
Re: You're a fool. (Score:2)
I fully agree with you.
I think hydrogen is a nice add-on if we ever to make it green. It would've been great 20 years ago when we didn't have yet any of the electrical infrastructure and everything was still combustion based.
But now, it makes less and less sense. Even as far as storage goes I'd actually expect battery tech to grow morr useful than hydrogen storage, as the latter has some pretty serious drawbacks that won't ever be easy to cope with for purely physical reasons alone (hydrogen being the small
And you are "funny" (Score:2)
Replacing arguments and logical deduction by insults and accusations.
You are just the worst of the worst.
Lobbyist with a conscience? (Score:2)
Now I've seen everything... unless someone's made a flying penguin! Nobody? Very disappointing.
Re: Lobbyist with a conscience? (Score:2)
Blue hydrogen is eternal. (Score:4, Insightful)
No matter what some brilliant scientist magics up, it will always be cheaper to convert natural gas into hydrogen aka "blue hydrogen". It will only be after every piece of land is fracked that it might finally be possible for green hydrogen to prevail. By the time that happens, it will be long past 2100 and there will be a huge fucking band of deadly heat circling the planet.
If you thought hydrogen was the solution then I'm sorry to inform you that it simply can never be without politicians suddenly caring about this planet more than they care about getting reelected.
Re:Blue hydrogen is eternal. (Score:5, Insightful)
it will always be cheaper to convert natural gas
Unless governments make permits for natural gas prohibitively expensive. Not taxing fossil fuels into extinction is how we'll face a tragedy of the commons, where we suffer a collective harm while a few individuals make massive profits.
If government can't hold a gun to someone's head to make them stop doing something, then why have one in the first place?
Re:Blue hydrogen is eternal. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Blue hydrogen is eternal. (Score:2)
Good idea. You want me to plant them in your back yard, or... ?!
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You can plant them in mine and my neighbors. A storm took out millions of trees last summer around here. I may have to clear out more if they don't show signs of growing back soon.
Re: Blue hydrogen is eternal. (Score:2)
That'd be a good idea.
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Re: Blue hydrogen is eternal. (Score:2)
Point being: if your solution doesn't scale for everybody, it's not a solution.
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In seriousness though, being a joyless prick who steps on jokes compulsively probably isn't working out as well for you as you think.
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sadly, it is physically impossible to plant enough trees to offset the amount of carbon we've pumped out of the ground. You need to bury millions of years of plant life in a way where it doesn't decompose immediately and can be trapped under many layers of impermeable sediment. One way to do this is start on a planet that lacks microorganism capable of breaking down the cell walls of wood plants. Our planet is not a good starting place for this process anymore, that time has long past.
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> No matter what some brilliant scientist magics up, it will always be cheaper to convert natural gas into hydrogen aka "blue hydrogen".
On the contrary, green hydrogen will be "soon" (in this decade) cheaper than natural gas (not just blue hydrogen).
That's because main cost of green hydrogen is electricity, and renewable electricity has gone down steady for decades and it's expected to continue next years, so in some point, green hydrogen will be cheaper.
Besides that, also taxes over CO2 emissions and fo
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No matter what some brilliant scientist magics up, it will always be cheaper to convert natural gas into hydrogen aka "blue hydrogen".
Will this also be true when green hydrogen is made from the waste energy captured by solar and wind farms?
Remember that the biggest problem with green sources is storage. In practice this means you only get power when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. Green hydrogen could be a good way to bridge the periods of non-production.
Re: Blue hydrogen is eternal. (Score:2)
Depends on the emission costs they have to pay to allow them to sell on the fossil carbon monoxide.
Utter Codswallop (Score:5, Interesting)
"Blue hydrogen" made from natural gas cannot possibly be a "cleaner" fuel than actual natural gas, especially considering that there is not yet any realistic and practicable "carbon capture" technology.
A fully hydrogen-based economy MIGHT be possible if there were enough nuclear powerplants to generate electricity for electrolysis to dissociate the hydrogen from the oxygen in water. Even THAT will produce some atmospheric "pollution" caused by burning hydrogen in air that's 75% nitrogen; heating nitrogen in air will create nitrogen oxides.
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"Blue hydrogen" made from natural gas cannot possibly be a "cleaner" fuel than actual natural gas, especially considering that there is not yet any realistic and practicable "carbon capture" technology.
So your summary is "blue hydrogen" cannot be cleaner than natural gas if it is actually not "blue hydrogen" but rather "grey hydrogen". No fucking way!
What next, wind power isn't cleaner than natural gas when it is in fact coal power? Blue hydrogen by definition includes carbon capture. If you strip that out, it's not blue hydrogen.
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Burning hydrogen is woefully inefficient. It's actually far more efficient to use a fuel cell to convert hydrogen to electricity and then use it to power something.
A hydrogen car using an ICE is about half as efficient as a hydrogen car using a fuel cell and n electric motor.
However, hydrogen is just an inefficient energy storage medium - by the time
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A fully hydrogen-based economy MIGHT be possible if there were enough nuclear powerplants to generate electricity for electrolysis to dissociate the hydrogen from the oxygen in water.
By definition, that would be a fully nuclear-based economy. You'd just have an additional abstraction layer. And since each conversion step reduces efficiency, it would be even less efficient than not having the hydrogen.
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"Blue hydrogen" made from natural gas cannot possibly be a "cleaner" fuel than actual natural gas
This. It is self-evident that any sort of processing, to crack methane into hydrogen and carbon, is a waste of energy compared to just using the methane directly. Furthermore, we already have the infrastructure for distributing natural gas. "Blue hydrogen" makes exactly no sense.
Anyway, large-scale use of hydrogen just seems really impractical. Hydrogen is too difficult to store and transport, too eager to escape. Using it outside of niche applications would require a completely new, and highly complex infr
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This. It is self-evident that any sort of processing, to crack methane into hydrogen and carbon, is a waste of energy compared to just using the methane directly.
Indeed. This is also why we pour raw crude oil into our cars and rely on every engine to remove impurities and change the product options. I fully agree with your basic view of the world that every truck and every building and every furnace should have it's own independent CCS plant. We all after all know that there's no such things as economies of scale and the most efficient method of doing any energy conversion is in tiny scales. /metricfucktonofsarcasm.
some useful info about Hydrogen (Score:5, Insightful)
and why it sucks as an energy storage medium.
Full video is entertaining to watch but here is a link to where it gets relevant.
https://youtu.be/qOntMxYA29U?t... [youtu.be]
From the same poster. He mostly talks about Hydrogen as a fuel in ICEs, but the technical info about Hydrogen, manufacture, storage, use, etc is useful to know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
tl;dw
Hydrogen sucks as a fuel unless you specifically need it for it's chemical properties. Even breaking water using solar/wind is a net lose of energy. You would get a better return by charging batteries or just feeding the electricity into the grid.
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Tell that to people that think throwing away 75% of the fuel as heat and just using 25% to propel their vehicles.
hint: don't get fooled by 40% efficiency for a diesel cycle engine - that's
a.) for the engine alone (w/o vehicle)
b.) for one specific stationary point of operation
c.) operating at that point of operation in for example, urban environment is not "practical"
d.) and it doesn't factor in the driver's use of the vehicle.
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The reality of before is that EVs were the dominant type of car before gassers took over. Your goal is making excuses.
Re: some useful info about Hydrogen (Score:2)
All seasonal storage media suck, a medium which can't do seasonal storage at all sucks infinitely for it. Such as batteries.
Kudos to Chris Jackson (Score:5, Interesting)
Many people talk about workplace ethics but it takes some guts to step down from a well paid position and say "sorry, I do not really believe what they want me to preach". I wish we had more people like that... and I will try to remember Chris when my employer asks me to say something that I cannot agree with.
Hmm (Score:2)
Two eyes. One moon circles.
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but is that what they have, or what they need?
I'd ponder this more but I need to get some sleep.
No shit (Score:4, Interesting)
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You're completely correct. Which is why the fossil fuels industry is not at all pushing blue or green hydrogen for passenger vehicles, and specifically marketing it as a solution to problems that BEVs can't solve.
Toyota and Total are the exception. What is it with companies starting with T...
Difficult situation (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously, "blue" hydrogen is a distraction. It only makes sense if there's a future for regular hydrogen, which seems tp be quite an assumption given the energy economy of hydrogen production; it'll never be able to compete with directly using the electricity that would be used for electrolysis.
However, in areas that (a) lack the geological features required for large scale pumped hydro storage and (b) have summer-winter style seasons, seasonal energy storage needs to play a major role in their energy economies. Hydrogen has the best (read: least bad) cards to fulfill that role, even though it is extremely inefficient to produce. During hot summer days, negative electricity prices are a thing now already and this will get much worse. Production capacity now often is shut down during such periods of excess. This will only get worse and it will make hydrogen production much more economically viable.
I used to be very much in the the-hydrogen-economy-is-nonsense-camp. Now I see it as the least horrible solution for seasonal energy storage, at least in my geographic whereabouts. Until something better comes along, that is. But that seems to be very far away...
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It only makes sense if there's a future for regular hydrogen
What do you mean a future? There is a present for regular hydrogen. There are several companies that make their core business producing it and at present it's a shit dirty process. For many other industries they rely on burning nat gas directly, which is fine if we carbon capture every single ignition point, but we don't and couldn't possibly.
it'll never be able to compete with directly using the electricity
Nothing about the hydrogen economy is talking about competing with electricity. There's a reason the same companies pushing blue hydrogen are also those investing in c
Everybody knew it for years (Score:2)
Now even they lobbyists realize the truth.
Sounds familiar. (Score:2, Flamebait)
The guy quits because he sees people demanding subsidies for 25 years out while claiming the technology will be self supporting in 5 years. Sounds a lot like wind and solar power.
It's time to end the wind and solar subsidies. The claim is that wind and solar is able to compete with fossil fuels on their own so hold them to it. Sink or swim, dammit. This is my tax money going to these scams and it is time to stop. Can you compete with natural gas or not? We know the answer because the natural gas indus
Companies therefor governments like hydrogen (Score:2)
Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) are set to be a major disruptive technology, for one particular issue that people tend to not want to talk about. You can charge your BEV at home, without having to do too many/if any upgrades to your home, and for some they may want to upgrade their home with solar panels for other reasons, but also can charge their BEV without overloading the grid.
You can power your car for less money, and you can leave for work every morning with a "full tank" giving you plenty of range (w
Well, maybe (Score:2)
"Instead, they're asking taxpayers for billions in subsidies for the next 25 years. They should tell the government they don't need it. The fact that they don't tells you everything you need to know."
It tells me that they like free money. Who doesn't?
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