Four US States Plan $8 Billion Hydrogen Fuel Hub (apnews.com) 145
This week the governors of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming announced plans for a "hydrogen hub," reports the Associated Press.
The states hope to use $8 billion in recently approved federal infrastructure funding to make hydrogen — the most abundant element in the universe — "more available and useful as clean-burning fuel for cars, trucks and trains." Hydrogen can be derived from water using an electric current and when burned emits only water vapor as a byproduct. The fuel could theoretically reduce greenhouse emissions and air pollution, depending on how it's obtained. As with electric vehicles, however, hydrogen's potential has been limited by infrastructure. Lack of fueling stations limits the market for hydrogen-fueled vehicles. Few hydrogen-fueled vehicles limits investment in producing and moving hydrogen....
Critics point out that as it's now produced, hydrogen isn't green, carbon-free or unlimited. Currently nearly all hydrogen commercially produced in the U.S. comes not from water but natural gas, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. While advocates say using fossil fuels to produce hydrogen now can help to develop a clean industry later, environmentalists are skeptical. "It's essentially a push for expanded oil and gas development. More oil and gas development is completely at odds with the need to confront the climate crisis and drastically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels," Jeremy Nichols with the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based environmental group WildEarth Guardians said by email.
Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming rank seventh, eighth and ninth, respectively, for U.S. onshore gas production. Utah also is significant gas-producing state, according to the Energy Information Administration.
The states hope to use $8 billion in recently approved federal infrastructure funding to make hydrogen — the most abundant element in the universe — "more available and useful as clean-burning fuel for cars, trucks and trains." Hydrogen can be derived from water using an electric current and when burned emits only water vapor as a byproduct. The fuel could theoretically reduce greenhouse emissions and air pollution, depending on how it's obtained. As with electric vehicles, however, hydrogen's potential has been limited by infrastructure. Lack of fueling stations limits the market for hydrogen-fueled vehicles. Few hydrogen-fueled vehicles limits investment in producing and moving hydrogen....
Critics point out that as it's now produced, hydrogen isn't green, carbon-free or unlimited. Currently nearly all hydrogen commercially produced in the U.S. comes not from water but natural gas, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. While advocates say using fossil fuels to produce hydrogen now can help to develop a clean industry later, environmentalists are skeptical. "It's essentially a push for expanded oil and gas development. More oil and gas development is completely at odds with the need to confront the climate crisis and drastically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels," Jeremy Nichols with the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based environmental group WildEarth Guardians said by email.
Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming rank seventh, eighth and ninth, respectively, for U.S. onshore gas production. Utah also is significant gas-producing state, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Good position (Score:2)
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Hydrogen electrolysis has a roundtrip efficiency of about 40%.
H2 is a wasteful method of storing power. There are many better methods.
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Hydrogen electrolysis has a roundtrip efficiency of about 40%.
H2 is a wasteful method of storing power. There are many better methods.
I agree, it's extremely wasteful. However, it's energy storage that produces drinking water from an internal combustion engine. As storage, this could be useful for overnight power in desert regions bordering the ocean, like north Africa and the Arabian peninsula, which have plenty of insolation and a shortage of fresh water.
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However, it's energy storage that produces drinking water from an internal combustion engine.
No it is not. The ICE has lubricant and some of the lubricant is always burned, and winds up in the exhaust. It's energy storage that produces drinking water from a PEM fuel cell, not from an ICE.
One of the ways we know hydrogen is a stupid boondoggle is that the people promoting it are uniformly ignorant
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It is probably cheaper for these desert regions bordering on salt water deposits to use electricity to desalinate.
You'd be able to double-dip.
Desalinate with nuclear. Then burn the hydrogen in a secondary generator to produce fresh water. No need to waste the extra energy. It would even be an efficient way to transport water to remote cities.
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This being if you also use nuclear generated electricity to split some water while you're at it. Plenty of energy available.
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Hydrogen electrolysis has a roundtrip efficiency of about 40%.
H2 is a wasteful method of storing power. There are many better methods.
It is a wasteful method, but unlike some magical fairy dust technology that'd enable batteries on grid level scale, that might or might not be even possible within actual laws of chemistry, it actually exists NOW, and is proven to work. Moreover, if you electrolyse sea water then that's a method of desalination that comes with ZERO additional cost, so you're doing two needed things at once.
So sure, do battery research, but don't put all your eggs in this basket.
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Hydrogen electrolysis has a roundtrip efficiency of about 40%.
H2 is a wasteful method of storing power. There are many better methods.
It is a wasteful method, but unlike some magical fairy dust technology that'd enable batteries on grid level scale, that might or might not be even possible within actual laws of chemistry, it actually exists NOW, and is proven to work.
Good lord! Making a claim that batteries are violating "laws of chemistry" is an interesting one.
Nothing is being violated. It would be possible right now, to build a nickle-iron battery system to store electricity from wind or solar farms.
Just take your generation field, pour a nice big pad, and place the batteries on it. With the price of the materials, and no longer a need to conserve weight, we have a nice constant supply of electricity. Nickel-Iron does not have the best characteristics, so-so ene
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Hydrogen electrolysis has a roundtrip efficiency of about 40%.
H2 is a wasteful method of storing power. There are many better methods.
It is a wasteful method, but unlike some magical fairy dust technology that'd enable batteries on grid level scale, that might or might not be even possible within actual laws of chemistry, it actually exists NOW, and is proven to work.
Good lord! Making a claim that batteries are violating "laws of chemistry" is an interesting one.
Nothing is being violated. It would be possible right now, to build a nickle-iron battery system to store electricity from wind or solar farms.
Just take your generation field, pour a nice big pad, and place the batteries on it. With the price of the materials, and no longer a need to conserve weight, we have a nice constant supply of electricity. Nickel-Iron does not have the best characteristics, so-so energy retention but in a virtually constant supply of energy, and with building as many of them as we need, the incredible toughness of the batteries and almost limitless recharge cycles, you have that steady supply.
Yeah, such a nice idea. On paper. Now try to figure out a way to do that in reality, on huge scale, that would make a sliver of economic sense. So yes, again, barring some unexpected game-changing technological breakthrough we have no way of making battery storage work. Economically that is, not "on paper".
Moreover, if you electrolyse sea water then that's a method of desalination that comes with ZERO additional cost, so you're doing two needed things at once.
I was just waiting for someone to start talking about electrolyzing sea water. Nothing like producing a hella lot of Chlorine that we have to figure out what to do with.
...or we could just do steam electr
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At planet scale is that much water be a good thing (Score:2)
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I can't imagine the effect of pushing that much moisture into the atmosphere being healthy. I guess a planet wide rain forest would a great carbon sink for the foreseeable future and maybe all those undiscovered drugs we are losing in the existing disappearing rain forests can make the future a little more pleasant. Re-wilding on a massive scale!
Oof if people think CO2 is bad, Water vapor is the biggest Greenhouse "gas"
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if people think CO2 is bad, Water vapor is the biggest Greenhouse "gas"
If you stuff more water vapor into the atmosphere then it comes out again. You get rain or condensation in short order. This is why methane is so scary but water vapor isn't. Methane hangs around for months to a year or so and then breaks down into mostly CO2 which stays around for even longer, while water vapor tends to depart the atmosphere within nine days.
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if people think CO2 is bad, Water vapor is the biggest Greenhouse "gas"
If you stuff more water vapor into the atmosphere then it comes out again. You get rain or condensation in short order. This is why methane is so scary but water vapor isn't. Methane hangs around for months to a year or so and then breaks down into mostly CO2 which stays around for even longer, while water vapor tends to depart the atmosphere within nine days.
Yes, water vapor has the nice aspect of cycling soon.
As a side note, one of the proponents of the "Every word in the Bible is absolute truth had tried to claim that there was a way that enough water to raise sea level to past Mt Everest by claiming that the atmosphere was constantly full of enough water to rain all out Damn the humidity must have been awful.
But even he had to admit that that much water vapor would have made the earth a tad warm.
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Since internal combustion engines are so plentiful, the scale of water vapor production seems like there can only be problems. Will that big cloud of water vapor over the industrialized countries stay over the industrialized countries or will move over the ocean and rain there and dilute the salt water? Will it
Hydrogen is dangerous (Score:5, Informative)
Minimum explosive limit is about 5% - H2 in Air similar but lower than natural gas
Maximum explosive limit is about 70% - H2 in Air - nat gas is 18%
explosive limit is where a flame can start and be sustained
Flame speed H2 is about 5 times that of natgas - so it gets away from you real quick
Calorific value is much lower than nat gas - so you need more of it for the same amount of energy
Corrosive as anything - so it destroys your pressure storage vessels,
what you say corrosive, it is not chemical action it is molecular action
the molecules of H2 get between the atoms of the steel and make holes in the steel and then break it.
so on all points not good
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I am not sure all your hydrogen chemistry is right.
Hydrogen is not corrosive, and does not destroy storage vessels. Before the discovery of north sea oil and gas, the UK manufactured gas from coal, and as far as I know, most of that gas was hydrogen. It was piped around the country in large diameter iron pipes, and stored in large expandable containers commonly called "gasometers", which were a feature of the urban landscape in my childhood. This system of energy distribution used gas at fairly low pressure
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Hydrogen embrittlement affects high strength steels though. Cast iron should be fine, it was already brittle :)
https://www.imetllc.com/hydrog... [imetllc.com].
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What I learned about hydrogen embrittlement is that it is not caused by hydrogen gas. The welding problem I referred to in my earlier post did apply to high strength steel, but it was not related to containment of hydrogen gas. It was simply a welded joint subject to severe dynamic stress, and poor weld strength due to hydrogen embrittlement was one among many possible causes of early weld failure. I am not a metallurgist, but I tend to get odd jobs like that at work. We employed some proper metallurgists t
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More of the same (Score:2)
Hydrogen is a Fossil Fuel (Score:4, Interesting)
Wyoming is a big oil state, so no wonder they're involved. I've said this before, but too many people don't seem to understand it. Hydrogen is the last hope for coal and natural gas producers.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexpl... [eia.gov]
If we move to hydrogen as a major transportation fuel, most of it will be made from natural gas and coal, as it's much cheaper than other methods. The whole push for hydrogen is all about trying to keep the same business model that we have today with a good bit of greenwashing.
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Eventually, churning hydrogen out of fossil fuels will simply be uneconomic. As others have in this thread have pointed out, you might as well burn the oil or gas directly, rather than convert it to hydrogen. I think the problem comes when political interests get involved. In many states, oil and gas have generated whole industries, which communities come to depend on. There is an incentive to support those communities, by supporting their main form of livelihood. And that tends to mean providing financial
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Eventually, churning hydrogen out of fossil fuels will simply be uneconomic.
Eventually, the carbon released by churning hydrogen out of fossil fuels will leave us with one option: kissing our asses goodbye.
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Eventually, the carbon released by churning hydrogen out of fossil fuels will leave us with one option: kissing our asses goodbye.
I can't disagree with that. But if you can make hydrogen by sustainable means, then maybe our asses might live another day. A great deal depends on whether you want good times now, or the survival of a sentient species in the future,
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A great deal depends on whether you want good times now, or the survival of a sentient species in the future,
Right, that's why we have to severely reduce fossil fuel production and consumption right now. And right now, it's very inefficient to use hydrogen, and we don't have enough renewables to produce it sustainably. We have to build enough renewables to have lots of overproduction before that happens.
"Hydrogen is the most abundant element" (Score:2)
H2 is the most scarce element on earth.
How stupid do they think we are?
There are no naturally occurring deposits of H2 on earth. H2 has to be created at great cost in energy, pollution, etc. then more problems when it is burned.
All of the methods for creating H2 (electricity, methane reformation, etc.) are better off just being used as they are rather than put through a wasteful, inefficient, polluting process to make H2.
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Interesting that they have actually found a natural deposit of H2 in Mali. Very rare.
$53.00 per tax payer. (Score:2)
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From the wikipedia article... "The hydrogenation is an exothermic reaction..."
Meaning to store hydrogen it releases (?!?!?) energy. Then it requires energy (endothermic reaction) to release the hydrogen again. This is with a catalyst and at higher than room temperature for both operations (think 150-200C was mentioned for one part).
I assume the energy transfer per volume would be much lower for this process than straight petroleum. And I saw a note that the catalyst breaks down very quickly (10% reactio
Less dangerous than natgas or LP (Score:2)
Hydrogen is lighter so leaks disperse quickly rather than fill low-lying areas.
The ignorant fear hydrogen because of the Hindenburg but that unlike most airliner crashes had many survivors so fear of hydrogen as a fuel is misperception feeding another misperception.
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Agreed. Hydrogen can be handled safely.
Using hydrogen is stupid for other reasons.
Re: Less dangerous than natgas or LP (Score:2)
Re:Less dangerous than natgas or LP (Score:4, Interesting)
Hydrogen is lighter so leaks disperse quickly rather than fill low-lying areas.
Even though we scarcely have any hydrogen vehicles or filling stations in use, a couple of the filling stations have had explosions during filling already. Tell us again how quickly hydrogen disperses.
Re: Less dangerous than natgas or LP (Score:2)
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Easy to solve!! Just do all filling of vehicles in a zero-oxygen environment!!
Bonus, it helps solve over-population!
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If it explodes, then it sounds like it disperses VERY quickly.
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So is gasoline, which in some ways is more dangerous than hydrogen, yet we manage to produce, store, transport, and use it while keeping accidents down to about 10,000 per year in the US.
Re: Clownworld (Score:2)
Re: Clownworld (Score:2)
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Tell that to the 900 who were barbecued by the gas in their Pintos.
Re:Clownworld (Score:5, Funny)
Hydrogen is dangerous to produce, transport and use and it will be most interesting to see how this gets insured.
It is easy and safe to store and transport if it is oxidized first and then deoxidized again at its destination.
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Hydrogen is dangerous to produce, transport and use and it will be most interesting to see how this gets insured.
It is easy and safe to store and transport if it is oxidized first and then deoxidized again at its destination.
Well played, sir, well played indeed! 8^)
Re: Clownworld (Score:2)
Instructions unclear, burnt and drowning.
Re: Clownworld (Score:2)
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Hydrogen is dangerous to produce, transport and use and it will be most interesting to see how this gets insured.
We somehow manage to produce, transport and use natgas without getting regular explosions, and hydrogen leaks are even more dangerous than natgas because it shoots straight up in the atmosphere instead of staying around in explosive ratios, waiting for some spark to start the fun.
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Hydrogen is dangerous to produce, transport and use and it will be most interesting to see how this gets insured.
We somehow manage to produce, transport and use natgas without getting regular explosions, and hydrogen leaks are even more dangerous than natgas because it shoots straight up in the atmosphere instead of staying around in explosive ratios, waiting for some spark to start the fun.
Damn, I obviously meant "less dangerous", not "more".
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Hydrogen is dangerous to produce, transport and use and it will be most interesting to see how this gets insured.
We somehow manage to produce, transport and use natgas without getting regular explosions, and hydrogen leaks are even more dangerous than natgas because it shoots straight up in the atmosphere instead of staying around in explosive ratios, waiting for some spark to start the fun.
Gee - there is more misinformation going on here.
Hydrogen in and of itself, makes a sort of red flame, pretty quiet when it ignites. Surprisingly innocuous.
Mix that hydrogen with some air, and it suffers a quick personality change. At that point it ignites explosively. This is nothing to be trifled with.
In fact, if there is hydrogen in the neighborhood, we try to burn it off ASAP. The best example of that is the Delta Rocket. Right around engine start, there is a lot of hydrogen at the bottom of th
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Hydrogen is dangerous to produce, transport and use and it will be most interesting to see how this gets insured.
We somehow manage to produce, transport and use natgas without getting regular explosions, and hydrogen leaks are even more dangerous than natgas because it shoots straight up in the atmosphere instead of staying around in explosive ratios, waiting for some spark to start the fun.
Gee - there is more misinformation going on here.
Hydrogen in and of itself, makes a sort of red flame, pretty quiet when it ignites. Surprisingly innocuous.
Mix that hydrogen with some air, and it suffers a quick personality change. At that point it ignites explosively. This is nothing to be trifled with.
In fact, if there is hydrogen in the neighborhood, we try to burn it off ASAP. The best example of that is the Delta Rocket. Right around engine start, there is a lot of hydrogen at the bottom of the rocket. so they purposely ignite it. A bif reddish flame envelopes the rocket, and even scorches it. I've seen a lot of these, and it still unnerves me, because it just doesn't look right, But it's needed.
If only a few seconds late, the igniters would provide a much more dramatic event.
The idea that the hydrogen just zooms out of the atmosphere is wrong. It mixes with air, and while it does rise, it's a lot more dispersion than just heading to the heavens.
Side note. Most of the flaming from the Hindenburg was not from the hydrogen. It was gone pretty quickly. But the skin of the dirigible was made of fabric covered with what was essentially thermite. I'll leave it to others to discuss the wisdom of that.
Like I said, methane has all of the problems of hydrogen, including making explosive mixtures with air, at the same limit of about 4% concentration, and yet, somehow we manage.
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methane has all of the problems of hydrogen, including making explosive mixtures with air, at the same limit of about 4% concentration, and yet, somehow we manage.
We manage in large part by not letting plebes put it into cars or storage tanks, requiring that to be done by [slightly] trained personnel.
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methane has all of the problems of hydrogen, including making explosive mixtures with air, at the same limit of about 4% concentration, and yet, somehow we manage.
We manage in large part by not letting plebes put it into cars or storage tanks, requiring that to be done by [slightly] trained personnel.
Ah, you're right, having gas station personnel handle refueling like in the olden days is a totally insurmountable problem. Humanity simply isn't capable of handling this and will never be, not now, not in thousand years, not before we reach singularity and not even after.
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Ah, you're right, having gas station personnel handle refueling like in the olden days is a totally insurmountable problem.
We don't want that. It's a step backwards. It's also unsustainable. Increased natgas production is tied to fracking, which is known to increase seismicity and also pollute water supplies, and we're already on the cusp of water wars worldwide.
We could produce more natgas reasonably sustainably, through bio bagging feedlot manure, but not enough to serve a substantial portion of our transportation fuel needs, let alone other needs.
Humanity simply isn't capable of handling this and will never be, not now, not in thousand years, not before we reach singularity and not even after.
If we keep burning fossil fuels, humanity won't be here for a thousand years.
Re: Clownworld (Score:2)
Re: Clownworld (Score:2)
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Also, Hydrogen is stored under pressure. If it managed to catch fire while leaking, the pressurized hydrogen would quickly blow it out and starve the flame of oxygen. You'd be more at risk of suffocation with the cold hydrogen hanging low to the ground.
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Err...wait. Hydrogen is so much less dense that even cold it would probably have a near impossible time sinking down.
Re: Clownworld (Score:2)
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You jumped in before seeing that I even immediately replied to myself to that effect
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You have to click the link on my original post ID # to see all the comments on the original post - you're just in your own subthread right now.
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The Hindenburg did not explode. The fabric of the hydrogen vessels caught fire. There was some escaping hydrogen from leaks but it was not an explosion. The materials that were used lacked fire resistance. The Hindenburg hit the ground softly enough for half the crew and passengers to survive.
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Must be the Ukraine crisis...
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Must be the Ukraine crisis.
On the plusside, COVID seems to have disappeared completely from the headlines. So, you know, silver lining?
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It would be a nasty target for terror attacks, for sure.
Re: A plan to waste 8 billion of taxpayers' money (Score:2)
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Considering AOC proposed a green new deal that required rebuilding "every building in the US" that price tag couldnt even be estimated. They stopped at $90T without even doing that particular calculation.
Don't look up, comrade.
Re:A plan to waste 8 billion of taxpayers' money (Score:4, Informative)
Not wasting it, diverting it.
Wasting it by diverting it.
Hydrogen is either made inefficiently from gas or coal or inefficiently from electricity. In either case it makes more sense to just use the gas, coal, or electricity directly. The hydrogen just adds another wasteful step and makes a dirty process even dirtier.
Hydrogen fuel makes no sense for anything but aviation and rockets, and it is far from ready for aviation.
"Green hydrogen" is the triumph of human stupidity over common sense.
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It is difficult to store electricity.
Re: A plan to waste 8 billion of taxpayers' money (Score:2)
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Even when electric vehicles get their power from a dirty power grid it is still cleaner than burning gas in a car.
That is true for battery-EVs.
It is not true for hydrogen power. "Green hydrogen" has twice the carbon footprint of BEVs.
Re: A plan to waste 8 billion of taxpayers' money (Score:2)
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Burning H2 in an ICE can cause NOx just like burning petrol. NOx production is a function of high temperatures in the ICE.
In a well to wheel analysis, a H2 ICE car has 16% the efficiency of a BEV. Meaning that based on the same amount of renewable energy, the BEV will travel 6 times the distance of a green H2 car. That is terrible efficiency. It is better to cut-out the hydrogen middle-man and charge the BEV from renewables.
Also a H2 ICE car will need to be a hybrid with an electric drivetrain plus battery
Re: A plan to waste 8 billion of taxpayers' money (Score:3)
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You just need to look at the history of disruptive consumer products to see that prices fall when the product becomes mass market. Be patient and wait up to 5 years. China will manufacture the cheap battery electric cars for the US. The BEV market in China is booming today with about 100 domestic EV manufacturers. Chinese people are not rich and are switching to EVs. My guess is a $20k BEV will eventually come that does 300 miles per charge because there are fewer parts in a BEV than an ICE car. New electri
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How about using only short range rental cars in cities and mass transport (trains, electric buses) for everything else?
Re: A plan to waste 8 billion of taxpayers' money (Score:2)
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The problem is that fuel cell vehicles cost as much as BEVs and run on a flammable gas that escapes through solids, must be stored at incredible pressures to reach a practical density for use in vehicles, and is currently produced almost solely as a fossil fuel byproduct, available at less than 10 locations in the US today, vs. electricity which is available in most manmade structures.
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Fuel cell is the clean way to use hydrogen
Sure, but that requires replacing existing cars.
If we replace the ICEs, it makes far more sense to replace them with BEVs, which have twice the efficiency of hydrogen fuel cells.
A major convenience of a BEV is you can recharge it while you sleep, and chargers can be installed in parking lots.
Hydrogen will require tons of new infrastructure.
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It would be better to produce electrofuels with renewable energy that can go into ICE vehicles with zero modifications than to convert ICEs to run on hydrogen, which will cause a reduction of engine power unless that retrofit includes some power mods to offset the loss (most of which would reduce efficiency). Gasoline-like electrofuels would also be safer since hydrogen is the most dangerous fuel ever attempted for use in a wheel-driven land vehicle - it can escape through solids, embrittling steel on the w
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How are you calculating the carbon footprint of green hydrogen?
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... it makes more sense to just use the gas, coal, or electricity directly.
The point about hydrogen is that it is a portable and storable fuel, that can be made from just water and electricity. This is a big win with the efficient use of intermittent energy sources, such as wind and solar. What happens now, I understand, is that those energy sources are turned off when the electricity grid does not have the demand, which is of course 0% efficient. It is much better to divert spare electricity generation capacity to hydrogen production, where the fuel can be used later, rather tha
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Using hydrogen in long term energy storage systems is a good idea. However, the hydrogen is an energy medium and not a fuel. This is because it would technically be possible to have a closed system of water, oxygen and hydrogen tanks with the fuel cell and electrolyzer. The hydrogen can be cycled multiple times from water to gas and back again. Effectively, it is a battery on an industrial scale.
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You don't actually need a closed system when using hydrogen as a fuel, because the combustion product is water, rather than CO2. You don't have to recycle hydrogen.
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Using a hydrogen fuel cell is 2 times more efficient than burning hydrogen in an ICE. For long term energy storage, fuel cells will be used. Burning hydrogen can also produce NOx which is a pollutant.
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Most hydrogen now is produced from steam reaction with natural gas and creates loads of carbon monoxide as a byproduct. Carbon monoxide is not a direct greenhouse gas, but it does indirectly contribute to greenhouse gas buildup in the atmosphere.
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But burning syngas results in CO2 emission.
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You mean by putting the hydrogen you extracted back into it? Yeah, I'm sure that will be really useful.
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The difficulty is the round-trip (energy->storage->energy) efficiency for hydrogen storage is kinda shit.
So you've spent all that money and effort to roll out renewable energy, and now you finally have reliable periods of surplus that you can start to store for peaks and lulls. You can use a chemical battery that has a round-trip efficiency of >80%, or you can make hydrogen which has a round-trip efficiency of 50% or less. This matters because if you *need* to store so many GWhr of energy or whatev
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Well, you're 3/4 correct. However,
With renewable energy being pretty costly...
That is a flat-out lie.
Renewable energy is already cheaper than most fossil fuel energy, and that's without large scale grid storage or accounting for the CO2 cost of fossil fuels. Once you have either of those in place, renewable energy destroys fossil fuel energy in terms of cost.
I 100% agree with you on the stupidity due to the effiiency difference. What people seem to think is that we'll just replace the gas in our pipelines and tanks with H2. That's so far wrong it's
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> Renewable energy is already cheaper than most fossil fuel energy
The levelized cost is, the capital costs are not.
You still want to reduce capital costs as much as possible, which means not installing more renewable infrastructure than you really need to.
=Smidge=
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The difficulty is the round-trip (energy->storage->energy) efficiency for hydrogen storage is kinda shit.
So what. At issue is availability mitigation via storage. The other option is to use wind power to charge batteries at a charging station. Either way a key criticism of wind power (that water is wet and the wind doesn't blow all the time) is addressed.
Efficiency of the system is a technology development issue experienced by every form of energy extraction system.
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> So what.
So maybe read the rest of the post to get an idea why that's a problem.
=Smidge=
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> So what.
So maybe read the rest of the post to get an idea why that's a problem. =Smidge=
I did read the rest of your post and answered your point with:
Efficiency of the system is a technology development issue experienced by every form of energy extraction system.
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> Combined cycle that uses the heat actually gets 70%+ efficiency.
We're talking about round-trip efficiency, which means you need to include the losses in generating, packaging, and distribution.
Also, CHP is great if you need the heat. If you don't need the heat, you either need to dump it so you can keep making electricity, or you turn it off and stop making electricity.
> Also, this is about shifting the availability of energy to physical spaces that are not electrified
It really isn't though... the n
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So because you think that is a good idea that we put bloody windmills everywhere does not mean that it actually is. I do not bring the alternatives as this has been done before and does not work. I guess we will try and see.
You need to tell the wind power people who installed wind farms along the Allegheny front that their system isn't working.
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