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United States Power Transportation

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.

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Four US States Plan $8 Billion Hydrogen Fuel Hub

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  • These states are well suited to massive solar installations making the electrolysis of water into hydrogen an effective use of extra capacities and an alternative to more expensive battery storage options. Colorado has the larger populations centers and with mountains might contribute as much from microhydropower (river flow turbines) as well. New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming have small widely dispersed populations operating in rural settings without electrical infrastructure and providing the hydrogen fuel sol
    • Hydrogen electrolysis has a roundtrip efficiency of about 40%.

      H2 is a wasteful method of storing power. There are many better methods.

      • 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.

        • 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

      • 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.

        • 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

          • 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

    • I am in New Mexico and we are nowhere near having enough solar to supply the state's electricity. If solar make so much sense why not just fund more solar? If we have excess electricity then it makes sense to think of ways to use it.
  • 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!
    • 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"

      • 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.

        • 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.

        • So if I understand it correctly, if we make hydrogen from natural gas we are adding "additional" water into the system? If we make it from water, it will raise the humidity level until it rains.

          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
  • by Thorfinn.au ( 1140205 ) on Monday February 28, 2022 @07:21AM (#62311089)
    Hydrogen burns as soon as it cat
    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
    • 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

      • Hydrogen embrittlement affects high strength steels though. Cast iron should be fine, it was already brittle :)

        https://www.imetllc.com/hydrog... [imetllc.com].

        • 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

      • It is molecular corrosion not chemical corrosion as others have noted, it is still corrosion, that is deteriorates the object. In text books it is hydrogen embrittlement. It makes the metal brittle by penetrating between the crystals, makes a void and breaks the metal. The higher the pressure the worse the problem, or use expensive alloys and put the price of the tank up 250%.
  • More national wealth going to the elites for nothing
  • by crow ( 16139 ) on Monday February 28, 2022 @10:29AM (#62311549) Homepage Journal

    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.

    • 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

      • 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.

        • 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,

          • 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.

  • 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.

  • Is there a way to opt out?

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