Comment by pfdietz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pfdietz | Hacker News Reader

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> That "manipulation of hydrogen" mostly involves use in the the chemical industry. We don't use hydrogen to power gas turbines.

So, when you said hydrogen rapidly corrodes any metal it comes into contact with, that didn't include the metal that the chemical industry makes their equipment from? So, let's just put a "this is chemical industry" signs on our hydrogen storage plants, and presto! Magically protected!

Note that one of the things the chemical industry does with hydrogen-rich gases is burn them in combustion turbines, just like in a proposed hydrogen energy storage facility. Turbines for burning hydrogen have been available for decades. See, for example, what General Electric says:

https://www.ge.com/power/gas/fuel-capability/hydrogen-fueled...

"Our turbines have nearly 30 years of experience operating on a variety of fuels that contain hydrogen, totaling over 6 million operating hours as hydrogen-fueled turbines using concentrations ranging from 5% to 95% (by volume)."

Off. The. Shelf.

> I'm not sure why you're trying to deny the existence of chemical facts: https://www.twi-global.com/technical-knowledge/faqs/what-is-....

I'm not sure why you're presenting a link that doesn't back up the claim you made.

> So, when you said hydrogen rapidly corrodes any metal it comes into contact with, that didn't include the metal that the chemical industry makes their equipment from? So, let's just put a "this is chemical industry" signs on our hydrogen storage plants, and presto! Magically protected!

I'd say you're being deliberately ignorant here, but I'm really not so sure. A gas turbine spins rapidly, putting huge stresses on the blades. They also operate at extremely high temperatures.

And from your link:

> The use of hydrogen as a gas turbine fuel has been demonstrated commercially, but there are differences between natural gas and hydrogen that must be taken into account to properly and safely use hydrogen in a gas turbine. In addition to differences in the combustion properties of these fuels, the impact to all gas turbine systems as well as the overall balance of plant, must be considered. In a power plant with one or more hydrogen-fueled turbines, changes may be needed to the fuel accessories, bottoming cycle components, and plant safety systems. GE’s broad field experience enables our engineers to understand the impact of using hydrogen as a gas turbine fuel.

Hmm, maybe not so simple.

And when we look at what's actually being deployed, it's not 100% hydrogen it's a mixture that's mostly natural gas with only a small portion of hydrogen:

https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/gas-turbines-hydro...

> The new gas turbines will be commercially guaranteed capable of using a mix of 30% hydrogen and 70% natural gas fuel. Between 2025 and 2045, the hydrogen capability will be systematically increased to 100% renewable hydrogen.

These turbines still mostly burn natural gas. GE says it'll get there eventually, possibly over the course of 3 decades.

Your grumbling and desperate denial doesn't change that turbines burning hydrogen are old hat. This is not something that any reasonable person would think won't work.

None of the issues discussed there are showstoppers. They are things that should be, and have been, tweaked.

You broke the site guidelines more than once in this thread. I'm not going to ban you like the other users who were so outrageously abusive, but this is still seriously not ok and we've had to warn you about it before.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

> I'd say you're being deliberately ignorant here, but I'm really not so sure. A gas turbine spins rapidly, putting huge stresses on the blades. They also operate at extremely high temperatures.

Seriously, your projection is out of control here. A gas turbine burning hydrogen does not experience any stresses that is meaningfully different from one burning natural gas or kerosene. Simply applied engineering can solve all of the issues associated with hydrogen gas turbines.

> A gas turbine burning hydrogen does not experience any stresses that is meaningfully different from one burning natural gas or kerosene. Simply applied engineering can solve all of the issues associated with hydrogen gas turbines.

Did you misread that comment? The point was that hydrogen's application in the chemical industry don't involve turbine blades spinning at extreme speeds at high temperatures.

Yes, the principle of combusting a gas, driving a turbine with the expanding gas, and using that turbine to drive a compressor is the same. That doesn't mean you can just feed a gasoline powered turbine hydrogen and be done with it. The turbines that can run hydrogen today can only run a small portion of it.

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/12/08/...

> The challenges of using hydrogen go beyond body shape, though. Redesigning a turbine engine to run on the stuff will be a multi-billion-dollar endeavour. Hydrogen burns faster than kerosene, and also burns hotter. That means materials exposed to its combustion experience greater stresses. It also risks increasing the pollution generated in the form of oxides of nitrogen, which would partially negate the environmental benefits of burning hydrogen. And it would be useful as well to arrange matters so that some of the energy used to compress or liquefy the hydrogen for storage could be recovered and put to work.

The Soviets built a plane that flew on hydrogen, but it only completed 100 flights. And only part of those were with hydrogen, the rest were with natural gas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-155

> The Soviets built a plane that flew on hydrogen, but it only completed 100 flights. And only part of those were with hydrogen, the rest were with natural gas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-155

So you admit this has been done since the 1980s? You seriously don't think we can improve on 33 year old technology?

How dishonest are you going to get before you will admit you were wrong?

It was done for a very short duration during the 1980s as a technology demonstrator. A prototype, not an actually commercially viable product. Yes, we can improve on a 33 year old technology, but it's not something we can just buy off the shelf. GE thinks it'll take until 2045 to make turbines that run off of 100% hydrogen.

> How dishonest are you going to get before you will admit you were wrong?

When you show me where I can buy a gas turbine that runs off of hydrogen. Not a gas turbine that runs mostly off of natural gas with a little bit of hydrogen mixed in. Not a press release of a company saying "we have experience with hydrogen turbines". If you're going to say that hydrogen gas turbines are off-the-shelf then show me the shelf off of which I can buy it.

Are you familiar with the term "moving the goalposts"?

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