Wind-to-hydrogen production reaches deep water
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
My question is whether storing hydrogen and the complications therein are mitigated. I just don’t know my modern material science/manufacturing enough.
If I remember video correctly, summary would be: not yet
You lose quite a bit of energy making the hydrogen (around 50% I think) but the claimed positives make this not that problematic. If it's possible to create a lot of energy somewhere remote, making hydrogen there and shipping the hydrogen out can be a good idea. Also making hydrogen when there is unused electricity and storing it for further use when energy is not available (night, winter)
There are many other drawbacks - I'm no expert.
Fuel cells are expensive, so you have capital cost problems. Additionally fuel cells have problems providing variable power output. For this reason you often couple the system with a battery.
Gas turbines running on hydrogen have some engineering challenges. In particular the gas turbine technology needs to be re-engineered because hydrogen burns differently from natural gas. Secondly NOx emissions are an issue that needs to be addressed.
Moreover, if one is to store and transport hydrogen as a gas or a liquid, the infrastructure is more challenging than with a natural gas pipeline. If one is to further convert hydrogen into a synthetic fuel, you get additional conversion losses.
- it has an abysmal energy density per unit volume, even as a liquid. E.g. if you used to need 1 tanker or gasoline, you’ll need 18 tankers of compressed hydrogen for the same energy content.
- compressing and liquifying it is much more expensive and challanging that natural gas. See this fun little challange [0]
- there are currently no odorants available for use in hydrogen (the thing that gives natural gas it’s smell). All the available ones either react with hydrogen or poison your fuel cell
- it’s flame is essentially invisible and incredibly hot
- it has an explosive range from 4-75% (natural gas for example is 5-17%)
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_isomers_of_hydrogen
Walk with a broom in front of them if they thought there might be a hydrogen fire. If the broom suddenly burst into flames, they knew they had a problem.
To add to this, hydrogen also:
- is the smallest molecule; as such is very difficult to contain
- embrittles and degrades most steels
- is ignited by a miniscule amount of energy, such as static sparks
- has a terribly rapid flame front, which means big boom when it does ignite
Everyone has seen the consequences of pilot lights going out while owners are on vacation. House fills with natural gas, fridge compressor kicks on, ignites gas, house explodes. A house filled with hydrogen would not only destroy the house containing it, but the houses next to it as well, and it would be much more likely to ignite due to its much lower ignition energy.
I do not trust contractors to install hydrogen piping, and I do not trust homeowners to maintain their hydrogen sensors. I would NEVER live in a building that had hydrogen stored (as in a vehicle tank) or piped inside. There are simply too many ways for that scenario to go wrong, and if it does go wrong, it goes wrong in a very bad way.
So Its molecule is so tiny it's hard to contain even in specially constructed containers, but in a house leak it'll hang around and build up enough in a house to level a suburb block?
You can't have it both ways.
If leaked into a house, the pressure remains 1 atm - the issue is not with the pressure, but with the amount of atoms of hydrogen being close enough that, if one catches fire, it will spread to enough atoms to cause an explosion that will raise a block.
The atoms are not moving quickly to escape the house, they observe light motion as particles in the still-ish air of the house, so after some time they overcrowd the house without even having to reach the outside wall, they could all hang around the pipe.
In the UK, British Gas and Cadet tried to force 2,000 some homes to change to hydrogen by cutting of their natural gas supply in order to run a trial project [0].
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/30/people-ches...
Now park 1000 of those cars in a multi story parking station, or under a block of housing units.
https://www.trucknews.com/sustainability/nacfe-takes-fresh-l...
That tanker has a boil off rate of 0.3-0.6%. The thing you're storing it in is going to have a similar boil off range.
B) "No hydrogen option will fully displace BEVs, noted Roeth"
BEVs will still exist as short-ranged urban vehicles. That is a niche, and in trucking that is a very small one too.
There is no evidence to support the idea that BEVs (cars or trucks) will remain short-ranged urban vehicle. Even the "entry" level BEVs in NA, like the leaf, have gotten to EPA ranges of 360 km, a number that is only ever going to go up.
Even trucking is slowly getting there as the battery tech improves. In Europe Mercedes is testing trucks, today, which hit 200-400 km before needing to charge [0]. That's not enough for long distance, but that doesn't matter. They can serve this market and when they're ready they can expand to longer ranges.
Further, there is even less evidence that in applications where BEVs don't (and won't) work that hydrogen is the winning solution. What is hydrogen's go to market strategy? Introduce trucks for long range that have higher up front costs and higher total cost of ownership that diesel trucks, plus severely limit where you can drive since you depend on a (non-existent) hydrogen network?
[0]: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/06/11/electric-semi-truck-dri...
https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/9013_energy_requirement...
It is not guaranteed to be 30%. And you're entirely basing your argument on the idea that batteries will get radically more advanced, while hydrogen technology will not. What happens when Toyota makes a Corolla powered by hydrogen at the same level of cost and the fuel is basically free (made from excess green energy)? Will BEVs really have much of a future in that scenario?
It's not guaranteed to be 30% no, but that's what they are now.
> Actual liquefaction energy requirements are substantially higher, typically 10-13 kWh/kg LH2, depending on the size of the liquefaction operation [5,6].
> What happens when Toyota makes a Corolla powered by hydrogen at the same level of cost
Pigs will fly.
Toyota currently sells the Mirai, and it costs more than a model 3. The Mirai uses ~3x more electricity at the source to drive the same amount (assuming very optimistic efficiencies) and costs ~5x more to drive per mile.
So I ask you, who will buy the Mirai instead of a model 3?
The answer, based on sales data, is not many people.
Because the Mirai is not even better for the environment unless you mange to source pure green energy hydrogen.
So how will Toyota sell enough to bring down the cost of production?
How long with it take for the hydrogen network to expand outside of california? A decade? And when that's happened, how will you convince the BEV drivers to sell their 10th gen BEV for a 3rd gen Hydrogen car?
> and the fuel is basically free
That is an absurd thing to claim.
- Green electricity is not free since there's a Capex associated with it.
- wind/solar does not suffer negative electricity rates in the same way that coal/gas/nuclear since they can be turned off on a whim. They do not have to generate excess energy if they don't want to.
- Creating hydrogen from water is not free since there is expensive Capex associated with electrolyzers and other equipment required.
- Combine the above 3 together and you'll find the idea of running your electrolyzers intermittenly for only a few hours when there's excess energy to be a laughable proposition from an economic point of view.
- Compressing, storing, and transporting hydrogen is not free
For reference, hydrogen from methane in the US currently sells for ~1.5$/kg. The idea that green hydrogren will get cheaper than that, much less free, is laughable.
Not to mention that this is recoverable energy. Liquid hydrogen is literally cryogenic energy storage. You can easily find methods of shrinking losses ever further.
Considering Toyota is literally making a hydrogen powered Corolla to go racing, your claim about cost is pure Ludditism. It time for you to stop living in the past. Hydrogen cars will be cheaper than BEVs to build and likely no more expensive to run.
Perhaps its time you ask yourself a simple question: Once all of the facilities have been built, what is the margin cost of further production? It is in fact basically zero. This is for both wind and solar, but also anything made exclusively from it like green hydrogen. In fact, hydrogen could be the cheapest of them all, since it is not limited by the problems of intermittency and long-duration storage.
As a result, it is a matter of when, not if you'll see hydrogen for $1.5/kg. And eventually even less than that.
PS: Your post is just pure anti-progress. Imagine being so offended by the idea of advancements in green energy. So many of your type are just brainwashed BEV fanatics. It's pure short-sightedness.
It is not anti-progress to point out obviously impossible things.
> will be cheaper than BEVs to build and likely no more expensive to run.
Please explain to the luddites in the room how it will cost the same. How it could ever cost the same. Both would start with electricity. The BEV would charge directly on that. The hydrogen car would require an electrolyzer, cleaning of the gas, compressing it, transmission, distribution, refueling stations, then a fuel cell. Each step along the way being costly and not 100% efficient. Hint: you can’t.
Even if you hook up a perfect fuel cell to a perfect electrolyzer, for each kW you put into the electrolyzer you’ll be getting less than 1 kW from the fuel cell.
Except the marginal costs is not zero. The marginal cost of the next kg of hydrogen is not zero. Electricity is not free, and each kg of hydrogen requires the same amount of electricity as the previous.
Toyota making one car for their racing circuit is very different from them making it cheaply and people buying it on mass. Again, real operating costs of the vehicle they sell on the market today are 5x higher the BEVs, so why would anyone buy it?
The only way you’ll reach green hydrogen for less 1.5$/kg is if you have an army of volunteers working on donated equipment for >0.02$/kWh. There are few of any places that even have electricity that cheap.
It is not me that’s living in the past, it’s the hydrogen hype that has come back for its third crack at things. On the hope that maybe this time around thermodynamics will be different.
I'd like to mention that Toyota is playing with syntetic fuels as well, and that some in the car market see this more as an option for car enthusiasts to keep running their cars when gas will be "obsolete". Much of the marketing of the corolla is about how "the engine is not not-green, it's the fuel that's the issue".
Seeing how gas powered engines are much less efficient (just from the heat waste) than electric ones, I have a hard time expecting hydrogen to become a normal fuel for cars - especially with the risks associated. Can you imagine a transparent flame in your car?
This seems more like rnd into syntetic fuels and alternatives for enthusiasts than their actual horse in the race.
And this is why it is a 100% guarantee that they will displace li-ion batteries. Why on Earth would anyone choose a very expensive and unsustainable battery technology when there is another system that is just as good but does not have any of those weaknesses? It's pure BEV brainwashing that people even think that way. So my advice to you is stop believing in these lies and accept that cars of the future will be hydrogen powered.
The theoretical efficiency for a fuel cell car and a battery electric car are absolutely not the same when you look at well-to-wheel. Not even close.
As for unsustainable. People make a big deal about cobalt in the batteries. Fine, the cobalt is being removed, all that’s left is abundant minerals.
Can you say the same about the platinum-group metals in electrolyzers and fuel cells?
You do not need platinum in a fuel cell. There are several types of them, and only one of them require platinum. Also, the amount required is comparable to a catalytic converter and only grams per fuel cell is needed: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-platinum-week-bosch-fuelc...
Yeah, it means i'd love a refence, and one that includes actual effiency too.
> It also helps not to spam FUD about efficiency, and in the real-world they are much closer than you are thinking.
BEV well to wheel is 77% while hydrogen is 33% [0]. A 2x is what I have in mind.
> In fact, hydrogen cars are the second most efficient form of transportation possible
Yes, a far far second behind electric and far far ahead petrol, which is not particularly hard to do.
[0]: https://www.transportenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2020...
The maximum possible efficiency of a fuel cell is 100%. It follows directly from the realization that they are not limited by Carnot's cycle. Hence why in the long run, it is pretty much a guarantee that a hydrogen based solution will win out. If two solutions are equally efficiency, than the only that is vastly cheaper will be the solution.
These types of comparisons of efficiency comparisons are ultimately just nonsense. Most of them are all over the place, from 2x difference to sometimes 10x or worse. That's because they are just cherry-pick numbers in order to create a narrative. It is not really based on any sort of real analysis.
In reality, a large portion of renewable energy is lost or never utilized, largely due to its intermittency. Without any way of storing it, renewable energy is very inefficient overall. They pretty much always have to be backed up by fossil fuels today. Adding a way to store vast amounts of it, such as hydrogen, makes renewable energy significantly more efficient and eliminates the need for fossil fuels.
But if you make that realization, then it also becomes obvious that running cars off of hydrogen does not imply any kind of major loss of efficiency. The problem basically becomes irrelevant, since you are running cars off of energy that would've been lost anyways.
The problem with synthetic fuels isn’t the technology, it’s the economics.
Synthetic fuels, to be remeotely green, need hydrogen created from electrolyzing water. That need to be done with 100% green energy (and new green energy, not simply pull from the grid to cause fossil fuel plants in o come online).
Then you need carbon from someone here other than fossil fuels. Direct air capture is what many look at, and that’s very expensive because of the chemistry and thermodynamics. (You’re trying to pull co2 out of the air, something in concentrations in the parts per million).
At the end of this Rube Goldberg operation you’re left with a fuel that’s going to cost 10x the price.
And the only way the price goes down is if people buy a lot of it so that the technology can improve and so the plants increase to get economies of scale.
Porsche is building a plant for this. But idk about you, but I doubt there are enough people who care enough about their car, and could afford, to pay >40$/gallon for gasoline.
It is pure Ludditism because you are refusing to accept the possibility of technological progress. Some of which already exist. As renewable energy scales up, it will approach the marginal cost of zero. We even see negative price electricity at times. As a result, hydrogen could also approach zero cost.
$0.02/kWh is fully possible and is already realistic now: https://cleantechnica.com/2020/08/30/new-record-low-solar-pr...
You are the one living in the past. Imagine thinking that a fuel made from water can never catch on. This is so deep into BEV brainwashing it will be eventually talked about in the same way as bloodletting.
Look at how people use hydrogen now, all 90 million tones a year. Do they produce it at central facility where economies of scale help them? No. They all produce it in small and expensive plants less than a 1km from where it’s used. Strange. Perhaps they simply haven’t heard the good word.
Negative prices exist because power plants cannot curb their production quickly enough to match falling demand. These are not a thing for solar and wind operations since you can shut them off much faster.
If their electricity is soo incredibly cheap, why in the world would we bother with all this hydrogen problems, then simply overbuilding solar and wind like crazy? It does my matter how cheap you think hydrogen is, it doesn’t produce electricity at the end of the process cheaper than what went in.
Hydrogen can be made from water. But not for anywhere near the prices you discuss. Again, this is predatory detail by the fossil fuel companies. As long as they can make people believe that eventually green hydrogen will be cheap, they can build out their methane- based hydrogen infrastructure.
Go read some sources which do not have a direct conflict of interest in hydrogen: https://h2sciencecoalition.com/
For starters, most hydrogen today is made from natural gas, so all infrastructure is just natural gas based. If there was a vast source of hydrogen, it will switch over to hydrogen infrastructure. This story resembles the rise of LNG and how people dismissed it as impossible for multiple years.
Negative prices literally create the very incentive for cheap green hydrogen. Your dreams of overbuilding wind and solar makes this even more self-evident that green hydrogen will be nearly free. Seriously, your whole plan is to waste the vast majority of green energy, while simultaneous denying the possibility of any method of utilizing it. It is pure self-contradiction.
Again, virtually free electricity will imply virtually free hydrogen made from it once it reaches mass production. This is so obvious that only people brainwashed by BEV propaganda can refuse to accept it.
PS: H2 Science Coalition is a anti-hydrogen propaganda organization. It only exists to spread FUD about it.
You are seeing what you want to see. And what I see is someone showing a complete lack of knowledge about material science.
> If there was a vast source of hydrogen, it will switch over to hydrogen infrastructure.
The existing natural gas infrastructure will not simply "switch over" because it fundamentally is incapable of safely transporting hydrogen. You need different material properties in your metal to handle hydrogen (see hydrogen embritlement as one reason), to say nothing of the other equipment involved. These cannot be "switched over", they must be completely replaced.
This in fact is the thinking that's backwards: continue to think about chemical energy carriers and moving them around in pipes. This made sense when we started with chemicals (fossil fuels), but it makes no sense when our starting point is electricity. Simply store and more that electriicty around.
> Negative prices literally create the very incentive for cheap green hydrogen. > Again, virtually free electricity will imply virtually free hydrogen made from it once it reaches mass production.
No it won't. It doesn't matter how many times you say it.
Further, if you're buying electricity for a negative price, you're getting it from a coal/gas plant which is decidedly not green. Or if you're lucky from a nuclear plant.
Very cheap electricity is a necessary condition for cheap green hydrogen, not an incentive for it.
Again, cheap is not free, and at the energy requirements needed per kg of H2, even cheap adds up quickly. Further, the equipment to produce, store, and transport it are not cheap, and are certainly not free.
> Seriously, your whole plan is to waste the vast majority of green energy, while simultaneous denying the possibility of any method of utilizing it. It is pure self-contradiction.
All together now: the sun shines and wind blows even if you turn off your solar panels and wind turbines. Nothing is wasted.
> anti-hydrogen propaganda organization. It only exists to spread FUD about it.
Again, see my point about being fixated on Hydrogen as the goal rather than the means. You can label criticism as FUD but it won't make it any less true.
As for the H2 Science Coalition, they clearly are not. They are very clear that hydrogen has it's uses (and its own major decarbonization problems). But that it's simply very poorly suited to be "an energy carrier".
What I know is that your position on hydrogen is pure FUD. I know as a matter of fact that your views on the material science side of things are false.
You can send hydrogen via natural gas pipelines. It is fully possible to "switch over." At worst, you will have to line the insides with some kind of coating: https://www.ul.com/sites/g/files/qbfpbp251/files/2023-02/Hyd...
And yet a pipeline is 10x cheaper than sending electricity. As it turns, basic physics does not change no matter how strongly you describe it as "backwards": https://www.brinknews.com/could-hydrogen-replace-the-need-fo...
You are continuing to deny reality with this post: If you are talking about massive overprovisioning, then you are going to have negatively priced electricity coming from renewables. This is the most obvious and most irrefutable point here.
And you can beat around the bush all you want; it does not change the fact that practically free electricity is happening right now, and it will lead to practically free hydrogen. Again, the only necessary resource is water. The cost floor is far lower than any other idea you can conceive of. And since it is cheaper to store and move hydrogen around that electricity, you will eventually abandon an all electricity-based solution in favor of one that moves energy around with hydrogen.
> Again, see my point about being fixated on Hydrogen as the goal rather than the means. You can label criticism as FUD but it won't make it any less true.
No one is fixated on hydrogen. It is the anti-hydrogen Luddites that are fixated on stopping it. This inevitably causes a conflict where rational and non-brainwashed people come out and say "No, you really do have to accept this that this is a necessary part of the solution."
> then you are going to have negatively priced electricity coming from renewables. This is the most obvious and most irrefutable point here.
Solar and wind do not have negative electricity rates. Negative electricity rates are caused by a fixed/hard to ramp down source (nuclear/coal/gas) whose electricity is not needed. These plant cannot be turned on and off quickly ebnough to not produce this excess electricity, and because the grid must remain balanced (all the production must be immediately met by demand) they have to pay people to take the electricity off their hands because it's the cheapest option for them.
Solar and wind you can simply turn off, they do not have to pay peopel to take excess energy off their hands since they can simply choose not to make it.
Adding solar and wind will cause negative rates to occur, but it is not the solar and wind that are paying those negative values, it is the gas/coal/nuclear.
If you are buying electricity at a negative rate you are helping out a fossil fuel plant (or if your lucky a nuclear one).
> it will lead to practically free hydrogen.
Nope. Equipment still has a cost, no matter how many times you ignore it.
As for who is fixated, and/or brainwashed. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Funny how that never happened until recently. Only with the introduction of renewables did such things happen.
I agree that there's no point in continuing to talk to you. Your mind is made up.
I will leave it up to history to debunk your argument. It is a repeat of anti-wind and anti-solar rhetoric, that something made from free electricity and water cannot ever be cheap. It is obvious that that cannot be true, but for some it will take more than words to convince them otherwise.
The supposed overwhelming advantage results in saving 20 minutes on a 1000km trip (if nobody else used the hydrogen station before you, otherwise fuelling times are the same).
With current state of the art batteries being put into next model cars that last bit goes away too.
In what possible world do hydrogen passenger cars have a future?
> The major auto supplier, which recently partnered with Sweden's Powercell, is working on a new fuel cell architecture that, according to Reuters' report, will "use only as much platinum as a diesel catalytic converter."
So the price would come down if they were massed produced.
Except you would need a market that is willing to pay the high cost until it comes down. Such a market segment has yet to materialise.
If you build satellite you need a source of energy that doesn't depend on your bringing fuel for it. So you're willing to pay the obscene starting price of PV. If you needed/wanted clean electricity made off-grid you're willing to pay for PV since it had many benefits over the alternatives (if they even existed in your situation).
What is the same starting market for fuel cells? It would have to:
1. Not care that the hydrogen is difficult to transport to that location, or be willing to invest in the costly equipment to make and store it on site.
2. It would have to be willing to put up with the poor end-to-end efficiency, both in absolute and relative terms.
3. It would need to be isolated from a grid such that you would require storage in the first place.
4. It would need to be long term and isolated enough such that batteries, pumped hydro, connection to the grid, and overbuilding of renewable are not a viable/cheaper alternative.
And if biofuels cost is a concern, synthetic fuels will be out of the question.
Ain’t no incremental improvement going to improve the density of a gas or a liquid. On top of that you talk of energy per mass, but what kills you for flights is also volume.
Hydrogen power flights are not feasible today. Even hydrogen busses are struggling to operate, to say. I thing of trains.
For starters you’ll need hydrogen at any and all possible destinations (plus any nearby airports if you’re diverted) since nobody is going to buy a plane that will likely get stranded.
Then:
1. Hydrogen’s energy/volume is far too low.
2. You can’t store it in the empty space in the fuselage due to pressure vessel geometry requirements.
3. You need heaters and coolers and all sorts of extra parts to operate something hydrogen power (hint: a hydrogen car is just an electric car with a small battery and a while separate hydrogen system frankesteined ontop).
4. Going back to that volume, you’ll need to store the hydeogren tanks inside the main fuselage, where the volume required is going to either eat into your available volume for cabin or cargo. OR, you’re gonna need a bigger cross-section, which will increase your drag.
To top all that off. Nobody is using green hydrogen. They’re using hydrogen made directly from methane (or god help us coal). This hydrogen has more GhG emissions associate with it than the methane it’s made from. Hydrogen itself also has a GHG impact since it will interfere with the processes occurring that remove other GHGs.
Synthetic kerosene is a technology that we have today and imho the most likely option because it is plug and play. Otherwise one would have to work out many modifications to fly directly on hydrogen, but that is also technically possible today, if one wanted to do it that way.
The technology for synthetic karosene is something we have today, expect it cost more 10x regular karosene and:
A) what’s the path to scale to bring that number down? Who isn’t going to pay that 10x price while it’s that high. Batteries had cell phones, then laptop, then cars and storage. Now it’s trucks, ships and planes are next up.
B) by continuing with combustions engines you keep the same operating costs that you have now. Whereas electrification gets rid of many of them (same way it did for cars).
Seriously, that claim is just bullshit. 55 Wh/L is worse than a lead-acid battery. That graph is straight-up lying.
I'm sorry, but that is simply far too ridiculous to be taken seriously. It's blatantly some made-up number that no one can believe.
Jet engines need to be maintained pretty much after every flight and that costs $$.
But the energy source that handles everything beyond that is much more likely to be biolfuels than hydrogen (or synthetics).
The cost it much better and the infrastructure is already there.
Obviously costs change the demand side of the equation - it may be that we wind up with very expensive airfare, and have a lot more somewhat slower modes (say high-speed rail) that can more easily use the cheaper energy forms.
That biofuels have costs that concern people is letting perfect be the enemy of the good. Any of the synthetic fuels or hydrogen options require an incredible amount of energy. Energy that could have been available to decarbonize the grid, or energy that could have been used for making clean water or any other pressing issues. The thing is, those costs are more hidden.
The idea that the shipping companies would pay for a premium gas like hydrogen is laughable.
Even with bunker fuel, fuel costs make up a large percentage of shipping cost.
There’s no way that’s happening.
Fuel aside, might be less of a retrofit than we think.
Cruise ships, RORO, off-shore supply ships and vessels with similarly dynamic operating profiles have started to use diesel electric.
Also starting to employ batteries to handle peak loads.
Biology found an efficient solution to storing energy with hydrogen, and its hydrocarbons. I struggle to imagine why hydrogen-powered planes are superior other than on marketing merits.
The only pure greenwashing is hydrogen push by fossil fuel companies who wish to continue having something to do with their methane. See Germany recently with their “hydrogen-ready” boilers.
Seriously, fuck you. You're a brainwashed BEV fanatic. And pretty much a climate change denier given your extremist position.
To end on:
> a fuel made from water
Except it’s currently not. And will not be made from water at anything close to the current price without major subsidies.
I don’t know where to get the idea that anything I say is denying climate change. Quite the opposite. We already have proven solution that work. We don’t have time and money to waste on trying out ridiculous ideas like “hydrogen as an energy carrier”.
It's not made from water, it's made from fossil gas.
All these schemes to increase demand aren't about making electrolysers to replace existing grey hydrogen, they're ahout selling grey hydrogen.
First, it is not always most convenient or efficient to produce energy where you use it, and electricity needs to be generated relatively nearby where it is used, and transit lines can be expensive to build. For example, deep offshore wind seems to look like a more and more promising option, but you need some practical way to get that energy onshore.
Second, electricity is just not practical for some modes of transportation; notably cargo ships and airplanes. And these represent significant CO2 and other pollution emission sources.
Also, hydrogen is a chemical feedstock with plenty of uses besides as a source of energy.
I agree about hydrogen having plenty of uses. In fact it has so many uses that it currently represents a decarbonization problem. We have 90 million tones of hydrogen used every year, which the vast majority coming straight from fossil fuels.
Replacing that with green hydrogen should be top priority before we consider new use cases.
"Heavy-duty road vehicles Hydrogen fuel cells or hydrogen-derived fuels offer a low-carbon alternative for heavy-duty vehicles, for which batteries do not currently have the energy density to offer a long-range solution. "
"One niche market for hydrogen fuel cells is forklift trucks. These currently outnumber hydrogen cars, with around 30,000 in use. Fuel cell forklifts are suited to warehouse use because refuelling is simple, and the vehicles emit no air pollutants32"
"Synthetic fuels. A range of synthetic fuels for multiple uses can be made via the Fischer Tropsch process, reacting captured CO2 with hydrogen. These could potentially provide a lower carbon drop-in fuel alternative for the aviation fleet as well as an option for trucks or ships"
"Ammonia is denser and only requires compression to 10 times atmospheric pressure or chilling to -33°C6 . Ammonia storage is mature because of its widespread use as a feedstock for mineral fertilisers. "
"For transport, China is aiming to produce one million hydrogen fuelled vehicles and 1,000 refuelling stations by 2030, the same goals as California3, 55. South Korea’s roadmap is aiming to produce six million FCEVs and roll out 1,200 refilling stations by 2040."
There are also some disadvantages of hydrogen though: Low volumetric density makes transport in anything but pipelines much less efficient compared to carbohydrates. That includes fuel tanks which makes hydrogen for aeroplanes unlikely. Also there's no existing infrastructure compared to existing oil and gas infrastructure.
A lot of ideas for reducing our carbon footprint depend on the dream of getting methane out of the fertilizer business.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/clean-hydrogen-ladder-v40-mic...
> For offshore wind producers, meanwhile, Lhyfe projects that adding electrolysis and a hydrogen pipeline to shore will reduce the cost of delivering their energy as wind parks move further offshore. “A hydrogen production plant plus pipeline is five to ten times cheaper, as an investment, than an electric substation plus a cable,” says Le Berre.Oil and urnanium have a miraculous energy density, and can be easily transported.
It's good we build alternative capabilities while we have cheap energy, but we should not forget why we can.
It'll be good that they're gone, when they're gone, and may we never have to rely on such morally unsound people or technology ever again.
If you can't understand energy density, you may be under the impression we can go 100% renewable right now.
But we can't sustain our current life-style with them today.
Also if you think oil companies are going to disappear after we migrated, you are going to be disappointed if you don't understand the role they play in systems.
Yes, indeed. We need to very substantially decrease our per-capita energy usage. It is going to be hard for some people.
This is not logical. We are building solar panels and wind turbines with fossil fuels becuase that's the energy source we have now, now becuase they are cheap.
Once we have enough energy from solar and wind, that energy will be cheaper than fossil fuels, and that input to their production will be cheaper, reducing the cost of wind turbines and solar panels further.
Fossil fuels have been made obsolete for most use cases, and we are building the industrial capacity to replace them as fast as we possibly can.
If you don't believe me, check out what the world is deploying for new electricity production. Especially in profit driven markets like Texas' ERCOT. Outside of ERCOT, most of the grid decisions are smoky-room deals with lots of corruption, and there fossil fuels tend to have a huge leg up, since more expensive electricity means a higher profit level for the utility.
Fossil fuel are dense, easy to transport, and extracting energy from it is super simple.
It's not the case for wind and solar.
Right now, we are calculating the cost of wind and solar energy by evaluating the cost of transport and manufacturing of very complex system powered by fossil fuel. We say they are profitable in this context, and only in this context.
If we were to transport and manufacture them solely self-bootstrapped by solar and wind, it would not be cost efficient.
I think most people underestimate how much energy transport and metal work uses. Every single electronic circuit, every single screw, tire and wire are made using fossil fuel. And the food, home, roads and heat systems of the people working on those are all powered mostly with fossil fuel.
Not just because it's a habit.
It turns out you can escape thermodynamics .
Energy density matters A LOT. If you take an entire cinema of air and pass it through a wind turbine, you get the equivalent of a drop of oil. That's how magical oil is.
Now it's quite possible in the future we improve the tech so much, and we have such an abundance of it that it will be a net win. I'm rooting for that. Oil has terrible side effects, no matter how awesome it is, we need to get rid of it.
But for now, we are funding the green revolution with fossil fuel.
Don't get me wrong, this is a smart strategy. There is no way around it.
However, putting our head in the sand is not going to help.
I don’t see hydrogen for cars unless we got a gigantic Eisenhower scale infrastructure build out commitment. There is already a power grid so the infrastructure problem for EVs is way easier to solve.
Edit: A fair comparison needs to keep the electrical power input to the grid constant. This means the calculation needs to account for both the losses in conversion to and back from hydrogen, as well as that offshore electrolysis would be able to make use of a greater share of the power during peak wind turbine output.
I want to see the math, not only an opaque claim of lower cost when one set of infrastructure delivers electricity and the other delivers hydrogen.
You wouldn't, though. If you are going to convert hydrogen back to electricity, it makes the most sense to do it where that electricity is hardest to obtain by any other method — say, an off-grid research station in the Yukon or something.
I hope maintenance won't be a nightmare, I wonder what problems seawater electrolysis plants run into!
https://gwec.buzzsprout.com/1229717/11455756-hydrogen-series...
Maybe it can be a component of an artificial hydrocarbon, but unless the carbon were sourced from the air it wouldn't be a cycle and wouldn't be any better for the environment.
But my point being its storage and stability as a solid material unlike liquefied hydrogen which may cause embrittlement of its container.
A solid material, heat to release H, send it through a fuel cell. At some point maybe that method will become a type of battery.
I get people like batteries and they are very efficient but there seems to be such weird hostility at the mere mention of hydrogen. It's bizarre. It has its uses especially for the ability to store a powerful energy source.
PS: People are hostile because they own a BEV, or own shares in a BEV company, or have some other financial motivation. They are openly hostile to anything that could disrupt their business or lifestyle. In fact, we really should just be more direct in confronting this. Hydrogen is straight-up disrupting the conventional battery market, and the opposition is running a FUD campaign to stop it.
With hydrogen, the storage is cheap. We already store natural gas in tanks. We can switch to hydrogen. Maybe hydrogen will leak more, but 1. hydrogen is not a greenhouse gas and 2. the square-cube law tells you that for large tanks you don't really care about leakage.
I don't think we will find an alternative to hydrogen for long term storage of electricity.
Nobody is saying that hydrogen technology is without its problems, but it is feasibly scalable unlike anything else I am aware of, and it is not some kind of mythical vapourware that exists only in the form of CAD renderings.
Is there somewhere to learn about the proper storage and use of hydrogen?
I’d just add that for grid scale storage the hydrogen probably doesn’t have to go far from generation. That probably resolves plenty of problems.
Over time, hydrogen damages the tank. (Which is undesirable combo with “explosive gas when mixed with air”)
I would like some breakthrough in material sciences here.
> Steel with an ultimate tensile strength of less than 1000 MPa (~145,000 psi) or hardness of less than HRC 32 on the Hardness Rockwell Scale is not generally considered susceptible to hydrogen embrittlement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement
Gas storage facilities also generally use geological structures which are not susceptible to hydrogen embrittlement either:
Converting hydrogen into something more safe, like ethanol or methanol. Fuel cells for those also exist, but needs more research.
You can't ship things in steel vessels overseas because steel rusts in contact with water, especially salty water. See what I did there?
> distribution costs
What about distribution costs? Hydrogen can replace natural gas. Wherever you have a gas burning powerplant, you can retrofit it to burn hydrogen. The tanks that store gas for that plant can be modified to hold hydrogen. Whatever distribution costs are incurred for natgas will be incurred by hydrogen. Some will go up, some down, but not by orders of magnitude.
> sheer loss of efficiency
As opposed to what? In a world powered by solar and wind, you'll have times (lots of times) when you generate more than you consume. The least efficient option is to just not generate. Generating electricity and converting it to hydrogen, and then the hydrogen back to electricity at a later time may or may not be economically profitable. In the cases where the economics will work out, people will do that, where it won't people won't do it. But the economics will always be against batteries for long term storage, except if by some miracle batteries will get to be 100 times cheaper (not a mistake, 100).
Other chemical storage solutions (ammonia, methanol, ethanol, lithium hydride) need one extra step that will be very expensive. There are slight chances for one of those to make sense, but my bet is that they won't. Why? Because both Europe and Japan are betting very, very big bucks on hydrogen.
Well, at least, it's a much less bad one:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2901/7f35d70295af32860db77a...
Cube square law also makes small scale hydrogen storage more expensive than batteries.
Then you're back to limited niche uses, or needing expensive, leaky distribution.
The best use of hydrogen for seasonal arbitrage is making it into sponge iron and ammonia for steel and fertiliser then storing that. Then your seasonal-cadence variability is gone.
A good reference is Michael Liebherr's hydrogen ladder. It organizes hydrogen use cases by their economical viability. Some of the least economical things you can do with it is using it for transport or heating. It just doesn't make any sense to do that; there are cheaper ways to do those things. The more economical things at the top are a combination of things we already use lots of (grey) hydrogen for such as fertilizer production and other industrial processes and a few things like steel production and other industrial processes that currently rely on burning fossil fuels. For each of those producing the hydrogen close to where it is consumed is key. There are plenty of economical uses for hydrogen. More than enough that bothering with the low yield uneconomical use cases just doesn't make sense. Just cleaning up the existing uses of grey hydrogen is actually a massive project by itself.
Because of it's physical properties, transporting and storing hydrogen is costly and technically challenging. It takes up a lot of space. In liquid form it's almost 3x the volume of liquid methane. And to get it to that state, you have to cool it to a few degrees above absolute zero. Keeping it in that state also costs energy. You typically get that by boiling some of it off. Same with methane of course but liquid methane is a lot warmer so the need to boil it off is a lot smaller. Converting hydrogen to methane or other fuels is of course possible but also not free. Every energy conversion you sacrifice double digit percentages of energy. The more conversions, the less economical sense it makes.
Also, efficiency becomes far less important if the source energy is cheap and the sold hydrogen is expensive. If the margins are high enough you can afford to waste energy.
The fact that it exists does not mean that it’s fit for purpose. Hydrogen gas has very different material requirements, you can’t simply put it into those pipes.
“If the source energy is cheap and the sold hydrogen is expensive”
Except a) the energy is not cheap (nor is the equipment required to make and transport the hydrogen).
And b) who is going to buy this expensive hydrogen when they could instead use a cheaper alternative which is much more efficient (direct electricity cation)?
Green hydrogen production will eventually happen at scale. As you say, it's way too valuable for that not to happen. But the caveat with that is that using it for uneconomical / low value things doesn't make much sense. Why waste an expensive resource on stuff like that when there are much more valuable things you can do with it.
At the top of the ladder are things like industrial and chemical processes, long haul aviation via e-fuels generated from hydrogen, etc. Sticking it in the ground in order to burn it in order to boil water and drive a generator would be closer to the bottom. You could do it technically but there are a gazillion other ways to store and generate energy. Likewise using it for road transport is just madness. And forget about replacing methane with hydrogen to heat your home.