[HN Gopher] Wind-to-hydrogen production reaches deep water
___________________________________________________________________
Wind-to-hydrogen production reaches deep water
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 68 points
Date : 2023-06-10 14:41 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| DropPanda wrote:
| The article states that the capital investment cost of an
| electrolyzer and pipeline is lower than that of a cable and a
| substation. But what if you want electricity? If you include a
| fuel cell and grid connection at the end of the pipeline, is the
| capital investment cost still lower?
|
| 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.
| scythe wrote:
| >If you include a fuel cell and grid connection at the end of
| the pipeline, is the capital investment cost still lower?
|
| 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.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| Once you build enough wind and solar, energy itself become cheap
| and one is then more concerned with how to store and transmit
| that energy. That's why hydrogen makes sense despite the inherent
| conversion inefficiencies.
| api wrote:
| Grid scale storage and aviation are the two areas where
| hydrogen seems to make sense to me. With the former you get
| around the problem of having to build absurd numbers of
| batteries and the material cost of that by using water as a far
| cheaper working material. With the latter you have an
| application where unlike cars minimizing weight per kWh is
| absolutely critical. The fact that there aren't all that many
| airports would also make deployment of hydrogen filling
| infrastructure much easier.
|
| 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.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| I agree that those are the two and the many industrial use
| cases that use hydrogen directly are the most promising
| areas. I think it might be plausible to see hydrogen creep
| into other market sectors once it already serves a purpose
| and the infrastructure is already built for use in
| grid/aviation/steel...etc. Because it is so scalable, we
| might find it easy to ramp up production and then end up
| using it other markets sectors.
| Valgrim wrote:
| Compared to other fuels, what are the advantages of hydrogen?
| rawgabbit wrote:
| From
| https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/climate-
| cha....
|
| "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 -33degC6 . 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."
| analog31 wrote:
| In addition to its use as a fuel, it's also a chemical
| feedstock, perhaps notably for the production of ammonia. In
| fact, wind-to-ammonia production would be a cool thing.
| Synthetic ammonia for fertilizer, produced via the Haber-
| Bosch process, sustains more than half of the world's animal
| population.
|
| A lot of ideas for reducing our carbon footprint depend on
| the dream of getting methane out of the fertilizer business.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| See the hydrogen ladder for what can use synthetic fuels
| compared to hydrogen as a feedstock.
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/clean-hydrogen-
| ladder-v40-mic...
| alex_duf wrote:
| Doesn't release CO2 or methane during production and use
| Krssst wrote:
| Depending on how it is produced. Electrolysis is fine but
| steam methane reformating is the cheapest method and emits
| CO2. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production)
| goethes_kind wrote:
| What other fuels? All green/synthetic fuels depend on
| hydrogen and as such I consider them the same technology.
| ianai wrote:
| Pulls oxygen in from the atmosphere and outputs energy plus
| water. Just have to make the hydrogen generation/transport
| emission free.
|
| My question is whether storing hydrogen and the
| complications therein are mitigated. I just don't know my
| modern material science/manufacturing enough.
| funnymony wrote:
| If you have some time: https://youtu.be/Zklo4Z1SqkE
| (Sabine Hossenfelder)
|
| If I remember video correctly, summary would be: not yet
| [deleted]
| ianai wrote:
| Seen it, she's taking pot shots at hydrogen. I'd be more
| interested in hearing how it works in established
| applications now and relevant to the article.
| dmbche wrote:
| Easy to produce, doesn't go bad, somewhat light, can be
| produced on site.
|
| 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.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| The drawbacks are as follows. To convert hydrogen back into
| electricity you need to either use a gas turbine or a fuel
| cell.
|
| 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.
| dmbche wrote:
| Thanks for the explanation, clear and to the point.
| bwanab wrote:
| Wouldn't the cost of fuel cells come down, as happened
| with PV, once they are mass produced? Or, is there some
| inherent high cost to them?
| jgamman wrote:
| currently use a lot of rare metals like platinum. inc vol
| of fuel cells will drive up price of fairly inelastic
| supply of rare metals. or require step change in
| anode/cathode catalysts to cheaper metals
| dmbche wrote:
| I think it's inherent from the danger of hydrogen and I
| imagine it's extremely reactive, it might interact with
| most materials used to hold it.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Don't forget:
|
| - 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
| somewhat_drunk wrote:
| I was a project engineer in a hydrogen fuel cell research
| lab for a few years.
|
| 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.
| dmbche wrote:
| Would it be reasonable to reserve hydrogen for electric
| plants then? Bringing power from far away and burning the
| hydrogen to power locals?
| dmbche wrote:
| I hadn't realised the flame was invisible. It's
| terrifying to me, after seeing ethanol fires on racecars.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| It is! NASA and firefighters had the broom test [0].
|
| 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.
|
| [0]: https://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff1997/ps1.html
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| If you have an accident at a filling station it will go
| boom real loud
| Etrnl_President wrote:
| [dead]
| credit_guy wrote:
| In the particular case discussed here hydrogen just wins
| hands down. You can easily generate hydrogen at sea, but you
| can't bring a floating chemical plant to make other fuels.
| The alternative to send electricity via cable was also
| considered: > 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.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Why do we need fuels? We have electricity that we need to use
| later. Going electricity -> fuel -> electricity is a
| necessarily lossy process.
| allannienhuis wrote:
| As an example: transportation. More specifically,
| airplanes. Energy density is a bigger factor for some uses
| than others.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Anything but the longest flights will end up electric,
| and everything else can go biofuels. No need for a
| hydrogen-centered Rube Goldberg machine.
|
| And if biofuels cost is a concern, synthetic fuels will
| be out of the question.
| allannienhuis wrote:
| the question I'm replying to was about why the need for
| fuels at all, not specifically Hydrogen. I'm not big on
| hydrogen. I like the ideas around ammonia based fuels.
| Biofuels have other environmental costs that concern some
| people. Synthetic fuels could serve a purpose, but yes
| energy cost has to be really low for that to make sense.
| But they might be the only viable option in some cases.
|
| 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.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| You are betting on a 20x improvement in mass energy
| density of batteries for that to become realistic. That
| would probably require entirely new chemistries and while
| I am not going to rule it out, there is really no good
| reason to believe that it will happen either. Hydrogen
| powered flight is on the other hand only a matter of
| incremental improvements. It is already feasible today.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Damn straight I am: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/
| articles/fotw-1234-apri...
|
| 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.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| The bottom line is, the batteries that you would need do
| not exist yet. You just have faith that your
| extrapolation holds true. I cannot comment on that either
| way, because there is no way to tell when battery energy
| densities will stop improving.
|
| 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.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| The biggest advantage of electric flight is the
| maintenance interval. Electric engines need next to no
| maintenance.
|
| Jet engines need to be maintained pretty much after every
| flight and that costs $$.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Any commercial flights over 500mi will be too far for
| electric. There are a lot of regional flights that might
| work as electric.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| There will be some X mi limit that will slowly increase.
|
| 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.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Another good example is cargo ships. Making those
| electric would be expensive and use a lot of cargo space.
| Hydrogen is lower density than bunker fuel but better
| than batteries. It should be possible to retrofit
| hydrogen engines to existing ships unlike using kites.
| uncertainrhymes wrote:
| I don't have first-hand knowledge of this, but my
| understanding is most cargo ships already have electric
| engines to drive the propellers. The fuel is only there
| to run the generators.
|
| Fuel aside, might be less of a retrofit than we think.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Not true. They use hyper optimized two stroke diesel
| engines.
|
| 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.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Bunker fuel is used because companies basically have to
| pay to get rid of it. It's 3.5% sufur for crying out
| loud.
|
| 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.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _an example: transportation. More specifically,
| airplanes_
|
| 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.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I guess I have two answers.
|
| 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.
| Etrnl_President wrote:
| [dead]
| legulere wrote:
| All other fuels depend on hydrogen when producing from
| electricity and have a lower efficiency. Ammonia as a fuel is
| difficult to handle. Carbohydrates like natural gas or
| e-fuels depend on carbon capture which is still very
| expensive/inefficient and they also burn much more dirty
| emitting particulate matter.
|
| 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.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I'm a proponent of investing in solar and wind energy, but it
| will be only cheap because we build solar panels and wind
| turbines using fossil and nuclear fuel.
|
| 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.
| hkt wrote:
| I don't really see the point of remembering this. More
| salient perhaps is the behaviour of the oil companies: their
| cover ups of climate science and pollution, their lobbying,
| their massive, massive subsidies and their (frankly cruel)
| profiteering.
|
| 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.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Well, it's important because if we want to transition, we
| need a strategy and we need people to understand it.
|
| 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.
| epistasis wrote:
| > only cheap because we build solar panels and wind turbines
| using fossil and nuclear fuel.
|
| 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.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| Well, fossil fuels are indeed very convenient. However I
| disagree that they are/were cheap. The costs are just hidden.
| I mean, that's the whole point we are having to replace them.
| hkt wrote:
| Here's a thought: if Russia didn't have a market for its
| oil and gas, would anyone be on the hook for war materiel
| in Ukraine?
| epistasis wrote:
| This is pretty far afield from the current conversation,
| but I think that there would be far far more support for
| Ukraine if Russia didn't have massive amounts of fossil
| fuels. Russia's ability to withhold them is a source of
| economic and political power.
| hkt wrote:
| It is absolutely related to the current conversation,
| though - fossil fuels as diplomatic leverage. Russia's
| economy couldn't support the war without trade in fossil
| fuels either.
| usrusr wrote:
| Still needs mooring? What i want to see are swimming
| hydrolyzer/hydrogen transport units that sail the oceans under
| wind power, driving a hydrogenerator turbine as they go that
| powers hydrolyzer and compressor. They'd go wherever weather
| models predict favorable conditions, cruise up and down those
| waters on a net stationary beam reach course until the storage is
| filled. Might want to leave some capacity for the return trip
| harvest. Then they return home, or to whatever port has the best
| offersvfor selling hydrogen and buying maintenance.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Would be moored more or less the same way deep-sea oils rigs
| are. The main difficulties, as I understand it, is the unique
| stresses and forces of the turbine on platform stability. I can
| see why an image of these moving back and forth is appealing,
| it will almost certainly make more sense to have dedicated
| craft responsible for it (even if they were not fixed to the
| ground). The very sorts of stability you need would work
| against it being an efficient transport.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I recommend a listen to this series
|
| https://gwec.buzzsprout.com/1229717/11455756-hydrogen-series...
| [deleted]
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| hydrogen is almost as bad as batteries for storage, distribution,
| and portable use. Worse in a lot of ways. Even if it were totally
| free.
|
| 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.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It's much worse than batteries for energy storage. With
| batteries you get most of the energy back at least. Converting
| electricity to hydrogen and back to electricity, the losses are
| much steeper. Which makes it not ideal for that kind of thing.
| There are lots of battery chemistries at this point; the round
| trip is well over 90% efficient with most of them. With
| hydrogen there are a lot of lossy steps, generating it, storing
| it, transporting it, transforming it back, etc. Batteries are
| produced at large scale now. Hundreds of gwh per year. Soon
| twh. Green hydrogen production is orders of magnitude away from
| that.
|
| 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.
| 7952 wrote:
| I was reading about the hydrogen projects around Teeside in
| the UK. You have existing hydrocarbon infrastructure,
| industrial customers, offshore storage, spare land, and an
| existing grid connection to the wider grid and renewables.
| This proximity makes the economic case work as there are
| opportunities to buy and sell in one place.
|
| 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.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| True, it's just that that excludes any use cases where that
| hydrogen competes directly with renewable electricity. When
| the choice is using the electricity to charge a battery to
| drive a truck, or convert the electricity to hydrogen
| transport it half way around the world after first
| compressing and cooling it and while boiling off double
| digit percentages to keep it cool and then transporting it
| by road to a fueling station (in gas form by now stored at
| 300 bar), putting it in a truck and then running it through
| a fuel cell .... you get my point. No sense whatsoever.
| Unless you ignore all the inefficiencies. The vast majority
| of road transport is going to be powered by batteries.
| Including 100+ ton road trains in Australia. Because that
| already happened.
|
| 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.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| "Existing hydrocarbon infrastructure"
|
| 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)?
| dghughes wrote:
| Hydrogen can be stored as a metal hydride. More of it can be
| stored in the same volume compared to liquid hydrogen.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| And how much equipment, energy, and time does it take to
| convert it back to a gas?
| Etrnl_President wrote:
| [dead]
| credit_guy wrote:
| I don't know why you are saying that. Batteries are expensive.
| To recoup the capital expense you need to charge and discharge
| them daily (so you can buy the electricity cheap and sell it
| expensive and you get a profit). If you want to use them for
| long term storage, then you buy cheap electricity in the
| summer, sell it for a profit in the winter, do the same each
| year, and find out in a few years that you are broke.
|
| 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.
| Rygian wrote:
| You seem to happily ignore the distribution costs, metal
| embrittlement, sheer loss of efficiency and rest of factors
| that make hydrogen a bad idea for almost any use where it's
| not yet being used.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| So what is your better option? What alternative technology
| has the potential to be used to store six months worth of
| energy for an entire continent?
|
| 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.
| ianai wrote:
| Definitely another space where the anti/propaganda has
| won the early game.
|
| 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.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "So what is your better option?"
|
| Converting hydrogen into something more safe, like
| ethanol or methanol. Fuel cells for those also exist, but
| needs more research.
| funnymony wrote:
| Storing hydrogen is not the same as storing oil.
|
| 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.
| legulere wrote:
| Only if you don't use suitable materials:
|
| > 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:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_storage#Types
| credit_guy wrote:
| > metal embrittlement
|
| 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.
| scythe wrote:
| >hydrogen is not a greenhouse gas
|
| Well, at least, it's a much less bad one:
|
| https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2901/7f35d70295af32860db77a.
| ..
| dmbche wrote:
| This is so exciting that I had Freebird playing in my mind while
| reading. This is so cool. Cheap, away from people, little
| environemental risks.
|
| I hope maintenance won't be a nightmare, I wonder what problems
| seawater electrolysis plants run into!
| tcfhgj wrote:
| Environmental risk: hydrogen leaking and reducing the amount of
| methane removed from the atmosphere
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