[HN Gopher] Terraform Industries converts electricity and air in...
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Terraform Industries converts electricity and air into synthetic
natural gas
Author : jseliger
Score : 32 points
Date : 2024-04-01 17:22 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| avmich wrote:
| Not sure how to meaningfully participate in the movement, but
| certainly to watch Terraform Industries progress should be quite
| interesting.
| jakozaur wrote:
| Congratulations!
|
| Though I can't still wrap my head around it:
|
| 1. Terraform needs to produce hydrogen using electrolysis.
| Turning hydrogen into natural gas requires more equipment and
| energy.
|
| 2. Simultaneously, we transform natural gas into hydrogen through
| natural gas reforming. Currently, hydrogen is vital for
| fertilizers and refineries. This also uses energy and a lot of
| equipment.
|
| So, before we produce synthetic natural gas, displacing hydrogen
| produced by fossil fuels with electrolytes should be more
| economical.
|
| On top of that, fertilizers such as ammonia are way easier to
| ship worldwide than natural gas.
| kurthr wrote:
| Yeah, and there are several long used and relatively efficient
| ammonia generation methods for direct electrical conversion
| that uses nitrogen from the air and water with renewable
| electricity.
|
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2021.5808...
| angiosperm wrote:
| The social benefit of such production, considered strictly,
| probably far exceeds methane. But methane costs more to ship,
| and displaces demand for Russian gas. Economics is hard.
| mateo1 wrote:
| Producing hydrogen using electricity will only be more
| economical than than steam reforming when natural gas, coal and
| oil all run out. I respect the choice to move away from fossil
| fuels but if you do the calculations on how much this will
| cost, people will start having second thoughts.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Producing hydrogen using electricity is proportional to the
| cost of electricity. If electricity is crazy cheap, so is
| electrically produced hydrogen. (At site of production;
| transporting hydrogen is also expensive).
|
| Terraform is betting on the continuing cost reduction of
| solar.
| busterarm wrote:
| I wonder how many people on this board decrying the cost
| effectiveness here are also invested heavily in
| cryptocurrency...
| angiosperm wrote:
| Displacing mined methane is an overwhelmingly better use
| of excess power.
| callalex wrote:
| When calculating the costs, you don't get to just ignore the
| huge, expensive harms caused by releasing CO2 and methane
| into the atmosphere because they are inconvenient.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Terraform believes that the decline in the cost of solar power
| will make their process profitable in 2027. Fertilizer &
| ammonia created using green hydrogen may be profitable earlier,
| lets say 2026.
|
| Seems to me Terraform made the right call by going for the
| bigger market.
|
| Edit. It looks like they're not ignoring fertilizer/ammonia
| either: "The company has ongoing discussions regarding
| prototyping or selling standalone electrolyzers as separate
| products"
|
| > On top of that, fertilizers such as ammonia are way easier to
| ship worldwide than natural gas.
|
| That's a big reason why Terraform is doing natgas. The cost of
| Natural Gas in most of the world is dominated by the cost of
| shipping. Terraform can produce locally and bypass shipping
| costs.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The only buyers for green hydrogen or natural gas today are
| companies where the 'greenness' of the fuel matters far more
| than the price.
|
| They are happy to pay a 100x or even 1000x premium to have
| their CEO's car powered by green hydrogen.
| avmich wrote:
| As I understand it, the Terraform Industries idea is,
| roughly, to reduce the price.
| jseliger wrote:
| More detail:
| https://terraformindustries.wordpress.com/2024/04/01/terrafo...
| analyte123 wrote:
| The 273 btu of gas they have stored in those impressive cylinders
| is equivalent to 0.08 kWh. Here's hoping for more to come.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Here's a sobering view on the economics of hydrogen:
| https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-clean-hydrogens-missin...
|
| Hint, they remain terrible and you shouldn't get your hopes up.
|
| Converting air into gas isn't hard technically. It's just really
| expensive. The expensive bits get waffled over a lot by
| proponents. But there's no real solution for this stuff just
| being really, really expensive.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| They've supposedly got their H2 cost under $2.50 per kg. Your
| link calls $2.20 per kg by 2030 "hopelessly optimistic". In
| comparison steam reformed hydrogen from natural gas costs $1.50
| - $5.00 per kg.
| bodhiandphysics wrote:
| Just to point out... the whole point of Terraform Industries is
| to solve the problems that are raised in that sobering view!
| That doesn't mean they will succeed, but saying "this is hard,
| so they won't" is also not terribly useful. Ultimately, when
| faced with difficult problems, the only hope is to try to
| figure out how to solve them.
| malfist wrote:
| People say the same thing about any new tech. Look at solar
| when it first came out.
|
| Technology advances. Manufacturing costs go down, generally.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| It really depends on the application. If a company wants to
| provide a premium verifiably carbon-neutral product, instead of
| some sham carbon credit scheme, they can swap out their fuels
| to carbon-neutral versions.
|
| There's perhaps some use in capturing excess solar during times
| of negative prices and instead driving electrolysis. That
| hydrogen could either be used to sell back to the system when
| prices are at their highest, or export to another place. As
| solar enters over-capacity, such plants could be useful.
| gimmeThaBeet wrote:
| I think this is really cool, I think the economics of it are
| really tough, but there's a lot of ways natural gas is just a
| much easier thing to deal with, or at least a more approachable
| with our current infrastructure.
|
| I think taking a step back though, the hydrogen itself is
| important in the first place.
|
| I don't know if it is the largest use of hydrogen, but certainly
| the significant use is in steam reformation of natural gas to
| make ammonia.
|
| It's not power generation, but it's keeping us alive and natural
| gas is a feedstock more than a fuel. You really are finding a way
| to replace it and its not fungible in the way electricity is.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I've always thought it would be better to produce something like
| methanol. The chemistry is similar, but methanol is not gaseous
| (at typical temperatures). That makes it much easier to handle.
| angiosperm wrote:
| Methanol is strictly harder. There is enough demand for any
| amount of hydrogen or methane that can be produced cheaply
| enough. Methanol can wait until those are saturated. Ammonia
| might be another intermediate step before it is worth doing
| methanol.
| angiosperm wrote:
| The economics of this sort of thing is full of surprises.
|
| Someone with a solar farm who cannot sell the excess they produce
| at noon (local utility won't take it) can put it into producing
| methane to sell (or use), if the equipment is cheap enough to
| amortize over only the over-productive intervals. And claim extra
| carbon credits for displacing mined methane. They might install
| some extra panels to increase the intervals. Displacing methane
| they would have had to buy yields more value.
|
| Probably in the future it will be more profitable to produce
| ammonia instead. Ammonia is even more useful than methane.
| skybrian wrote:
| Yes, the equipment needs to be cheap if it's not running very
| often, or it won't pay off.
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