cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/8569504
How is the hydrogen made?
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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To save you all a google: it's made from natural gas, at a pretty significant energy loss compared to just burning the gas. It generates about 4 times more co2 than burning diesel.
Time to arm the swans and Canada geese, too.
That is true of all colours of hydrogen other than green (and possibly natural stores of 'fossil' hydrogen if they can be extracted without leakage).
Green hydrogen is better thought of as a battery than a fuel. It's a good way to store the excess from renewables and may be the only way to solve problems like air travel.
How hydrogen is transforming these tiny Scottish islands
That's not to say it's perfect. Hydrogen in the atmosphere slows down the decomposition of methane so leaks must be kept well below 5% or the climate benefits are lost. We don't have a good way to measure leaks. It's also quite inefficient because a lot of energy is needed to compress it for portable uses.
And, of course, the biggest problem is that Big Carbon will never stop pushing for dirtier hydrogens to be included in the mix, if green hydrogen paves the way.
Storing hydrogen is also really hard. It needs to be kept extremely cold, and when it isn't, it tends to pass right through most storage units.
But as a local battery, it can be very useful. Or for applications in large machinery where batteries aren't a useful option yet.
If the leaks of hydrogen should be kept under 5%, we don't have a good track record of keeping gas leaks under control anyway...
https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw?si=Kn-uO64U4X5B_szD
Yes. I'm not watching a video but it is a serious problem, especially as hydrogen degrades metals and finds its way out anyway. The private sector cannot be trusted to self-regulate nor the government to meaningfully regulate.
Trying very hard not to succumb to nihilism here ...
Or, in other words, the hydrogen economy is prone to bubbles and explosions here and there.
And better yet, if the excess heat can be used. Last Friday i heard a sales rep from a (green) hydrogen company describe their solution as a heating solution that produce hydrogen at an energy storage conference. Seems fair to me😊
I really don’t get why hydrogen remains popular. Hydrogen is significantly less efficient than lithium batteries in storing electricity. There are currently dozens of technologies on the way for improving batteries beyond what’s possible with lithium. So what’s the market potential for green hydrogen again?
It wins by a huge margin on the energy to weight ratio. In scenarios where weight doesn't matter it's dumb, but there is potential in places like air travel where it does make sense.
I had to scroll way too far to find this - surely the main pro/con if hydrogen.
Storage was an issue in the past. Is it better now?
Batteries are too heavy for many applications (including, arguably, cars).
That doesn't make hydrogen the only solution but it is at least a currently available solution. I posted a link about why the Orkneys (population 23k) are producing hydrogen and switching much of their transport to it: they have so much wind the UK (population 70m) national grid can't take all the power they generate from it.
Hydrogen is useful in a lot of industrial processes. It also maybe win the race for green aviation fuel, but this one is not likely. There is plenty of market for green hydrogen.
There is also absolutely no reason to hype about any of it. Everybody hyping it on the media is trying to make global warming worse.
Industry uses A LOT of Hydrogen and that would increase dramatically if we stopped using fossil fuels as chemical feedstocks. eg. plastics, pharmaceuticals, dyes etc.
In case anyone wants to read up on it
Oh great, and I was wondering why some of our policians were pushing hydrogen cars as an alternative to electric cars, despite even the car industry telling them to shut the fuck up.
Some of car industry. Some are dumb or corrupt. Then a lot people/consumers just see the range and zero 'direct' emissions. They don't look at cost per mile, total energy efficiency, fuel storage and distribution, etc.
the car industry have brains?
Finally, a correct answer within the context.
Didn‘t we have a process to electrically synthesize hydrogen out of water?
Electrolysis, it works but it takes a lot of energy to produce, so burning hydrogen from this would be a fools errand.
Wouldn't you spend almost same amount of energy to split water compared to heat produced by burning hydrogen?
Probably more because of entropy: Nature's IRS.
The only way for electrolysis to be greener than fossil fuels is to use renewable energy sources like wind or solar. It wouldn't produce enough to gain much market share in any case. So the oil lobby is pushing to derive it from petroleum, because they're Captain Planet villains.
That's why I said almost.
Yep. Basically gas battery.
But you could technically build huge solar panel areas in deserts and bring that hydrogen to populated areas. Or you could use excess energy from renewables to produce hydrogen, storing at least some of the excess energy for times where renewables produce less.
Are those CO2 emissions? I don't get where the CO2 comes from.
I know this is an animation, but it shows pretty well, how hydrogen is made from natural gas. No CO2 emissions. And using the hydrogen should produce H2O.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHseMOXbefs
In reverse order:
1 - it needs to be tranported
2 - it needs to compressed and cooled, in order to transport it. You need to cool it down around 1700 degrees, because:
3 - methane pyrolysis is done at around 1500 degrees C, getting something that hot isn't free.
4 - methane isn't the only component in natural gas, so you need to seperate out all the impurities.
5 - methane is a very strong contributor to global warming, so any natural gas leak from the drill to the factory adds co2equivalent.
6 - you need to extract natural gas from the ground and transport it, which takes energy.
Plus the big one is that my taking the hydrogen off of the methane, you're left with carbon. And that carbon is usually reacted with oxygen to make carbon dioxide during the refining process. So for every two liters of hydrogen you make, you'd make a liter of CO2.
And we're not doing so well on the gas leak part...
https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw?si=Kn-uO64U4X5B_szD
So what is the best solution, in your opinion?
Hydrogen isn't a solution at all. Literally anything is better than using hydrogen from methane, even shovelling coal into steam engines produces less CO2 equivalent.
So, "don't do that, it makes things worse".
I don't think I should have to produce an answer to one of the main problems facing Western society to be able to point out that hydrogen is mostly natural gas under an asbestos bedsheet.
It could make sense for planes, where batteries are just too heavy. But you'd need to weigh it against things like synthetic electrically produced kerosene or biodiesel.
How about hydrogen from water? Yeah, you need high amounts of electricity to get it, but, as one example, if it's used in ICE engines, isn't that significantly cleaner than petrol? And a lot less damaging than making lithium batteries? Once burned, wouldn't it just react with oxygen to then form water vapour? And then, if it's making water, that's a self-sufficient cycle?
I feel like hydrogen can potentially be a very good solution, but the technology needs to catch up massively. I mean, scientists are getting to on nuclear fusion reactors, and their yield seems a lot better than everything else. Even fission reactors.
Also, I had this thought the other day, and yes, it's extremely futuristic, with the right people in charge thought, but mining gas planets for the hydrogen. We'll more than likely never inhabit those ones or use them for much, so we might as well use them for something, at least. At least before Dyson swarms become a thing.
Using excess green energy to produce hydrogen is a great option, but those events are pretty rare, and it doesn't produce very much, compared to pyrolysis of natural gas. Using regular electricity isn't very smart, since you're burning hydrocarbons to create hydrogen from water, when you could just get them from the hydrocarbons, so that's even less efficient.
I think the issue is where the energy to heat the reaction vessel comes from. The video shows green sources, but that isn't the only way to do it. The thing is, this is ultimately an energy storage tech rather than an energy generation tech. You need excess capacity to make it work, and if that means you have to make up for a shortful with conventional generators elsewhere, you aren't actually saving anything.
I don't know if the previous poster is right of course, but the planet is an almost closed system, and there really is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to energy.
The ultimate idea afaik is to build huge renewable energy power plants (for example solar energy in deserts) to generate it there, and then transport it through pipelines to wherever you need it.
The only logical way to use it is as fuel for heavy transport if it's produced in the same place that said transport refuels. We can't keep petrol in pipelines, how do people think we'll keep hydrogen in them?