Posted on 08/13/2021 4:13:06 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Hydrogen! It’s the obvious and perfect answer to global warming caused by human CO2 emissions. Instead of burning hydrocarbons (fossil fuels) we can leave out the carbon part, burn just the hydrogen, and emit nothing but pure water vapor. H2 + O = H2O! Thus, no more CO2 emissions . Why didn’t anyone think of this before now?
Actually, the geniuses are way ahead of you on this one. President George W. Bush was touting the coming “hydrogen economy” as far back as 2003. (“In his 2003 State of the Union Address, President Bush launched his Hydrogen Fuel Initiative. The goal of this initiative is to work in partnership with the private sector to accelerate the research and development required for a hydrogen economy.”). Barack Obama was not one to get left behind on an issue like this. In the run-up to the Paris Climate Conference in 2015 Obama’s Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced, “[F]uel cell technologies [i.e., hydrogen-fueled motors] are paving the way to competitiveness in the global clean energy market and to new jobs and business creation across the country.” Then there’s the biggest hydrogen enthusiast of all, PM Boris Johnson of the UK, who promises that his country is at the dawn of the “hydrogen economy.” (“Towards the end of 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson released details of a 10-point plan for a so-called ‘green industrial revolution.’. . . This year will also see the government publish a Hydrogen Strategy that will “outline plans” to develop a hydrogen economy in the U.K.”)
And let us not forget California. If you look at my post from two days ago about California’s plans for “zero carbon” electricity, you will find a chart showing that by 2045 they plan to have some 40 GW of what they call “Zero Carbon Firm” resources. What does that mean? In the print below the chart, they reveal it: “hydrogen fuel cells.” (Their current amount of hydrogen fuel cells contributing to the grid is 0.)
So basically, hydrogen is the perfect answer to our problems, right? Wrong. Only an idiot could think that hydrogen offers any material useful contribution to the world’s energy supply.
For much of the information that follows, I’ll be relying on a June 6, 2020 Report written for the Global Warming Policy Foundation by John Constable. However, and not to downplay Mr. Constable’s excellent Report in any way, but I made many of the same points in one of the very first posts on this blog in November 2012, titled “The Hydrogen Economy.” That post was based mostly on my layman’s understanding of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Really, that’s all you need to know to realize that hydrogen as a major source of energy for the economy doesn’t make any sense at all.
So what is the fundamental flaw in the idea of a hydrogen-based energy economy? Constable puts it this way: “Being highly reactive, elemental hydrogen, H2, is found in only small quantities in nature on the earth’s surface but is present in a very wide range of compounds.” In other words, the hydrogen is not free for the taking, but rather is already combined with something else; and to separate the hydrogen so that you have free hydrogen to use, you need to add energy. Once you have added the energy and you have the free hydrogen, you can burn it. But that’s where the Second Law of Thermodynamics comes in. Due to inevitable inefficiencies in the processes, when you burn the hydrogen, you get back less energy than you expended to free it up. No matter how you approach the problem, the process of freeing up hydrogen and then burning it costs more energy than it generates.
Do you think somebody in our political leadership or bureaucracies might understand this? Don’t count on it.
Constable then goes into much more detail, and the deeper he gets into it the more ridiculous the hydrogen project looks. Since essentially all of the hydrogen starts out combined with something, where might you look to find a source of large quantities of hydrogen? Constable: “[T]he sources are few in number, being limited to either water, fossil hydrocarbons or biomass.”
The bond of hydrogen and oxygen in water is a high-energy thing that therefore takes a lot of energy to undo. So let’s consider getting the hydrogen from natural gas. Indeed, that is the main source today of substantial quantities of pure hydrogen for industrial purposes. Constable describes a well-established process called “steam methane reformation” (SMR) by which steam is passed through natural gas (methane, or CH4). The bond is broken and the hydrogen breaks free. Voila! Oh, but what happens to the carbon? Why obviously, it is released also, and thereupon combines with oxygen from the air forming CO2.
Wait a minute! The whole idea behind undertaking this expensive process was to avoid the release of the CO2. So clearly, we need another step. In the British proposal to create the “hydrogen economy,” they have had to include the addition of processes for “carbon capture and storage” to capture the CO2 before it gets away and prevent it getting into the atmosphere. Except that they haven’t figured out how to capture it all. They are hoping for capture rates of maybe 85 - 90%. So it turns out that this process, for all its additional costs, is not emissions-free at all.
And then there’s the next obvious question: Why not just burn the natural gas? Instead of having to input energy in the “steam reformation” process, this way you will release a large amount of useable and useful energy when the carbon gets burned. And as to CO2, you get the exact same amount. If you have a fetish that the CO2 must be captured, you can try to capture it from this process instead of from the “steam reformation” process. Again, you will not get 100%, but it’s really no different.
Except for the optics. In the first scenario, you claim you are burning “clean, pure hydrogen.” In the second scenario, you are burning natural gas, just as we have been doing for decades. Can people really be fooled by this? It seems like “smart” people like Bush, Obama and Johnson have all been fooled, so I guess there’s no reason not to expect most of the rest of the people to go along.
We are working on a pilot project to crack methane into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The CO2 will be injected into an oil reservoir for enhanced recovery. The hydrogen will be sold to some bozos for tax credits and such.
For pipelines not as much as you think methane has 1000 but per cubic foot at STP hydrogen is 325 at the same STP a 500 psi methane pipeline would need to be at just under 3x the pressure for equal energy transport. Hydrogen has a lower energy of compression than methane so it’s not three times as much energy to compress it. The’re are hundreds of miles of hydrogen pipelines all over the Gulf Coast region for the oil refineries the problems of hydrogen pipelines were solved decades ago. You can see one along IH10 between Beaumont and port A Texas if one knows where to look.
Pump the CO2 by product into Marijuana grow houses. Win/win.
“Gasoline is a dangerous liquid that emits a dangerous fume.”
So are all of the fossil sources for making lithium batteries and electricity. Only, with EV’s you have to use twice as much of it to turn your wheels.
“You can see one along IH10 between Beaumont and port A Texas if one knows where to look.”
I-10 doesn’t run between Beaumont and Port Author.
That H consumes more energy than released is immaterial. The goal is PORTABLE ENERGY. Energy that a vehicle can carry with it away from any real source.
Just like any battery — you lose more than you get, but what you get lets you drive around.
As to the danger of H, not really. H gas is formed of such small molecules that it almost instantaneously disperses given any puncture to its tank. Gas, on the other hand hangs around and burns the crap outta everything within reach.
Yah, the Hindenberg was filled with H. But, much of the flames were from burning structural material. Regardless, it was not on the ground — which doomed many on board.
IMHOpinion, H’s advantage is you can make it anywhere. If you can get electricity to a regular gas station you can have a separator there, too. This means no gas lines, no trucks , etc. Lots of companies in the energy sector hate this. Freedom, yknow.
changing H tanks at a gas station might even be faster than pumping gas.
Make them easily accessible - pop off an empty tank, pop-on a full tank. Make them small and so lightweight- you might have a rack of them
My main point was that extra compression requires extra energy.
Are you saying that transporting and storing hydrogen gas costs the same as natural gas per BTU?
NASA, rocket applications, and refineries can all afford expensive seals and the maintenance they require to keep the seals, glands, packing, and gaskets tight. I really doubt those solutions will be cost effective or maintainable by low-skill labor in millions of refueling stations and millions of delivery tankers.
“Batteries do not have the energy density to power aircraft for long distances, hydrogen does”
I’ve wondered about the energy density of hydrogen (a compressed gas) versus gasoline. Would the hydrogen in vehicles be stored in liquid form? What can you tell us about these things?
***Hydrogen! It’s the obvious and perfect answer to global warming caused by human CO2 emissions.***
Yet, forty years ago it was CO2 that saved us from THEM COMING ICE AGE!
POPULAR SCIENCE, Feb 1980..
PS/What’s News ....
page 73
Changing the weather intentionally or otherwise weather modification..(Earth cooling vs Greenhouse effect)
“Do you suppose we can learn enough, soon enough, to pull off a balancing act with the CO2 blanket saving us from another ice age?”
About fifty years go there was a segmented wheel that was almost a perpetual motion machine. The segments were connected with another across to the other side of the wheel, and liquid propane or some such volatile liquid was in the lower wheel.
As the bottom segment passed through warm water the liquid turned to gas and flowed to the upper chamber, back to liquid, which being off balanced rolled forward to the next segment.
The magazine MOTHER EARTH NEWS spent a large amount of their own money to make a large version of the wheel.
It didn’t work.
*molecules...
You've made some very good points in this thread. Thank you.
It’s all about the Sun and solar cycles.
Anybody who thinks the effects of cow farts can overwhelm the effects from the Sun is too stupid to be reasoned with.
Hydrogen is complicated and hence expensive to produce. Plus it’s highly volatile and its storage needs to be scrupulously safeguarded.
Nature already captured sunshine and buried it in the ground in an easily accessible and easily transported form, all at no cost to us.
Should I be concerned?
They are building a hydrogen plant near us, next to a large dam producing electricity.
Should I be concerned?
Do you smoke?
How about fueling it?
well we have lots of fires here, smokey a lot in the summer, dry eastern washington. dang!
No idea except it can receive cheap electricity from the dam.
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