3 ms·
Lots of German households and industries use natural gas for heating, hence we've got something like 400,000 km of pipeline as well as storage facilities sittin
by cygx 7y ago
Lots of German households and industries use natural gas for heating, hence we've got something like 400,000 km of pipeline as well as storage facilities sitting around. Instead of buying natural gas from Russia, we could fill them with synthetically produced methane and/or hydrogen, generated during off-peak hours.
- manfredo 7y agoSynthetic methane production has a theoretical maximum efficiency of 30-40%. So we'd need to build 3x as much power and is actually needed, and a bunch of electrolysis and Sabatier reaction plants on top of that. Or we can just follow France's example and build nuclear plants.
- cygx 7y agoThose numbers are outdated. Round-trip efficiencies of up to 80% have been claimed: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544218320693 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054421... If that's legit and can be made cost-effective, the case for nuclear is largely gone...
- manfredo 7y agoEfficiencies of over 100% have been claimed. Over 50% of the US patent office's applications are for entropy-reversing devices. Come back to me once these claimed figures are actually implemented.
- cygx 7y agoReverse fuel cells aren't magic, though. I agree that 80% seems rather ambitous...