6 ms·

How green is blue hydrogen?

53 points by wglb 5y ago

wglb 5y ago
Observed years ago by Don Lancaster: https://www.tinaja.com/h2gas01w.shtml https://www.tinaja.com/h2gas01w.shtml
- zetalyrae 5y ago
  And some people are still talking about the "hydrogen economy" in this era of ever-improving batteries and large-scale grid storage with pumped storage etc. Just build an assembly line for small modular reactors.
greyface- 5y ago
9 hours ago, 151 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28161281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28161281
- mattowen_uk 5y ago
  I'm seeing dupe posts more often on HN these days... I'm wondering if the dupe-checker on the submit form is broken? (Question for dang...)
  - bbarnett 5y ago
    It's August, maybe the dupe checker guy is on vacation.
konschubert 5y ago
Off Topic: I think carbon capture is a valid approach for power plants and will be effective if done well. What's not effective are these carbon compensation schemes, where you can pay a few pennies to have somebody sign a paper that they'll let a tree grow for another year, as if that would somehow compensate the release of fossil CO2. It's no better than an indulgence letter you bought from from the Pope.
- danuker 5y ago
  It is very difficult to keep up with global CO2 production by planting trees. TL; DW: planting 20 million trees would equal roughly the CO2 emissions of the USA for half a day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqht2bIQXIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqht2bIQXIY
  - jorge-d 5y ago
    And... would be released back in the Atmosphere as soon as the forest burns
    - Jolter 5y ago
      The assumption would be that the newly forested land would be re-planted and re-harvested indefinitely, which would mean that on average we have now bound half of the maximum carbon content of that forest.
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        The question is, what happens with the harvested wood? If it eventually gets burned or rots, then you've captured nothing. That means it can't be used for paper or furniture, or even most construction - they all have too short lifespans these days. The optimum would be to bury the harvested forest in a deep, deep hole, where light and water can't get, and seal it there permanently.
        pbhjpbhj 5y ago
        Ah, the technique of The Ancients ...
        blendergeek 5y ago
        I would recommend burying it in old coal mines after compressing it under intense heat.
        ihattendorf 5y ago
siliconunit 5y ago
it looks like the vast majority of our pollution and energy generation through chemical/physical transformation (like the hydrogen in the article) could be rendered 'green' by remembering the free fusion reactor in the sky.. nearly all pollutant can be reclaimed by high temperature pyrolysis process, and hydrogen can be made without any methane by simply splitting ocean water. The catch? Just spend some years and build few gigascale solar parabolic through (my preferred, long lasting, robust, thermal mass even at night) or photovoltaic power plants and get let's start to properly treat the waste and energy needs, obviously once you have that much 'free' electricity you wouldn't need hydrogen, but for the sake of always having a b-plan, it wouldn't hurt.
- Retric 5y ago
  Solar parabolic isn’t close to cost effective vs PV. It costs more for less dependable power. What companies like about it is it’s a thermal power plant so they can run it 24/7 by burning fossil fuels while selling “green” power.
  - cestith 5y ago
    One of the goals with solar thermal is to store the heat in a thermal mass then use that to heat a closed loop steam or gas turbine at night. No fossil fuels are necessary if the system works well enough. There's a recent proof of concept plant using bauxite particles instead of a liquid or gas as the thermal mass. It should help quite a bit in cost and reliability. Rather than a bunch of high-pressure tubing for liquid salts and such, it works with grain lifts. One nice thing about using solar thermal for hydrolysis is that much hotter water is much easier to split with electricity. So if you use some of the heat mass to heat water steam to 600 or 700 C, you can use a lot less of the power post-conversion. A CO2 heat loop might be more efficient than a water steam one, so if the plant isn't dedicated to hydrolysis it might end up with two generation loops.
    - Retric 5y ago
      The issue beyond direct costs is it’s concentrated solar thermal which stops working in cloudy weather or dirty reflectors. Which means you need some other way to generate heat our your randomly out both daytime solar and backup energy. Net result, PV + batteries simply cost less for more reliable power unless you have backup fossil fuel for heat. If the goal was say 80% reduction of fossil fuels then concentrated solar is ok, it just doesn’t really work for a zero emissions grid because you need just as much storage somewhere else in the system.
roenxi 5y ago
I don't see how this is particularly interesting. Is anyone is arguing for blue hydrogen as along term fuel? It probably isn't much easier to work with compared to the methane used directly as fuel. The point here was to get things like cars and factories that use gas ready to use hydrogen instead, by making it abundant and supported. Then switch over to using solar panels and whatnot to synthesise the hydrogen. At no point in that story are the emissions of blue hydrogen an issue. As plans go it is a pretty good one. I'd rather leave things up to market economics, but this is better than Europe collapsing because the oil gets cut off for 6 months.
- Jolter 5y ago
  The natural gas industry is investing pretty heavily in lobbying for blue hydrogen right now. The upside for them being that a big bet on blue hydrogen necessitates big investments in natural gas infrastructure, which will remain indefinitely and will give them advantages in the long term since gas will be more competitive.
  - mxxx 5y ago
    Yep. The Australian government made a big deal about how they were going to invest in hydrogen recently in an effort to signal that they’ve got some semblance of a future energy policy. The way it was spun was entirely based on the general public not understanding the nuance between green and blue hydrogen. They get the best of both worlds, appease the fossil fuel industry while having the appearance of doing the opposite to anyone who’s not paying attention.
smilespray 5y ago
The title is a perfect starter question for the tv show QI...
hannob 5y ago
I had quite a few twitter discussions on this already. It's an interesting paper and I think a valuable contribution to the discussion. Though it should be noted that the authors make a lot of assumptions (naturally) and some of them are quite controversial. They consider three different methane leakage rates, which are probably a good range for what's happening in the US, but it's expected that some european sources have much lower rates. Their assumptions on CCS are more pessimistic compared to what other people expect, but you could argue compared to existing CCS projects they're actually optimistic. Then there's a whole debate around GWP20 vs. GWP100, which is whether you look at the greenhouse effect of methane vs. co2 over 20 or 100 years. The authors prefer GWP20, which is not the mainstream climate science position, but they do some of their calculations also with GWP100. tl;dr It's definitely worth a read and the authors make good points, but consider that other people see things differently.

53 points by wglb 5y ago

wglb 5y ago

Observed years ago by Don Lancaster: https://www.tinaja.com/h2gas01w.shtml https://www.tinaja.com/h2gas01w.shtml

zetalyrae 5y ago
And some people are still talking about the "hydrogen economy" in this era of ever-improving batteries and large-scale grid storage with pumped storage etc. Just build an assembly line for small modular reactors.

greyface- 5y ago

9 hours ago, 151 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28161281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28161281

mattowen_uk 5y ago
I'm seeing dupe posts more often on HN these days... I'm wondering if the dupe-checker on the submit form is broken? (Question for dang...)
- bbarnett 5y ago
  It's August, maybe the dupe checker guy is on vacation.

konschubert 5y ago

Off Topic: I think carbon capture is a valid approach for power plants and will be effective if done well. What's not effective are these carbon compensation schemes, where you can pay a few pennies to have somebody sign a paper that they'll let a tree grow for another year, as if that would somehow compensate the release of fossil CO2. It's no better than an indulgence letter you bought from from the Pope.

danuker 5y ago
It is very difficult to keep up with global CO2 production by planting trees. TL; DW: planting 20 million trees would equal roughly the CO2 emissions of the USA for half a day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqht2bIQXIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqht2bIQXIY
- jorge-d 5y ago
  And... would be released back in the Atmosphere as soon as the forest burns
  - Jolter 5y ago
    The assumption would be that the newly forested land would be re-planted and re-harvested indefinitely, which would mean that on average we have now bound half of the maximum carbon content of that forest.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      The question is, what happens with the harvested wood? If it eventually gets burned or rots, then you've captured nothing. That means it can't be used for paper or furniture, or even most construction - they all have too short lifespans these days. The optimum would be to bury the harvested forest in a deep, deep hole, where light and water can't get, and seal it there permanently.
      - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
        Ah, the technique of The Ancients ...
      - blendergeek 5y ago
        I would recommend burying it in old coal mines after compressing it under intense heat.
      - ihattendorf 5y ago

siliconunit 5y ago

it looks like the vast majority of our pollution and energy generation through chemical/physical transformation (like the hydrogen in the article) could be rendered 'green' by remembering the free fusion reactor in the sky.. nearly all pollutant can be reclaimed by high temperature pyrolysis process, and hydrogen can be made without any methane by simply splitting ocean water. The catch? Just spend some years and build few gigascale solar parabolic through (my preferred, long lasting, robust, thermal mass even at night) or photovoltaic power plants and get let's start to properly treat the waste and energy needs, obviously once you have that much 'free' electricity you wouldn't need hydrogen, but for the sake of always having a b-plan, it wouldn't hurt.

Retric 5y ago
Solar parabolic isn’t close to cost effective vs PV. It costs more for less dependable power. What companies like about it is it’s a thermal power plant so they can run it 24/7 by burning fossil fuels while selling “green” power.
- cestith 5y ago
  One of the goals with solar thermal is to store the heat in a thermal mass then use that to heat a closed loop steam or gas turbine at night. No fossil fuels are necessary if the system works well enough. There's a recent proof of concept plant using bauxite particles instead of a liquid or gas as the thermal mass. It should help quite a bit in cost and reliability. Rather than a bunch of high-pressure tubing for liquid salts and such, it works with grain lifts. One nice thing about using solar thermal for hydrolysis is that much hotter water is much easier to split with electricity. So if you use some of the heat mass to heat water steam to 600 or 700 C, you can use a lot less of the power post-conversion. A CO2 heat loop might be more efficient than a water steam one, so if the plant isn't dedicated to hydrolysis it might end up with two generation loops.
  - Retric 5y ago
    The issue beyond direct costs is it’s concentrated solar thermal which stops working in cloudy weather or dirty reflectors. Which means you need some other way to generate heat our your randomly out both daytime solar and backup energy. Net result, PV + batteries simply cost less for more reliable power unless you have backup fossil fuel for heat. If the goal was say 80% reduction of fossil fuels then concentrated solar is ok, it just doesn’t really work for a zero emissions grid because you need just as much storage somewhere else in the system.

roenxi 5y ago

I don't see how this is particularly interesting. Is anyone is arguing for blue hydrogen as along term fuel? It probably isn't much easier to work with compared to the methane used directly as fuel. The point here was to get things like cars and factories that use gas ready to use hydrogen instead, by making it abundant and supported. Then switch over to using solar panels and whatnot to synthesise the hydrogen. At no point in that story are the emissions of blue hydrogen an issue. As plans go it is a pretty good one. I'd rather leave things up to market economics, but this is better than Europe collapsing because the oil gets cut off for 6 months.

Jolter 5y ago
The natural gas industry is investing pretty heavily in lobbying for blue hydrogen right now. The upside for them being that a big bet on blue hydrogen necessitates big investments in natural gas infrastructure, which will remain indefinitely and will give them advantages in the long term since gas will be more competitive.
- mxxx 5y ago
  Yep. The Australian government made a big deal about how they were going to invest in hydrogen recently in an effort to signal that they’ve got some semblance of a future energy policy. The way it was spun was entirely based on the general public not understanding the nuance between green and blue hydrogen. They get the best of both worlds, appease the fossil fuel industry while having the appearance of doing the opposite to anyone who’s not paying attention.

smilespray 5y ago

The title is a perfect starter question for the tv show QI...

hannob 5y ago

I had quite a few twitter discussions on this already. It's an interesting paper and I think a valuable contribution to the discussion. Though it should be noted that the authors make a lot of assumptions (naturally) and some of them are quite controversial. They consider three different methane leakage rates, which are probably a good range for what's happening in the US, but it's expected that some european sources have much lower rates. Their assumptions on CCS are more pessimistic compared to what other people expect, but you could argue compared to existing CCS projects they're actually optimistic. Then there's a whole debate around GWP20 vs. GWP100, which is whether you look at the greenhouse effect of methane vs. co2 over 20 or 100 years. The authors prefer GWP20, which is not the mainstream climate science position, but they do some of their calculations also with GWP100. tl;dr It's definitely worth a read and the authors make good points, but consider that other people see things differently.