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India’s biggest businesses are tapping green hydrogen as a future fuel
- tyronehed 4y agoHydrogen is not the answer. This decision will eventually be seen as a colossal mistake. If they plan to use solar photovoltaic to make hydrogen, then it's much more efficient to just use the electricity directly, without going through hydrogen. They will end up making brown hydrogen and won't admit it, doing absolutely nothing to help the climate catastrophe--but they will be able to claim in public that they are.
- jl6 4y agoRenewables->electrolysis->hydrogen->ammonia could be a viable energy storage and transport system, regardless of efficiency, as long as it can be made cheap enough. Not all energy demand is easy to run a wire to, and those demands will be willing to pay the cost of inefficiency as long as the absolute price is bearable.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- uthinter 4y agoIt is just one of the legs of diversification. India is also investing heavily into Na-ion batteries. It already has swathes of solar farms and twenty two working nuclear reactors and 13 more in the pipeline .
- ncmncm 4y agoIndia will regret the money wasted on the nukes, and mothball them as they turn out to be unable to find bids for power at a price they can afford to offer. Some will be kept operating at a loss for a while, as ego props.
- pfdietz 4y agoYou are repeating a common, but very flawed and invalid, argument there. Yes, batteries are more efficient than power-to-hydrogen-to-power. But the "cost of inefficiency" is proportional to the number of charge-discharge cycles of the storage system over its economic lifespan. For diurnal storage, you'd be correct, hydrogen is a poor choice. But diurnal storage is only one storage use case. For other storage use cases, such as seasonal storage, or backup against rare prolonged outages of renewable sources, there are relatively few charge/discharge cycles. For those uses, hydrogen is vastly superior to batteries. The argument that hydrogen would imply use of fossil fuels is nonsense. Fossil fuels are going to have to be kept in the ground in general by punishing legal sanction. What makes production of hydrogen somehow immune to that?
- ben_w 4y agoThe best thing hydrogen has going for it is that it’s easy to scale up without needing significant increases in mining and processing various minerals. If you are willing to increase mining, and want the cheapest solution, and you can ignore or solve geopolitics, the “best” solution is neither hydrogen or batteries, it’s to make a several square meter cross-section HVDC loops around the planet, because nighttime winter is never more than 20 Mm from daytime summer and the losses are low enough that it is still worthwhile. But: you probably still want hydrogen and batteries for the vehicles, and vehicles use so much power that solving transport almost automatically gives you enough used parts to build the storage capacity for the electricity grid, and that even with batteries (and over-provisioning PV, which is fine because of how cheap it is), there would be enough storage for winter.
- WJW 4y ago> and you can ignore or solve geopolitics That's a hell of an "if" statement there my friend :) I agree though, in a thousand years there will be a worldwide electricity grid that takes care of the "big picture" energy flows; hydrogen will be created as needed to serve as chemical feedstock to make eg plastics or hydrocarbons for specialized purposes. That or we kill ourselves in the meantime, but since killing everyone is in nobody's best interest I don't think that'll happen. Hopefully.
- radicalbyte 4y agoI'm not sure - I could see both India and Australia become massive energy exporters if they make proper use of their available resources. In which case Hydrogen makes sense.
- adamredwoods 4y agoFrom the article they're already using brown hydrogen: >> Almost all of this demand came from oil refining and industrial sectors, mainly for production of ammonia and methane. Hydrogen produced from fossil fuels for these applications results in close to 900 MT CO2 emissions per year, according to IEA data. Oil refiners are largest consumers (40 MT). The gas they use is usually produced onsite by either steam methane reforming, separated from by-product gases through petrochemical processes or sourced externally as merchant hydrogen. Since use of low-carbon hydrogen in refining is not economically viable yet, refiners are trying to move to carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) technologies to lower carbon footprint. In this process, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide formed during the ‘coal to hydrogen’ process are trapped and stored in an environmentally sustainable manner. Estimates say use of low-carbon hydrogen in refining rose from 250 KT in 2019 to more than 300 KT in 2020, and based on the current pipeline of projects, 1.2-1.4 MT low-carbon hydrogen is likely to be used in refining by 2030.
- tmaly 4y agoI still think it would be cool to have zeppelins again. I am sure they could improve the safety of them today.
- You-Are-Right 4y agoI imagine all the people on my street parking their zeppelins will be fun!
- beachy 4y agoI don't know - it would only take one nutter with a sniper rifle and an incendiary bullet to cause the next Hindenberg.
- jl6 4y agoI don’t recognize the article’s definition of blue hydrogen, which I believe is normally used to refer to hydrogen derived from natural gas, not “from water”
- CyanBird 4y agoCorrect, blue hydrogen is hydrogen derived from fossil fuels, tho it doesn't need to necessarily be directly obtained from natural gas, could be just that natural gas or even coal is used for driving electrolysis
- shagie 4y agoThere's an entire spectrum of hydrogen "colors" - https://hydrogen-central.com/cummins-hydrogen-rainbow-colors/ https://hydrogen-central.com/cummins-hydrogen-rainbow-colors... and https://rail.ricardo.com/news/opinion-decoding-the-hydrogen-t-rainbow https://rail.ricardo.com/news/opinion-decoding-the-hydrogen-... Getting hydrogen from water is one of: red or purple (nuclear - depending on process), yellow (solar), green (other renewables).
- ncmncm 4y agoBlue hydrogen is a mythical beast, H2 made from NG and the carbon captured, somehow. It is not actually produced, but poisons discussion. Very soon NG will be too expensive to bother extracting, as renewables cost continues plummeting. It will all be green. People will laugh at us for having thought up blue hydrogen.
- lelag 4y ago
- arcen 4y agoI really do not understand what your argument is here. COP26 wanted two countries to stall their development + projects to help the poor in the nation. In addition, no real alternative was offered.
- ClumsyPilot 4y agomost emission were made by developed countries, already screwing India. The omly chance for india is to industrialise rapidly, so either debeloped nations offer money ans technology transfer, or India uses the same resources Europe and US did
- sbmthakur 4y agoYou cannot "get rid" of coal when 70% of your energy comes from it and there's not enough renewable energy infrastructure.
- wumpus 4y agoMany countries used to be > 70% coal and are less now. Can you explain how that's somehow impossible to do in the remaining countries?
- samarthr1 4y agoMany countries also burnt massive amounts of coal when they were industrializing. It is a bit unfair to compare a 70 year old country with a 400 year old country which routinely exports war, waste to countries poorer than themselves no?
- wumpus 4y agoI didn't make that comparison, and it has nothing to do with the conversation.
- 4y ago
- julosflb 4y agoHydrogen as such can't replace fossil fuels as it needs to be produced first using energy. It is only a vector. So many people make the confusion thinking that hydrogen is the solution.
- epistasis 4y agoThe article goes into deep discussion about this, and is actually fairly reasonable, and the plan looks fairly realistic (except perhaps fuel).
- Ma8ee 4y agoI don't think ever had been suggested as a source of energy, only as a form of storage.
- kumarvvr 4y agoThe idea is that energy from renewables can be converted to Hydrogen, which acts as a store of energy. It is a better store of energy than batteries, as scaling up batteries to grid scale is next to impossible. Hydrogen, however, can take advantage of existing gas and oil infrastructure. And once a critical mass is reached, along with electrification of transportation, we can drastically reduce oil usage.
- ncmncm 4y agoScaling up batteries to grid scale is very far from "impossible". You just need a hell of a lot of batteries, so it is expensive. Other, cheaper systems will be favored. Systems and procedures for LNG can probably be adapted for LH2 with not too much difficulty, but ammonia will be the more practical choice, most places.
- kumarvvr 4y agoBatteries alao have the additional burden of recycling and pollution issues of their own. Not to mention replacement every 10 to 15 years. When it comes to Hydrogen, its basically industrial compressors, tanks, piping, etc.
- epistasis 4y agoThe article is much better than the headline. But headlines always have weaknesses, and can never convey it all. Hydrogen will be a great chemical feedstock, and be used in all sorts of chemical processes that need to be decarbonized. But thinking it will be a fuel is pretty clearly not going to happen. At best it will be one step towards a fuel. Or it will be a fuel in a few areas with very special geography: salt caverns. Or maybe I'm wrong and somebody comes up with an easy and cost effective way to store significant amounts of hydrogen. That would be a wonderful way to be wrong.
- politician 4y agoAmmonia?
- epistasis 4y agoWe will definitely be making a ton of that for fertilizer, and use green hydrogen as a feedstock for that. Using green ammonia a fuel would be, as I said, using hydrogen as a step towards other fields. But I sincerely hope ammonia is never allowed as a fuel near cities, because the NOx pollution would be horrifying. I think ammonia as a fuel for shipping might be more realistic. But then, I'm just a random guy on the internet who spends an hour or two a day learning about the energy transition, I could be very wrong.
- franckl 4y agoLow NOx ammonia burner have been demonstrated, and you can add an SCR filters to filter the rest. Our team at Airthium is working on a low NOx external ammonia burner tailored to our energy storage system.
- Jistern 4y agoIn addition, NH3 (ammonia) would probably first be used in cargo ships (which I learned in another thread here on HackerNews) which currently produce vast amounts of pollution. The main point is this: cheap, clean, renewable electricity promises to make fuel cheap. Those who claim "Hydrogen isn't a fuel; it's a means of storing energy." are absolutely wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel "A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as thermal energy or to be used for work." Usually, the hydrogen-isn't-a-fuel wonks seem to be social justice warriors who are arguing speciously out of anger against fossil fuel companies which they believe are pushing hydrogen as a means to increase the use of "dirty hydrogen."
- anon20220703 4y ago
- bobthepanda 4y agoQuestion because I'm not familiar: if you need water to make hydrogen, isn't that an issue in countries that are having water issues, like India?
- kristjank 4y agoI am not familiar either, but I imagine the answer is similar to the vegan argument against grazing cattle: not all water sources are made equal.
- xyzzyz 4y agoAs a very rough approximation (just to get a proper order of magnitude), to make enough hydrogen fuel through electrolysis to run a car, you need about as much water as you would need gasoline. Compared to daily household needs, it’s insubstantial, and compared to agricultural needs, it’s less than rounding error.
- ummonk 4y agoThe amount of water used would be minuscule, and besides, electrolysis is probably cheaper using sea water anyway. Water shortages happen because agriculture uses so much water, not because we don’t have much of it.
- kumarvvr 4y agoNot much water is required to produce hydrogen in the scale required. And, it can also be captured and recycled.
- ummonk 4y ago> For energy-starved India, which is aiming for carbon neutrality by 2070, the path to energy security goes through a mix of oil, coal, blended fuels, natural gas, renewables and electricity. Kind of conspicuous omission not to mention India’s nuclear plan to bootstrap to thorium reactors.
- ncmncm 4y agoBecause they are a boutique item that, at most, produces a vanishingly small fraction of used energy. Most likely they will be abandoned as it becomes clear they cannot be made competitive with other sources.
- np1810 4y agoAs much as India can rely on Solar/Wind/Water/Other green energy sources, we would still need good storage solutions that can cater to high demand-low supply scenarios. Any country has to be least reliant on foreign countries for energy, especially for future worst-case situations. India barely has any raw lithium reserves[0] compared to other countries[1] to go for battery energy storage. (Long-term possibility: India does have abundant raw material for "some new-age" batteries like sodium-ion.) Optimistically, I think just like batteries have improved so much in the last few decades[2], we might overcome the current problems with hydrogen as well. [0]:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_resources_of_India#Lithium https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_resources_of_India#L... [1]:https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2020/03/lithium-mining-what-you-should-know-about-the-contentious-issue.html https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2020/03/lithium... [2]:https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years-away-no-batteries-are-improving-under-your-nose/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years...
- ncmncm 4y agoBatteries are the most expensive storage alternative. There are myriad other, cheaper methods. India will use many of them, in different places and scales.
- 8bitsrule 4y agoGreen hydrogen is expensive to make and store ... gotta wonder about the economics. It'd be great if there was a chemical reaction path that leads to some common fuel that removes CO2 from the air as it 'burns'. Don't know enough organic chem to know if that's even possible. (But then, maybe, life ... finds a way.)
- bamboozled 4y agoWhere does this come from? I hear it all the time. Nearly everything starts out expensive and difficult, then over time, with innovation it becomes cheaper. Coal, oil and gas were the same until all the infrastructure was made, mining technology improved. What do people who write this same comment over and over want people to do? Nothing?
- jazzyjackson 4y agocheaper than climate change
- sva_ 4y agoI don't think there's nearly enough co2 in the atmosphere to support such a reaction (0.04%)
- known 4y agoHigh-pressure tanks weigh much more than the hydrogen they can hold. The hydrogen may be around 5.7% of the total mass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density