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The 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, a
by epistasis 4y ago
The 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."
- ncmncm 4y agoShipbuilders are investing in electrolysed ammonia production at ports right now, to fuel the ships they will build to burn it. Full production at the first such I know of is scheduled for 2026. It takes a damn long time to build GW-scale anything.
- Jistern 4y agoActually, you were the one who taught me this. Please see... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31832490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31832490 Thanks. Here's a link I suggest you include when posting on the subject... https://spectrum.ieee.org/why-the-shipping-industry-is-betting-big-on-ammonia https://spectrum.ieee.org/why-the-shipping-industry-is-betti... "Also by 2024, the Viking Energy is poised to become the first vessel propelled by ammonia fuel cells...." Hydrogen and ammonia per se are not very important. What's important is that as a result of cheap, plentiful, renewable energy, a huge opportunity now exists for an efficient and effective means of converting that energy into a useful fuel (or fuels). Please understand that I’m not arguing that hydrogen, generally, and ammonia, in particular, are bad fuels. They seem to be very promising… today. But I can imagine that they might be replaced in, say, 25 years with “the next big thing.” What’s unlikely to change in, say, 25 years is this: cheap, plentiful, renewable energy. When looking at energy these days, most engineers and business people are struggling with the following: they are so accustomed to energy being dear (being expensive) that they are having a difficult time wrapping their minds around the new reality. Namely, energy, much like most popular commercial agricultural products in the West from, say, 1650 to 1875, and steel from 1850-1875, and long-distance phone calls from 1985 to 2005, is on the cusp of becoming extremely inexpensive. One of the results of cheap energy is obvious: energy efficiency will become much less important than it is today. Imagine if you lived in Phoenix, Arizona. You’d probably be somewhat focused on conserving fresh water because, well, fresh water is expensive there, just as it is in the middle of most hot, arid deserts. But what if you moved from Phoenix, Arizona to, say, Recife, Brazil? You probably wouldn’t bother much with conserving fresh water because, well, much of the time, you could quench your thirst simply by walking outside, looking up, and opening your mouth. (I’m being facetious). Collectively, vis-à-vis useful energy, it is as if we were all quickly moving from Phoenix, Arizona to Recife, Brazil. Of course the Hacker News hoi polloi will need to find a new casus belli once the global warming boogeyman abruptly vanishes ignominiously into the dustbin of history along with their pet energy fantasy, nuucuuler energy (read in the accent of President George W. Bush). Finally, I’ve become extremely contemptuous of the arrogant and ignorant arguments in favor of nuclear energy on Hacker News that seem to pop up every month or so. These days wind and solar are generally cheaper and easier means of creating useful energy. (Sure, nuclear-powered submarines make sense, but that’s a very small niche case). Bring on downvotes… cowards!
- epistasis 4y agoI love the vision on your website. Any chance such scrubbers and combustion could be put on mobile engines for motorcycles and cars and trucks? That's my biggest fear for ammonia being combusted in cities. Though batteries handle city-based use cases well, once ammonia is a fuel I fear for urban environments with poor air pollutions controls, like those often found in India.
- politician 4y agoI agree with you that we should be wary of burning Ammonia as a fuel directly, but its use for liquified hydrogen transport is extremely interesting. One paper: https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(20)30495-5 https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(20)30495-5
- ncmncm 4y agoAmmonia will certainly be burned for fuel, at first in ships, soon after in peaker plants, eventually in farm and construction equipment.
- politician 4y agoIt makes total sense, but I’m just concerned about the consequences of an overturned tanker truck of ammonia in a populated city. The other use cases are fine afaic: offshore, rural.
- ncmncm 4y agoTrucks of it might be banned from densely populated areas, or require extra safety precautions.
- Jistern 4y agoI think you are obsessed with ammonia as a fuel source. Ammonia might never make it to peaker plants, nor farm, nor construction equipment. The sun shines brightly 100% of the time and the wind blows strongly 100% of the time... somewhere. California currently imports electricity from... Wyoming. With a network of ultra-high-voltage electricity transmission (UHV electricity transmission) lines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-voltage_electricity_transmission_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-voltage_electricity... throughout the USA, the current concern many engineers seem to have with "the energy storage problem" associated with renewable energy might vanish into irrelevancy. At 7pm on Tuesday, most of the East Coast might get 80% of its electricity produced by photovoltaics in the Mojave Desert in Nevada; whereas on Wednesday at 2am, Florida might get 90% of its electricity produced from wind generators in Custer County in Oklahoma. Even if 20% of the electricity were lost due to long-distance transmission, it wouldn't matter much if the electricity were produced extremely inexpensively. Currently, almost 100% of the aforementioned solar and wind energy are "lost" because almost all of the sunlight in the desert simply lands on the ground, and the wind in the prairies simply blows along without being utilized. Sure, for airplanes and cargo ships, fuel is important. But for most terrestrial uses (such as in cities and farms) "just in time" electricity might be the best solution. "But, what about outages?" I'm glad you asked. The military and hospitals have backup diesel generators. Personally, I think "evil" coal-fired power plants might be a feasible source of local, backup electricity which would normally be used very rarely. The current "anti-coal" bandwagon is absurd. Coal is a great source of fuel. However, much of the world "went crazy" burning way, way, way too much coal for a couple of hundred years. We never should have done that because of the terrible pollution we suffered from. My favorite things about coal are this: it's very easy to store and very easy to burn. If people want to store tanks of hydrogen gas in their backyards above ground, or tanks of ammonia underground, that would probably be fine too. But for large scale, backup sources of electricity (say for a city like Portland, Oregon) "evil" coal-fired power plants might be the cheapest and easiest method. As long as the ultra-high-voltage electricity transmission network has suitable redundancy, is maintained properly, and is not sabotaged (say, by terrorists) then I would guess that within 10 years or so, it would be up over 95% of the time; and within 25 years or so, it would be up over 99% of the time.
- Ma8ee 4y agoWhat is hard with storing hydrogen? I've heard that they plan to use tanks that currently are used to store natural gas.
- regularfry 4y agoHydrogen leaks much more easily than bigger molecules. It's entirely possible that existing storage systems designed for natural gas would be completely unusable for H2. You've also got to account for hydrogen embrittlement, where the small size of the hydrogen molecule means that under pressure it works its way into the crystal lattice of the metal of the container itself, and changes its mechanical properties.
- ncmncm 4y agoLeaks and embrittlement are always trotted out as big problems. But they are a product of high pressure. Keep pressure low and ensure positive airflow in any closed space, and there is little to worry about.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoHigher pressure is necessary to keep costs down, smaller pipes and higher pressure is what makes sense for vast majority of liquids and gases.
- ncmncm 4y agoThere will be no need to pipe H2 long distances. It can be made locally from wired in power. Where a large amount must be handled, underground caverns at low pressure and LH2 tanks at ambient pressure will be favored.
- regularfry 4y agoThat precludes reusing existing infrastructure at the same pressures as today, though. For the same pressure, H2 will leak worse than natural gas. And it's not just a pressure problem, either: embrittlement will happen at room temperature and pressure, just through diffusion.
- semi-extrinsic 4y ago> 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. Liquefaction is the way. We already do it for natural gas (LNG), we just need to build similar infrastructure for LH2.
- tonmoy 4y agoSince this article talks about using renewable electricity to produce hydrogen, the H2 storage and distribution has to be more efficient and safer than transmission lines + Li ion batteries. Note Li ion battery technology is likely to keep improving for the next decade as well
- ncmncm 4y agoBatteries will not be used in energy transport. Transmission lines will be favored for up to 2000 km, ships full of liquified ammonia much beyond that. Far northern cities without reliable transmission lines will get regular ammonia shipments from solar farms in the tropics, just as they get LNG today.
- gruez 4y ago>> Or maybe I'm wrong and somebody comes up with an easy and cost effective way to store significant amounts of hydrogen >We already do it for natural gas (LNG), we just need to build similar infrastructure for LH2. That doesn't address the "easy and cost effective" part. Current estimates say that the energy required is 30% of the energy value of the hydrogen itself. >But whereas liquefying natural gas only requires temperatures of -160°C, to liquefy hydrogen you need refrigeration systems capable of getting down to -253°C. That is an expensive proposition. Using current technologies the energy required is 30% of that in the hydrogen being liquefied. https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2022/06/23/making-natural-gas-emissions-free-will-be-a-challenge https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2022/06/23/ma...
- ncmncm 4y agoWhen the energy going in is cheap, efficiency can become the least important concern. LH2 is the obviously correct fuel for future aviation. But probably few other places.
- dang 4y agoSubmitted title was "India plans to replace fossil fuels with hydrogen". We've replaced it with a more neutral subtitle from the article.
- themitigating 4y agoDo you record users who modify titles which you later replace?
- epistasis 4y agoMany outlets A/B test headlines, or otherwise change them, so it can be hard to know what the article's headline was at submission compared to the eventual headline.
- heavyset_go 4y agoThat, and the title of the article can change, and the metadata embedded in the page that encodes the title doesn't get changed with it.
- markdown 4y agoMaybe 2 or 3 hours of code and testing. Not hard at all. Save the headline at submission, then a few more times more later. Let us see all the headlines when we hover the title.
- themitigating 4y agoI meant to punish users who alter the titles
- mensetmanusman 4y agoSometimes the title does not fit in the HN submission box.
- 4y ago
- phkahler 4y ago>> Or maybe I'm wrong and somebody comes up with an easy and cost effective way to store significant amounts of hydrogen. Don't forget "safe". A hydrogen leak is extremely dangerous, as it detonates over a very wide range of concentrations and is flammable over more.
- ncmncm 4y agoA hydrogen leak in a confined space is dangerous. People working with hydrogen will quickly learn to take the "positive airflow" requirement seriously.
- kumarvvr 4y agoHydrogen is a great way to store energy, a crucial step to replace batteries. Imagine a network of solar power plants, that store their energy in form of Hydrogen during day and generate power during peak and night hours. The world needs to pour investments into such an infrastructure, so that we can have a chance at a fully carbon free world.
- ncmncm 4y agoHydrogen will be one storage medium among many. It is not the cheapest, but has certain practical advantages that overcome that, in places.
- rasz 4y ago>Hydrogen is a great way to store energy Have we solved hydrogen embrittlement? Last time I checked storage was terrible compared to something like LNG/LPG.
- pfdietz 4y agoThe difficulty imposed by embrittlement is greatly overstated. It just means one needs to pay attention and not use the wrong material. Since the world manipulates some 70 megatons of hydrogen each year, it should be obvious that materials are well known that can contain this gas (otherwise, how the hell could that huge amount of gas have been manipulated?)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kwatsonafter 4y agoI like the cut of your jib mister.
- ncmncm 4y agoLiquified hydrogen will anyway be the fuel of all future aviation. Enough will be stored in underground tanks at airports to fuel aircraft for a day. More will be made at need via transmission line and local electrolysis.
- epistasis 4y agoIMHO, hydrogen for aviation seems exceedingly unlikely, it will require redesign of all aircraft. And aircraft are fairly long lived capital. It seems far more likely that we will create synthetic kerosene (from hydrogen feedstocks).
- ncmncm 4y agoAll aircraft age out. Anyplace where LH2 aircraft are in use, kerosene craft will be found to be completely unable to compete. Thus, starting on key routes, kerosene craft will be driven off to less profitable routes. Demand for LH2 craft will be driven by need to stay in the market at all. The earlier adopters will profit most, initially pocketing the huge difference between current prices and their own cost, and later by wholly owning the most profitable routes.
- fomine3 4y agoWhy unable to compete?
- ncmncm 4y agoFirst, all of the extra weight left off because the fuel for a flight weighs much less is available for extra paying cargo. Second, because the hydrogen for a flight will cost less than kerosene, because it was made on-site rather than pumped, refined, and trucked in. Further, it was made at the time of day when grid power was cheapest. The result is that an LH2 operator can always undercut a kerosene operator, anytime they compete. The kerosene operator only gets flights the LH2 operator passes up. Thus, the LH2 operator also gets the most profitable routes, because those are where they choose to bid. Even after synthetic kerosene becomes available, it will necessarily cost more than hydrogen, and not anyway be made on-site, and still weigh too much.
- baybal2 4y agoBiggest use of hydrogen today is to make heavy oil lighter. Then, it's fertiliser. If there will be a massive double digit global switch to EVs, green hydrogen becomes uneconomical to produce.
- _hypx 4y agoHydrogen will be a fuel. Except for synfuels, nothing has the necessary energy density for a huge of use cases.