11 ms·
‘Gold hydrogen’ is an untapped resource in depleted oil wells
- habibur 4y agoThe numbers : Their cost : $1 / kg of H. Other's cost : $1.5 / kg on average. 1 kg H is equivalent to 1 gallon of petroleum fuel in energy.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
- Weryj 4y agoHave we not learnt: "to generate hydrogen and CO2."
- eloff 4y agoOnly if they can do something with the CO2 other than releasing it into the atmosphere. Like trapping it underground or storing it somehow. It's not a totally crazy idea, carbon capture from the atmosphere is very hard - there's only 400 parts per million. Carbon capture from concentrated sources, like the smokestacks of coal power plants is a real thing. It remains to be seen if it's done responsibly.
- lostlogin 4y agoThe article says they intend to leave it in the wells, and in one case, under a lake (which the locals are opposing).
- brutusborn 4y agoYes we have, CO2 only matters if it gets released. The article even suggests some solutions. Please don't make CO2 a boogieman when it doesn't need to be. CO2 produced in a wellbore =/= CO2 in the atmosphere.
- Teever 4y agoWe've taken the biosphere to the brink of devastation through this kind of carefree approach with CO2. The precautionary principle needs to at the forefront any large project involving hydrocarbons. Maybe instead of trusting the companies that got us into this mess we should, do the opposite, and not trust their claims?
- brutusborn 4y agoWe have caused devastation by CO2 emissions, not CO2 capture and storage. Reflexively opposing green tech that isn't up to your environmental standards is not useful. Nothing I said involved "trusting" these companies, I think they should be better regulated.
- Teever 4y agoQuibbling over words. We've caused devastation by over confidently assuming that we know what we're talking about and that there won't be any unintended consequences from our actions. We did it before and we'll do it again.
- dataflow 4y agoHonestly, "don't worry about the CO2, we can confine it" sounds a lot like "don't worry about the plastic, we'll recycle it".
- hinkley 4y agoAka more promises from proven liars.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- oehpr 4y ago"gold hydrogen" My god the hydrocarbon industry is shameless. "Our hydrogen got dumped on with this color grading system." "Not with out gold tier ultra premium deluxe hydrogen." And what happens to the carbon that hydrogen is bonded to? >Capturing or otherwise neutralizing the CO2 must be done safely, says Stephen Wallace, who runs a microbiology lab at the University of Edinburgh. But he adds that Cemvita Factory’s idea of OK so no plans. The most inexpensive thing possible will happen. This is grey hydrogen with branding.
- AtlasBarfed 4y agoHydrogen is a trojan horse. I give you exhibit A.
- nr2x 4y agoThere’s a lot of places with a ton of solar though, and you can use that for hydrogen. It could be a potential export from the Middle East. They also have the infra already.
- number6 4y agoSolar-powered desalination that produces water and hydrogen.
- jojobas 4y agoDesalination produces water and brine. Desalination and electrolysis don't have much in common.
- alexvoda 4y agoElectrolysis without first desalinating produces chlorine.
- number6 4y agoProducing desalinated water and hydrogen from seawater using solar energy. •Performing a multi-objective optimization to achieve the highest performance. •Considering low, high, and no solar radiation operational modes during a day. •Producing 4.33, 2.62, and 3.54 g/s of hydrogen for mentioned modes, respectively. •Attaining 81.5%, 27.9% and 50.61% of energy efficiency for mentioned modes, respectiv https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360319920344657 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03603... Don't know how much merit this has
- hinkley 4y ago> Once inside the well, the microbes began breaking down the residual oil hydrocarbons in there—dregs that would be unprofitable to extract—to generate hydrogen and CO2. So brown hydrogen, then.
- kamray23 4y agoEffectively. Less efficient than SMR (ideally 253 kJ/mol against 206 kJ/mol, microbes consume more, so even less so), produces literal CO₂, uses fossil fuels and is in any case has higher emissions than green hydrogen ever will. Or diesel. Or gasoline. Seems like a fairly bad idea.
- thinkcontext 4y agoProton Technologies (mentioned in the article) claims to solve the problem by using a membrane that only lets hydrogen pass through. That way all the co2 just stays in the well.
- Pxtl 4y agoYeah, this is just another flavor of blue hydrogen -- h2 generated in a way that releases co2 and they're suuuuper sure they'll figure out a way to capture it. Hydrogen tech is just a scam to greenwash the legacy fossil fuels industry.
- nmridul 4y agoThis.. It stuck me when I saw Aramco (Saudi oil major) advertising Hydrogen tech on TV. The brown and black hydrogen will be far cheaper than green hydrogen for some time. They also have the advantage of existing subsidised infrastructure for drilling and pumping. And when the hydrogen vehicles and Power stations become common, the common man have no choice but to purchase this cheaper hydrogen
- stubish 4y agoThe common man has no choice but to purchase what is available to them. With regulation, that will be Green. Without regulation, its unlikely retailers will even bother to stock Green until it is cheaper. Free Market, meet Tragedy of the Commons.
- Pxtl 4y agoWhich is why carbon pricing is the best option in terms of economics. If something's worth going dirty over, let people pay the price.
- goethes_kind 4y agoIMHO hydrogen as energy storage is not a scam. I can see it scaling much better than any other alternative as a means of energy storage and transport. However there are also lots of industry incumbents who are proposing hydrogen-themed solutions that are not even carbon neutral.
- j16sdiz 4y agoHydrogen, being the lightest gas, is much harder to store long term without leak.
- hannasm 4y ago"a biotech firm in Texas, had spritzed a carefully selected combination of bacteria" Would this spritz be measured in gallons or tons? As much as it's worth considering the co2 byproduct and it's affect, doesn't pumping large volumes of liquids into the earth like this lead to all sorts of unintended consequences as well?
- a3w 4y agoExponential growth means you could use a few hundred cells per type I guess. Leaking these cells into the biosphere and contaminating every other oil source would be, no pun intended, unwell.
- Ptchd 4y ago> doesn't pumping large volumes of liquids into the earth like this lead to all sorts of unintended consequences as well? Is it better to have the large voids that were created when oïl was extracted?
- skeeter2020 4y agoThis is not what an oil well looks like, and the article doesn't help with phrasing like "depleted cavern". An oil well is not a big cave filled with black, bubbling oil and a big "straw" poked into it. The hydrocarbons are held in the porosity of the rock, and pressures (both natural and introduced) force them to the wellbore. A very poor sponge is a better visible analogy, but even that over-represents the voids.
- thinkcontext 4y agoThat's what fracking is. It doesn't sound like this new company would be pumping anywhere near as much water, under as much pressure or with as toxic a mix.
- aaron695 4y ago
- rklaehn 4y agoI don't get the strong opposition to it. Yes, CO2 is a byproduct. And yes, that CO2 might leak out of the wells. But it would still be much better than the status quo, which is hydrogen from fossil fuels, with the CO2 being emitted 100%. Hydrogen is very much needed for chemical synthesis (ammonia for fertiliser), and can also be used to make steel. Using this would be much better than blue hydrogen. A good pragmatic solution until we have green hydrogen.
- lazide 4y agoThis hydrogen is from the fossil fuel underground, correct? The CO2 still is getting emitted in this plan, near as I can tell?
- kolinko 4y agoThis produces the same amount of co2 as the regular hydrogen generated from fossil fuels.p, unless they lock it underground permamently.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoCapturing the CO2 from doing this is the same lie as capturing fugitive methane. The line is stop drilling, digging and cutting.
- kamray23 4y ago> But it would still be much better than the status quo, which is hydrogen from fossil fuels, with the CO2 being emitted 100%. This produces the same amount. Actually, steam reforming is more efficient energy-wise, consuming 206 kJ/mol instead of the 253 kJ/mol this ideally consumes. Since the microbes are not being fed electricity, that comes out of the same fossil fuels, giving us an even worse, actually much worse, carbon / hydrogen ratio. The emissions are higher and storing the gas is no easier or harder than with ordinary SMR from natural gas or oil. We absolutely can and do store the CO from SMR, consuming many times the energy stored in the hydrogen coming out. It's really no solution at all and just a worse, less efficient version of hydrogen from fossil fuels. No matter how you seal it, nowhere close to the produced amount of CO₂ can fit in the well and it will nearly in its entirety just find alternative routes out. It's a waste of time, mostly.
- techdragon 4y agoJust going to say it, anyone using the mystery colour labels in their comments here, comes off to me (and I suspect others) as combinations of joking, obfuscating and even a little condescending since I’m familiar with the use of this sort of linguistic abstraction as a mechanism for gatekeeping, limiting the size of the audience that can speak to those that have kept up with current shibboleths. Blue, black, green, grey, white, translucent, gold, purple polka dot… this is a stupid way to name things… If it’s hydrogen derived from oil by industrial petrochemical processes like steam reforming or catalytic cracking, can we just use these terms… it’s not like we’re trying to explain which pump handles to fill up a car with, we’re talking about issues with a proposed concept and obfuscation of what that concept truly is and what it’s competing against, with cutesy colours labels… frankly just puts me off the entire hydrogen industry … Hydrogen is pretty easy to get ahold of chemically speaking because it’s everywhere. If we need to differentiate let’s just use the additional nouns necessary. “Hydrogen from Electrolysis powered by Carbon Neutral electricity” and “Hydrogen by thermochemical decomposition of organic waste powered by Carbon Neutral fuels” are ecologically better than “Hydrogen from Electrolysis powered by Coal” and “Hydrogen captured as a waste gas from existing oil refineries, with no other effort to reduce Carbon emissions“ I don’t normally come across a HN thread that reads so “cliquey” outside of the crypto community stuff… seeing this sort of stuff about Hydrogen is just weird.
- plaguepilled 4y agoBlame marketing teams + policy teams. They're the ones that push this terminology.
- RhodesianHunter 4y agoOr just people who prefer to use one simple word rather than a mouthful of technical ones.
- WarOnPrivacy 4y agoSure but using non-sequitur rainbow pieces to reference complex processes seems like the extreme end of uselessness. Wouldn't words that reflected stand-out parts of the process be more intuitive?
- jonplackett 4y agoIf this produces co2, then doesn’t this make the entire case for hydrogen pointless?
- a3w 4y agoIt does produce CO2. They just hope to store or contain it. Please don't. You can generate the H2 once. We need the infrastructure to produce our worldwide energy demand regeneratively anyway, so why take this risk?
- jojobas 4y agoIsn't there enough energy in hydrocarbons to do (C₂H)ₙ-> H₂ + H₂O + C?
- thombat 4y agoWhere did the oxygen come from? Presumably can't be too readily available to avoid heading straight to a second water & carbon monoxide.
- nightfly 4y agoThis isn't the only way to generate/extract hydrogen
- jonplackett 4y agoSorry I just meant isn’t it pointless - in this case
- linuxftw 4y agoNo. Not every energy innovation is concerned with CO2 production. This is a way to extract more energy from the earth. I expect the vast, vast majority of our energy is going to be derived from fossil fuels for the next 2-300 years.
- aritmo 4y ago'Gold hydrogen'? Sounds like the marketing term 'clean coal'.
- quickthrower2 4y agoAn innovative energy tech that increases co2 emissions is not that exciting. Kind of hope it is not economical for this reason. Unless they can trap the co2 it but not sure how?
- jeroenhd 4y agoStuff like this is why the fossil fuel industry keeps pushing for hydrogen rather than solar + batteries as a replacement for the current fuel system. Hydrogen can be created cleanly, but once the infrastructure is in place, the cheapest and most profitable sources will all be fossil fuel sites, depleted or otherwise. I'm glad electric cars are already taking off. Hydrogen may have a future for storage for excess renewable energy eventually, but as a simple replacement for gas tanks it's simply dangerous.
- stuaxo 4y ago"Hydrogen, which releases zero carbon emissions" Except the article already stated the Co2 is already emitted as part of the process of breaking down these hydrocarbons (club being in their name) - "microbes began breaking down the residual oil hydrocarbons in there—dregs that would be unprofitable to extract—to generate hydrogen and CO2."
- elil17 4y ago> It will be important to prevent the CO2 byproduct from leaking into the atmosphere and contributing to climate change, however. Cemvita Factory argues that it can keep the CO2 locked underground, use other microbes to fix it somehow, or find commercial uses for the greenhouse gas… Exactly what solution Cemvita would use in each location—and how successfully—isn’t yet known. Seems like a bit of a dealbreaker to me. CO2 storage is a huge unsolved problem. This is about as close to a climate friendly solution as saying “we’ll do traditional hydrogen and put the CO2 somewhere.” Theoretically fine but not a practical idea at the moment.
- Kerbonut 4y agoWe need to scale up graphene from co2
- thinkcontext 4y agoProton Technologies (mentioned in the article) claims to solve the problem by using a membrane that only lets hydrogen pass through. That way all the co2 just stays in the well.
- jonstewart 4y agoMore oil company-funded hydrogen distractions.