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Green hydrogen is made from electricity. The cost of green hydrogen is currently high, but it is dropping faster than pretty much any other energy storage techn
by enslavedrobot 4y ago
Green hydrogen is made from electricity. The cost of green hydrogen is currently high, but it is dropping faster than pretty much any other energy storage technology. Hydrogen storage is an order of magnitude cheaper (or more) than any other tech. It is expensive because of the cost of electrolyzers/fuel-cells that convert between electricity and H2. These costs are dropping fast at efficiencies of 80%+ along with the cost of solar and wind. If you project the cost declines into the future the economics of producing hydrogen at remote solar wind farms, generating hydrogen, and transporting the H2 by tanker or pipeline are compelling.
Abu Dhabi already sells solar electricity for 1.35 cents/kWh. That price will drop by at 3-5x as solar reaches maturity. Natural gas plants sell power for ~6cents/kWh. Green hydrogen will have at least 5.5cents/kWh ($1.80/kg) of wiggle room to generate returns.
Many people consider batteries to be superior to hydrogen for all business cases. This isn't true for applications that need more than ~10 hours or so of capacity. Sub 10 hours is a huge market and encompasses almost all transportation, but there is a vast market for storage beyond 10 hours.
The Achilles heel of batteries is that the power of the battery and the energy stored by the battery are linked. An Li battery can easily discharge itself in one hour. If you want 10 hours of storage you need to buy a battery that could deliver 10x the power you're asking it to. This dramatically increases the cost and sheer tonnage of materials required to make the required system. Green hydrogen systems only require equipment that can deliver power at 1x the requirement with a storage tank that holds 10 hours of fuel. This means that there is always a crossover point where hydrogen becomes cheaper than batteries. My projection for the future is that this number will be around 10-20 hours.
This makes hydrogen the best choice for many applications and is the reason why lots of governments are into the idea. Transportation is only around ~20% of the energy we use, much of the rest might come from renewable hydrogen in the future.
- cbmuser 4y agoJapan plans to make hydrogen using high-temperature nuclear reactors (HTGR or HTTR). See: https://www.jaea.go.jp/04/o-arai/en/research/research_03.html https://www.jaea.go.jp/04/o-arai/en/research/research_03.htm...
- enslavedrobot 4y agoHigh temperature hydrogen electrolysis is a proven cheap tech. The main problem is the cost of nuclear in my opinion.
- 6510 4y agoWhile one could easily do arm chair criticism the author of the top article thought it more convenient to just ignore it?
- amluto 4y agoNifty. The chemical process involved appears to be: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur–iodine_cycle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur–iodine_cycle 50% thermal efficiency from nuclear to hydrogen sounds very good.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoExcept nuclear steam generators have to run at well under 830 degrees and at low head because of two loop cooling and corrosion issues so odds are pretty good this will be about as reliable as every other gas cooled reactor and be shut down in 10 years.
- dbspin 4y agoUnfortunately 'green hydrogen' currently isn't. "Under baseline conditions, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are around one-quarter that of the currently dominant process for hydrogen production, steam methane reforming (SMR). However, sensitivity analysis shows that GHG emissions may be comparable to SMR under reasonably anticipated conditions. " https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/ee/d1ee01288f https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/ee/d1ee0...
- enslavedrobot 4y agoI think this type of analysis fails to project the future. GHG emissions from solar cell production will decline as the inputs and processes used to make them begin to use renewable energy. Green hydrogen decouples H2 generation from hydrocarbons, and industrial uses of H2 will be critical in decoupling more processes and industries from fossil fuels. That's the whole point. The other part of the abstract suggests that grid energy will be required to buffer intermittent renewables. This argument assumes that it is not possible to design H2 electrolyzers that can rapidly adapt to a change in electrical input, which is simply a relatively straightforward engineering challenge. I find it hard to believe that the authors of this paper didn't already know all of this.