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There are many, many uses for green hydrogen unrelated to road vehicles. Long-term power storage (use cheap summertime solar to bank hydrogen for utility power
by snewman 4y ago
There are many, many uses for green hydrogen unrelated to road vehicles. Long-term power storage (use cheap summertime solar to bank hydrogen for utility power in the winter), ammonia synthesis for fertilizer, replacing fossil fuels for high-temperature heat to drive industrial processes such as steel and cement production, possibly as fuel for long-haul shipping and aviation (either directly as hydrogen, or after conversion to other forms such as ammonia or hydrocarbons), etc.
- pfdietz 4y agoReduction of iron ore to metallic iron (DRI, "direct reduced iron").
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago> replacing fossil fuels for high-temperature heat to drive industrial processes such as steel and cement production IIUC, 1 kg of hydrogen has close to the same energy as 1 gallon of gasoline - which has 120k btu. It takes ~39 kWh with perfect efficiency to produce 1 kg of hydrogen (120k btu). 1 kWh = 3412 btu 39 kWh = 133k btu Wouldn't you always be better off converting kWh to heat than kWh to hydrogen and then burning hydrogen?
- foota 4y agoI think the key word here is high heat, I'm not sure electrical heating can be used in the same places?
- ehnto 4y agoI believe the hydrogen is actually part of the chemical process for steel production, not just a source of heat.
- GravitasFailure 4y agoFor steel making, hydrogen is used as a reducing agent to reduce iron oxide to iron. I think arc furnaces are the usual heat sources if you're not using coal or natural gas.
- bigger_cheese 4y agoI work in the steel industry so I can provide some background. An Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) uses electricity and solid feed such as scrap metal and/or DRI (Directly Reduced Iron Briquettes) to produce Steel. The electrical arcs basically melt the solid feed producing liquid steel. Note that an Arc Furnace needs highly metallic feed, Iron Ore which you dig up from the ground is an oxide (i.e. it is not metallic) it needs to be chemically reduced. You cannot feed ore directly into an Arc Furnace to produce steel. Arc Furnaces can recycle steel scrap into new steel but they are not suited to making virgin steel. The most common way of producing virgin steel from Iron Ore is through what is known as an integrated steel plant which combines two processes 1. A Blast Furnace - which uses chemical reduction to produce molten liquid Iron. 2. A Basic Oxygen Furnace (also known as an LD converter) which injects oxygen at supersonic speed into the liquid Blast Furnace iron to remove impurities such as Carbon and Phosphorus. This produces liquid steel at the end of the process Blast Furnaces use Carbon (Typically the carbon comes in form of coke, which is basically highly refined coal) for the chemical reduction of iron ore. CO2 is a byproduct of this reaction. There are some alternates to a Blast Furnace Such as DRI (which uses a gas such as Natural Gas rather than Coke). It is possible to chemically reduce Iron Ore using Hydrogen rather than Carbon (Thus avoiding CO2 as a byproduct) but for a variety of complicated technical reasons it is not as simple as just swapping the coke in a blast furnace one for one with hydrogen. Hydrogen is widely seen within the industry as being the future of steelmaking, there is massive ongoing effort currently underway to develop capability etc the industry is very much going through a transitional period at the moment. I know of one plant in Sweden which is doing some pretty cutting edge work in this area currently.
- GravitasFailure 4y agoThanks for the detailed reply! Is hydrogen being used as the heat source and the reducing agent, or is it exclusively for reduction?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]