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This is interesting, but it does strike me as a little surprising that if there’s a lot of extractable hydrogen available we haven’t had more indications of it
by rgmerk 4y ago
This is interesting, but it does strike me as a little surprising that if there’s a lot of extractable hydrogen available we haven’t had more indications of it already (yes, I read the article).
It’s worth noting here that a disadvantage of hydrogen is that unlike coal, oil, and to a lesser extent natural gas it’s hard to put it in a ship and transport it. So in a world where there’s cheap hydrogen in Mali and few other locations, it’s more likely that some hydrogen-intensive or energy-intensive industries will shift to Mali rather than Mali exporting lots of hydrogen to Europe, North America or Asia.
- b112 4y agoh2 is shipped all the time, by boat, rail, road, pipeline and more. It is not hard to ship, it's easy to store and transport, this is a solved problem. That said, obviously ... local generation is best. The same goes for oil extraction, and power production (dam or nuclear or solar or wind), local is best.
- rgmerk 4y agoBulk H2 is not currently shipped. There was considerable fanfare in 2022 when an experimental hydrogen carrier shipped hydrogen from Australia to Japan: https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/worlds-first-hydrogen-tanker-ship-test-cargo-australia-japan-2022-01-20/ https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/worlds-first-hy... Ammonia is routinely shipped but as I understand it the conversion process has considerable inefficiencies which would push up the cost of using it as an energy carrier to unviable levels.
- b112 4y agoBulk H2 is not currently shipped Sure it is. Just because it ships with other things, eg railcar size but on ship, doesn't invalidate this truth. It is a solved thing, it is not complex, it is merely that we haven't needed whole tanker shipping yet.
- rgmerk 4y agoThat's like pointing to Climeworks and saying that direct air capture is a solved problem. There's no doubt we can do it if money is no object; whether we can do so at scale cheaply enough to be worth doing is another question entirely.
- b112 4y agoWe ship sawdust to China, and it comes back glued into fake wood, as cheap furniture. If we can do that cost effectively, h2 shipping at immense volume is trivial.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]