8 ms·

Sure, if you're only using it as storage in a largely electrified economy. The attraction of synthetic methane is that it is 1) transportable in existing pipe

by rgmerk 3y ago

Sure, if you're only using it as storage in a largely electrified economy. The attraction of synthetic methane is that it is 1) transportable in existing pipelines, including to millions of homes and small businesses. 2) usable in literally millions of existing devices 3) relatively easy to ship. None of those things are true for hydrogen.

chii 3y ago
so the question becomes whether it's harder to improve CO2 capture, or to make transporting and using hydrogen (ala, build out new or improve existing pipes, machines etc). I would imagine that improving CO2 capture is "easier", because it requires fewer people to cooperate. Existing infrastructure replacement/improvements will need large numbers of people to agree on what, who and how. And you know how that goes...
pfdietz 3y ago
It's more efficient to burn hydrogen (or methane) in a combined cycle plant and use that power to drive heat pumps in homes and businesses, than it would be to burn that fuel in furnaces there. As an added bonus, you can often drive those heat pumps directly from renewable sources without the conversion cost of electrolysis (and for methane, DAC and methane synthesis.) Methane also has the probably unavoidable problem of leaks in the distribution network. It's a strong greenhouse gas; even small leaks are very problematic.
- rgmerk 3y ago
  Yes, I agree, and am of the view that the widespread distribution of piped gas (hydrogen, methane, or blends thereof) to homes and small business is going to be phased out for the reasons you describe. But you can see why some people are trying to make a drop-in, clean-ish (modulo fugitive emissions) replacement for fossil gas.
- angiosperm 3y ago
  Incidentally, leaked hydrogen is substantially worse, as a greenhouse gas, than methane.
  - fomine3 3y ago
    Is it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential#Values https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential#Value...
  - morsch 3y ago
    In the atmosphere? No. The GWP of methane is about twice as high as hydrogen, as far as we know. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential
  - semi-extrinsic 3y ago
    Nope, the GWP of methane is 2x larger than hydrogen, both on 20 and 100 year time scales. And that's on an equal-mass basis. If you consider an equal-energy basis (which is what we actually care about), methane is 5x worse than hydrogen. Finally, hydrogen has wider flammability limits than methane, so from a safety perspective you have to make hydrogen systems even more leak-proof than methane/natural gas systems.
    - angiosperm 3y ago
      The atmosphere has a limited capacity for turning H2 into H2O. As more H2 is released, each molecule takes longer to be neutralized.
      - pfdietz 3y ago
        It may be possible to increase this capacity, for example by releasing iron salt aerosols. These would generate additional OH and Cl radicals by photochemical reactions in sunlight. It would be better to use that increase to destroy methane, though. I also wonder if it could be better to make hydrogen by electrolysis of salt water and produce chlorine instead of oxygen. Released into sunlit atmosphere, chlorine is rapidly decomposed to Cl radicals which will rapidly react with methane (or hydrogen). You'd want to release it at sufficiently low dilution that there's enough methane in each air parcel to consume all the chlorine, though.
  - 3y ago
- jaclaz 3y ago
  >It's more efficient to burn hydrogen (or methane) in a combined cycle plant and use that power to drive heat pumps in homes and businesses Well, heat pumps powered by methane do exist since years, the were biggish but there is a trend towards making smaller units suitable for home use, JFYI: http://www.roburheatpumps.co.uk/ http://www.roburheatpumps.co.uk/
- rcme 3y ago
  It might be more efficient in terms of raw power inputs, but in cold climates using methane is still way cheaper at current prices.
  - ianburrell 3y ago
    In any scenario where electricity is cheap enough to make hydrogen or methane, it is cheap enough to run heat pumps. It is cheap enough to use heat strips. It is cheap enough to use the savings to buy everyone with gas furnace a heat pump.
whimsicalism 3y ago
Synthetic methane also would enable renewable, carbon-neutral plastics - I have a friend working on a startup that is using microorganisms to produce traditional petrochemical precursors and they have said a major barrier to this being green is that the methanol that the bacteria needs is typically produced from natgas now.
Loic 3y ago
We are in the process of using current gas pipelines for pure hydrogen in Germany. It is also possible to mix a percentage of hydrogen in the normal feed of gas burners. For the moment only at the industrial scale. Home devices are not yet adapted. Industry is quick to adapt especially because of the incentives.
- b3orn 3y ago
  Are we? Do you have a source for that? Unless it has already been built with hydrogen in mind we'd need completely new infrastructure, pipepines, storage and turbines in power plants.
  - ben_bai 3y ago
    We aren't. It's all a pipe dream. We want to, but Hydrogen is much harder to contain than Methane. If anything we are closer to dismantling the gas pipelines then to use them for Hydrogen. All the attached "Appliances" must be converted from using Methan to Hydrogen, too. Not gonna happen.
    - defrost 3y ago
      I suspect the plans in Germany are to import Hydrogen as Ammonia from overseas in addition to directly creating and locally storing hydrogen from wind and solar power .. all to feed local generators to baseload the German powergrid. https://www.wasserstoff-niedersachsen.de/en/wilhelmshaven-green-energy-hub/ https://www.wasserstoff-niedersachsen.de/en/wilhelmshaven-gr... https://www.ewe.com/en/media-center/press-releases/2022/11/tes-and-ewe-to-build-500mw-electrolyser-at-wilhelmshaven-green-energy-hub-ewe-ag https://www.ewe.com/en/media-center/press-releases/2022/11/t... https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/fortescue-germanys-tree-energy-partner-develop-green-hydrogen-facility-2022-10-04/ https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/fortes...
    - Loic 3y ago
      I can tell you that the industry, that is, the biggest are setting up the infrastructure at the moment to have H2 transit between the "North" and the Ruhr region. So, yes, we do it now. Source: I work in oil & gas.
tastyfreeze 3y ago
I agree on methane being the ideal energy storage medium. It can be synthesisize but it is more efficient to use an anaerobic digester to turn organic waste to methane.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Methane is not ideal. Liquid hydrocarbons would be much easier to store. They might be harder to make than methane, but then methane is harder to make than hydrogen (from non-biomass renewables), so by that metric methane isn't ideal either.
  - tastyfreeze 3y ago
    If we have the energy available for longer hydrocarbons, sure, do it. Methane is the feedstock. We would do well to produce as much methane as possible as local as possible. Everybody wants natural gas and we spend a lot of energy transporting it around the world.
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      Longer chain hydrocarbons are more valuable as feedstocks than methane, too. Methane is used to make ammonia because it's so cheap.
      - tastyfreeze 3y ago
        I'm not referring to the Haber-Bosch process. Fischer-Tropsch process also uses syngas mosty derived by steam reforming methane. FT is used to make a variety of hydrocarbons. If we are breaking hydrocarbons down to build them back from scratch might as well use the cheapest feedstock. That is currently methane. The nice thing about methane is we can get it almost for free, anywhere, using biology. That means we can continue our high energy lifestyle relying less on moving energy around.
hef19898 3y ago
Hydrogen is also ised in a variety of industries, including steel. Today, that hydrogen is a by-product of oil refining. Having a green hydrogen source that is cost competitive is a great thing. No idea if the 1 USD per kg is realistic so.
- thinkcontext 3y ago
  Hydrogen is consumed during oil refining, it is not generally a big byproduct.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Most hydrogen is produced deliberately by steam methane reforming (SMR). Some 6% of world natural gas demand is making hydrogen. The primary use is for synthesis of ammonia (with hydrodesulfurization of petroleum also important.)
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> 1) transportable in existing pipelines, including to millions of homes and small businesses. Thats not an advantage if hydrogen does not need to be transported at all - you burn it in a powerplant and send out electrons.

by rgmerk 3y ago

chii 3y ago

so the question becomes whether it's harder to improve CO2 capture, or to make transporting and using hydrogen (ala, build out new or improve existing pipes, machines etc). I would imagine that improving CO2 capture is "easier", because it requires fewer people to cooperate. Existing infrastructure replacement/improvements will need large numbers of people to agree on what, who and how. And you know how that goes...

pfdietz 3y ago

It's more efficient to burn hydrogen (or methane) in a combined cycle plant and use that power to drive heat pumps in homes and businesses, than it would be to burn that fuel in furnaces there. As an added bonus, you can often drive those heat pumps directly from renewable sources without the conversion cost of electrolysis (and for methane, DAC and methane synthesis.) Methane also has the probably unavoidable problem of leaks in the distribution network. It's a strong greenhouse gas; even small leaks are very problematic.

rgmerk 3y ago
Yes, I agree, and am of the view that the widespread distribution of piped gas (hydrogen, methane, or blends thereof) to homes and small business is going to be phased out for the reasons you describe. But you can see why some people are trying to make a drop-in, clean-ish (modulo fugitive emissions) replacement for fossil gas.
angiosperm 3y ago
Incidentally, leaked hydrogen is substantially worse, as a greenhouse gas, than methane.
- fomine3 3y ago
  Is it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential#Values https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential#Value...
- morsch 3y ago
  In the atmosphere? No. The GWP of methane is about twice as high as hydrogen, as far as we know. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential
- semi-extrinsic 3y ago
  Nope, the GWP of methane is 2x larger than hydrogen, both on 20 and 100 year time scales. And that's on an equal-mass basis. If you consider an equal-energy basis (which is what we actually care about), methane is 5x worse than hydrogen. Finally, hydrogen has wider flammability limits than methane, so from a safety perspective you have to make hydrogen systems even more leak-proof than methane/natural gas systems.
  - angiosperm 3y ago
    The atmosphere has a limited capacity for turning H2 into H2O. As more H2 is released, each molecule takes longer to be neutralized.
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      It may be possible to increase this capacity, for example by releasing iron salt aerosols. These would generate additional OH and Cl radicals by photochemical reactions in sunlight. It would be better to use that increase to destroy methane, though. I also wonder if it could be better to make hydrogen by electrolysis of salt water and produce chlorine instead of oxygen. Released into sunlit atmosphere, chlorine is rapidly decomposed to Cl radicals which will rapidly react with methane (or hydrogen). You'd want to release it at sufficiently low dilution that there's enough methane in each air parcel to consume all the chlorine, though.
- 3y ago
jaclaz 3y ago
>It's more efficient to burn hydrogen (or methane) in a combined cycle plant and use that power to drive heat pumps in homes and businesses Well, heat pumps powered by methane do exist since years, the were biggish but there is a trend towards making smaller units suitable for home use, JFYI: http://www.roburheatpumps.co.uk/ http://www.roburheatpumps.co.uk/
rcme 3y ago
It might be more efficient in terms of raw power inputs, but in cold climates using methane is still way cheaper at current prices.
- ianburrell 3y ago
  In any scenario where electricity is cheap enough to make hydrogen or methane, it is cheap enough to run heat pumps. It is cheap enough to use heat strips. It is cheap enough to use the savings to buy everyone with gas furnace a heat pump.

whimsicalism 3y ago

Synthetic methane also would enable renewable, carbon-neutral plastics - I have a friend working on a startup that is using microorganisms to produce traditional petrochemical precursors and they have said a major barrier to this being green is that the methanol that the bacteria needs is typically produced from natgas now.

Loic 3y ago

We are in the process of using current gas pipelines for pure hydrogen in Germany. It is also possible to mix a percentage of hydrogen in the normal feed of gas burners. For the moment only at the industrial scale. Home devices are not yet adapted. Industry is quick to adapt especially because of the incentives.

b3orn 3y ago
Are we? Do you have a source for that? Unless it has already been built with hydrogen in mind we'd need completely new infrastructure, pipepines, storage and turbines in power plants.
- ben_bai 3y ago
  We aren't. It's all a pipe dream. We want to, but Hydrogen is much harder to contain than Methane. If anything we are closer to dismantling the gas pipelines then to use them for Hydrogen. All the attached "Appliances" must be converted from using Methan to Hydrogen, too. Not gonna happen.
  - defrost 3y ago
    I suspect the plans in Germany are to import Hydrogen as Ammonia from overseas in addition to directly creating and locally storing hydrogen from wind and solar power .. all to feed local generators to baseload the German powergrid. https://www.wasserstoff-niedersachsen.de/en/wilhelmshaven-green-energy-hub/ https://www.wasserstoff-niedersachsen.de/en/wilhelmshaven-gr... https://www.ewe.com/en/media-center/press-releases/2022/11/tes-and-ewe-to-build-500mw-electrolyser-at-wilhelmshaven-green-energy-hub-ewe-ag https://www.ewe.com/en/media-center/press-releases/2022/11/t... https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/fortescue-germanys-tree-energy-partner-develop-green-hydrogen-facility-2022-10-04/ https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/fortes...
  - Loic 3y ago
    I can tell you that the industry, that is, the biggest are setting up the infrastructure at the moment to have H2 transit between the "North" and the Ruhr region. So, yes, we do it now. Source: I work in oil & gas.

tastyfreeze 3y ago

I agree on methane being the ideal energy storage medium. It can be synthesisize but it is more efficient to use an anaerobic digester to turn organic waste to methane.

pfdietz 3y ago
Methane is not ideal. Liquid hydrocarbons would be much easier to store. They might be harder to make than methane, but then methane is harder to make than hydrogen (from non-biomass renewables), so by that metric methane isn't ideal either.
- tastyfreeze 3y ago
  If we have the energy available for longer hydrocarbons, sure, do it. Methane is the feedstock. We would do well to produce as much methane as possible as local as possible. Everybody wants natural gas and we spend a lot of energy transporting it around the world.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Longer chain hydrocarbons are more valuable as feedstocks than methane, too. Methane is used to make ammonia because it's so cheap.
    - tastyfreeze 3y ago
      I'm not referring to the Haber-Bosch process. Fischer-Tropsch process also uses syngas mosty derived by steam reforming methane. FT is used to make a variety of hydrocarbons. If we are breaking hydrocarbons down to build them back from scratch might as well use the cheapest feedstock. That is currently methane. The nice thing about methane is we can get it almost for free, anywhere, using biology. That means we can continue our high energy lifestyle relying less on moving energy around.

hef19898 3y ago

Hydrogen is also ised in a variety of industries, including steel. Today, that hydrogen is a by-product of oil refining. Having a green hydrogen source that is cost competitive is a great thing. No idea if the 1 USD per kg is realistic so.

thinkcontext 3y ago
Hydrogen is consumed during oil refining, it is not generally a big byproduct.
pfdietz 3y ago
Most hydrogen is produced deliberately by steam methane reforming (SMR). Some 6% of world natural gas demand is making hydrogen. The primary use is for synthesis of ammonia (with hydrodesulfurization of petroleum also important.)

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

> 1) transportable in existing pipelines, including to millions of homes and small businesses. Thats not an advantage if hydrogen does not need to be transported at all - you burn it in a powerplant and send out electrons.