4 ms·
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 ba
by 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 agoThe atmosphere has a limited capacity for turning H2 into H2O. As more H2 is released, each molecule takes longer to be neutralized.
- pfdietz 3y agoIt 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.