6 ms·

Terraform Industries converts electricity and air into synthetic natural gas

53 points by jseliger 3y ago

avmich 3y ago
Not sure how to meaningfully participate in the movement, but certainly to watch Terraform Industries progress should be quite interesting.
jakozaur 3y ago
Congratulations! Though I can't still wrap my head around it: 1. Terraform needs to produce hydrogen using electrolysis. Turning hydrogen into natural gas requires more equipment and energy. 2. Simultaneously, we transform natural gas into hydrogen through natural gas reforming. Currently, hydrogen is vital for fertilizers and refineries. This also uses energy and a lot of equipment. So, before we produce synthetic natural gas, displacing hydrogen produced by fossil fuels with electrolytes should be more economical. On top of that, fertilizers such as ammonia are way easier to ship worldwide than natural gas.
- kurthr 3y ago
  Yeah, and there are several long used and relatively efficient ammonia generation methods for direct electrical conversion that uses nitrogen from the air and water with renewable electricity. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2021.580808/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2021.5808...
  - angiosperm 3y ago
    The social benefit of such production, considered strictly, probably far exceeds methane. But methane costs more to ship, and displaces demand for Russian gas. Economics is hard.
- mateo1 3y ago
  Producing hydrogen using electricity will only be more economical than than steam reforming when natural gas, coal and oil all run out. I respect the choice to move away from fossil fuels but if you do the calculations on how much this will cost, people will start having second thoughts.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Producing hydrogen using electricity is proportional to the cost of electricity. If electricity is crazy cheap, so is electrically produced hydrogen. (At site of production; transporting hydrogen is also expensive). Terraform is betting on the continuing cost reduction of solar.
    - busterarm 3y ago
      I wonder how many people on this board decrying the cost effectiveness here are also invested heavily in cryptocurrency...
      - angiosperm 3y ago
        Displacing mined methane is an overwhelmingly better use of excess power.
  - callalex 3y ago
    When calculating the costs, you don’t get to just ignore the huge, expensive harms caused by releasing CO2 and methane into the atmosphere because they are inconvenient.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Terraform believes that the decline in the cost of solar power will make their process profitable in 2027. Fertilizer & ammonia created using green hydrogen may be profitable earlier, lets say 2026. Seems to me Terraform made the right call by going for the bigger market. Edit. It looks like they're not ignoring fertilizer/ammonia either: "The company has ongoing discussions regarding prototyping or selling standalone electrolyzers as separate products" > On top of that, fertilizers such as ammonia are way easier to ship worldwide than natural gas. That's a big reason why Terraform is doing natgas. The cost of Natural Gas in most of the world is dominated by the cost of shipping. Terraform can produce locally and bypass shipping costs.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  The only buyers for green hydrogen or natural gas today are companies where the 'greenness' of the fuel matters far more than the price. They are happy to pay a 100x or even 1000x premium to have their CEO's car powered by green hydrogen.
  - avmich 3y ago
    As I understand it, the Terraform Industries idea is, roughly, to reduce the price.
jseliger 3y ago
More detail: https://terraformindustries.wordpress.com/2024/04/01/terraform-makes-carbon-neutral-natural-gas/ https://terraformindustries.wordpress.com/2024/04/01/terrafo...
analyte123 3y ago
The 273 btu of gas they have stored in those impressive cylinders is equivalent to 0.08 kWh. Here's hoping for more to come.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
Here's a sobering view on the economics of hydrogen: https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-clean-hydrogens-missing-trillions/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-clean-hydrogens-missin... Hint, they remain terrible and you shouldn't get your hopes up. Converting air into gas isn't hard technically. It's just really expensive. The expensive bits get waffled over a lot by proponents. But there's no real solution for this stuff just being really, really expensive.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  They've supposedly got their H2 cost under $2.50 per kg. Your link calls $2.20 per kg by 2030 "hopelessly optimistic". In comparison steam reformed hydrogen from natural gas costs $1.50 - $5.00 per kg.
  - jillesvangurp 3y ago
    That's excluding carbon capture, which is expensive. Blue hydrogen is being talked about a lot but isn't being produced at any scale worth talking about currently. Most hydrogen is grey hydrogen and a tiny amount of it is green hydrogen. This system proposes using hydrogen to create natural gas. Using grey hydrogen for this doesn't make any sense. It would be more efficient to just use the gas directly. You'd end up with more gas for less money. Even if you capture the carbon and somehow manage to get some cheap blue hydrogen it still doesn't make sense. Especially if you then go and burn the gas and dump the carbon back in the atmosphere. This plan only makes sense with green hydrogen. Which remains expensive.
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      They also claim to do carbon capture for $250 per ton.
    - fransje26 3y ago
      > Most hydrogen is grey hydrogen and a tiny amount of it is green hydrogen. They specifically explain that they produce fossil-free natural gas, i.e. the hydrogen they use is not grey hydrogen.
gimmeThaBeet 3y ago
I think this is really cool, I think the economics of it are really tough, but there's a lot of ways natural gas is just a much easier thing to deal with, or at least a more approachable with our current infrastructure. I think taking a step back though, the hydrogen itself is important in the first place. I don't know if it is the largest use of hydrogen, but certainly the significant use is in steam reformation of natural gas to make ammonia. It's not power generation, but it's keeping us alive and natural gas is a feedstock more than a fuel. You really are finding a way to replace it and its not fungible in the way electricity is.
xhkkffbf 3y ago
I've always thought it would be better to produce something like methanol. The chemistry is similar, but methanol is not gaseous (at typical temperatures). That makes it much easier to handle.
- angiosperm 3y ago
  Methanol is strictly harder. There is enough demand for any amount of hydrogen or methane that can be produced cheaply enough. Methanol can wait until those are saturated. Ammonia might be another intermediate step before it is worth doing methanol.
- singleshot_ 3y ago
  One thing about methanol that is not easier to handle is the fact it burns invisible on its own.
angiosperm 3y ago
The economics of this sort of thing is full of surprises. Someone with a solar farm who cannot sell the excess they produce at noon (local utility won't take it) can put it into producing methane to sell (or use), if the equipment is cheap enough to amortize over only the over-productive intervals. And claim extra carbon credits for displacing mined methane. They might install some extra panels to increase the intervals. Displacing methane they would have had to buy yields more value. Probably in the future it will be more profitable to produce ammonia instead. Ammonia is even more useful than methane.
- skybrian 3y ago
  Yes, the equipment needs to be cheap if it's not running very often, or it won't pay off.
  - bschne 3y ago
    That's their whole thing — they deliberately save on capex by accepting lower efficiency, because that in turn allows running it intermittently on cheap solar without extra costs like batteries or having to run on more expensive power in the night etc. I have no idea how realistic their end game is, but the general approach seems like a smart idea. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/08/16/how-to-produce-green-hydrogen-for-1-kg/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/08/16/how-to-produce...
- bodhiandphysics 3y ago
  Ammonia has the mild issue that it's not just flammable, but toxic and flammable!
c_o_n_v_e_x 3y ago
I'd be curious to see how much the economics change if they were go to go from DAC to sourcing CO2 from a pipeline.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  The math should be straightforward. From their white paper: $2.50/kg for H2 + $250 / ton for CO2 -> $10/kcf for methane. So we can roughly calculate how much of the $10 is H2, how much is CO2 and how much is the Sabatier process. I'd do it, but I'm supposed to be working and not confident I'd screw up the unit conversions.
skybrian 3y ago
I was a bit confused about where the hydrogen is coming from. Apparently, they pull water vapor out of the air as a side effect of capturing CO2.

53 points by jseliger 3y ago

Not sure how to meaningfully participate in the movement, but certainly to watch Terraform Industries progress should be quite interesting.

jakozaur 3y ago

Congratulations! Though I can't still wrap my head around it: 1. Terraform needs to produce hydrogen using electrolysis. Turning hydrogen into natural gas requires more equipment and energy. 2. Simultaneously, we transform natural gas into hydrogen through natural gas reforming. Currently, hydrogen is vital for fertilizers and refineries. This also uses energy and a lot of equipment. So, before we produce synthetic natural gas, displacing hydrogen produced by fossil fuels with electrolytes should be more economical. On top of that, fertilizers such as ammonia are way easier to ship worldwide than natural gas.

kurthr 3y ago
Yeah, and there are several long used and relatively efficient ammonia generation methods for direct electrical conversion that uses nitrogen from the air and water with renewable electricity. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2021.580808/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2021.5808...
- angiosperm 3y ago
  The social benefit of such production, considered strictly, probably far exceeds methane. But methane costs more to ship, and displaces demand for Russian gas. Economics is hard.
mateo1 3y ago
Producing hydrogen using electricity will only be more economical than than steam reforming when natural gas, coal and oil all run out. I respect the choice to move away from fossil fuels but if you do the calculations on how much this will cost, people will start having second thoughts.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Producing hydrogen using electricity is proportional to the cost of electricity. If electricity is crazy cheap, so is electrically produced hydrogen. (At site of production; transporting hydrogen is also expensive). Terraform is betting on the continuing cost reduction of solar.
  - busterarm 3y ago
    I wonder how many people on this board decrying the cost effectiveness here are also invested heavily in cryptocurrency...
    - angiosperm 3y ago
      Displacing mined methane is an overwhelmingly better use of excess power.
- callalex 3y ago
  When calculating the costs, you don’t get to just ignore the huge, expensive harms caused by releasing CO2 and methane into the atmosphere because they are inconvenient.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
Terraform believes that the decline in the cost of solar power will make their process profitable in 2027. Fertilizer & ammonia created using green hydrogen may be profitable earlier, lets say 2026. Seems to me Terraform made the right call by going for the bigger market. Edit. It looks like they're not ignoring fertilizer/ammonia either: "The company has ongoing discussions regarding prototyping or selling standalone electrolyzers as separate products" > On top of that, fertilizers such as ammonia are way easier to ship worldwide than natural gas. That's a big reason why Terraform is doing natgas. The cost of Natural Gas in most of the world is dominated by the cost of shipping. Terraform can produce locally and bypass shipping costs.
londons_explore 3y ago
The only buyers for green hydrogen or natural gas today are companies where the 'greenness' of the fuel matters far more than the price. They are happy to pay a 100x or even 1000x premium to have their CEO's car powered by green hydrogen.
- avmich 3y ago
  As I understand it, the Terraform Industries idea is, roughly, to reduce the price.

jseliger 3y ago

More detail: https://terraformindustries.wordpress.com/2024/04/01/terraform-makes-carbon-neutral-natural-gas/ https://terraformindustries.wordpress.com/2024/04/01/terrafo...

analyte123 3y ago

The 273 btu of gas they have stored in those impressive cylinders is equivalent to 0.08 kWh. Here's hoping for more to come.

jillesvangurp 3y ago

Here's a sobering view on the economics of hydrogen: https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-clean-hydrogens-missing-trillions/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-clean-hydrogens-missin... Hint, they remain terrible and you shouldn't get your hopes up. Converting air into gas isn't hard technically. It's just really expensive. The expensive bits get waffled over a lot by proponents. But there's no real solution for this stuff just being really, really expensive.

bryanlarsen 3y ago
They've supposedly got their H2 cost under $2.50 per kg. Your link calls $2.20 per kg by 2030 "hopelessly optimistic". In comparison steam reformed hydrogen from natural gas costs $1.50 - $5.00 per kg.
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  That's excluding carbon capture, which is expensive. Blue hydrogen is being talked about a lot but isn't being produced at any scale worth talking about currently. Most hydrogen is grey hydrogen and a tiny amount of it is green hydrogen. This system proposes using hydrogen to create natural gas. Using grey hydrogen for this doesn't make any sense. It would be more efficient to just use the gas directly. You'd end up with more gas for less money. Even if you capture the carbon and somehow manage to get some cheap blue hydrogen it still doesn't make sense. Especially if you then go and burn the gas and dump the carbon back in the atmosphere. This plan only makes sense with green hydrogen. Which remains expensive.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    They also claim to do carbon capture for $250 per ton.
  - fransje26 3y ago
    > Most hydrogen is grey hydrogen and a tiny amount of it is green hydrogen. They specifically explain that they produce fossil-free natural gas, i.e. the hydrogen they use is not grey hydrogen.

gimmeThaBeet 3y ago

I think this is really cool, I think the economics of it are really tough, but there's a lot of ways natural gas is just a much easier thing to deal with, or at least a more approachable with our current infrastructure. I think taking a step back though, the hydrogen itself is important in the first place. I don't know if it is the largest use of hydrogen, but certainly the significant use is in steam reformation of natural gas to make ammonia. It's not power generation, but it's keeping us alive and natural gas is a feedstock more than a fuel. You really are finding a way to replace it and its not fungible in the way electricity is.

xhkkffbf 3y ago

I've always thought it would be better to produce something like methanol. The chemistry is similar, but methanol is not gaseous (at typical temperatures). That makes it much easier to handle.

angiosperm 3y ago
Methanol is strictly harder. There is enough demand for any amount of hydrogen or methane that can be produced cheaply enough. Methanol can wait until those are saturated. Ammonia might be another intermediate step before it is worth doing methanol.
singleshot_ 3y ago
One thing about methanol that is not easier to handle is the fact it burns invisible on its own.

angiosperm 3y ago

The economics of this sort of thing is full of surprises. Someone with a solar farm who cannot sell the excess they produce at noon (local utility won't take it) can put it into producing methane to sell (or use), if the equipment is cheap enough to amortize over only the over-productive intervals. And claim extra carbon credits for displacing mined methane. They might install some extra panels to increase the intervals. Displacing methane they would have had to buy yields more value. Probably in the future it will be more profitable to produce ammonia instead. Ammonia is even more useful than methane.

skybrian 3y ago
Yes, the equipment needs to be cheap if it's not running very often, or it won't pay off.
- bschne 3y ago
  That's their whole thing — they deliberately save on capex by accepting lower efficiency, because that in turn allows running it intermittently on cheap solar without extra costs like batteries or having to run on more expensive power in the night etc. I have no idea how realistic their end game is, but the general approach seems like a smart idea. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/08/16/how-to-produce-green-hydrogen-for-1-kg/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/08/16/how-to-produce...
bodhiandphysics 3y ago
Ammonia has the mild issue that it's not just flammable, but toxic and flammable!

c_o_n_v_e_x 3y ago

I'd be curious to see how much the economics change if they were go to go from DAC to sourcing CO2 from a pipeline.

bryanlarsen 3y ago
The math should be straightforward. From their white paper: $2.50/kg for H2 + $250 / ton for CO2 -> $10/kcf for methane. So we can roughly calculate how much of the $10 is H2, how much is CO2 and how much is the Sabatier process. I'd do it, but I'm supposed to be working and not confident I'd screw up the unit conversions.

skybrian 3y ago

I was a bit confused about where the hydrogen is coming from. Apparently, they pull water vapor out of the air as a side effect of capturing CO2.