Hydrogen Hoopla

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Hydrogen is rapidly becoming the#1 Poster Child as the replacement fuel for use in industry and heavy equipment where currently we depend primarily on diesel fuel as the energy source.  The biggest challenge is producing enough "Green" hydrogen to meet the demand.  Green H is made by using renewable electricity, primarily from wind and solar installations to split water into its component elements of Hydrogen and Oxygen.  Carbon is not involved in the process at all.

Currently, only 1% of H on the market is Green, but that is set to change dramatically over the next 5 years as pretty much every big player in the energy market is busy building Green H production facilities.  China, USA, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Sweden and many others all are building production facilities.  This is one of those situations where they very well may build so much capacity so fast there won't be enough machines yet operating using it that the market is oversupplied and the price will be forced down so nobody can make a profit on it.

Energy density compared to hydrocarbons is much lower, and the need to either compress it or cool it to liquid adds complexity, cost, space and weight, so in general you have shorter range and more refueling to do than with FFs.  However, with the exception of long range jet aircraft travel, it is a suitable replacement for FFs.

It will be interesting to see how much infrastructure can be put in place by 2030.  If they could achieve say 20% reduction in FFs replaced by Green Hydrogen by 2030, it's conceivable a full transition could be completed by 2050.  If so, the worst case scenarios of collapse might be avoided.

Iime will tell, but it's something we can keep track of over the near term to have a window to the longer term effect of fossil fuel depletion.  Use this thread to keep track of developments in Hydrogen energy.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Race-for-Green-Hydrogen-Dominance-is-Heating-Up.html

The Race for Green Hydrogen Dominance is Heating Up

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[RE]

The costs for green hydrogen are coming down, and while this doesn't help with the energy density issues, it does make it more economically viable as a fuel, particularly if you make it yourself.

The current cost of H if you buy it is around $16/kg.  However, PRODUCTION cost via electrolysis in the FSoA is around $2.60/kg.  Price target for next year is $2/kg, $1/kg by 2031.  So as you can see, MOST of the cost comes not from the production, but from the costs involved instoring it, transporting it and marketing it, plus taxes of course.

If you produce it yourself at home with a solar system, it is FREE of course, after you have paid for the cost of all your equipment.  A home installation with about 6kw of power is the size of a complete setup that Honda has as a demo, it's very high tech looking and will probably cost a fortune.  It also is slow doing a fillup, you gotta leave it overnight filling your tank from the H it makes during the day.  The amount total fuel it produces in one day of I assume average sunshine also is not huge, 8 hours to produce enough for 30 miles of driving.  Besides what you see in the Honda video, you would need a bigger tank to store more hydrogen and a car with more tank space than this honda demo vehicle has.  Practically speaking, you're probably limited to maybe 100 miles of driving, which is a serious limitation no matter what the price point is.

However, you have to remember that using it as transportation fuel is only one aspect of H, it's real value is for LDES (long duration energy storage) where you can store H you produce during summer months for use in the winter for heating and producing electricity for your Doomstead.  For this, you would need also a couple of 1000 gal compressed gas tanks, the kind people who use propane for heating have up here.

The total setup cost on a doomstead with the big tanks and the compressor and electrolyser and solar cells etc I am WAGing at $30K.  I'm sure NF could make a more knowledgable and accurate estimate.

Hydrogen can't replace FFs completely, but as part of a basket of different technologies that includes batteries, gravity & compressed air storage and pumped hydro, if enough renewable energy production systems are brought online, these LDES methods fill in the gaps that intermittent production has with wind and solar.  Hydrogen can also be used for the direct production of ammonia needed for fertilizer, mostly made now from methane.  So this could alleviate food production problems as FFs diminish in availability.

Do we still have problems?  You bet we do.  Will there still be a significant population die off? Yes.  However, there is more hopium now that we are not facing an extinction level event, and that we can maintain a level of technology above the stone age.  Whether we will actually do that is another question entirely.  It is at least theoretically possible though.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/05/07/the-hydrogen-stream-us-government-targets-2-kg-by-2026-1-kg-by-2031/

The Hydrogen Stream: US government targets $2/kg by 2026, $1/kg by 2031

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[RE]

I have heard this one before, and if you understand the energetics of oxidation-reduction reactions, you know why what is being sold either is total bullshit, or you're not getting the whole story.  3 articles on Water fueled engines popped up today, and only in this one do I see what they are trying to do and how they're doing it.

What they are developing is a catalyst that does the hydrolysis (splitting water into H & O), and thereafter your vehicle can use the H either in a fuel cell to generate electricity, or in an ICE or Jet engine to provde mechanical energy through combustion.

The reason energetically this doesn't fly is because the reaction 2H₂O --> 2H₂+O₂ is ENDOTHERMIC, meaning it takes energy to make it happen.  All catalysts do is speed up a reaction, they don't drive reactions forward that are endothermic.

However, IF you have a catalyst that you can add energy to by charging it up electrically first, then pass water by it or through it, H & O will come out the other side.  This is what these folks at ILU are trying to make.  It's a catalytic battery of sorts.

Why is this useful?  It resolves the storage problem of Hydrogen, instead of compressing it or liquifying it, it hangs out at room temperature together with the O atom in a molecule of water.  When you need the H to power your vehicle, the catalyst splits it off, the H is recombined with a new O atom and the energy is released to do work.

Brilliant, so where's the problem?  2 places, first is WTF is this catalytic material you can charge up, and what's the energy density of it when charged?  Sounds like it's solid state material so should be very dense by mass/volume, energy/mass ratio is unknown here.  Has to be very high because of problem #2, efficiency and loss.   You have to go through two transitions here back and forth water to H and back to water, and substantial energy is lost both times.  How much?  Dunno.

However, IN THEORY,this resolves the final problem with using H as fuel, the storage problem.  It all hinges on haw much energy can be stored in the catalytic material, and how many times it can go through charge/discharge cycles.

I do not expect this material to be produced in commercial quantity anytime too soon.

https://www.iit.edu/news/goodbye-gasoline-hello-water

Goodbye Gasoline, Hello Water

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[K-Dog]

Life should be more than pointing out the obvious.

The law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant; it is said to be conserved over time.  In the case of a closed system the principle says that the total amount of energy within the system can only be changed through energy entering or leaving the system.

So (Car + battery + water + catalyst + ICE engine) is supposed to be better than (Car + battery + electric motor)?

We only have one power source the battery.  We will use the same battery in both cars. 

The water to gas conversion will have 50% power loss.  And the ICE engine will only be 30% efficient.  The power loss in the electric motor car is only from the imperfect efficiency of the electric motor, which at 85% is at least double the ICE engine.  The wires between the battery and motor waste negligible power.  Only the 85% efficiency has to be considered.

If the battery has charge to drive the ICE engine car 15 miles, the same charge will make a standard electric powered EV go 85 miles if they weigh the same.  But wait there is more.

The weight of the ICE motor is hundreds of pounds.  That is weight the standard EV does not need at all, so expect the range ratio to be more like ten to one after you add in the weight of all the additional and totally unnecessary new hydrogen conversion hardware.  An electric motor has a better power to weight ratio than an ICE motor does.  And far better efficiency.^*  Adding hydrogen to the mix can only reduce efficiency.  Conservation of energy says so.

* A high-performance electric motor used in electric vehicles can have a power-to-weight ratio of 6 kW/kg or higher.  A typical internal combustion engine in a car could have a power-to-weight ratio of only 0.1 to 1.0 kW/kg.

[RE]

The water to gas conversion will have 50% power loss

Where did you get that figure from?  They didn't give any specifics on the energetics of the catalyst.  They don't even have a final product yet.  It's a good guess, but it's hard to say for sure.

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[K-Dog]

The water to gas conversion will have 50% power loss

Where did you get that figure from?  They didn't give any specifics on the energetics of the catalyst.  They don't even have a final product yet.  It's a good guess, but it's hard to say for sure.

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No it is not.  In the absence of other info, using the typical efficiency of water hydrolysis is fine.  Using any other figure would be irresponsible and show a complete misunderstanding of physics.  A catalyst only makes a reaction happen.  It cannot change the overall efficiency.  That would violate the law of conservation of energy.

[RE]

It is not what?  A good guess?

I already said catalysts only speed up reactions.

The efficiency has nothing to do with the catalysis, efficiency only measures the amount of useable energy you get versus the amount of waste heat. They didn't say how efficiently the water was produced in the reaction.  They didn't even say how much energy they stored in the catalyst.  It's all a big mystery.  That's why the claim is suspect.  Until those things are revealed, you won't know where they are, only that they say they have a candidate for the process.

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[RE]

The legendary German automaker  Porche has decided the future of the 911 is Hydrogen.  Or maybe alcohol or ammonia.  OOr some kind f potpourri mixture of a basket of fuels.  Together mostly with fuel cells rather than combusttion for the most part, although combustion in some applications.

I'm wondering if they could work up an engine that uses Ammonium Nitrate?  You, know, the stuff we make BOMBS from.     GREAT energy density!  Problem of course is it's a solid state material.  I'.m thinking perhaps a slurry of nanopparticles, which would add another high tech buzzword into the mix here.  Or maybe ammonium perchlorate.  That's used as a solid rocket propellant and might be great for Private Jets.

Wait.  Forget the  jets and go straight to Private Space Planes!  Unfortunately, the recent 1st test flight by another German compnay crashed on takeoff, but that hasn't deterred them  from going to the next model.  Werner von Braun would not give up.



https://newatlas.com/aircraft/polaris-mira-test-flight-crash/

All we need is to think outside the box, I'm sure we can come up with something.

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/evs-porsche-hydrogen/2029/

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[RE]

Well, despite the low energy density, Airbus and the Europeans apparently feel Liquid Hydrogen will work for them as Aviation fuel.

It is conceivable in Europe, since most of the routes are quite short. About the longest is London-Athens at 3.5 hours.  The Regional Jets in the FSoA fly similar distances.  If these routes were convverted to liquid H, and FFs were restricted to the long trans-oceanic flights, that would probably cut CO₂ emmissions by 70% or more.

You wouldn't be able to fly non-stop NY-LA anymore, you'd have to refuel in Chicago or St. Louis, but that's not too huge a drop in speed and wouldn't affect commerce that much.

Anyhow, they wouldn't be doing this if the couldn't use it at all.

https://simpleflying.com/airbus-european-hydrogen-refueling/

Airbus Leading European Hydrogen Refueling Project

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[RE]

Well, Toyota seems to have solved the problem of where to store all the Hydrogen for your EV Happy Motoring without giving up any passenger space or cargo capacity.  They just dropped high pressure tanks under the whole fucking chassis!



What could possibly go wrong? lol.  Don't worry, Toyota has a very good safety record. 

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/japan-california-hydrogen-tesla-evs/2228/

The ultimate futuristic end to EVs: Japan chooses this U.S. state to outperform Tesla

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[RE]

MOAR Hydrogen Hoopla in CA!

EcoNewz is apparently the main propaganda organ for Green Hydrogen.  Prior to the H push, I don't ever remember seeing this website before.  Now it appears every day in my Google Newz summary.  This of course because I click the links, so I get still more off them.  Since there is no Paywall, I can actually read more than just the headline.  Very smooth propaganda method.

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https://www.ecoticias.com/en/new-energy-hydrogen-us/2269/

U.S. starts producing new energy: largest plant ever built and 3 tons per day

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[RE]

Despite the Negative Waves regarding the low energy density of Hydrogen making it unsuitable for use as a transportation fuel, SwRI has in fact built a Hydrogen fueled, ICE powered tractor utilizing a modified Cummins engine designed for running on NG.

As with the Toyota car that gets around the problem of where to put all the tanks you need to hold the H underneath the car on the chassis,  the tractor has all the tanks strapped onto the cab like a backpack.  Looks like a standard Freightliner tractor was used for the prototype.



So, it appears that this actually CAN be done.  Beyond building enough renewable energy plants and getting the H refueling hardware into the main truckstops on the interstate, there's no major technical hurdle that needs to be overcome to make this work.  It just remains to be seen if they can produce enough Green Hydrogen, distribute the pumps and storage tanks and replace the current FF powered fleet at a cost that people can afford to pay for the products being shipped fast enough to keep this vital system from collapsing as the FFs become scarce and expensive.

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/swris-heavy-duty-hydrogen-engine

SwRI's heavy-duty hydrogen engine offers 2,025 Nm torque with ultra-low emissions

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[RE]

At least in trucking, the H power transition has made an official commercial beginning in South Korea.  That's a pretty big step towards demonstrating its feasibility in this area of the transportation energy problem, which is one of the biggest problem areas in making the transition to renewable energy.

The other main important question is how rapidly the production of Green Hydrogen can be scaled up to meet the demand of replacing the Millions of gallons of diesel burned each year to move our food from farm to table and toys from Amazon distribution center to living room entertainment center.  China has gone a long way toward producing the mega quantities of Solar PV panels needed, however they're not all deployed nor are they all hooked up to Hydrolysis plants that can take millions of gallons of water and turn it into millions of gallons of liquid H, which is how it probably will leave the factory as then used to fill compressed gas H tanks at truckstops.  At some point NG pipelines may be converted to carry H instead, but in the beginning I suspect it will mostly be moved in bulk as a liquid.

The FSoA is well behind China in both solar PV total generating capacity as well as in production of green H.  Currently, the cost of H in the FSoA is quadruple what it is coming in at over in Asia, and then even the cheaper Asian price is higher than the cost of diesel.  So inevitably, if this transition moves forward it's going to raise transportation costs until such time as the cost of the H is brought down significantly.

The transition is likely to have many supply-demand imbalances which will also vary by region and country and will depend a lot on how subsidies are sprinkled out and how the financing is done.  That is likely to be a major political football in the energy and transportation industries.

However, despite all the obvious problems, it's a hopium-full break from the usual Star Trek ideas that get floated every day for replacing FFs, the technology all exists and the only question is how much Green H can be produced how fast?  They will need a LOT of it to completely substitute for Diesel in all the trucks driving on the Eisenhower Interstate every day.  How much time they have before there are substantial shortfalls in diesel supply is a known unknown.  The countdown has begun.

https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/commercial-sales-of-hydrogen-engine-trucks-will-begin-this-year-followed-by-exponential-growth-analyst/2-1-1656234

Commercial sales of hydrogen-engine trucks will begin this year, followed by exponential growth: analyst

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[RE]

The argument that Hydrogen can't be used for aviation is now in dispute.  This eVTOL plane supposedly does 320 mph and has an 1150 mile range.  It flies at 21,000 feet, slightly under the 30,000 ft for most long flights bur still well above the weather in most cases.

It's Private Jet size for Billionaires, but I see no reason it wouldn't scale up for commercial passenger flights.  Actually, bigger planes have better volume/surface area ratio and can use heavier structural materials than smaller ones.

Calling it a "Jet" is a misnomer, because it uses electrically power fans, not direct propulsion from hot gas as a real jet engine does, but that's really irrelevant.  It flies at a fast enough speed to do NY-St Louis in under 3 hours and St.Louis-Denver in 2.5 hrs and Denver-LA 2.5 also.  So, 8 hrs, plus you don't need a landing strip.  The lack of sufficient range to do transatlantic and transpacific flights though makes its overall commercial viability outlook poor.  Looks like mainly a toy for billionaires.

I find this still to be questionable, because along with a dozen photos of the plane and 2 videos showing engineers in meetings, there was no video of the plane in action.  I also wonder how well all those little fans would work in a heavy rain?  BMW is a reputable companyy though, so that gives it a little extra credibility.

https://newatlas.com/aircraft/global-unveiling-sirius-ceo-jet-hydrogen-electric/

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[RE]

Now for the opposite argument, which uses basic physics and math to demonstrate why Hydrogen is a EPIC FAILURE as aviation fuel.  It does it well, and definitely with the current aircraft used by the aviation industry, you can kiss off H as direct fuel for keeping the Billionaire Private Jets airborne.

However, this doesn't necessarily mean being grounded for good, if you're rich enough.  I see two possible solutions to the problem.

I mentioned one a while back, which is to switch from Jet engines to Rocket engines utilizing Solid Fuel propellant like the old Space Shuttle.  Ammonium Nitrate, also used for Fertilizer and making Bombs is used for solid rocket fuel.  This can be synthesized by taking Nitrogen and hydrogenating it over a catalyst to make Ammonia, then combining that with Nitrates created by oxidizing Nitrogen.  All these synthetic reactions require the input of gobs of energy, but this (in theory) could be sourced from renewable power generation.

The other is taking biologically sourced carbon compounds, such as Wood Gas or Ethanol, hydrogenating them and polymerizing up the carbon chain to 5-7 atoms and using pentane-hexane-heptane as your jet fuel.  This produces CO₂ when burned, but it's carbon neutral since the carbon comes from plants you grow to make the wood gas or alcohol.

This whole process would be very expensive and the fuel would cost a bundle, but this is irrelevant to Elon's $56B pay package.  Also explains why Elon & Jeff have Rocket companies, they need them to build their Private Rockets.

You however can kiss off your vacations in Hawaii, unless you have time to sail there.

https://cleantechnica.com/2024/07/01/another-day-another-hydrogen-transportation-firm-plummets-to-earth/

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