OT - Hydrogen economy - please explain

All true, but doing the same comparison for gasoline, you will find that gasoline has an appalling efficiency. Not only energy is lost, but CO2 being released directly to the atmosphere at the refineries.
And there is also the issue with other harmful particles emitted to the atmosphere, where hydrogen is very close to zero emission.

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I am not trying to justify or promote the use of petrol (gasoline) or diesel, or any fossil fuel. My question was just about the hydrogen economy. I am not trying to attack green energy, I think solar power, wind power, hydro power and batteries (of various type) and electricity make a lot more sense.

I now work in the utilities (power generation) and we are looking at mixing in H2 into our natural gas feed into our gas turbine generators.

H2 is a convenient energy storage medium and helps even the load with renewable sources. That is, when you get too much wind and solar, one can easily use H2 as a way to store the extra energy.

For some real time context, take a look at the real time CAISO dashboard.

https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html

The frustrating part for me regarding this discussion is in the popular media is they miss out on how the system need to work. For renewable to work, you will need gas-turbine or other base load source to "balance" out thing. Yet I keep hearing people say "why don't you replace all polluting source with solar/wind when it's cheaper"

harryting said:

Yet I keep hearing people say "why don't you replace all polluting source with solar/wind when it's cheaper"

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Gosh, there's ign'nce in the general population and popular media?


Oh dear, what a surprise.

Are they using hydrogen generators to power EV charging stations yet?

Here is a link to the website of a company involved in the "hydrogen economy". I have no personal stake in them. I'm only aware of them because they're located about 50 miles from where I live and I know one or two people who work there. There will be plenty of self-serving BS on the website along with some useful factual information to be found there.

https://www.plugpower.com/

I am an engineer, of course I understand that there has to be balancing supplies for when renewable energy sources aren't producing. But I would still ask if hydrogen is the best option. Here is a system that has been operating in the UK since 1984:
https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/dinorwig-power-station/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station
Also known as Electric Mountain. Though I say that it is operating in the UK, I should point out that it is operating in Wales, which is a country that is part of the UK. I don't want to upset the people of Wales

We may have to get used to doing things when we have the energy available, rather than when we want.

BryanG said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station

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Reminds me of the Gravity Battery.

Taylor Turner said:

Are they using hydrogen generators to power EV charging stations yet?

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Remote Tesla charging stations are powered by a diesel generator, that if you calculate how much fuel was used to run the charger for your extra 200 miles that Tesla got 4.7MPG on diesel fuel.


As far as renewable energy solar and hydro are good choices, but wind is expensive to maintain and the area has to have constant winds like California off the coast does.

Here in Michigan they can sit idle up to 50% of the time, and a lot of times spin so slowly they barely create enough to cover the operating costs. I pass a group of them going to a frequent customer and at least half the time they aren't moving, or move in a small jerk when a gust of wind appears - so they aren't shut off, just not moving.

This is slightly off topic because this is comparing EV vs Diesel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e55Vued028
This is just for fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNTo9YH_9ek
I was never a pick-up truck guy until I started looking at what it took to haul my camper
I am in my camper now as I write this.
Fast Lane Truckers is an excellent channel for comparing pick-ups.
BTW, I have a gas fueled Hemi 6.4 L . In the end it was all I needed for haul my arctic fox 990. I am glad I got a gas fueled truck now that diesel costs almost a dollar more per gallon.

Never really looked into the benefits of other so called "clean" fuels but have seen articles on them.
Take Hydrogen, currently it appears that Grey is the predominant type at the moment, however, this uses fossil fuels to produce why bother ?
Blue hydrogen uses renewables, I believe that one process at least produces CO2 that has to be buried, What?
Hydrogen burns at a higher temperature, however, it requires 3 times more (or very high pressures) to give the equivent energy (don't quote me on that, just what I have read). Because the molecules are so small the amount of leakage can be a lot higher by migrating from the pipelines, apparently there is some chemical process when hydrogen gas is released into the air, it reacts with hydroxyl radicals (pairs of hydrogen and oxygen atoms) that form water vapor. That prevents the hydroxyls from doing another job: destroying methane molecules. So if the pipelines carrying the gas are not closely monitored or maintained (as is currently the case) is this still a clean fuel.
Currently electric cars are using lithium cells as a power source, again no expert but have read that this (what I consider a rare element) is mined at the cost to the local environment regarding contaminating the local water. This then is transported thousands of miles (currently by sea using fossill fuels) to be processed, again causing polution, then transported thousands of miles to be used.
Again it does seem to depend on what you read, how can you be sure that the information you read is accurate, I believe that institutions that produce these facts bend it to suit their agenda's.
Me, am i helping to save the environment, I like to think so, I recycle, have a garden that's full of flowers & plants for the local wildlife rather than astro turf & concrete (thanks to my wife), however, I like most use energy, drive a car, enjoy holidays etc. so perhaps I'm just as guilty as most others.
That's my rant over

I apologise to harryting, I asked for reasons to use hydrogen and reacted with annoyance at his annoyance. Harry can you tell me how they produce the hydrogen that you are looking at using? Obviously if you are already burning something then having something that you can add that burns easily may be a sensible solution.

That is interesting, there is a move in the UK to add hydrogen to natual gas, this is probably going to be Blue hydrogen as the grey currently uses fossil fuels to generate it, Blue hydrogen is about 3-5 times the cost to produce so will increase the cost in any process, the reason for the addition I believe is to supposedly reduce greenhouse gases without the need for very high pressure needed for that same energy output that would require existing gas systems to be modified, even then some older systems may need modification or replacing.
It is the same with the introduction of E10 petrol, the theory is that it would reduce the emmisions by increasing the amount of bio fuel, many have said that the cost of manufacture of bio may add to some extent to emmisions & that the extra bio fuel would reduce the efficiency of the engine therefore the reduction in emmissions is not proportional, added to that a loss of performance may encourage more aggressive use of the accelerater reducing fuel economy, I personally have not noticed any real difference in miles per gallon, but then again neary all my journeys are short & in traffic so difficult to assess.
As already posted, there are concerns that replacing existing energy, although reducing carbon emmissions may in effect introduce new problems.
The jury is out on that one.

parky said:

....so will increase the cost in any process,...

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No matter what they figure out can be done, even running something through a clear pipe to get some sunlight then expose it to air, will increase the price.



Anything "New and improved" will be at a higher price.
Anything "Clean and green" will be at a higher price.


Companies are in business to make profits, and the business model lately is gouge customers as much as you can.

Yep, again not looked into it but here in the UK, you can sign up to "GREEN" Energy, believe you pay a premium for it, however, the grid is a grid so you are not using totally green energy everyone is using both, so the ones signed up are paying extra to build the infastructure for going green, the investors are using this money rather than giving up their very large profits, in the end we all will be paying extra, the poor people who have been hoodwinked into thinking they are going green will have paid more than those who haven't & will pay the same as those who did not meanwhile the investors have made their profits but not done a great deal on investing it, that's partly done by the eco greens.
Was it Napoleon that said we were a nation of shopkeepers, quite a complement, hustle & bustle of the high street shops where it was a community, the shopkeeper was the art of conversation and to many a delight when out shopping. what have we got now, no you cannot speak to a real person, need to spend hours in a queue pressing 123.... etc. then to be told by a robot that says please try again later or go on-line & speak to a robot, only then you have to let a robot know that you are not a robot, corporate greed.

The major issue with Hydrogen is not specific heat, it is that you cannot get it to a liquid easily and its very low molar mass. The specific heat of hydrogen is very high (140+ Mj/KG which is about 3x diesel fuel), but its molar mass is only 2.01 g/mol. That means that to get 140MJ of energy potential you need to have 70 mols of Hydrogen. The critical temperature of hydrogen is also very low at −239.95 °C (33.20 K). That means that for any practical non lab/industrial usage we will always be messing in the supercritical region (meaning not a liquid). This all adds up to needing to use Hydrogen as a gas, and having to have that gas at very high pressures in a container to get any meaningful mass in the container.

From what I have gathered, a fuel cell class 8 tractor (over the road semi) with high pressure tanks of H2 can get about 400miles before those tanks are empty. Refilling of the high pressure tanks takes much much longer than refilling diesel (think hours).

A fun/strange thing with hydrogen is that it has a negative Joule Thomson coefficient. That means that it heats up when you drop its pressure. This is only of concern at very high pressures, but it is something that has to be monitored/accounted for when trying to refill high pressure fuel tanks for fuel cells vehicles.


Why is the "green" discussion always centered around solar and wind and not nuclear? Right now we as a species we have the ability to power all of our electrical and most of our thermal energy needs with nuclear fission. The majority of fear mongering about nuclear is all backed by fossil fuels companies, who know that having solar and wind will also mean having gas power plants as the real base load power source. Nuclear plants solve this issue by providing power at extremely high availability rates.