Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Green plan to make natural gas from US fracking operations really expensive and dangerous.
Reenvisioning The Role For Natural Gas In A Clean Energy Future
Clean” gas, or hydrogen sourced from natural gas, represents an alternative that has been receiving increased attention.
If the process of converting natural gas into hydrogen is combined with CO2 capture and storage, the bulk of the associated emissions can be avoided.
By Dolf Gielen, Morgan D. Bazilian, and Kenneth B. Medlock III
To meet climate goals, enormous changes to the world’s energy systems are required. The impacts will no doubt be significant for fossil fuels ranging from coal, to oil, to natural gas. With regard to natural gas, various regional and national pipeline systems represent important and large infrastructures with long life spans. Additionally, natural gas resources—proven, probable, and possible—represent an enormous asset. So, strategies that avoid stranded costs along the natural gas value chain while being aligned to climate objectives are attractive. “Clean” gas, or hydrogen sourced from natural gas, represents an alternative that has been receiving increased attention.
…
If the process of converting natural gas into hydrogen is combined with CO2 capture and storage, the bulk of the associated emissions can be avoided. Still, worldwide just three plants for hydrogen production are employing CCS (Air products, Quest, and ACTL Sturgeon). One plant has dedicated storage while the others use the CO2for enhanced oil recovery, but quantities are modest, each at around 1 Mt per year.
…
How much energy do you discard if you convert methane to hydrogen?
According to World Nuclear Association:
| Hydrogen | 120-142 MJ/kg |
| Methane (CH4) | 50-55 MJ/kg |
HOWEVER the molecular weight of methane is carbon (12) + Hydrogen (1) x 4 = 16.
The molecular weight of Hydrogen (H2) = 2
If you start with 1kg of methane and discard the carbon (12 of 16, 3/4 of the mass of the methane molecule), you only end up with a quarter of a kilo of hydrogen.
So even assuming a perfect zero cost conversion, 1kg of Methane (50 MJ) gets converted to 0.25Kg of Hydrogen (30MJ) – an immediate loss 2/5 of the original energy.
When you add the cost of building and maintaining the conversion plant, you have at least doubled the cost of gas.
Add to this the difficulties of handling hydrogen – hydrogen leaks prolifically (small H2 molecules find every crack), it can burn in air with a flame so hot it radiates ultraviolet (like a welding torch), and it ignites, often explosively, at a very wide range of hydrogen concentrations in air; in my opinion a hydrogen economy would be an economy which kills people.
The following is a video of some explosive hydrogen experiments performed by the University of Nottingham.
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If they really want hydrogen why not make it from sea water? Sea level is rising! Turn it into hydrogen and stop sea level rise!
If we somehow magically converted to a hydrogen economy, the Green Marxists would be demonizing that most potent of all GreenHouse gasses, water vapor.
What they don’t talk about is even with a methane to H2+CCS system, significant world-wide exploration, drilling and fracking is still needed for the nat gas. Let’s imagine a modern large platform drilling rig trying to run all its operations on H2…. sorry can do it.
And methane can be (is) easily and stablily stored in underground salt domes. H2 storage in underground geologic structures is not feasible as H2 will have side reactions with sulfur and metals present to make strong acids that would rapidly deteriorate (dissolve) the geologic structure and escape or be lost entirely.
And mercapten is added to natural gas so that the human nose can detect its presence, a key natural gas safety feature. Will they do this to hydrogen? Can you safely add an odorant like H2S? Which is highly toxic?
Safety will be essential. It cannot be discounted.
Wow, this is a great idea…take perfectly good Natural Gas and extract the Carbon, combining it with oxygen and then storing it underground at high pressure where it eventually will likely leak back out to feed plants. But it has one drawback. Its hard to store H2 safely without the container breaking down.
So, thinking this through, you could then add a different Carbon atom (taken from CO2 in the air to I am now officially Green) in-between four hydrogen atoms to “stabilize” them, making them easier to store. And this would reduce CO2 from the air!
To power this industrial conversion I could build lots of Mirrors that focus the light of the Sun onto a tower to melt a salt, that is pumped around to make steam (the pumps run off of batteries), that generates electricity to charge batteries, to run my new factory. In order to keep the salts molten during the night, and of course to keep the batteries fully charged, I could build a power generator that burns the H2 gas (stabilized with an extra Carbon atom) to spin a generator. I could use wind turbines to produce extra electricity that moves water up into storage tanks, that at night falls through a tube connected to a different generator to charge another set of batteries so that when the wind is not blowing I can use that stored power to keep the turbines spinning.
I may have to patent this idea. I bet the greens would love it! I just need the government to pay for it now.
This is analogous to what the late Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Georgia) used to say about the more leftish members of the Senate Armed Services Committee: “They are one-hundred percent in favor of whatever weapons system you are not trying to build right now.”
They are chaos spreaders. Chaos is a bad thing, not a good thing.
When you use fake engineering that is the end of the silly road.
This is sort of an Enron scam (there are lies, data altering, fake models, and so on) except there are no winners.
This is an interesting response to a young Cult of CAGW followers question Do you think CAGW will unite the right and left? at an Oxford conference. Manias end one person at time.
There is no problem using hydrogen in natural gas grids…
this is just one example of pilot projects underway in the UK and Germany.
https://www.hsl.gov.uk/news/news_items/news-archive/hydrogen-in-the-gas-grid-–-project-receives-ofgem-funding
I think the UK is around 400,000 gt…..and China is over 10,000,000 gt
….so go for it
What is their loss rate? Hydrogen leaks out of natural gas rated systems at a prodigious rate, what is your plan to make up all that lost energy?
People can make a good living helping the Left spread chaos, by providing essential fake engineering and fake science.
The cult of CAGW do not understand there is a shortage of non-hydrocarbon-based energy.
It takes energy to make hydrogen from let say methane. I have seen scam Siemens cartoon pictures of wind and solar farms connected to a cartoon picture of plant that makes hydrogen. There is zero chance this scheme will reduce CO2 emissions regardless of how much it would cost and the impracticality of shipping gaseous hydrogen.
It is pathetic that Siemens and Scientific America pushed the hydrogen scam.
The purpose of this study is to look at the pros/cons of injecting hydrogen into a country’s natural gas system.
“The £6.8 million project, led by National Grid, is an important step to providing practical, referenecable data to allow hydrogen gas-grid injection in the UK, and kick off the process of decarbonising the grid and heat (providing heating and hot water) in the UK. The three year project will begin in 2017 and the results will be used to inform a further public trial of the use of hydrogen-blended natural gas in the UK grid, with the intention of then rolling out the use of hydrogen blends nationwide.”
As I understand it one reason for the UK considering hydrogen in the gas grid is because the supply of natural gas is being depleted faster than expected. In which case the hydrogen wouldn’t be produced from methane.
“So even assuming a perfect zero cost conversion, 1kg of Methane (50 MJ) gets converted to 0.25Kg of Hydrogen (30MJ) – an immediate loss 2/5 of the original energy.”
That’s not how chemical reactions work.
More specifically thats not how this chemistry would work. Even if we take this luddite oversimplification the energy isn’t lost. It would be given off as heat from the process and likely used to generate electricity.
But the actual method of conversion would be through steam reformation reactions. These reactions produce hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and a small amount of CO2 as products and it consumes energy. The carbon monoxide would then be run through a Fischer-Tropsch process which would produce longer chain alkanes and potentially chains into the naphtalene regions. Some of this heat would supply the reformation. Reactions. The FT process from natural gas is actually profitable to produce oil conversion under $20/BBL for oil.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://web.anl.gov/PCS/acsfuel/preprint%2520archive/Files/42_2_SAN%2520FRANCISCO_04-97_0672.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjLxZ25_5_gAhULTt8KHQMBAyEQFjAEegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw02fE1hhnkb_pZnK6g-CRzz
In addition hydrogen is pretty safe with modern fiber tank storage and is a viable green energy alternative via fuel cells to hydrocarbon sources maintaining their refueling advantage without the costs or weight of batteries.
“Steam reforming of natural gas is approximately 65–75% efficient.”
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming
Ooops.
I am glad someone caught on to this. In steam reforming, you will convert the methane (CH4) to H2 and CO/CO2. The CO can be oxidized to CO2, releasing all the heat from the oxidation of carbon. The CO2 can then be captured, which is what the article says. It does not leave behind the 2/5 of energy Mr. Worrall has stated. But I do agree that the use of the hydrogen as a replacement energy source is problematic.
CO being oxidized to CO2 does not “release all the heat from the oxidation of carbon.”
And according to Wikipedia, no, you don’t “leave behind” 40% of the available energy . . . instead only 25-35%. Ha-hah.
The best way to store Hydrogen is to attach it to Carbon.
I live off grid and I was thinking of using the extra electricity of my solar panels, when my batteries are full, to run an electrolyser and inject the hydrogen in an anaerobic biodigester, which combines with the CO2 in biogas to produce methane, qhich is far easier to store.
Many here have commented that indeed having hydrogen stabilized by carbon is the best way to go.
This world is so f upped, if you are “green” you should follow the most efficient methods available, not try to make energy conversion more inefficient… Much ado about nothing. Poor life giving CO2 is unjustly demonized.
Speaking of efficiency, do you have any idea of the realizable efficiency of running a high capacity water electrolyzer?
According to wikipedia (the subject of electrolysis is not very politicized so I think it is an acceptable source in that case) :
Conventional alkaline electrolysis has an efficiency of about 70%.[24] Accounting for the accepted use of the higher heat value (because inefficiency via heat can be redirected back into the system to create the steam required by the catalyst), average working efficiencies for PEM electrolysis are around 80%.[25] This is expected to increase to between 82–86%[26] before 2030. Theoretical efficiency for PEM electrolysers are predicted up to 94%.[27]
#500ppm
The linked Forbes article waits until its fourth paragraph to surface the big “If . . .” paragraph about the feasibility of CO2 capture and storage. The only method for doing so offered in the article is by pumping the CO2 into underground cavities that have/will have resulted from petroleum or natural gas extraction (most likely formations having salt domes). And what could possibly go wrong with that?
If that wasn’t enough insult, the Forbes article has this little gem: “The idea is to produce ammonia from natural gas with CCS in Norway, then ship the ammonia to the UK where it is converted to hydrogen upon landing. The cost of such conversion roughly doubles the wholesale cost of gas.” This is tacit admission that there is no practical, economical method to ship elemental hydrogen (in gaseous or cryogenic liquid form) over even intermediate distances, let alone across oceans. Norway is only about 400 miles from the UK, but apparently still requires the ammonia-intermediate pathway . . . go figure!
I’m confused, I thought gas burnt to produce CO2 and H20 only, so is clean without any messing about.
CH4+2O2 = 2H2O + CO2 plus a bunch of molecular binding energy? Perfect.
But I’m a physicist and engineer, not a consensus scientist, and prefer the simple honest engineering approach to deliver what is wanted at the lowest cost. Unnatural acts with energy to appease fictional green gods are not in my philosphy, Horatio.
CCGT is also 60% thermally efficient, the highest thermal conversion efficiency of the three controllable intense power sources. Gas, Coal or nuclear.
PS Of course nuclear is SO intense and sustainable it doesn’t matter its a tad thermally inefficient.
Steam reforming of methane
CH4 + 2H20 = 4H + CO2
The inconvenient truth is that this method of Hydrogen production is a greenhouse gas producing process!
And a grossly inefficient one at that – and that before getting into all the energy spendthrift processes of compression and storage.
They simply ducked the issue by adding magical carbon sequestering as a solution.
It once was my belief that Hydrogen was the fuel of the future but the technological problems piled up against Hydrogen keep piling up with no solutions in sight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen
For me the final nail in the coffin of Hydrogen is the problem of leakage – something engineers have been unable to solve. It is a very small molecule and leaks through most materials, some metals and microporosity in welds etc.
The problem: if we start to use Hydrogen as a world wide portable fuel to replace petrol, diesel & LPG will be that the loss of Hydrogen through leakage will be appreciable.
Also “unburned” hydrogen on misfires or “rich” running will also be “leakage” to the atmosphere.
Cryogenically stored liquid hydrogen – typically stored in thermos flask type vessels is initially cooled and then kept cold by evaporation – another major source of “leakage”.
Losses to leakage, cryogenic evaporation, coupling & uncoupling etc. can be from 1% to 10%
Leakage Hydrogen will rise rapidly through the atmosphere, through the stratosphere and eventually meet the Ozone layer – there it will react with the Ozone to produce water vapour. (6H+O3 = 3H2O)
Even an extremely optimistic 1% will release sufficient free hydrogen to be extremely damaging.
This will be bad for two reasons :-
Firstly the damage to the Ozone layer – by depleting it will bring about greater UV exposure.
Secondly this water vapour above (and within) the Stratosphere will produce (previously rare) noctilucent clouds which will drastically increase the Earth’s albedo (reflectiveness) thereby causing a significant Global Cooling.
So my current position is that Hydrogen will not solve our energy problems principally because it is dangerous, grossly inefficient (overall) and a pollutant with real and serious consequences for global climate.
You have presented the argument for not moving to hydrogen fueled power that greenies can not rebut: ozone layer destruction. They don’t seem to care about economical or practical non-feasibility of green schemes, but they do say they want to protect the ozone layer at all costs. So, emphasize that not converting to H2 for power is the cost of saving the ozone layer.
SR
The explosion hazard associated with natural gas was due to leakage from the old pipelines which had no such problems with town gas. Led to a nationwide replacement of the pipeline system. Similar problems with natural gas explosions are being encountered in Massachusetts. Hydrogen when it leaks diffuses very rapidly so that it is too lean a mixture to ignite methane diffuses much more slowly and tends to stay as a flammable mixture for much longer.
Why didn’t this leakage of hydrogen to the stratosphere occur during the 20th century when coal gas was being widely used?
How do we know it didn’t? Ozone hole was already present when capability to detect it was developed.
I’m not saying ozone depletion in the ozone layer is something to worry about, though. Greenies worry about it, so let them know H2 is destructive to the ozone layer and maybe they will stop trying to force us into using H2 to power autos.
SR
How do we know it didn’t? Ozone hole was already present when capability to detect it was developed.
No the ‘hole’ didn’t develop until the late 70s, the ability to detect it had existed since ’56.
Ken,
CH4 + 2H20 = 4H + CO2 is not a balanced chemical equation.
Someone upthread asked if the scheme even produces net available energy. I can’t find the posting at this point, but the answer is assuredly no. The gibbs free energy to go from methane to graphite (carbon) and hydrogen is 12 Kcal/ mole. Thus it takes an energy source of some sort to do this. Not only this, but what will we do with all the carbon black produced? Maybe we can bury it in the coal fields that will be outlawed. Since this represents burying a great deal of availability, at some future time when sanity prevails again we can dig it up and use it.
Maybe, as an energy source, we can use wind and solar to reform natural gas to hydrogen, and thus take care of the problem of energy storage in these non-dispatchable sources. The problems of leakage of hydrogen can be mitigated as HDPE makes a good hydrogen barrier to use in coating metal pipes. But still ,there is a staggering cost to all the changes to infrastructure required. I look forward to the chaos.
H2 + 1/2 O2 —> H2O ΔHf = -241.818 kJ/mol
C + O2 —> CO2 ΔHf = -394.36 kJ/mol
C + H2 —> CH4 ΔHf = -74.85 kJ/mol
2* -241.818 + -394.36 + 74.85 + -803.85 kJ/mol
-802.85 kJ/mol / 16 g/mol + -50.1966 MJ/kg which is the lower heating value for combustion of Methane
So 49% of the heating value of methane is lost regardless of the efficiency of steam-methane reforming. Then there is the loss of heat running the unit, plus the energy consumption scrubbing the methane from the gas stream, then regeneration of the (usually) amine scrubbing solvent to recover CO2 from the stream, and finally compression costs for putting CO2 into a pipeline (~2000 psi) and transport to a stable formation for sequestration. The best use of CO2 though is for enhanced oil recovery where roughly 1 ton of methane displaces 2 bbl of crude, depending on the field.
What a total waste of useful energy!
Dr. Bob,
You chemical equations giving heats of formation of different compounds does not support your conclusion “So 49% of the heating value of methane is lost”.
Hydrogen will leak out of any tiny hole or crack and has to be kept under strict control. It burns hot in air and ignites at a wide range on concentrations as the well known Hindenburg pictures show. It would not be a happy experience driving in a car which at any time and especially in an accident could produce your own private Hindenburg. Cost of production would be at least doubling petrol. These people, Dolf Gielen, Morgan D. Bazilian, and Kenneth B. Medlock III need better employment for their idle hands.
Eric,
You’ve done triggered my engineering OCD.
Let’s get the chemistry right. Hydrogen is manufactured from methane using the steam reforming reaction:
CH4 + 2 H2O -> CO2 + 4 H2
In the end we convert 1 Standard Cubic Feet (SCF) of methane into 4 SCF of hydrogen.
The net heating values are (Engineering Toolbox):
Methane: 910 BTU/SCF
Hydrogen: 275 BTU/SCF
In the end since we get 4 hydrogen molecules for each methane molecule it looks like we come out ahead with 1,100 BTU out for each 910 in, but we know thermodynamics doesn’t work that way. The reaction requires high temperature and pressure and is highly endothermic. Thermodynamic losses run about 40% assuming you use methane as the fuel for the heater. If you choose to use produced hydrogen as the fuel for the heater losses go up quite a bit.
The attraction of pairing steam methane reforming with carbon capture and storage is the CO2 off the end of the separation train is nearly pure and is therefore ready for storage without further processing. The same cannot be said for the heater flue gas should methane be used as the fuel.
Finally CO2 compression, transport, and storage could apply another 10% thermodynamic penalty.
And we still haven’t talked about the thermodynamic losses in converting our ‘clean’ hydrogen fuel into useful work or heat. If you are worried about producing energy economically this is not the way to do it.
As alluded to by others hydrogen has a myriad of hazards that make it more dangerous than most flammable gasses, starting with an extremely wide flammability limit. Essentially if you have hydrogen in air it’s flammable. Hydrocarbon gasses have narrow flammability limits which limits the possibility that a flammable mixture will exist near an ignition source in the event of a leak. [Picking nits from above: electrical classification for potential hydrogen containing atmospheres is Class 1 Division 1; hydrocarbon atmospheres are Class 1 Division 2. It makes a big difference on what you are allowed to do in the area.]
Hydrogen is also a very rare gas whose temperature increases when pressure is released (it cools when you compress it). This almost guarantees that a high pressure hydrogen leak will catch fire. Hydrogen flames are not visible in the daylight, leading to the very real possibility of unwittingly walking through a fire (and don’t let anyone kid you that a hydrogen fire is not that hot). When hydrogen leaks it also cuts, turning small leaks into big leaks. In the refining industry special leak detection procedures are followed whenever a hydrogen unit or process line is inventoried after maintenance.
Hydrogen poses special corrosion risks, requiring special metallurgy and monitoring of process temperatures and pressures.
As for substituting hydrogen in natural gas (methane) lines, to go much beyond 10% hydrogen would require a total replacement of all commercial gas fired appliances. As noted above hydrogen has 30% of the heating value of methane, requiring the modification of fuel flow orifices. Also the stoichiometric air fuel ratio for methane is ~10:1, whereas it’s 5:2 for hydrogen (5 SCF air to 2 SCF hydrogen). The air handling side of all fired equipment would also need to be modified since, as odd as it may seem, less air would be required. (Refineries despite being large users of hydrogen try to avoid putting it in the fuel gas system because it messes up heater operation.)
Transporting hydrogen in the current natural gas infrastructure would require modification of let’s just call it all compressors to handle the much lighter mole weight of hydrogen.
So let’s sum up:
• Use thermodynamic inefficiencies to discourage energy usage via high prices – check
• Opportunities to decrease the surplus population – check
• Green energy job opportunities to modify or replace all gas fired appliances – check
o Or maybe just get a wood fired stove?
As they say, an idea so bad only an academic could love it.
What would Hollywood do without Hydrogen. Watch the cars explode, and the flames always rise up.
Seriously why bother, natural gas as we here call it, LPG, is easy to use both in cars and as a gas for domestic use.
MJE
What is the difference between Natural Gas and Oil and Coal? They are all natural and should therefore be pre-fixed with ‘Natural’.
Time factor. Natural gas is produced very soon after eating beans. Oil and coal production takes a little longer.
SR
An interesting analysis of hydrogen versus batteries.
It’s pretty much par for the course in the world now run by our new green overlords: Forever funding people to rediscover old technologies that work half as well at twice the price.
What humans need is more and cheaper energy. If we had properly pursued nuclear designs at full speed then we might now have electricity produced cheaply enough to be able to afford such wasteful schemes for what is mostly just going to be transport fuel. A functioning electricity grid will take care of all other requirements.
The only merit I can see in schemes like this is as a distraction. A pacifier, a baby’s dummy, to make the loud-crowd think we are doing something and keep them from wreaking worse damage upon the world’s economy.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world will get on with business as usual, using fossil fuels. Eventually, even the hardest of hard-core greens will be forced to admit defeat and that the world passed them by. Just like that Beavis and Butthead cartoon where they actually try and do a potentially useful mathematical calculation beyond their abilities before coming to the inevitable (to the viewer) conclusion: “Errrr.. this is hard. Let’s do something else.”
Just to open a different can of worms, the Hindenburg did not explode.
It burnt.
Exactly what and why it burnt is open to debate. Personally I am still a supporter of the Addison Bain school but we digress.
This is not to say that hydrogen filled airship didn’t explode as if anyone has even a casual look at the historical record they will discover airships basically exploded all the time – usually with 100% fatalities – but ironically the most famous airship to ‘explode’, didn’t.
“It burnt”
Just as it would have if it had been filled with methane.
During WWI fighter pilots shot hydrogen filled airships full of holes and it didn’t seem to have any effect.
Interestingly enough tracer bullets didn’t do the job either. A tracer round cannot ignite a pure hydrogen environment and its travelling too fast to cause ignition on exit so they didn’t even start fires.
Eventually they figured out they needed to mix fragmentation heads and low velocity tracer / base bleed rounds at about 1 in 5 rounds – that was the end of the airship raids on London.
Hydrogen production, worldwide, is around 50 million tons. Per year. If it was such a huge hazard you would have heard of it. Hydrogen gas, while both very flammable and explosive, is not very much different from acetylene, which is a common welding gas. Is it hazardous? You bet. But so are gasoline fumes, and they hurt and kill quite a lot of people each year.
So, is hydrogen a hazard? Yes, it is. But it is manageable.
The real question is, as many have pointed to, the energy equations involved. There are many ways of looking at it. For instance, one kg of crude oil contains enough energy to produce 5-20 kg more crude (depending on where you extract it). One kg of hydrogen contains enough energy, today, to produce about 1/4 kg of new hydrogen. The difference is, of course, that crude oil is a source and hydrogen a carrier of energy.
In another perspective one might look at the amount of primary energy you need to produce a unit of usable energy. By this I mean how much energy do you need to input at one end of a process in order to have one unit of usable energy at e.g. a shaft or electrical socket. Let’s us a car as an example. If your car is electric, you need to produce about 1.3-1.5 kWh at the hydro plant/wind turbine/solar plant in order to have 1 kWh at the drive shaft. If you are running on diesel, you need to get about 1.8-2.5 kWh at the diesel pump in order to have 1 kWh on the shaft. If you run on hydrogen, you need 4-5 kWh from the hydro plant/wind turbine/solar plant that provides the energy to make the hydrogen you need to have 1 kWh at the shaft.
Hydrogen has tremendous amounts of energy per unit mass. But is so light that it doesn’t matter. You only get 80 kg of hydrogen per cubic meter (in liquid form). So to use it we are thinking of other carriers of hydrogen. You may do it by carrying hydrogen in methanol, and using the methanol as fuel. It is a good possibility, but today it is hampered by that pesky carbon in the molecule. So we could turn to ammonia, and either use it only as a carrier i.e cracking the hydrogen out of it before using it or bruning ammonia directly. The drawback is of course that ammonia is noxious, and it is lethally toxic in small doses. There is no Goldilocks solution for this, only a bunch of compromises.
Hydrogen has a distinct advantage over batteries. It can be ‘charged’ way faster than any conceivable battery, ever. This will not change with ever better batteries, and is the achilles heel of all battery solutions. Fast charge has to do with power, and nothing to do with energy.
State-of-the-art maritime batteries in industrial use already compete directly with 300 bar compressed hydrogen when it comes to energy density. If the promise of a quadrupling of battery capacity within the next 10 years holds up, batteries exceed even the 700 bar compressed hydrogen solution used in cars.
Hydrogen is a hazardous gas, but nothing we cannot handle. The energy budget, however, is what makes it a ludicruous solution. In a world with abundant, cheap fusion power – maybe. But in any other world – not!
When working testing electrical enclosures for use in explosive environments, one of the classes – flameproof – was designed to be able to contain an explosion. In order to be able to carry out a static hydraulic pressure test on the enclosure, a peak explosion pressure was needed as the base. As this was a worse case, guess which gas was used? Yes, Hydrogen as it gives the biggest bang.
I think the power and pollution to make hydrogen can be fixed very fast.
Just buy it from the China.
Of course, all the ship terminals would have to be in California.
Can you imagine a 100,000 ton H2 Gas tanker parked in San Fransisco.
Or off shore terminals, with dirigibles to bring it on shore.
I bet I could consult for CARB at 1/4 million a year.
The leading article reads like a tabloid science scare story, complete with dramatic photo. It reminded me of the flaming faucets pic used so often in anti-fracking propaganda. Then there’s the line: “in my opinion a hydrogen economy would be an economy which kills people.”
Anders Valland’s comment is spot on: “So, is hydrogen a hazard? Yes, it is. But it is manageable.”
We have been producing and using huge quantities of hydrogen for over a century. There are hydrogen pipelines running across Holland, Belgium and Northern France that I know of and there are probably others around the world in heavily industrialised countries. As many others have already noted, Town Gas contained 50-60% hydrogen and was ubiquitous in the UK until replaced by North Sea Gas: some of the massive old gas-holders can still be seen.
These schemes fail on the grounds of efficiency, practicality and cost. Scare-story reportage is irresponsible and detracts from the factual counter-arguments. It’s disappointing to see it on this website.