Guest post by David Archibald
In energy policy, the Australian government is compounding stupidity upon stupidity. Hundreds of millions of dollars are now to be spent on the dead end that is the hydrogen economy. To put that stupidity into context, let’s go back a few years and look at the missed opportunities to put things to right.
After Trump’s election win in 2016, Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington was given the job of finding a director for the Environmental Protection Agency. Instead of taking the job himself as he should have done, the job was given to Scott Pruitt who was more interested in decorating his office than reform. Mr Pruitt left the position in 2018. Dr Will Happer came into the administration for a while and was expected to write a paper debunking global warming. This was to be the first government report on the planet to say that global warming is a nonsense. That effort was apparently killed off by Jared Kushner and Dr Happer left. Consequently tens of billions of dollars continue to be wasted fighting the phantom menace of global warming.
In fact the global warming misinformation campaign keeps ratcheting up. In 2017 the globalists of the World Economic Forum, based in Geneva but best known for their annual meeting in Davos, created an offshoot called the Hydrogen Council. This is based in Belgium, which is also the birthplace of Dr Evil. The promoters of hydrogen must know it is a non-starter. Their market research on selling global warming would have told them that they needed a positive story about a future nirvana that would be free of the evil carbon. So they go through the charade of promoting the hydrogen heaven to come.
Why is hydrogen no good? A succinct paper on the whys and wherefores was published by Baldur Eliasson and Ulf Bossel in 2003 – “The Future of the Hydrogen Economy: Bright or Bleak?” From that paper, energy lost in power transmission, operation of oil refineries and transport is usually less than 10% of the energy traded. The losses in hydrogen manufacture and transport are much higher and inherent to this element.
Hydrogen has a heating value of 142 MJ/kg compared to methane at 55 MJ/kg. But in terms of volumetric heating value, hydrogen is less than a third of methane at 11.7 kJ/litre. Methane’s value is 36.5 kJ/kg.
Figure 1: Heating value per litre.
Hydrogen has to compressed or liquefied for storage and transport. As figure 1 shows for an equivalent amount of low pressure storage and transport, facilities for handling hydrogen are three times larger than the same energy content of methane. At 800 bar or in the liquid state hydrogen must be kept in hi-tech pressure tanks or cryogenic vessels whereas liquid hydrocarbon fuels are kept at atmospheric pressure in simple containers.
Hydrogen can be made by electrolysis of water, which is 75% efficient, or by steam reforming of natural gas, 90% efficiency. But as the religious compulsion is “clean hydrogen”, no fossil fuels or nuclear energy is allowed.
Producing 1 kg of hydrogen (which has a specific energy of 143 MJ/kg or about 40 kWh/kg) requires 50–55 kWh of electricity.
Solar panels made in China using power priced at US$0.04/kWh can produce power priced equivalent to power from diesel engines at about US$0.15/kWh under ideal conditions in a desert, for eight hours per day. So at best clean hydrogen could be produced for US$8.00/kg, not including the capital costs of the electrolysis segment.
Ten times as much energy is required to compress hydrogen as the same weight of methane. To compress one tonne per hour of hydrogen to 200 bar (natural gas pipelines operate up to 150 bar) takes 7.2% of its heating value.
Liquefying hydrogen is highly energy intensive. At a plant capacity of 100 kg of liquid hydrogen per hour, about 60 MJ of electrical energy is used per kg of hydrogen. Plant efficiency increases with plant size but with a theoretical minimum of about 40 MJ, equating to 28% of the contained energy of the hydrogen produced. By comparison liquefying methane takes 6% of the contained energy of the methane feedstock.
Storing hydrogen as a metal hydride of alkali metals is comparable to compression in terms of energy consumption. External heat is needed to release hydrogen from the metal hydride storage material. The amount of hydrogen that can be stored per cubic metre of metal hydride is about 60 kg, approaching that of liquid hydrogen of 72 kg per cubic metre. But it is well short of the 100 kg contained in a cubic metre of methanol.
Distribution of hydrogen by pipeline would require a new system. It is well established that existing pipelines cannot be used for hydrogen, because of diffusion losses, brittleness of materials and seals, incompatibility of pump lubrication with hydrogen and other technical issues. That hasn’t stopped Australian gas distributors from spiking their gas supply with 5% hydrogen. No doubt one day they will wake up to find their pipes and valves embrittled and leaking like a sieve.
Because of the low volumetric energy density of hydrogen, the flow velocity must be increased by over three times in a pipeline delivering hydrogen as compared to methane. In a natural gas pipeline 0.3% of the contained energy of the transported gas is used every 150 km to run the compressors. In a hydrogen pipeline this rises to 1.4% every 150 km.
If delivering hydrogen by pipeline is energy-intensive, distributing it by road transport is far more problematic. By Eliasson and Bossel’s figures, a 40 ton truck could deliver 25 tons of gasoline, 3.2 tons of methane but only 320 kg of hydrogen. This is a consequence of the low energy density of hydrogen and the weight of the pressure vessels.
In their parable of the gasoline station, a mid-size filling station on a freeway sells 25 tons of fuel each day. This can be delivered by one 40 ton truck. But it would need 21 hydrogen trucks to deliver the same amount of energy to the station. About one in one hundred trucks on the road are gasoline or diesel tankers. For hydrogen distribution by road that would rise to 120 trucks on the road with 21 of these transporting hydrogen with one out of six truck accidents involving a hydrogen truck.
What if hydrogen was generated at filling stations by electrolysis and then compressed to 200 bars? Eliasson and Bossel calculate that at a station servicing 1,000 vehicles per day the efficiency of conversion of the electric power required would be about 50%, in turn requiring power generation capacity to be tripled.
The problems of hydrogen are innate – its physical properties are incompatible with the requirements of the energy market. As Eliasson and Bossel state, most of hydrogen’s problems cannot be solved by additional research and development. If hydrogen is irredeemable, what would be the ideal energy carrier? It would be a liquid with a boiling point of at least 60°C and a solidification point under 40°C. It would stay liquid under normal weather conditions and at high altitudes. Even if oil had never been discovered, the world would not use synthetic hydrogen but a synthetic hydrocarbon fuel.
All the above is known to the promoters of the glorious hydrogen economy to come. Theirs is a cynical exercise in duping the public in order to advance the globalist agenda. Australia’s politicians are either foot soldiers in that globalist putsch or easily deluded simpletons.
We rational people can dream too. Economic modelling gives President Trump a 90% chance of winning the election a few weeks away. Soon after Dr Happer will be recalled and sign off on the report that drives a stake through the heart of the global warming monster. The globalist rent-seekers will be forced to get real jobs. Scientific truth will be pursued as an end in itself. We can dream.
David Archibald is the author of American Gripen: The Solution to the F-35 Nightmare
Will it have a stenching agent?
I find it highly illogical to be pushing hydrogen these days, when electric car batteries are becoming spectacularly good and cheaper than ever. Batteries can now last a million miles, can be recharges to 80% in 20 minutes and cost $100 per kWhr. Any formerly plausible reason for pushing hydrogen is gone forever.
Well there are hydrogen powered trains, buses… aircraft being trialled. You can inject (renewable) hydrogen into the natural gas grid and use it for energy storage…
Yes Griff, they are being explored, but the use of the GAS as it is currently being used, will be an utter failure.
It requires more power to create hydrogen, that Hydrogen can produce, which means a negative energy source.
Like Molten Salt Reactors, call me when they actually start making these things. Press releases don’t count.
The best and only way to use H is to fuse it into He. Talk about energy out!
rbabcock, And Hydrogen fusion reactors are only 50 years away as they have always been in my 70 years. A lot of hype, a lot of press releases and still no power generated, except the TVA coal power used to start up and maintain the magnetic field bubble. Having spent a lot of my life producing H2 and NH4, I find it pretty amazing all this equally ludicrous belief in a hydrogen transport fuel. Anders above has pretty well summed it up and I would caution that actual plants are oftentimes less efficient than his numbers. And there are busses running on H2 Fuel cells for nearly 20 years now, see Ballard.
The Aussie govt has been duped into this scam due to pressures to find a way to maintain the large coal industry. Certainly an own goal, up there with using biomass as a way of meeting ideological targets. Not only will the scheme fail, but it will take out more huge sums of taxpayer money and create a bigger debt burden for generations. It will also not improve their public image with the green nut jobs, who will protest with the burning of any coal, used for any purpose.
It would appear that when it comes to CO2 gamesmanship, the Chinese propaganda machine is still without parallel. As the worlds biggest emitter by more than 2x, including biggest YoY increases, they put out a statement this week of their goal to become carbon neutral by 2060, a target date about as meaningful as saying 2360 and of course a target that is totally fake, as evidenced by their scramble to keep building coal power stations. This cheap energy used to build expensive and useless RE that it can sell to the west to help them destroy their economies faster and create a master-slave energy dependency at the same time as they look to extend their red curtain of oppression over the entire globe. Not surprisingly, the climate alarmists lap this propaganda up like gospel from the good book and even increase their attacks on the small and largely irrelevant emissions coming from their own countries.
“Australia’s politicians are either foot soldiers in that globalist putsch or easily deluded simpletons.”
They are too stupid to be the former, ergo it must be the latter explanation. As stupid as a box of rocks.
The irony being the current largest producers and consumers of Hydrogen are….oil refineries.
There should probably be a distinction made between the Hydrogen Economy (the fantasy of hydrogen as a green energy source/supply manufactured by Green electricity) and the industrial use of hydrogen in multiple massive industries.
I doubt the Green Hydrogen economy is economical, as we shall see if Toyota has any success with its hydrogen fuel cell car now on the market. That will be a niche market and highly subsidized. If the hydrogen is made with nat gas and all the losses and CO2 production, then what was the point since that wouldn’t be green? Better to have a sold oxide fuel cell running on a fossil fuel if you want efficiency without adding another whole level of complexity with hydrogen filling stations everywhere. Plus competing with fast charge EV stations everywhere, so I doubt hydrogen as a ‘fuel’ will make any sense.
We already have a huge hydrogen industry in everything from steel making, oil refineries to making fertilizer, and hydrogen is one of the key components. It is made and consumed in near real time by steam reforming, and utilized for a number of key industries on a vast scale already. So hydrogen is already critical to our industrial processes. The fact that not much has happened the last 20 years since everyone thought the hydrogen economy was right around the corner should confirm the fact that it isn’t probably an ideal ‘fuel’ which it isn’t really a fuel anyway, but a storage medium. And a fairly low density lousy one as rightly pointed out. It hasn’t gone anywhere on its own, because it doesn’t make sense without huge subsidies, such as with solar and wind. Which is the only way we will see this expand, as it doesn’t stand on its own merits without some kind of subsidy. And why would we want to install two competing parallel energy sources…charging stations everywhere for EV’s, and now hydrogen fuelling stations everywhere.
But for industry, hydrogen is used in several industrial processes. Among other applications, it is important to point its use as raw material in the chemical industry, and also as a reductor agent in the metallurgic industry. Hydrogen is a fundamental building block for the manufacture of ammonia, and hence fertilizers, and of methanol, used in the manufacture of many polymers. Refineries, where hydrogen is used for the processing of intermediate oil products, are another area of use. Thus, about 55 % of the hydrogen produced around the world is used for ammonia synthesis, 25 % in refineries and about 10 % for methanol production. The other applications worldwide account for only about 10 % of global hydrogen production.
Hydrogen is also used in various in industrial applications; these include metalworking (primarily in metal alloying), flat glass production (hydrogen used as an inerting or protective gas), the electronics industry (used as a protective and carrier gas, in deposition processes, for cleaning, in etching, in reduction processes, etc.), and applications in electricity generation, for example for generator cooling or for corrosion prevention in power plant pipelines. There is more, but I think we get the idea. It is an industrial product required for manufacturing, and steam reforming on the fly from Nat Gas is the most efficient use of abundant NG. Electricity should be preserved for much higher and better applications than making hydrogen. Even charging a high tech battery is probably a better use of electricity than manufacturing hydrogen, especially for a transportation solution. EV’s have won that battle IMHO and PHEV’s are probably the best solution yet if you just want to plug and play if wanting some EV capability.
Check this out:
https://gigastack.co.uk/
The Author misses the obvious, yet again. All Aussie politicians know what happened to Whitlam – his government was simply dismissed by the Queen’s reserve powers, for insubordination.
Look at Prince Charles leading the green “Reset”. Whitlam was dismissed for trying to buy back the farm.
Welcome to the Commonwealth – the US will soon be reclaimed, if voters forget what 1783 was all about.
Whitlam brought about his own demise by trying to side-step the constitutional powers that govern how the federation must operate.
Like all socialists, he tried to engineer a national economy where most of the populace became dependent upon government for their employment, income, education, and most other living needs.
Trouble was, he quickly ran out of other people’s money, and never did get why & how this socialist nirvana never works.
So now try to buck the Royal Green edicts, and see what happens.
Tough being a subject, what?
This is what happens when people who can’t do basic arithmetic or don’t understand economics fall in love with an idea. Masses of equally challenging people love in line because of the emotional appeal of “changing the world.”
It all sounds wonderful if you choose to ignore facts and are impervious to reason. Clean energy, blue skies, no exhaust from smoke stacks (which is mostly water vapor, btw). A better world for our children and their children.
… what would be the ideal energy carrier? It would be a liquid with a boiling point of at least 60°C and a solidification point under 40°C.
Looks like a typo here. Maybe you mean minus 40 degrees?
That’s probably correct, that the author meant a freezing point of less than -40 C. This is one of the main specifications put on jet fuel (usually the spec is < -50 C), since jets fly in altitudes where ambient temperatures can be around -45 C.
Canada is in a similar quandary to Australia. Canadian Mark Carney, ex Bank of England governor, now heading up the UN environment sector, has openly declared at Jackson Hole 2019, backed up by BlackRock, a green , digital, world financial governance, where elected governments have no say. In other words The Royals will dismiss, not just Australia’s government, but now any and all, for insubordination if they do not adopt the Davos Great Reset. The dismissal will be “colorful” of course like the BLM/Antifa antics now plundering the US.
How dare any democratic elected government insist on credit for coal, petro, nuclear! They will find themselves on a charge!
Jimmy Carter converted the USA to hydrogen fuel long ago. You can see how that went.
Hydrogen is potentially useful in airplanes as it has a higher energy per kg. This saves them in weight for takeoff.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.popularmechanics.com/flight/airlines/amp34100227/airbus-hydrogen-powered-aircraft-photos-designs/
BUT, hydrogen fuel tanks to hold an equivalent amount of energy as jet fuel will have to be much larger and heaver (low volumetric energy density). That comes at the expense of passenger volume or requires added frontal area – increasing drag, reducing fuel economy, and necessarily requiring slower speeds. I wouldn’t quote Popular Mechanics on anything – they’ve become agenda-driven and are science and engineering illiterate.
The problem with using hydrogen to power aircraft is not its weight but its volume.
If a jet airliner has, for example, a 10,000-gallon (about 37.85 m3) tank filled with jet fuel (refined kerosene) with a density of about 800 kg/m3, that’s about 30,300 kg of fuel with a heat of combustion of about 43 MJ/kg, or about 1,300 GJ of heating value.
At 143 MJ/kg, the required mass of hydrogen would be about 9,100 kg. In order to fit that into a 37.85 m3 tank, the required density would be about 240 kg/m3. According to the ideal gas law, the required pressure for that density at 15 C would be about 2,850 bars, or over 40,000 psi.
Jet fuel doesn’t have a very high vapor pressure, usually less than about 5 psi at normal ambient temperatures, so the fuel tanks on airliners are only designed for about 50 psig. An aluminum tank (lined with stainless steel to resist corrosion) to hold 40,000 psi of pressure would have to be several inches thick, and the extra weight of the tank would far outweigh (literally) the weight savings of the fuel.
Also, turbines running on hydrogen would have to resist temperatures much higher than those fueled by kerosene, since hydrogen produces much less flue gases than kerosene for the same heat release. The turbine blades would have to be made with (more expensive) materials resistant to the higher temperatures.
On a recent post and briefly above here Griff refers to hydrogen use in aircraft. I assume he is thinking of the recent announcement by Airbus in Europe (and the UK) that they are pursuing three strategies to develop hydrogen powered flight by 2035.
He must have missed the bit about the WATER VAPOUR that results from the burning of hydrogen. Currently there are around 10,000 commercial aircraft in the sky at any one time and a daily average of over 100,000 flights. In total around 39,000 commercial and military planes are operational.
Water vapour is of course a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 and should all those aircraft be eventually producing water vapour trails how is that going to help at all?
Would it be much different from contrails?
I don’t think that the climate effects of water vapour in the atmosphere are necessarily going to be influenced by jet water exhaust. But we shall see.
Hydrogen powered jets are going to have 3 to 4 times as much water vapor in their exhaust.
I’m not surprised that you didn’t know that.
Don’t worry about water vapor. It’s a drop in the ocean.
Have any of you looked at a company with the ticket symbol HYSR? One of my sons is very enthusiastic about its prospects. As he describes it, their technology will make hydrogen production at each location, such as a fueling site, feasible.
Currently, a kg of hydrogen costs between $10 and $17 at California hydrogen stations, In California gasoline costs $2.50 per gallon
A kg of hydrogen is, energy wise, about equal to a gallon of gasoline
so, your fueling costs per mile for a Mirae will be about 4X gasoline at current prices.
The base price of a 2020 fuel cell Mirae is $59,455.
The following article is dated, so please do your own research.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai#FCV
Why can’t oversized dirigibles be used for transporting bulk hydrogen?
Oh wait . . .
In the old days, those pushing ideas that will never work because of very basic physical and engineering reasons, that absolutely will not change and cannot be changed.
Comment:
People do not understand corrupt companies can make lots of money working on stupid ideas (which taxes pay for) that will never work. Airbus proposed a ‘try’ to a developing an airplane that will be power using liquid hydrogen.
Hydrogen’s boiling point is not going to change. The dangers of pressurized tanks and liquid hydrogen in a pressurized tank will never change.
Would have been fired. The media is pushing the pathetic hydrogen ‘idea’ because Germany has reached the limit of their green scam.
The hydrogen scam is a German ‘idea.’
Hydrogen must be cooled to -252 C to liquify it, if it is stored in an atmospheric pressure tank. Pressurizing the tank reduces the temperature …..
However, pressurized tanks are dangerous.
Pressurized tanks, that can contain liquid hydrogen, will always be very expensive and require expensive refrigeration systems.
The only possible method to store a large amount of hydrogen is in a massive number of small and very expensive pressurized tanks which all must have a very expensive refrigeration system.
A tank containing liquid hydrogen will explode (pressure explosion) as the hydrogen turns back to a gas, if the refrigeration system fails or if there is a loss of electrical power to run the cooling system. This problem will never change.
Micro seconds after the pressure explosion that ruptures the tank, the hydrogen will be ignited by the immense energy … that is released as the hydrogen in micro seconds changes from a liquid to a gas.
And then there will be a hydrogen explosion which will create a pressure wave that will kill and destroy everything in a radius….
…. Exactly like powerful bomb.
Stupid ideas that will never work, do not solve fundamental problems such as the German battery problem. German need batteries.
CAGW fanatic Germans live in a northern country where it is …
… sunny and windy in the summer and is cold, cloudy in the winter.
This results in less wind by a factor of roughly three in the winter and less sun by a factor of roughly (30?) in the summer.
The problem is German has too much ‘green’ energy in the summer and not enough in the winter. Batteries cannot solve that problem.
Obviously as there are no magic batteries, Germany cheats by exporting half of their wind based electricity to other countries who then return hydrocarbon or nuclear energy.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/21/germanys-green-transition-has-hit-a-brick-wall/
Liquid hydrogen (LH2 or LH2) is the liquid state of the element hydrogen. Hydrogen is found naturally in the molecular H2 form.
To exist as a liquid, H2 must be cooled below its critical point of 33 K. However, for it to be in a fully liquid state at atmospheric pressure, H2 needs to be cooled to 20.28 K (−252.87 °C; −423.17 °F).[3] One common method of obtaining liquid hydrogen involves a compressor resembling a jet engine in both appearance and principle. Liquid hydrogen is typically used as a concentrated form of hydrogen storage.
NordStream2 will solve that if Mad Mike Pompeo is muzzled.
US LNG is simply too expensive, and even the Berlin offer of $1 billion for a terminal did not stop Mad Mike.
In other words the geopolitical nuts could not care less about the German economy, it is beef in the sandwich, yet again.
To be seen if German politicians stand up to Mad Mike’s cabal.
William, H2 has a negative Joule Thomson effect meaning that when it is depressurized it heats up and self ignites. Leaks become invisible flames which incinerate people standing nearby.
Germany exports when they have excess, most of the time they are importing from neighbors.
Meanwhile, progress continues apace on BrLP’s (inaptly named IMO) “SunCell” reactor (WHICH) uses H BTW); in-house field trials begin shortly on a couple different designs. Recently (this year) several more validation reports were performed and the results published by several specialists whose specialty is thermal ‘engine’/reactor designs.
I think the most striking tests performed to date have been the Gas Chromatography tests that indicate molecular hydrino H2(1/4), aside from the definitive calorimetry testing (pretty hard to ‘screw up’ water temperature rise measurements, and the measurement of input ‘excitation’ energy with today’s modern lab instruments).
“He who has ears, let him hear.”
– Matthew 11:15
Feel free all to tell what you want about the alleged uselessness of hydrogen use as secondary or ternary energy source!
I agree: hydrogen use in everybody’s cars or homes might make few sense.
But ‘mon petit doigt’ tells me that if Airbus Industries decided to start the engineering of a hydrogen-fuelled airplane to get it ready for 2035, they probably will know a bit more than the average WUWT poster about it.
J.-P. D.
Mon petit doigt m’a dit que :
The Airbus 380 would be waaaaay beyond schedule; it was.
The Airbus 380 would be too big for most airports and too difficult to sell; it was.
The projected 400M would never be built. It was not.
Mon petit doigt me dit que :
There will be no commercial H2 Airbus.
On verra…
My impression is that you live with a somewhat deprecated estimate of that company.
The guys responsible for all what you correctly report above had to leave, and have made place for people with a vision of the World more akin to it.
J.-P. D.
It is an act of considerable faith to believe that swallowing the green pill implies success at anything other than consuming subsideies and funds provided by hapless politicians.
“provided by hapless politicians”
– and even more hapless taxpayers.
Of course this all stops when they run out of other people’s money
Bindidon, maybe the average poster, but you have to realize that there are a lot of posters here that know a hell of a lot more about H2 than Airbus. Listen/read and understand.
Bindidon, perhaps the average WUWT poster, but there are a lot of real life hydrogen people here who know a lot about hydrogen and its hazards. Listen/read and learn.
When Germany makes these kind of comments I think they have their fusion reactor almost ready. Australia? Just dumb politicians.
Hydrogen, like electricity, is a carrier of energy. Clean burning except for that nasty greenhouse gas water vapour, LOL. Lots of great things about both but one thing they both have for their Achilles heal is STORAGE. If you can’t store energy for a minimum of a month without losing more than 1% then you are limited to direct use with no storage.
Now this could work in some instances like using solar to directly run air conditioning or water pumps but then the ROI period goes beyond the life of the panels. Until they solve storage they are sunk. Maybe they can make coal out of it?
Methane-based fuel cells:
https://www.blue.world/the-fuel-cell/
Fission Optimum is the energy source of the future, not hydrogen or wind and sun gathering.
A Canadian/US company, Terrestrial energy, have updated a US reactor design to produce the cheapest, safest fission reactor possible.
We could build and install thousands of nuclear reactor toaster a year. If we are going to dream, dream about something that works at an engineering level.
It is six times more fuel efficient than a pressure water fuel rod reactor and can compete with coal, all in on price. It produces 1/9 the amount of high level waste as a PWR.
The graphite core has a lifetime of seven years. So the small reactor is drained and replaced every 7 years with a new can that contains new heat exchangers and the six small screw pumps that stir the liquid in the sealed can.
All of the nuclear reactor wearout items are replaced every seven years, with the new reactor can, so there is zero long term nuclear can maintenance issues.
It is basically a fission toaster. It operates at atmospheric pressure. It is sealed. It is filled with a liquid that melts at 400C and boils at 1400C and the toaster produces heat at 600C.
The 440 Mw toaster (largest size that can be passively cooled for walk away emergency shutdown), is walk away fail safe. No possible chemical explosions. No requirement for a containment building.
The small reactor can, can be trucked to site. This a simple mass producible fission toaster. Currently in joint US/Canadian regulatory review, 3 sites selected for late 2020 start-up, pending regulatory approval.
Terrestrial Energy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgTgV3Kq49U
On a directly related item. There is a great deal more uranium for fission than currently believed. Same for the amount of hydrocarbons.
There are weird super concentrated deposits of Uranium in Canada, in the same regions where there are massive ‘heavy’ oil deposits.
These are the highest concentration uranium deposits, in the world.
This is an interesting video concerning the uranium industry. I do not recommend or not recommend the company. The Cigar lake Uranium deposit is part of the same super concentrated uranium deposits that require unmanned mining equipment to remove.
https://investors.isoenergy.ca/ceo-interview/?utm_campaign=rm_ceo_interview&utm_source=google&utm_medium=display&utm_content=r1_ceo_video&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIjMTBwJmD7AIV4xh9Ch341QnzEAEYASAAEgJngvD_BwE
https://investors.isoenergy.ca/high-grade-uranium/?utm_campaign=core_lead_caus&utm_source=google&utm_medium=display&utm_content=researcher_map&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI282L0p_56wIVJAPnCh2SmQJcEAEYASAAEgK-IfD_BwE
Wonderful.
Call me back when there’s a working prototype of the commercial model…
Meanwhile there’s a wind farm going up offshore in the UK with a 13GW capacity.
What is you point ‘griff’?
Wind farms do not work today. Germany has proven that.
Germany Energiewend Leading To Suicide By Cannibalism. Huge Oversupply Risks Destabilization
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/08/weekly-climate-and-energy-news-roundup-167/
There is no magic battery to solve the problem that Germany has more wind power than it can use in the summer and not enough in the winter.
The idiot German green party, forces more wind turbines to be installed even though green energy cannot be used.
The problem is to construct and install batteries, there is no savings in CO2 emissions.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/22/shocker-top-google-engineers-say-renewable-energy-simply-wont-work/
The key problem appears to be that the cost of manufacturing the components of the renewable power facilities is far too close to the total recoverable energy – the facilities never, or just barely, produce enough energy to balance the budget of what was consumed in their construction. This leads to a runaway cycle of constructing more and more renewable plants simply to produce the energy required to manufacture and maintain renewable energy plants – an obvious practical absurdity.
Not only that, but trying to integrate all those windmills and photovoltaics into a workable system amounts to creating a Frankenstein monster intent on destroying its creator.
Thank you for taking the time to debunk, once again, the pipe dream of the “Hydrogen Economy”. While hydrogen is a very good fuel for niche applications, as a general application for transportation fuel, or even other combustion engine power sources, it just doesn’t work, and the very real problems of logistics, safety, and materials compatibility make it quite uneconomical.
A very useful summary of many of the engineering realities associated with hydrogen, collecting together different aspects that are usually spread across different articles.
I’d add a couple of points. The German plans for hydrogen storage for PtG purposes assume underground cavern storage, currently used for natural gas. Of course it immediately implies than only a third as much energy can be stored in the same conditions of pressure and temperature. But I have seen no actual studies on any other problems that attempting this may cause. Caverns maybe rather less leakproof when storing hydrogen. Try telling the citizens of Groningen that there are plans to repressurize the gas field with hydrogen and see the reaction. Of course such a green hydrogen solution requires that the electrolysers and hydrogen powered generators are more or less colocated with the storage, with transmission built to cope with the necessary power flows. Reversing the direction of flow on a power line is at least a little easier than doing it on a pipeline.
Another key point is the distorted economic thinking. The assumption is that “surplus” energy is a free input to electrolysis. Nothing could be further from the truth. You have to invest in capacity to produce the surplus, and that capacity has to earn its keep from the power it sells. If it is forced to sell part of its output for nothing, or curtail, then it must achieve a higher price on the remainder of its output: calculations based on LCOE have to be adjusted to reflect this reality. Unless you have sufficient electrolysis and transmission capacity to absorb any surplus e.g. on a windy night with low demand, or a sunny yet windy summer Sunday afternoon you will be curtailing at the margin anyway.
Yet periods of maximum surplus are relatively rare, so capacity built to utilise them will only rarely be used. If your plant and transmission capacity only gets used 10% of the time its capital cost is 10 times that of capacity that is fully utilised. The result is that it will never be worth trying to use all the surplus.
But it doesn’t stop there. Even low levels of surplus are intermittent events, depending on varying levels of generation less varying levels of demand. So even the very first plant you build can only hope to have very intermittent operation based on surplus electricity. It makes no sense to use it when there is no surplus, because you are destroy energy and have to find other ways to supply it.
Calculations I have done suggest that average utilisation of hydrolysis plant would be below 25% for a full renewables plus storage solution.