Hydrogen! It’s the obvious and perfect answer to global warming caused by human CO2 emissions. Instead of burning hydrocarbons (fossil fuels) we can leave out the carbon part, burn just the hydrogen, and emit nothing but pure water vapor. H2 + O = H2O! Thus, no more CO2 emissions . Why didn’t anyone think of this before now?
Actually, the geniuses are way ahead of you on this one. President George W. Bush was touting the coming “hydrogen economy” as far back as 2003. (“In his 2003 State of the Union Address, President Bush launched his Hydrogen Fuel Initiative. The goal of this initiative is to work in partnership with the private sector to accelerate the research and development required for a hydrogen economy.”). Barack Obama was not one to get left behind on an issue like this. In the run-up to the Paris Climate Conference in 2015 Obama’s Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced, “[F]uel cell technologies [i.e., hydrogen-fueled motors] are paving the way to competitiveness in the global clean energy market and to new jobs and business creation across the country.” Then there’s the biggest hydrogen enthusiast of all, PM Boris Johnson of the UK, who promises that his country is at the dawn of the “hydrogen economy.” (“Towards the end of 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson released details of a 10-point plan for a so-called ‘green industrial revolution.’. . . This year will also see the government publish a Hydrogen Strategy that will “outline plans” to develop a hydrogen economy in the U.K.”)
And let us not forget California. If you look at my post from two days ago about California’s plans for “zero carbon” electricity, you will find a chart showing that by 2045 they plan to have some 40 GW of what they call “Zero Carbon Firm” resources. What does that mean? In the print below the chart, they reveal it: “hydrogen fuel cells.” (Their current amount of hydrogen fuel cells contributing to the grid is 0.)
So basically, hydrogen is the perfect answer to our problems, right? Wrong. Only an idiot could think that hydrogen offers any material useful contribution to the world’s energy supply.
For much of the information that follows, I’ll be relying on a June 6, 2020 Report written for the Global Warming Policy Foundation by John Constable. However, and not to downplay Mr. Constable’s excellent Report in any way, but I made many of the same points in one of the very first posts on this blog in November 2012, titled “The Hydrogen Economy.” That post was based mostly on my layman’s understanding of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Really, that’s all you need to know to realize that hydrogen as a major source of energy for the economy doesn’t make any sense at all.
So what is the fundamental flaw in the idea of a hydrogen-based energy economy? Constable puts it this way: “Being highly reactive, elemental hydrogen, H2, is found in only small quantities in nature on the earth’s surface but is present in a very wide range of compounds.” In other words, the hydrogen is not free for the taking, but rather is already combined with something else; and to separate the hydrogen so that you have free hydrogen to use, you need to add energy. Once you have added the energy and you have the free hydrogen, you can burn it. But that’s where the Second Law of Thermodynamics comes in. Due to inevitable inefficiencies in the processes, when you burn the hydrogen, you get back less energy than you expended to free it up. No matter how you approach the problem, the process of freeing up hydrogen and then burning it costs more energy than it generates.
Do you think somebody in our political leadership or bureaucracies might understand this? Don’t count on it.
Constable then goes into much more detail, and the deeper he gets into it the more ridiculous the hydrogen project looks. Since essentially all of the hydrogen starts out combined with something, where might you look to find a source of large quantities of hydrogen? Constable: “[T]he sources are few in number, being limited to either water, fossil hydrocarbons or biomass.”
The bond of hydrogen and oxygen in water is a high-energy thing that therefore takes a lot of energy to undo. So let’s consider getting the hydrogen from natural gas. Indeed, that is the main source today of substantial quantities of pure hydrogen for industrial purposes. Constable describes a well-established process called “steam methane reformation” (SMR) by which steam is passed through natural gas (methane, or CH4). The bond is broken and the hydrogen breaks free. Voila! Oh, but what happens to the carbon? Why obviously, it is released also, and thereupon combines with oxygen from the air forming CO2.
Wait a minute! The whole idea behind undertaking this expensive process was to avoid the release of the CO2. So clearly, we need another step. In the British proposal to create the “hydrogen economy,” they have had to include the addition of processes for “carbon capture and storage” to capture the CO2 before it gets away and prevent it getting into the atmosphere. Except that they haven’t figured out how to capture it all. They are hoping for capture rates of maybe 85 – 90%. So it turns out that this process, for all its additional costs, is not emissions-free at all.
And then there’s the next obvious question: Why not just burn the natural gas? Instead of having to input energy in the “steam reformation” process, this way you will release a large amount of useable and useful energy when the carbon gets burned. And as to CO2, you get the exact same amount. If you have a fetish that the CO2 must be captured, you can try to capture it from this process instead of from the “steam reformation” process. Again, you will not get 100%, but it’s really no different.
Except for the optics. In the first scenario, you claim you are burning “clean, pure hydrogen.” In the second scenario, you are burning natural gas, just as we have been doing for decades. Can people really be fooled by this?
Isn’t water vapor a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2?
But it’s already loose in the environment, unless you’re using fossil water.
Your gasoline powered car already emits a lot of water vapour:
C6H14 (octane) + 9½O2 → 6CO2 + 7H2O
1 mole of octane = 86 grams = 123 mL, 7 moles of H2O = 126 grams = 126 mL
For every gallon of gasoline your car burns (assuming it’s pure octane, which is an approximation) it emits 1.02 gallons of water (mostly as water vapour, but you can often see water dripping from tailpipes after a cold start on a cold day)
Because water vapour is present in the atmosphere at levels measured in tens of thousands of ppm, human contribution doesn’t make a significant difference, although all those jet aircraft leaving water vapour in the stratosphere – who knows?
The technical problems with hydrogen are basically engineering problems. How to make electrolysis of water work on an industrial scale, how to store it without leaking because the molecules are so tiny and many metals are somewhat porous to H2, and how to compress it to the extreme pressures needed to store a usable amount of energy for a car and avoid the hazard of explosion. Those are the obvious ones; no doubt there are others.
Essentially correct, but, umm, that’s not octane.
Not trying to be a jerk. It’s all meant in good fun.
You hexed him.
63% of human body atoms is hydrogen, but only 10% of its weight, about one and half tankful of a hydrogen powered Toyota car.
Would you happen to be suggesting that we liberate hydrogen from people?
Would this be the new soylent fleet of vehicles?
That too was a green economy as I recall.
Which now reminds me of a vehicle I saw on the highway one time.
It was a green VW Bug. License plate read SOYLNT
Soylent green was set in 2022…..
ONLY ONE MORE YEAR!
(AOC had it wrong!)
Don’t give them any more ideas Vuk, they are mad enough as it is.
The idea of Soylent Green fuel will not have escaped them.
You guys are so old school! They’re going to use people as batteries!
All Hail the Matrix!
Yep, already happened,thousands Aussies sit in 12 hour shifts on fixed exercise bikes fitted with dynamos charging the ElonMusk’s giant South Australia’s battery complex.
Musk exudes exuberance when he talks about his pet project “We are proud to be part of South Australia’s renewable energy future, and hope this project provides a model for future deployments around the world.”
I read the other day that Air Products is going to replace its delivery trucks with ones that use hydrogen fuel cells.
I’d like to have a working diesel fuel cell powered vehicle.
In Europe during WW2 when petrol(gasoline) was rationed people resorted to gasbag vehicles.
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/11/gas-bag-vehicles.html
You mean that we aren’t “carbon based” life forms?
Star Trek got it wrong? 😎
This energy density chart in MJ/kg and MJ/L says it all. H2 has great energy per mass, but terrible per volume, even compressed, relative to hydrocarbons. But worse yet is Li ion batteries which are dead last in both categories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_density.svg
Are you proposing an alternative to Soylent Green? TIC
You must mean water gas, not water vapor. Vapor is not a gas in the same way that CO2 is.
Why not?
Yes; water vapor can be treated as an ideal gas just as can CO2…
Vapor is not a well defined term scientifically. For many people vapor is akin to steam.
Water vapor, water vapour or aqueous vapor is the gaseous phase of water. As a gas it is just like CO2. In fact it is the dominant greenhouse gas, making CO2 something of an also ran … a nobody in the GHG sweepstakes.
Hello Fred. It is impossible to demonize water, because so many people use it on a daily basis. I myself drink it every day, as it is an essential component of whisky. We can’t even demonize carbon dioxide, because animals expel it with every breath. If you breath, you are a source of climate-destroying carbon dioxide. Could you please breath less? No? Do you want to destroy life on Earth? That argument ain’t going to work.
However we can demonize carbon. I hate the stuff. I used to use pencils, before I found out that the graphite in them was 100 percent carbon. What was I thinking? And don’t get me started on diamonds.
It is time to abolish the element whose atomic number is 6. The number of the Beast is 6. Is this a coincidence? I don’t think so.
I think I’ll have some more whisky, which has always helped me think.
It would seem that the whisky actually helps to make you BRILLIANT!
But isn’t “you put more energy in than you get out” true of just about any battery? I agree hydrogen makes no sense for a fixed site grid power generation fuel. But how about as a way to store energy for transportation? How does the energy density and full lifecycle cost of hydrogen as a transport fuel compare to lithium battery cells? Presumably the cost of generating the electricity to “recharge” either a lithium battery or a hydrogen tank would be the same. They both emit no carbon while being discharged for transport. Does hydrogen have an advantage over lithium because of the much lower time required to recharge? Or is that advantage outweighed by other disadvantages?
Hydrogen is not the easiest gas to store and transport. It will need to stored under high pressure in a tank that is constructed out of materials with low hydrogen permeability. I shudder to thick what would happen if a high pressure hydrogen tank was ruptured in an accident.
Hydrogen embrittlement of steels is a well known issue. When hydrogen burns, the flame is very difficult to see.
With the ruptured and ignited hydrogen tank, the effect would be immediate. Compared to lithium batteries which can burn for hours.
The difference between a flame and an explosion.
Besides, the hydrogen escapes upward, away from the source and rapidly dissipates much of it won’t even burn.
Jim, you’re talking about a tiny leak.
Fill a balloon with hydrogen gas then supply a spark.
What happens?
Fill a tank with liquid hydrogen, rupture it and supply a spark.
What happens?
hindenberg… oh the humanity…
For a good example of large quantities of hydrogen burning, look no further than the Hindenburg disaster.
Most people of the Hindenburgh desaster died from the fall,not from the cold flames.Any balloon filled with natural gas would have shown more pyro show
.Hindenburgh was and is primarily used to show the symbolic failure of the Nazs.
A more important question would be.
If 90 years ago nazis were able to store hydrogen in tanks and develop balloon skins that were hydrogenproof to cross the Atlantic,why is it a problem nowadays to store it.
As it is better to store energy the inefficient way than to not store it at all.
I merely remarked that the Hindenburg was a good example “of large quantities of hydrogen burning”. Can you think of a better example?
You sure do make a lot of assumptions from a simple fact. BTW, it was probably the Nazis’ coatings that burned the hottest, most probably thermite combined with some sort of lacquer … in other words a form of rocket fuel. Oh … and they weren’t all that “hydrogenproof” either. They leaked like sieves.
Read the comments and you’ll learn why it’s hard to store hydrogen.
They actually used the stomachs of thousands of cows to make the “bladders” to store the gas.
But WHY do you NEED a way to store this energy?
Because you have set a goal of using unreliable, non-dispatchable energy sources.
A solution to a non-problem, i.e., a waste of time and energy and money, but the money part does go to the chosen, doesn’t it?
Two problems off the top of my head:
Hydrogen is an incredibly volumetrically inefficient propellant, and how is it going to be stored?
But, then, I a an engineer and not trying to save the world.
ummm.
Hydrogen is merely j(G)ust another Energy Storage System.
(GUESS!)
Problem is,- just like Lithium batteries it takes loads of energy to get the infrastructure for storage in the form that is useable.
Ie. Lithium, mining and carting the stuff around the world then charging it up with energy.
Hydrogen, seperating the gas, then pumping it up to 1000s of bar pressure. (No doubt cools down the cylinder nicely as it expands).
There is no way any of those energy intensive processes could ever be offset by producing less CO2 from the manufacturing/storage inducing processes, which usually take place in CONCRETE structures, made specially for the purpose. (more CO2 involved there!)
My experiences with Hydrogen bubble chambers involved frangible walls, so that an explosion caused by anything over 4% H>air would explode the walls of a building without killing people with over-pressure.
Dunno if they plan to use the same strategies in 21st century, but most experimental proton bubble chamber halls weren’t particularly warm and required big powerful magnets.
I wouldn’t want hydrogen anywhere near something I drive, and I’m not so enthusiastic about highly reactive metals like Lithium, Cobalt etc either.!
In terms of storage, H2 is a poor performer. Coal, oil, wood, peat, CH4 are much better and safer.
U forgot Uranium and kinetic energy of water with a place to fall to.
Why not add some carbon atoms to make H2 a much safer and more efficient fuel? We could call it gas…
Yes, it is. Highly corrosive for metals. Containers and pipes should be carefully surveyed and replaced very often.
Yes, of course.
The last sentence says, “Can people really be fooled by this?”
Does a wild bear sh!t in the woods?
“Can people really be fooled by this?”
Sadly, yes
Two weeks to flatten the curve.
Who remembers the Hindenburg?
I certainly don’t. I wasn’t even born yet.
Well, I wasn’t born yet either, but my father was, living in Philadelphia, and the whole family piled into the Ford and drove down to nearby Lakehurst, New Jersey to watch the disaster. Video of the explosion and fire has been shown many times. Here is just one of the many videos on YouTube,the archived footage.
Very few were killed by the hydrogen fire itself which burned away from the ship. The impact of the landing, flying debris, and diesel fuel ignited by the hydrogen caused most of the death and injury.
Afterwards, dirigibles were filled with helium but their size and rigid structures caused problems due to wind sheer.
Wasn’t the reason Hydrogen was used was because Germany was unable to get a steady supply of helium because of the war? At least that is what I was told many years ago. Helium was the preferred gas for inflation because it was not prone to burning. Even if the hydrogen didn’t incinerate the passengers and crew, impact with the ground did a dandy job of extinguishing life.
I am sitting back and watching all this talk of green hydrogen being the future of our energy needs and waiting for the tragedies to start rolling in.
The commercial Zeppelin fleet was built between the wars.
The reason that hydrogen was used is that it is easily generated from abundant methane and water using the steam process described in the article. Helium is a much more expensive process, although the major feed stock is also natural gas, from which it is extracted cryogenically, after everything that could solidify during the process (water and carbon dioxide) is removed.
For commercial extraction, the natural gas must also be relatively rich in helium – which is true of only a few sources, none of them in Germany at the time. The helium is created when radioactive elements decay in the crust, emitting alpha particles (the nucleus of helium), so the natural gas well has to be where there are also relatively rich uranium or thorium deposits.
So, that story about the Allies not selling Helium to Germany was just anti-Allies propaganda? Very interesting.
Whoa!
In your defense of using H2 today, are you serious trying to suggest that The Hindenburg would not have been if a disaster if there where no fossil fuels aboard?
My understanding is also that the reflective and anti-static paint was made using aluminium and iron oxide, which is effectively solid rocket fuel (or thermite)
I spent some time working in Lakehurst at the Naval Air Station as an SME contractor. I was more than a little shocked that to that point and I assume to this day, the memorial to the Hindenberg there is only a tall painted stick/weathervane. They kept me so busy I never even had time to get my picture taken with it.
I seem to recall someone screaming ‘Oh, the humanity”. Don’t recall the source.
The landing was being broadcast live on radio. The announcer who made the statement was Herbert Morrison.
It seems these days people can be fooled by almost anything
Sheesh, just send it to Congress and have them change the law.
It’s all irrelevant anyways. Cold fusion is just 10 years away.
Prove it….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion
Proven.😉
OK. I might be overly optimistic on the 10 year thing.
Oh, and here I thought you had just not bothered with the /sarc tag.
Hank, is that you?
.. and has been 10 years away for the past 50. Will probably stay 10 years away for the next 50 as well.
Check out a man called Rossi,He is launching the most energy efficient light ( 4 watts input 100 watts output Can be powered of a 12 volt supply)on November 25th. Also he will be announcing An electricity producing module.
You can per-order a lamp at $25 each, have look might find it interesting.
Ummm . . . where can I order 100 million of these? I will have just become a bazillionaire and solved the world’s energy crisis in one fell swoop.
Try certification of the E-cat SKled.
I bought 5.
“A fool and his money are soon parted.” — Thomas Tusser, 1557
I’ll believe it when he builds a plant to manufacture these things. Or if he turns a handful over to independent testers for a full and complete validation of his claims.
Something tells me twobob isn’t playing with a full deck. It was something about his writing style that tipped me off.
Nope! I have the full two shilling.
So you are another, believing in tipping points.
Having questing mind,does not inhibit my delving.
LOL … so I was right. You are utterly illiterate.
Yep … you’re completely out to lunch. I suggest you learn basic English before you decide to comment any further.
I see that irony is wasted on your self.
You must be from american roots.
You see nothing … and no, I’m not American.
Don’t bother with Congress. Just have JRB sign an executive order to change it!.
It well understood that a robust law has been established by modern climatology that the 10 year rule is unequivocal. All catastrophes and all scientific advances are just 10 years away.
The Cal energy idiots foresee using solar PV farms exclusively to use electrolysis to make the hydrogen to use in fuel cells. Of course would only run for about 6 hours/day in the winter. You have to make lots of hydrogen to get through long winter nights.
The problem is standard hydrolysis methods are quite inefficient with a lot of waste heat generated in passing a current though water. And the scale they would need hydrogen is far from realistic in terms of storage.
The largest cryogenic H2 (LH2) storage tank in the world is at Cape Kennedy space center. Extremely expensive due to the maintenance (seals) and special steels and insulations involved.
No one has solved this issue of where the hydrogen is to come at the scale envisioned by the Green idiots. Then there would be the serious issue of getting the hydrogen to generation plants to feed the grid. No one has that figured out either.
Bottom line is hydrogen power for grid scale electricity is going nowhere without copious amounts of natural gas consumption to make even partial hydrogen power possible.
Yes, people really under appreciate the technical difficulties.
I’ve been using laboratory sized electrolysis hydrogen generators for a long time and inevitably something causes an increase in resistance across the cells, they get hotter and this increases resistance and they eventually spiral out of control and fail.
The problem is that engineers still are unable to make inexpensive and robust cells. they can make robust cells but they are expensive. This problem exists at scale also.
The problem remains that hydrogen is a storage medium for the energy made from excess sun and wind generation, or it has no advantages or has disadvantages compared to the fossil fuels that it is otherwise made from. As a storage medium, batteries are easier for human beings to manufacture and maintain, not to mention safer. This situation can’t be overcome by foreseeable technology, so hydrogen will be a niche technology for situations where it can be generated and used nearby.
For example there are already many warehouse forklifts that use hydrogen fuel….advantages are that the forklifts are short range, indoor odors are nil, electric forklift batteries are a major capital cost, and electrolysis uses the same amount of electricity as recharging batteries…niche market…for you to drive to Yosemite, many supply problems….
Yes, it’s the typical government “one size fits all” approach to niche problems. If one needs to use hydrogen, such as for a flame ionization detector, then electrolysis might be a good option. In my experience, a cylinder of hydrogen is more reliable.
when I was mud logging we used Hydrogen FID dectectors. We started out with hydrogen generators but soon switched to 100lb Hydrogen bottles. Much more reliable and volume controllable..Typical bottle would last about 30 days before being needed to swapped out.
So, the obvious question is to ask, “Why not just use gas”? Asking for a friend.
Oh do keep up. They can’t use natural gas ‘cos it’s a, y’know, fossil fuel and has a public image problem!
Personally I’d just use natural gas and call it ‘hydrogen gas’ if anyone asked – I mean, it is gas and it has got hydrogen in it.
I don’t know why one would want to electrolyze water to produce low energy density (not to mention difficult to store and transport) hydrogen, when we could just as easily electrolyze molten salts, say, NaCl, to produce low volume and easily transported solid sodium and liquified chlorine gas. The latter could be readily dumped…er…recycled into freshwater lakes, rivers, streams and wetlands worldwide to provide safe drinking water for billions of people, while the sodium itself would readily react with water in power plants, work places, homes and vehicles to provide a (very) rapid source of energy whose only waste product can be dumped down drains…
/sarc
Electrolysis R&D is now the Search for the Magic Catalyst from what I have seen.
Oops. Hydrogen is usually combined. You have omitted any references to the newly confirmed cold fusion process.
In the last twelve months it has become apparent the cold fusion nut has been cracked. Even NASA has got a patent and apologised for previously putting it down.
There has been an enormous amount of work gone into discovering the process and uni’s world wide and their students have been passing test info and results around. It was like the early days of computing.
Cold fusion eventually came out to be simple when the keys were discovered. It requires hydrogen; form, not greatly significant. A metallic element which can act as catalyst. A small plasma AND an additional pumped oscillating voltage through it.
The process runs about 1000 deg C. or less and radiation is not a problem. Clean energy!
The argument about how the excess heat is produced may not be settled this century. The best seems to be that the hydrogen has its state changed by the presence of the voltage disturbing the plasma and its electron is shifted in the shell. A “hydrino” is the result and they have been shown to have their own spectral signature. They are also on offer freely to the world for investigation.
There are several contenders for commercial development. Andrea Rossi has been a long stayer and has a public demo organised for late November. He has very cleverly not only shown the process but is <em>harvesting electricity directly from the plasma.</em> Such a unit is only 20cm cubed with controls and has been demonstrated a year or so ago at a uni presentation with an output of 18.5 Kw. Power conditioning has been a problem bur Dr Rossi has recently announced he has achieved that using AI software and the whole process will be shown later this year. There is a lot to see on https://e-catworld.com
Another contender is https://brilliantlightpower.com
These are the hydrino people. They are showing a 250Kw boiler on their site and working on a 90%+ magnetohydrodynamic in-line conversion unit. They have several skilled engineers in their team and their plans for its use in driving ship, trains etc may well be realised.
This year may be a landmark one.
How deeply are you invested in these scams?
Mills and Rossi compete for the same marks and when they get money from them they say the mark has been landed. I guess some could invest is both.
In any case, every year is a landmark year.
I have none whatsoever. I have followed LENR for 10 years and watched it eventually come to fruition. The quantity of independent research reported on the net has been huge. Anyone with the right nous could pick up the way to do this at home and that’s what been happening. It probably led to the discovery of the pulsed electricity being required.
Mills and Rossi are far from being the only ones. NASA patented the process recently and apologised. Several others have recently announced their commercial intentions too. Expect more as the process can be gleaned from the net.
Must be the beginning of April – my that date rolls round quite fast these days.
April 1st is happening almost weekly today.
I blame it on climate change.
HB 41 was recently introduced officially changing every day to April 1.
I stand corrected! It explains a whole lot, that does …
The advantages over hydrogen that methane/natural gas/CH4 has are so obvious that it emphasises how ludicrous it is to even consider H2. The two gases share similar disadvantages in terms of lack of filling stations and low power density, but an average to large car has adequate space to fill up with several hundred miles worth.
LOX and particulate emissions are extremely low, a plus in crowded European cities.
There’s one huge advantage of advocating CH4 as the intermediate fuel of the future. It would actually let politicians off the hook – they can claim it’s halfway to the hydrogen economy and as such we can avoid crashing Western civilisation for thirty years.
JF
You seem to be anti-suicide. One can come to the conclusion that some, if not many, Western politicians want civilization to crash.
Yes. not many, but SOME!
That’s such a good paragraph. Hats off to you.
It’s dead Jim.
“You hold the Tricorder and I’ll get his wallet.”
Cant wait to hear the discussion with firefighters on the hydrogen powered fire engines going in to fight bushfires. No really it is safe, it could be worse you could be using Li powered vehicles.
Lol
If it doesn’t work Doris will throw billions at it
In today’s Times it seems the government is offering grants up to £7000 to replace gas boilers
Luckily my boiler is only 4 years old and I won’t be changing what works for something that doesn’t
That seems like a lot of money. Gas boilers are relatively inexpensive here in the U.S. for home heating and seem to last for many decades.
It’s nowhere near enough for a heat pump (>£10K) let alone converting space etc for a new hot water tank/ pumps etc Assuming one has the space available
It’s a bad joke
Heat pumps can be a nightmare, useless one doesn’t need heat.
Yep, otherwise they work just fine, for the manufacturers and installation crews!
Thanks for pointing that out, Scissor.
I’m U.S. too, and when I see the WUWT British contingent here discussing the high costs of replacing their boilers, electric systems, heat pumps and whatnot, the prices seem eyewatering to me too.
Not that it’s exactly cheap in the U.S., but it seems like costs here are half those in the U.K. Oh, I’ve noticed puzzled comments from the Oz brigade here that their prices are much lower, too.
The prices always come up in comments when it comes to the Brits changing out their boilers to anything else. I’ve never seen an explanation for the huge difference.
–
Closer to the topic, a forced change of energy supply is a waste and extra expense for everybody, but it seems the Brits get hit hardest. I have no clue why there’s such a difference; VAT maybe?
Can you guess why petrol is more expensive in the UK?
Two taxes: fuel duty and then VAT on top of that
We pay tax on tax
Since you’ve already paid income tax on that money, technically it’s a tax on a tax, on taxed money. VAT/GST/sales tax is already a tax on taxed money.
Not many things are cheap in the U.K., except maybe a pint of beer and talk.
Beer is far more expensive at roughly £6 a pint (568 mi)
1 litre petrol is around £1.35
Damn. I’d like to visit the U.K. again some day. Maybe not.
Well, my advice is start saving!
When I lived in the UK (mid ’60s) beer was 11 pence a pint and 11 P h’penny for best bitter. Talk about inflation … talk about years of bad government … poor buggers.
I got 5.9% beer for £1.69 a pint this week. The £6 pint does exist in London but these days London is not Britain.
In a pub or an off license?
If I say “Spoons” do you know what I mean?
It’s been 40 years since I lived in the UK. If I did know it’s left my mind now. Chemo wiped out rather a large %age of the past, LOL
You likely wouldn’t know then. It’s the slang name for a large pub chain. So it was in a pub not an off-licence. In fact it’s long time since I heard the term “off-licence”. These days the supermarkets are often open 24h and they sell loads of booze.
Right, I had completely forgotten that the UK decided to abandon its culture and suck up to Europe. The large pub chain was likely owned by Germans and staffed by French for American tourists and “refugees” from wherever..
And that was old pennies vs new pennies after decimalization.
240 old pennies to the Pound vs 100 new pennies
So converted to new pennies that 1960’s pint was a mere 4.5 new pennies.
I remember buying my first pint at the age of 16 for 11 pence. In those days the publican didn’t care if you were 18 or not.
As long as you didn’t make any problems that is.
The conversion cost the poor and the old terribly. Much of their lives was dealing in loose change, not notes. Everything suddenly cost much more.
When the government ‘mandates’ changes, it will ALWAYS cost more! Taxes are only a part of the problem. A truly free market will allow the MARKET to control the prices, not politicians! Another thing working there, is the concept of ‘gauge them for all you can get’! It works, too, apparently, in the UK! In the US a good ‘boiler’ (hot water heater) can be bought for under $500, plus installation. If you are able to screw a few pipes together, you can do it yourself, for free. I’ve done it MANY times, in different houses. Not so much anymore, since I’m now 82.
Are these actually gas boilers (IE, heat water to create steam) or is boiler a generic British term for what we in the US would call a furnace.
They are to run a hot water in radiators heating system. We don’t run them so hot as to raise steam.
The colour of the H₂ is obviously important.
So far:
Green
Blue
Pink
Turquoise
Grey
Brown
Black
the Global Warming Policy Foundation
a mysteriously funded propaganda organisation with no scientific credibility
Yes, you are.
Griff often signs off with a truth and sometimes even begins with a truth.
The Guardian – founded on the proceeds of slavery
And it bothers you not, griff
Why is that?
Are you attempting to describe the Democrat Party there griff? If so I agree with your overview….
The IPCC
a mysteriously funded propaganda organisation with no scientific credibility…
If you repeat a lie long enough, and LOUDLY enough, it will soon be accepted as the truth. Or something like that.
griff,
Academic Advisory Board of the GWPF-
Professor Christopher Essex (Chairman),
Sir Ian Byatt,
Dr.John Constable,
Professor Vincent Courtillot,
Professor Peter Dobson OBE,
Christian Gerondeau,
Professor Lawrence Gould,
Professor William Happer,
Professor Ole Humlum,
Professor Khalghatgi,
Professor Terence Kealey
William Kinninmonth,
Bryan Leyland,
Professor Richard Lindzen,
Professor Ross McKitrick,
Professor Robert Mendelsohn,
Professor Garth Paltridge,
Professor Ian Plimer,
Professor Gwythian,
Professor Paul Reiter,
Professor Peter Ridd,
Dr. Matt Ridley,
Sir Alan Rudge,
Professor Nir Shaviv,
Professor Hendrik Svensmark,
Dr.David Whitehouse.
Deceased Council Members:
Sir Samuel Brittan,
Viscount Camrose,
Professor Robert Carter,
Professor Freeman Dyson,(Founding Member of the GWPF),
Professor David Henderson,
Professor Tony Kelly,
Professor Depak Lal,
Professor Sir Alan Peacock,
Professor B.P. Radhakrishna.
Would you like to withdraw your fatuous claim of “no scientific credibility.”
Griff finds Mickey Mouse and Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore far more believable scientists … they claimed a climate emergency so it must be true.
LdB,
That’s MIKEY Mouse if you don’t wish to added to the list of lawsuits! But you are correct; the griffter is in awe of Mickey Mouse’s academic credentials!
They don’t have degrees in climate science (as a matter of fact, there are no degrees in climate science).
Someone in their family may have once met someone who worked for an oil company, therefore they are hopelessly corrupted.
Their opinions don’t match the latest run of the sacred models, therefore they are proven wrong.
Unable to rebut the (self-evident) facts in this article, Griff characteristically attempts to defame the people who produced it.
That’s the old ad hominem argument. It has no credibility.
if you can’t refute the message , attack the messenger
You talk about IPCC ??? 😀
Once again when griff can’t refute the science, he attacks the messenger.
Is that your personal definition or did you copy it from some other idiot?
And Griff, what century would you prefer to live in given the deadly CO2 running amuck in our atmosphere today, according to you.
The 1700’s? Life expectancy 35?
The 1800’s? Life expectancy 45?
The 1900’s? Life expectancy 60?
The 2000’s? Life expectancy 70+?
Sounds like most British media, the IPCC and most of UK universities.
Best headline on a WUWT article for many, many years. Thanks!
The best information on Hydrogen I have seen is HARRYS GARAGE “Is hydrogen, rather than electric, the future for big-engined machinery? I visit JCB to find out”
That is an excellent video on youtube. A real company with practicality in mind. However the issue is the production of the hydrogen in the first place.
I would say “also” rather than instead.
A small quantity of hydrogen for special purposes may be worth the cost. But why not simply have a small, with an emphasis on small, pilot project doing research until they come up with cost effective and safe ways of producing and working with hydrogen before running ahead with very costly unicorn schemes?
The answer is: X% of a small number is small.
Various companies and organizations have been handling hydrogen for many years. It’s already a mature technology
True, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good, mature technology.
Odd… Using hydrogen to avoid releasing CO2″, because CO2 is a “greenhouse gas”; but burning hydrogen will release H2O vapour, which is a more powerful “greenhouse gas”…
Am I missing something?
Yes, you have that H2O in addition to the CO2 used to produce the H2.
No, it’s just that mankind’s emissions relative to natural CO2 emissions is on the order of 3-4%. Mankind’s emissions relative to natural H2O emissions would be essentially 0%.
You forgot that hydrogen is all around us. Like wind. And it is FREE!!! Just like wind.
Yes, adding H20 to the atmosphere will only increase the amount temporarily, as it will precipitate out in short order. Not the case for CO2
Well…
A quick statistics of the comments to my comment indicate that one half says yes, the other says no.
Science is settled, then! (hydrogen idiots will come and cancel the comments that do not fit the narrative)
“You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.” — George W. Bush
Whoever told you that “greenies” neither listen to nor learn from Republicans was mistaken.
That quote comes from a gridiron speech, and was meant to be humerous.
Bush also stated that he was quoting Democrat Robert Straus when he gave that quote.
Now that’s just funny
Everyone is missing the real value of Hydrogen.. Hydrogen –> Helium is the ticket. There are gazillions of these factories across the universe (and one just 93 million miles away) that do this 24x7x365 (366 on leap years). Just duplicate the process here on Earth and we got it. Easy Peasy.
I detest this common error. It’s 24/7/52 or 53 if you really want, or 24/365 or 356
We seem to be going over too a unreliable electric system where we can not control the output. Cloudy/ high sunny days, windy/ windless days so there will be a lot of over capacity to stop blackouts.
The excess would be ideal for making Hydrogen?
From my school days (a lot of years ago) Water and electric makes hydrogen. both will abundant in the future.
See Harrys farm interview with JCB on their work on Hydrogen.
Brother, you can’t “fool” the willingly stupid, got to come up with a new word to describe the process. It is funny, for over 40 years people have been screeching that hydrogen fuel technology is here, and yet it is still not here. If it was so great and inexpensive it would be widely in use already. Oh well.
I seem to recall that hydrogen was the fuel of the future even when global cooling was in vogue.
It was supposed to power our flying cars! Or flying snowblowers. To each their own.
It’s the fuel of the future…and always will be.
That’s what I call insight.
It.should be noted though, that using solar energy (or even wind?) to separate hydrogen from water is a potentially viable route to reliable storage of that energy. I am not a huge proponent of either energy source, as the technologies currently exist, but if advances make either of them much more reasonable primary sources of energy a reliable means to store the energy is still required. Hydrogen *could* be that means on an industrial scale for grid management.
Batteries are safer, cheaper and more efficient.
You just may be on to something, there. Wind and/or solar are NOT reliable sources for running our grid on, but how about using them to generate the hydrogen, and then using THAT to charge up the backup batteries that are sorely needed? Less input to generate the fuel. I didn’t say the dirty F word, either, since NOTHING is ever ‘free’. If we could cut down on the amount of energy (expense) needed to generate the H2, wouldn’t that be a huge plus?
Sometimes it’s better to milk a cow just by squeezing its teats.
You are not allowed to do the math, or to use logic when it comes to climate.
How dare you!
Hydrogen is difficult to store because has very low volumetric energy density. It is the simplest and lightest element–it’s lighter than helium. Hydrogen is 3.2 times less energy dense than natural gas and 2700 times less energy dense than gasoline. Sounds like the perfect bomb to put in your vehicle.
Well, it could save the BBC some money.. they could recycle all the old stock footage of cooling towers that punctuate every “climate” story they cover, and use them to show that the “green” hydrogen powerplants are saving the planet…
No, they plan to burn unicorn farts, which are of course hydrogen. . .
Yes, but the SMELLL!
Everyone knows unicorn farts smell like rainbows.
This is not a useful post as it provides no actual information to justify the position that hydrogen is not a useable fuel. The problem of using hydrogen as a transportation fuel is not so much a question of technical feasibility as it is economics. Fuel cell powered vehicles are a proven technology. Fuel cell powered vehicles have major advantages over pure electric vehicles in that they have better range and much faster refueling. A major obstacle to using hydrogen as a vehicle fuel is the lack of infrastructure. Of course, we didn’t start out with all the infrastructure we now have for gasoline and diesel. It can be built, but it will take a very, very long time. It will also take a long time to convert the vehicle fleet. So there is a huge cost, and it takes forever, but it could happen. The other big problem is simply the cost to make the hydrogen, which can be produced electrolytically, with solar power being the obvious choice (making it from natural gas makes no sense since the natural gas can be burned directly and it accomplishes nothing as far as reducing CO2 emissions, if that is important- not saying it, but that’s why the interest in hydrogen). The DOE estimates that in order for hydrogen to be economic as a vehicle fuel, the cost of electricity needs to be at about $0.03 per Kw-Hr. For solar, the energy cost is essentially zero, but even if conversion of solar energy to hydrogen were 100% efficient, the capital and operating cost still puts the cost of electricity from solar out of reach for it to be an economic source of hydrogen as a vehicle fuel. In addition to the solar collectors, you need the electrolyzer equipment along with some hydrogen compression and distribution system (pipelines). Some have suggested that hydrogen pipelines are impossible because of metallurgical limitations, but this is nonsense. Better electrolyzer technology is being developed, but the economics will always be challenging relative to fossil energy.
“For solar, the energy cost is essentially zero…”
How exactly is solar energy cost essentially zero? Free solar panels? Free land? 🤔
As I noted earlier, ‘NOTHING is ever ‘free’! Oh, and also, you can have ALL of the ‘nothing’ you want, since it IS free.
If you put solar panels on your roof, you don’t have to pay for the sunlight that falls on them and gets converted to electricity. You just have to pay for the cost of installing the equipment. You can argue that this is not an important distinction, but a careful reading of what I wrote clearly indicates that I was not saying that electrical energy from solar does not cost anything because I said, “even if conversion of solar energy to hydrogen were 100% efficient, the capital and operating cost still puts the cost of electricity from solar out of reach for it to be an economic source of hydrogen as a vehicle fuel.”
So Tom, why don’t we just treat hydrogen fuel as a plan B option for when we run out of oil?
I think that until the cost of the alternative reaches the point where solar hydrogen becomes economically attractive, the plan B is exactly what it is. Still, it is a problem worth studying, and it is technically feasible.
Why spend lots of other people’s money to duplicate something that already exists and is better over all. Just to solve a problem that never existed?
I never suggest that we should.
Supposing someone eventually solves the leakage and embrittlement problems, the inescapable issue with hydrogen is lack of energy density. Even as a cryogenic liquid, hydrocarbons are much more dense in energy, and much easier to handle.
Who woulda thought that? Imagine having all that energy at our fingertips and not knowing it.
There is no embrittlement problem. We already have commercial hydrogen pipelines in the United States.
I have always said that the first step toward net zero has to be to repeal the laws of thermodynamics.
I don’t think the democrats would go for that but they might go for one. They seem to think that you can get something for nothing, so the first law could go.
Wasn’t there a senator in somewhere who wanted to pass a law redefining PI to be 3.0
Yeah, something about pie being square in Indiana.
Wiki: The Indiana Pi Bill is the popular name for bill #246 of the 1897 sitting of the Indiana General Assembly, one of the most notorious attempts to establish mathematical truth by legislative fiat.
If Trump had champinned it, that would have been Biden’s first priority, I’m sure.
Didn’t Japan already fool Australia into an arrangement were a fossil fuel plant in Australia would be used to make hydrogen to ship to Japan for fuel leaving Australia with carbon deficit and Japan with the virtue signaling hydrogen benefit?
So, I guess, yes, the elite can be this easily fooled.
There was an article in the IEEE Spectrum a few months back touting (yes, this is the right description) how Japan has decided to go all-in as a nation for hydrogen.
Read https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232983331_The_Future_of_the_Hydrogen_Economy_Bright_or_Bleak and you will have a clear understanding of the problems of using Hydrogen as energy in an economy. It simply will not work.
Apparently presidents and prime ministers at least. It is the “idiots’ answer” after all.
Producing Hydrogen by water electrolysis requires very pure water you cannot produce but only through bidistillation: First energy loss.
Then electrolyzing water is a second energy loss since the hydrogen yield is 60 p.c. when compared with the electricity input in the electrolyzer.
To make the hydrogen easier to handle you have to compress it at very high pressures circa 800 Bars. Everybody knows that gas compression is another energy waste producing amounts of non usable heat: Third energy loss. In addition compressed hydrogen makes metallic H.P. cylinders becoming frail and dangerous. But that’s another story…
Last but not least: Transforming hydrogen into electricity in fuel cells to feed the vehicle’s motor has a 60 p.c. yield: Fourth energy loss, though the heat exhaust may be used sometimes to heat the vehicle during cold times.
Now everyone may easily understand why an electric with a Li/Ion rechargeable battery (90% p.c. yield) wastes much lesser amounts of energy than Hydrogen powered ones.
How does the weight of the pressurized tank for hydrogen plus the fuel cell compare to a battery? The range for both options needs to be similar.
This will be interesting.
https://www.airproducts.com/news-center/2021/07/0726-air-products-and-cummins-to-accelerate-development-and-deployment-of-hydrogen-fuel-cell-trucks
I think we are looking in the wrong direction here. Since using H2 as a vehicle fuel is not only wasteful but also nearly impossible, why even bother? As an on-site fuel you eliminate many of these problems. Use the H2 as a fuel AT the the point of extraction, and burn it, to produce electricity. That electricity could either be uploaded to grid or used to store the necessary power for load balancing, etc. We can figure out the vehicular power problem later. Or else, start building those nuclear power stations now. H2 is too difficult and expensive to transport, until we work out the technology.
It’s well understood that hydrogen would be a very expensive chemical energy storage process, considering the input energy required to produce it and the many losses of waste heat in the various steps needed from production to consumption.
It also provides zero benefit in terms of CO2 emissions if it is not produced by electrolysis using renewable electricity sources. Methane reformation will generate more emissions than simply burning the natural gas directly. If CO2 is captured and sequestered, the hydrogen process will produce more CO2 per KWh ultimately generated that needs to be sequestered (due to more waste heat).
So, as a concept, it depends on having vast excesses of wind or solar power that would be used very inefficiently when available in excess of grid demand. It means running electrolyzers intermittently and thus requiring many more of them to be capable of utilizing the excess power when it is available in surges, 25-33% of the time. 3-4 times the capital requirements, in other words. It’s clearly nuts!
It would make more sense to synthesize hydrocarbons from biomass using nuclear process heat and just keep using good old diesel-powered trucks.
THE HYDROGEN ECONOMY WILL BE HIGHLY UNLIKELY
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-hydrogen-economy
EXCERPT
As part of the quest of having energy sources that produce near-zero CO2 emissions, energy systems analysts have looked at hydrogen as one such source. They see hydrogen as a possible fuel for transportation.
In California, the hydrogen economy movement has received support, in the form of subsidies and demonstration projects, from the state government and environmental groups, often supported and financed by prominent Hollywood actors.
Current Hydrogen Production: Hydrogen is used by the chemical, oil and gas industries for many purposes. The US produces about 11 million short tons/y, or 19958 million kg/y.
At present, about 95% of the H2 production is by the steam reforming process using fossil fuels as feedstock, mostly low-cost natural gas. This process emits CO2.
Hydrogen for Transportation: Proponents of H2-powered fuel cell vehicles, FCVs, in California think the hydrogen economy will be the future and a good place to start to reduce CO2 emissions from internal combustion vehicles, ICVs, would be to have near-zero-emission vehicles.
Here are examples comparing the fuel cost/mile of an FC light duty vehicle, an E10-gasohol IC vehicle, and an EV:
– Honda Clarity-FCX, using electrolytic H2 in a fuel cell, mileage about 68 mile/kg, or 14.8 c/mile, at a price of $10/kg at a fueling station in California. About $7/kg is electricity cost, and $3/kg is station cost. The H2 is not taxed. The average commercial electricity rate in California is 13.41c/kWh, which ranks 7th in the nation and is 32.9% greater than the national average rate of 10.09 c/kWh.
http://www.airproducts.com/Company/news-center/2017/03/0306-air-products-california-fueling-stations-offering-hydrogen-below-$10-per-kilogram.aspx
http://www.electricitylocal.com/states/california/los-angeles/
– Honda Accord-LX, using E10-gasohol, mileage about 30 mile/gal, or 8.3 c/mile, at a price of $2.50/gal at a gas station in California; this price includes taxes, surcharges and fees.
– Tesla Model S, using 0.38 kWh/mile, includes charging and vampire losses of batteries, at user meter, or 7.6 c/mile, at a price of 20 c/kWh at user meter; this price includes taxes, surcharges and fees.
“a price of $10/kg at a fueling station in California. About $7/kg is electricity cost, and $3/kg is station cost.” Something wrong here…no accounting for the capital cost of the electrolyzer and other equipment, which I believe is pretty nontrivia.
Dave,
Please read the URLs
Have understood everything mentioned in this article for years, however there is one process in Mother Nature that splits the water molecule all the time, phtotosynthesis. I know there is much research in this area, we can only hope
I’m pretty sure that photosynthesis splits the CO2 molecule, whatever water that isn’t retained by the plant is released as vapour.
To answer the final question: yes. After more than a year of COVID mask silliness, we know people can be fooled by anything.
If math is racist, physics must be too. How else can you explain its adamant refusal to progressive climate dogma.
The only argument for the use of hydrogen (if there is one) would involve its use as a means of storing energy from surplus electricity, such at that produced by nuclear plants (which are hard to shut down) during slow demand periods or from nuclear plants that could be cheaply placed away from populated areas, where the approval process that can multiply costs would be a lot less onerous. I’d like to see nuclear submarines (which, having an unlimited supply of cooling water and being portable, could have a huge advantage over land-based nuke plants) with much larger reactors in place of the usual crew and weaponry, being offered to any customer who could run the necessary cables. Then any excess capacity could be used to generate hydrogen. But, perhaps more importantly, any process that generates hydrogen could generate methanol, which wouldn’t require pressurized or super-insulated storage. So would nuclear-generated hydrogen or methanol be the “solution to global warming”? Of course not; no one technology will meet the needs of everyone. But it might be a useful addition to the array of sources and methods we already have.
You’re kind of missing the point here. Using hydrogen has the same effect as electric cars. The idea is to shift the pollution away from rich city dwellers to poorer people in more rural areas or hopefully, red china. Thus the hydrogen car, like the electric car, doesn’t pollute – for them.
Meanwhile the people living near the power plants get it.
Strange that your post appeared here along with your claim of being “officially banned”.
There is no need, or benefit, for me to respond to the rest of your inane musings.
When people want to be fooled, it usually is not hard to do so. In fact they will assume most of the work for you.
See also: people who don’t accept a long string of extreme weather events can be related to climate change
See also: gullible twerps who think that extreme weather events didn’t occur before 1950.
I think your right about the extreme weather events, its August and I’m wearing a fleece here in England, catastrophic in my opinion but not warm.
If weather had no extremes, there would be no purpose in naming it. In the grand scheme of things humans are suffering about 90% fewer effects from extreme weather. Warmer weather reduces the energy which causes storms.
“Climate change” doesn’t mean anything
griff,
There’s no such thing as a global climate. Weather patterns and ultimately climates of various regions change continuously. Sometimes there are factors that impact all regions, but not all climate change is global. As your high priests do preach in hand-waving away the various warm periods as “not global” (even though in those cases, they were global in scope).
In NH summer, there are now, as there always have been hot weather events in various places at random times. Not as frequently as in the 1930s however.
At the same time in SH winter, there are now and always have been unusual cold weather events. Not as frequently as in the 1690s though.
There are now and always have been regions in drought at the same time that there are regions with excess rain leading to flooding.
I would feel sympathy for you if I thought you really were traumatized by the hysterical hype of the propaganda ministries, but you and I both know that you are a cog in the agitprop infrastructure, toiling away at building global fascism.
That is demonstrably the reason why you steadfastly refuse to answer the question as to in which time period you would prefer to live. You certainly would not prefer to live during the depths of the Little Ice Age, in poverty without any modern comforts made possible by fossil fuels. It is obvious to all but the most ideologically blinkered or obtuse that a milder climate, particularly in winter, is a boon to human civilization.
Nevertheless I will repeat the unanswerable query. In which time period would you prefer to live your life?
[__] Benign low CO2 1675-1750
[__] “Dangerous” CO2 1950-2025
For someone who’s officially banned, you are still quite annoying.
Oh, BULL SHIT! Prove me wrong, Mark!
Steel production should become climate-friendly – and the solution is hydrogen. At the manufacturer Georgsmarienhütte, however, one wonders where the gas is actually supposed to come from.
Steel stoves lack green hydrogen
The problems the greens have don’t get as far as The Second Law.
They don’t even get The First Law: There is no free lunch.
I still think hydrogen could be useful. Not as an energy distribution system, but as a large scale local storage mechanism when electricity prices are consistently low enough to overcome the inefficiencies of electrolytic hydrogen generation.
All roads still point to nuclear power.
I spent much of my 40 year career working on solar hydrogen, including my PhD thesis in the 1970s. I am here to tell you these morons pushing the hydrogen economy don’t even have a clue.
Late in my career at a major national laboratory, I taught a course on hydrogen. I started out stating that the hydrogen economy is stupid, impractical, crazy, moronic, etc. – but some day will become essential. My point was that using hydrogen as a fuel makes no sense. It is hard to handle, ship, and store and that fossil fuels such as gasoline are hard to beat. I would state that there is a tremendous amount of energy in a gallon of gasoline and that if they did not believe me to try pushing their SUV 20 miles! I liked to point out that if we ever come up with a cost-effective way of producing solar (or nuclear) hydrogen the first thing to do was to ship it to the gulf coast to hydrogenate heavy crude.
However, eventually our fossil fuel resources will run out. It may be 100, 200, 500 or even a 1000 years, or more, but it will eventually become scarce. When that happens producing hydrogen from water (or CO from CO2) with persistent energy sources such as solar (gravitationally confined fusion) or nuclear will be needed to produce synthetic hydrocarbon fuels.
There are things we could start doing now to introduce hydrogen into the fuel mix, namely steam or CO2 reforming of natural gas using solar or nuclear thermal input, The resulting syngas mixture of CO and H2 has a heating value that incorporates the thermal input. The product syngas heating value is increased by up to 25% to 30%, depending on whether it steam or CO2 reforming, respectfully. As I recall this become economically viable with natural gas prices at above $6/MMBTU or so. Of course, because this is not pure renewable hydrogen, it is not supported and is even fought tooth-and-nail by zealots.
BTW, I studied heat transfer for my masters and PhD and routinely applied it throughout my career. After retiring I looked at global warming theory and found it terribly flawed. There is NO CLIMATE CRISIS. Mankind has plenty of time to figure this out.
It makes sense if you accept the science that a reduction in CO2 is necessary.
See also: gullible twerps who think CO2 reduction is necessary because “science”.
No. It does not.
Even if you accept the so-called global warming science, if we could produce bulk hydrogen economically we could recycle CO2 into synthetic fuel. Turns out the cost of the CO2 feedstock is not significant.
But I refuse to accept global warming theory. The physics are flawed and I could prove it, if given a chance. Physicists are too specialized. They don’t see the “big picture,” and, therefore, make fundamental errors, which I’m pretty sure they know about but have too much of a conflict of interest to admit. Integrity has been distilled out of the global warming scientific community.
SMN,
Too broad of a brush regarding physicists.
Many have demonstrated the flawed CO2/AGW carp of the alarmists.
The “science” that suggests we should reduce CO2 is non existent. Science shows us that our planet has been suffering from CO2 starvation. More is better. IF CO2 is contributing to warming, science shows us that’s a very good thing.
Because of the amount of energy it takes to produce, store, and transport hydrogen I can tell you the exact date when it will be practical as transportation fuel- the 12th of Never.
A reasonably priced, mass produced fuel cell that ran on gasoline would quickly replace battery and generator technology around the world.
Lipo batteries store a pitiful amount of energy for their cost and size. This makes fossil fuels very attractive because they hold a huge amount of energy for their cost and size.
Imagine a small low cost fuel cell that could convert a gallon of gasoline to electricity with 90% efficiency. The internal combustion engine would be dead overnight.
Please, please, go away.
That is the last time I will ever interact with you.
A very smart and accomplished engineer I know wants desperately to get in to the hydrogen technology sector, not because he thinks there is any value in it to society, but because he knows our government and the voters are so stupid and/or malicious that they are likely to pour money into this till long after he retires. They won’t know how ridiculous it is till it runs up and bites them all on the afterparts.
Hydrogen causes cancer. There is not one instance of a cancer cell anywhere in the world where hydrogen is not found.
Carbon too.
Might the watermelons be right – ‘carbon’ is deadly??
Auto
Your writing is becoming even sloppier as your ideas grow more absurd. You haven’t been banned, Skippy … just caged and sidelined like a circus freak. You’re now here just for our amusement.
“The Idiot’s answer…”
Speaks wonders.
This 2019 source (https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/26/hydrogen-cars-have-4x-annual-fuel-cost-2-70-times-the-carbon-debt-as-electric-vehicles/) does a $ comparison between batteries and fuel cells but doesn’t specify how much of this comparison includes tax, incentives, etc. To the extent I can derive efficiency from these numbers, fuel cells are approximately 25% as efficient as batteries. Unless I missed it I have not seen end to end efficiency comparison between batteries and hydrogen fuel cells.
You’re right about tires to the road thermal efficiency. But what you really pay for is convenience, not to have to hook up a horse to go to town, not to wait two hours to let it feed (or charge), not to sit home until the power company allows you to charge, not to have to haul 1000+ lb of batteries everywhere you go. The truckers will find hauling batteries instead of payload to be “not what we want” and they will get the whole thing started. We do need cheaper hydrogen. Pricing hydrogen produced in off peak hours net of the capital costs might do it.
No chemical engineer was harmed in the making of this fantasy as none were involved
I don’t know why you are so negative about hydrogen. As an energy storage medium it is way better than batteries in energy to weight ratio. A hydrogen powered car is competitive with a fossil-fuel car in both range and performance. It can be refuelled almost as quickly as well, which is another massive advantage over batteries.
It can be produced directly from nuclear thermal energy without conversion to electricity and is therefore quite efficient.
If I was expected to convert to hydrogen instead of batteries I’d feel better about doing away with petrol and diesel.
French so called extreme right party, former “FN”, now “RN”, is anti electric battery cars but pro H2.
(Their platform is actually close to the former PCF aka communist party in the 80ties.)
“Can people really be fooled by this?”
Yes, they are called “politicians” and they are easily fooled by many things. Sadly, they also have the power to take our money and spend vast sums on these obviously stupid schemes.
The idea behind the hydrogen economy is to use your excess power generated by wind and solar to disassociate H2 from water and store it for when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. Then you use fuel cells to burn the hydrogen to produce electricity (and heat). Also, some hydrogen can be shipped to fueling stations for use in hydrogen – fuel cell powered vehicles.
Here’s a press release about it from fuel cell maker Bloom Energy:
Bloom Energy and Heliogen join forces to harness the power of the sun to produce low-cost green hydrogen | Bloom Energy
Bloom’s fuel cells are actually doing pretty well, generating over 200M in sales per quarter.
I’m not saying the “hydrogen economy” is a smart idea, I’m just explaining my understanding of the “grand plan”.
“use your excess power generated by wind and solar to disassociate H2 from water and store it for when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. Then you use fuel cells to burn the hydrogen to produce electricity (and heat).” You could also burn it in conventional gas turbines–GE has a mod kit allowing some turbines to run on up to (IIRC) 50% hydrogen.
Here’s a Google-link to articles and videos about Plasma Kinetics, a company that has a revolutionary method of storing and retrieving hydrogen:
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=plasma+kinetics&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Here’s a link to the company’s website:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwitq-jj9rLyAhVuJzQIHVOABOAQFnoECAIQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fplasmakinetics.com%2F&usg=AOvVaw0Mimz5AQHvcECMz7JDjzoW
Here’s a link to a vlogg video in which auto expert Sandy Munro raves about the potential for Plasma Kinetics’ tech to displace Lion batteries in EV cars (using fuel cells to consume the hydrogen):
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiGn5uy-bLyAhXnGTQIHVJPB5kQwqsBegQICBAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DbrEm4mEizns&usg=AOvVaw1fh-cs7Wc_PWHI8BGSdLvU
Here’s an article about the company’s tech:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwitq-jj9rLyAhVuJzQIHVOABOAQFnoECAUQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nextbigfuture.com%2F2021%2F04%2Fplasma-kinetics-light-activated-hydrides.html&usg=AOvVaw0PoofKb_Kw9Oi5ZpbvacGS
It says: “Plasma Kinetics makes light-activated hydrides. It removed the hydrogen from a hydride using light. It system is safe, clean, and scalable and holds more energy than a lithium-ion battery, costing less, and recharges in 5 minutes. This is an energy storage technology that Sandy Munro believes is workable.
“PK is the first company to pursue hydrogen in the form of a light-activated nano-structured thin film. Plasma Kinetics’ success is in our unique ability to filter out hydrogen from exhaust gases “like a sponge” with low temperature and pressure – reducing cost. Captured hydrogen is contained indefinitely, releasing with light on demand. Plasma Kinetics advancements offer the means for zero-carbon hydrogen, it’s an economical and safe hydrogen transport and infrastructure system. Our technology scales to fit the power demand of any application.
“Plasma Kinetics patent portfolio includes five U.S. patents with more than 40 granted claims. They have patents in Canada, Japan and Korea and patents pending in multiple countries around the world. Plasma Kinetics introduced Light Activated Energy Storage (LAES) hydrogen storage technology to the U.S. Department of Energy in July 2009. The DOE Advanced Research Projects Division stated that our technology had “the potential to have a high transformational impact”.
“Plasma Kinetics is planning the introduction of 19L containers with 500 g of H2 for mobile applications (aircraft, vehicles, and boats). Larger containers of 67 m3 and 76 m3 will have 500 kg and 1000 kg of H2. The larger containers are used for hydrogen production, storage, and delivery to stationary or large mobile (ship and rail) applications. All products are lighter, smaller, and less expensive than lithium-ion batteries. All products are zero-carbon and are also reusable and recyclable.”
Here’s a l,ink to a dozen-plus videos on its tech:
https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=vid&sxsrf=ALeKk02uGD06x5BsONB2SeJ_k1FtaBmYWg:1629027080745&q=plasma+kinetics&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwitq-jj9rLyAhVuJzQIHVOABOAQ8ccDegQIKRAI
When used as aviation fuel, only 25% of hydrogen burns giving thrust.
The remaining 75% is carried as useless dead weight.
Do you have a link or reference to support that assertion?
As many people know I’m an idiot – so:
1 – hydrogen has to come from somewhere. FIssion + seawater = minerals plus O and H.
2 – hydrogen has to be stored and released. The U.S. Army lab has an answer: pelletized AL + H + a catalyst provides safe, efficient, storage; easy transportation, easy refueling, and recycling.
Bottom line: yes H looks good as a future fuel bearing in mind that H, like gasoline, is a means of storing and transporting energy, not a means of creating it.
Didn’t Jimmy Carter convert the USA to hydrogen fuel?
I remember that.