From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
The Telegraph is reporting that BP may pull out of its hydrogen project on Teesside:
A massive hydrogen project at the heart of Ed Miliband’s net zero plans risks being cancelled as BP retreats from green targets.
The H2Teesside scheme, announced in 2021 by the company’s then chief executive Bernard Looney, was designed to produce “blue” hydrogen from natural gas, and then capture and store the carbon emissions.
It had been slated to deliver more than 10pc of the 2030 target set by Mr Miliband, the Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary, for hydrogen production and was expected to come online by the late 2020s.
But sources have warned that BP is now likely to scale back or even cancel the 1.2 gigawatt project as it struggles to secure enough customers to make the investment worthwhile.
The FTSE 100 company is currently in talks with the Government about whether greater state support can be provided, with Mr Miliband’s department viewing the scheme as a potentially important source of hydrogen for both industrial uses and power plants.
Apparently one of the major issues is the potential closure of the nearby Sabic chemical plant, which it was hoped would buy a lot of the BP hydrogen.
The Saudi’s who own Sabic may close their plant because of high energy costs. It is not without irony that any hydrogen they ended up buying would be much more expensive than the natural gas they currently use!
This is all in stark contrast to the green fanfare when BP originally announced the project back in 2021, which the Telegraph covered here. Hydrogen apparently was going to be our saviour in the battle against global warming.
That was in the days of Bernard Looney, who had fallen for the green agenda hook, line and sinker.
Now BP’s new team have returned to realityville, and have come to the conclusion that nobody wants to replace fossil fuels with something much more expensive.
If governments want it, let them pay for it is now the policy.
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Blue Hydrogen from natural gas? Did anyone bother asking why not simply burn the natural gas?
As an ex employee and now BP pensioner – brilliant news. Stop wasting my retirement fund. Drill baby Drill!
Blue hydrogen is made from Methane by stripping the 4 hydrogen atoms from the carbon atom in each methane molecule. This requires a lot of energy. One way of doing it is illustrative: methane gas is pressed through a liquid tin bath. The energy needed to break the atomic bonds comes from the hot molten metal, which would cool rapidly if not kept at temperature by continuous heating. By combusting coal or oil, or using electricity, even more inefficient. Some green delusion..
In some future circumstances, it might make sense to use nuclear power to supply the energy to pyrolyze methane to carbon and hydrogen using liquid tin process that you mention.
Most often today, steam methane reforming, with CO2 capture by amine scrubbing solutions is useful for hydrogen production to be used for example, hydro-processing.
To convert methane to hydrogen for the purpose of burning the formed hydrogen borders on insanity.
To convert methane into hydrogen for burning is insane, that would explain why Ed Miliband is in favour of doing it.
You want methane, can get you methane, well not so easy but lots of research. As you move into higher salinities more smell from hydrogen sulfide.
Crozier, C. R. and R. D. DeLaune. 1996. Methane production by soils from different Louisiana marsh types. Wetlands. 16:121-126.
https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03160685
One of their references. Sad thing is we knew about all this decades ago.
Dlugokencky, E.J., et al.1994. A dramatic decrease in the growth rate of atmospheric methane in the northern hemisphere during 1992. Geophysical Research Letters 12:45–48.
https://doi.org/10.1029/93GL03070
It is not insane to bend over and pick up free money from the ever-flowing, deficit funded government trough.
Just as does using green hydrogen as a battery. Round trip efficiency less than 50%.
A better method than pyrolysis is using the neutron flux of the reactor to do the job. KMS Fusion’s original business plan was to use the neutron flux from D-T fusion to power chemical reactions, generating various hydrocarbon fuels. Such a thing needn’t wait for fusion, however. Both carbon and hydrogen are used as moderators in nuclear fission reactors, because they have low neutron capture cross sections compared to their scattering cross section (hydrogen’s is actually larger than carbon’s). Using the neutron flux from a dedicated fission reactor to crack methane would be relatively easy, and efficient. One can even imagine a methane-moderated fission reactor, in which the methane pressure and temperature are controlled to maximize cracking.
I’d rather the methane pressure and temperature be controlled to moderate the fission reaction.
What fusion reactor? Magnetohydrodynamics says it will never be practical to generate energy. If it could work you don’t need Hydrogen!
“To convert methane to hydrogen for the purpose of burning the formed hydrogen borders on insanity”
What do you mean “borders on insanity” ???
It’s complete insanity !!
We desperately need to add a new mandatory course for engineering students titled: “How to Say No When Some Ignorant Politician Asks You to Do Something Stupid” – or something like that.
We desperately need a mandatory course for politicians titled, ” Fundamental Physics for Dummies”.
Unfortunately, I suspect most of them would not have the smarts to understand it.
Most politicians wouldn’t understand the first two words of the title.!!
Its nigh impossible to say no to free money.
Naw . . . not useful to do so because that then prevents applying the label of “green” to the hydrogen . . . something worth $trillions in research and marketing funding.
/sarc
The anti-white racists want to close the Sabic “cracker” plant just out of principle anyway.
🙂
Only ignorants and idiots will believe that blue hydrogen is a ‘green’ fuel.
By any measure it makes no sense v just burning the natural gas, and it depends on permanent CO2 capture/storage.
It’s as likely as Pegasus and a Unicorn turning up on the same day.
https://scijournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ese3.956#:~:text=Perhaps%20surprisingly%2C%20the%20greenhouse%20gas,an%20optimistic%20and%20unproven%20assumption.
The demonstration of electrolysis of water in junior high school science class has left a strong impression upon many politicians of the ease at which this process can be implemented.
“Let’s take perfectly good energy and, at great expense, turn it into Hopium Dioxide.”
Yeah, that’s the ticket!
The IEA published its latest ‘Global Hydrogen Review’ in October 2024 and noted that “Hydrogen production from fossil fuels grew marginally to 1.5 Mt by September 2024”
They noted that the sector would need to grow annually at a “rate of over 90% from 2024 – 2030” to meet projected targets and that “several projects faced delays and cancellations putting at risk a significant part of the project pipeline”
Demand was still “concentrated in refining and industrial applications where it has been used for decades” and whilst “demand for low emission hydrogen grew almost 10% in 2023 it still accounts for less than 1Mt”
Blue/green hydrogen is going nowhere fast.
Posted too fast and missed the edit deadline
Meant to close with
IEA noted that the “growth in global hydrogen demand was a result of global industry demands and had no benefits in terms of mitigating climate change”
From the above article:
“Now BP’s new team have returned to realityville, and have come to the conclusion that nobody wants to replace fossil fuels with something much more expensive.”
Not to mention:
— much more dangerous to handle and use (wide flammability range in air and ignition sensitivity)
— much more difficult to handle and use (requiring replacement metering devices for most existing ICEs and turbine engines)
— much more difficult to store, transport and transfer (as a high pressure gas or as a cryogenic liquid)
— much more lacking in production and storage infrastructure.
Albeit, all of he above factors are actually wrapped up in the the LCOE for hydrogen if one properly accounts for such under today’s energy market conditions.
“Realityville” . . . imagine such a concept!
You forgot to mention the problem of “hydrogen metal embrittlement”.
Harold, that’s a cracking reply (:-))
Go to Wikipedia and read the extensive file on “hydrogen metal embrittlement”. This is a really big problem and has undergone much research and testing with many types of metals especially steels.
No, I didn’t. Wanting to keep the size of my comment reasonable, I wrapped it into my comment “— much more difficult to store, transport and transfer”.
BTW, aerospace companies long ago created metal alloys that are basically immune to hydrogen embrittlement, such as superalloys containing Co, Ni and V. Use of such metals was one of the reasons that the Space Shuttle main engines (SSMEs) could use hydrogen (at temperatures ranging from cryogenic to about 1000 deg-C in the fuel pre-burner, and at pressures up to 8,000 psi) for long duration rocket firings and over many re-flight cycles (9 re-flight cycles for the single most-reflown SSME).
So, the real issue is not so much unavoidable hydrogen embrittlement of containment metals, but the cost to use the necessary specialty alloys.
BP seems to be shedding it’s poison pill projects, perhaps in anticipation of a merger. My personal preference would be a hostile take over by Shell or some other major. BP, by it’s horrific management practices over the past 20 years, has lost their right of existence (Definitely my worst investment ever).
“The Saudi’s”
No apostrophe needed for plurals.
You can fool around with crap that doesn’t work, wind, solar, storage, hydrogen and others all you want, they still won’t work. We know hydro, fossil fuel and nuclear work. Build things that work and quit being stupid.
Common sense like that Bob will probably get you arrested soon! Common sense is very rare amongst anything to do with Government. It would be wise to cut Government expenditure, but they do the opposite. They fail to do so many wise things, and do so many stupid ones, that the end must be nigh, I predict less than a year to meltdown!
If the government wants it, let the TAXPAYERS pay for it.
Not likely!