Hydrogen not as fuel

[boatgeek]

Some might argue its better to put the output of that SMR into the grid and reduce fossil fuel use instead of throwing 20% to 50% of it away making H2. Not me.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that by the time we're replacing fossils with hydrogen in large quantities, all of the other low-hanging fruit will be taken. There won't be much other fossil fuel use on the grid.

 

[jderimig]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that by the time we're replacing fossils with hydrogen in large quantities, all of the other low-hanging fruit will be taken. There won't be much other fossil fuel use on the grid.

I think you are right. If we haven't built out nuclear power generation big time before fossil fuels run out its going to be a catastrophe. Thankfully I won't be alive to experience that. The resource wars before that happens will be epic.

 

[kuririn]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that by the time we're replacing fossils with hydrogen in large quantities, all of the other low-hanging fruit will be taken. There won't be much other fossil fuel use on the grid.

I see what you did there.

 

[kramer714]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that by the time we're replacing fossils with hydrogen in large quantities, all of the other low-hanging fruit will be taken. There won't be much other fossil fuel use on the grid.

I disagree (respectfully of course), kind of like hydrogen, there are different 'colors' of fossil fuels.

Lignite coal is pretty bad stuff, low heat content and lots of pollution, We still use it in the US because it is easy to mine.

Oil from tar sands is another marginal fuel, expensive to turn into something worth while, produces more pollution when the mining and extraction are figured in, lots of surface damage. High in sulfur and contaminants that need to be taken out in refining (plus corrodes pipes / more likely to create leaks) We use something like 5% (I dont have the exact figure) of oil from tar sands. This was what the the Keystone XL pipeline was going to carry.

When I think of low hanging fruit, i look at it the other way, what is the rotten fruit that we need to get rid of, (lets start with Tar Sands and Lignite - brown coal) and can we use hydrogen (as part of the answer) to replace it.

 

[Funkworks]

I just Googled "operating fork lifts in America". The answer was 850,000 fork lifts. Progress may be coming, but it is not here, yet.

H2 products are available for those who want them. I don't think H2 will ever be a hit with consumers. It will stay in industry, handled by pros, and restricted to niche uses. That's my opinion and is what I'm trying to clarifiy with my posts and questions and remarks and whatnot.

ok, great! thanks for explaining your pov and motivation.

... seemed as if you were in favor of "H2 everywhere". it would have helped if you acknowledged the poor total cycle efficiency.

By trying to keep up to date on EVs, I come across H2 vehicles, but I didn't want to start a thermonuke thread so I specified "... as fuel". This can also include rocket fuel so the thread I started seemed like a good idea. My motivation is to get an idea of where H2 is used (all the niches), and whether green H2 is progressing, because I also like solar and wind. I also want to know when I'll get to fly in a mostly silent aircraft.

Less emissions is always a bonus but I'm not the kind to go to Alpha Centauri before Mars.

 

[OverTheTop]

Using Hydrogen in Air to Generate Electricity
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-09/monash-university-air-electricity-enzyme-soil/102071786
The news services made a big splash about this. Not sure how practical it is with the low concentration of H2 in air.

 

[boatgeek]

I see what you did there.

It actually wasn't intentional, but I'll own it.

I disagree (respectfully of course), kind of like hydrogen, there are different 'colors' of fossil fuels.

Lignite coal is pretty bad stuff, low heat content and lots of pollution, We still use it in the US because it is easy to mine.

Oil from tar sands is another marginal fuel, expensive to turn into something worth while, produces more pollution when the mining and extraction are figured in, lots of surface damage. High in sulfur and contaminants that need to be taken out in refining (plus corrodes pipes / more likely to create leaks) We use something like 5% (I dont have the exact figure) of oil from tar sands. This was what the the Keystone XL pipeline was going to carry.

When I think of low hanging fruit, i look at it the other way, what is the rotten fruit that we need to get rid of, (lets start with Tar Sands and Lignite - brown coal) and can we use hydrogen (as part of the answer) to replace it.

I think we're actually in violent (OK, respectful) agreement.

Coal power generation is already being put out of business by natural gas and wind. The accountants will take care of the rest in the not too distant future.

When we think of the petroleum ecosystem, it's reasonably connected. Tar sands oil is expensive and terrible in all of the ways that you describe, not to mention far from most of the petroleum user base. That means that it's going to be the first petroleum to go as petroleum production ramps down. The easy users to take off of petroleum are ground transportation uses, ie passenger cars and anything larger on short routes/regular home bases. Medium difficulty is stuff like long haul trucking, where battery technology and charging infrastructure need significant boosts to make it all work. The hardest is aviation and long-distance marine, where batteries become impractical.

I applaud using hydrogen in aviation right now, because we need demonstration projects to show a path forward and build out technologies, not to mention find and resolve operational problems. I'm also somewhat cynical in thinking that hydrogen-powered aircraft are going to be a small part of the overall commercial aircraft fleet for the next 10-20 years. I would hazard a guess that electric passenger cars will be 95% of their market before hydrogen aviation is 5% of theirs. I would be happy to be wrong, too.

 

[Peartree]

My impression of hydrogen ,ammonia, methane, and probably a few others, is that everyone is looking for a practical version of (borrowing from the Autobots) "Energon cubes." We want a "liquid" energy to replace the one we have so that, like now, energy can be easily transported from places where it is abundant but isn't useful, to other places where it's needed but not abundant.

For example, the desert would seem to be an ideal place to generate electricity but the majority of generated power would be lost to resistance in the transmission lines before you could get it to places where it is needed.

 

[rocket_troy]

Using Hydrogen in Air to Generate Electricity
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-09/monash-university-air-electricity-enzyme-soil/102071786
The news services made a big splash about this. Not sure how practical it is with the low concentration of H2 in air.

Yeah, when you look at the concentration of H2 in the atmosphere (what... <1ppm?) I'm still a bit confused as to why this made such high profile impact in the oz news. I'm obviously missing something?

TP

 

[Funkworks]

My impression of hydrogen ,ammonia, methane, and probably a few others, is that everyone is looking for a practical version of (borrowing from the Autobots) "Energon cubes." We want a "liquid" energy to replace the one we have so that, like now, energy can be easily transported from places where it is abundant but isn't useful, to other places where it's needed but not abundant.

For example, the desert would seem to be an ideal place to generate electricity but the majority of generated power would be lost to resistance in the transmission lines before you could get it to places where it is needed.

Transmission lines are not hypothetical, they are very much in use, and effective, over very long distances. But many cities are in fact near the desert, or another source (windy area etc.).

If you're comparing with pipelines, then it depends on much of a problem clients think emissions are. Some people seek to reduce emissions, while others ignore emissions altogether.

 

[OverTheTop]

Yeah, when you look at the concentration of H2 in the atmosphere (what... <1ppm?) I'm still a bit confused as to why this made such high profile impact in the oz news. I'm obviously missing something?

Just over-hyped news I think. Yes, just a hair over half a ppm, for H2 in air. My initial reaction (skeptical) to the story has proven to be correct.

 

[kuririn]

Just over-hyped news I think. Yes, just a hair over half a ppm, for H2 in air. My initial reaction (skeptical) to the story has proven to be correct.

Still, understanding how an enzyme converts hydrogen to electricity could be useful for future technological developments.

 

[OverTheTop]

Agreed, but not how it was sold by the news services. "Charging your phone from air".

 

[Funkworks]

oops wrong thread

(I'll stick to the other one to announce things I find interesting.)

 

[Alan15578]

Even the Hindenburg burned diesel for propulsion.

 

[Peartree]

Transmission lines are not hypothetical, they are very much in use, and effective, over very long distances. But many cities are in fact near the desert, or another source (windy area etc.).

If you're comparing with pipelines, then it depends on much of a problem clients think emissions are. Some people seek to reduce emissions, while others ignore emissions altogether.

I'm an electrical engineer. I'm aware of what long lines are, and are not. But the typical effective maximum transmission distance is about 300 miles. They are certainly useful and necessary. But, without room temperature superconductors or other currently unavailable technology, cities east of the Mississippi will gain nothing from desert solar installations, Rocky Mountain hydro power, or Colorado wind farms let alone theoretical giant Sub-Saharan, photovoltaic power plants or Indian Ocean wind cities.

Finding a way to move power across continents or across oceans like the Autobots do with "Energon cubes" remains fiction. Other than petroleum laden supertankers, we just can't (yet) do it. My point was that hydrogen, ammonia, and other experiments are attempts to implement, as much as current technology permits, to emulate the dream of the fictional Autobots.

 

[Funkworks]

I'm an electrical engineer. I'm aware of what long lines are, and are not. But the typical effective maximum transmission distance is about 300 miles. They are certainly useful and necessary. But, without room temperature superconductors or other currently unavailable technology, cities east of the Mississippi will gain nothing from desert solar installations, Rocky Mountain hydro power, or Colorado wind farms let alone theoretical giant Sub-Saharan, photovoltaic power plants or Indian Ocean wind cities.

Finding a way to move power across continents or across oceans like the Autobots do with "Energon cubes" remains fiction. Other than petroleum laden supertankers, we just can't (yet) do it. My point was that hydrogen, ammonia, and other experiments are attempts to implement, as much as current technology permits, to emulate the dream of the fictional Autobots.

I'm not sure what's the motivation to install power panels in the desert when they can be installed on a roof. That has yet to be maxed out and would be my first choice. But if someone wants to build a solar farm outside a town or city as far as they can, I see no problem with that either.

As for room-temperature superconductivity, I wouldn't consider it to be part of this discussion.

As for long distance power transmission:

"As of 1980, the longest cost-effective distance for DC transmission was 7,000 kilometres (4,300 miles). For AC it was 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles), though US transmission lines are substantially shorter. [22]"

http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/li...ong-distance-transmission-systems/index.shtml
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission

 

[boatgeek]

I'm not sure what's the motivation to go in the desert when panels can be installed on a roof. That would be my first choice, but if someone wants to build a solar farm outside the city as far as they can, I see no problem with that either.

Don't hold your breath for room-temperature superconductivity. I wouldn't consider it in this discussion.

There's been some discussion around of "If we just put up XX square miles of solar panels in Arizona, we can power the entire country!" For the reasons @Peartree mentioned, that's not a terribly practical plan. That said, I think the 300-mile limit is kind of low. At minimum, one of our local utilities gets a significant amount of power from a coal plant in Montana, approximately 950 road miles away. Power line miles will be a little different, but likely not more than +/- 50 miles.

 

[Funkworks]

There's been some discussion around of "If we just put up XX square miles of solar panels in Arizona, we can power the entire country!" For the reasons @Peartree mentioned, that's not a terribly practical plan. That said, I think the 300-mile limit is kind of low. At minimum, one of our local utilities gets a significant amount of power from a coal plant in Montana, approximately 950 road miles away. Power line miles will be a little different, but likely not more than +/- 50 miles.

Ok but not by me. When people talk about the surface area for a solar farm to power this or that, it's to make an easy mental image. Those I've seen do that obviously imply the area would be distributed in bits and pieces across the country or world. Any engineer able to calculate the required surface area would also know about long distance transmission constraints.

 

[FredA]

Finding a way to move power across continents or across oceans like the Autobots do with "Energon cubes" remains fiction.

Hmm - our entire shipping infrastructure is centered around moving containers.
We now have nukes in containers.
Problem solved, no fiction.

 

[Alan15578]

As for room-temperature superconductivity, I wouldn't consider it to be part of this discussion.

Well, it has nothing to do with hydrogen, unless you are using hydrogen to cool the superconducting transmission wires. Hydrogen does not play well with pipes. Even so, the electrical resistance power savings is dwarfed by the cooling costs. I do not follow superconductivity. However, In Iowa there is an effort to build a pipe system for liquid CO2. It would be interesting to lay a superconducting transmission cable inside a "free" cooled pipeline.

 

[Funkworks]

Well, it has nothing to do with hydrogen, unless you are using hydrogen to cool the superconducting transmission wires. Hydrogen does not play well with pipes. Even so, the electrical resistance power savings is dwarfed by the cooling costs. I do not follow superconductivity. However, In Iowa there is an effort to build a pipe system for liquid CO2. It would be interesting to lay a superconducting transmission cable inside a "free" cooled pipeline.

Peartree mentionned SC so I replied. In practice, SC is useful for niche applications, but room-temp SC is one of the holy grails no one can confirm we can attain. As such, I wouldn't discuss it here.

 

[kuririn]

Finding a way to move power across continents or across oceans like the Autobots do with "Energon cubes" remains fiction. Other than petroleum laden supertankers, we just can't (yet) do it

Perhaps not energon cubes, but transmitting power on the commercial scale across thousands of miles may be closer than anyone thinks.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/power-beaminghttps://wp.technologyreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/MIT_TII_Report2_V11_10072022.pdf

 

[Peartree]

From Wikipedia:

Transmitting electricity at high voltage reduces the fraction of energy lost to Joule heating, which varies by conductor type, the current, and the transmission distance. For example, a 100 mi (160 km) span at 765 kV carrying 1000 MW of power can have losses of 0.5% to 1.1%. A 345 kV line carrying the same load across the same distance has losses of 4.2%.[24] For a given amount of power, a higher voltage reduces the current and thus the resistive losses. For example, raising the voltage by a factor of 10 reduces the current by a corresponding factor of 10 and therefore the I 2 R

losses by a factor of 100, provided the same sized conductors are used in both cases. Even if the conductor size (cross-sectional area) is decreased ten-fold to match the lower current, the I 2 R

losses are still reduced ten-fold using the higher voltage.

Yes, greater distances and greater efficiencies can be had with DC transmission lines. But these are rare in the United States.

And yes, the theoretical limit to AC transmission lines is about 2500 miles but it assumes a dedicated location (in Brazil, I think) and a 10 GW source to make a claim of it being "cost effective" but making no claims as to it being practical.

And yes, 300 miles was low.

But it all boils down to what voltage lines are in your area and how efficient they are. As seen above a 345kV line loses 4.2 percent every 100 miles while a 765 kV line loses only 1.1% per 100 miles.

BUT, the US average line loss, not from transmission lines alone, but from ALL losses between transmission and point of sale is between 6 and 7 percent. So, we are likely safe in assuming that power companies would say that losses greater than 6 percent would be impractical or unprofitable. So, even assuming a 765kV line, then 600 miles is at the high end of expected tranmission distance, while a 345kV line would hit 6 percent in only 150 miles. A very high voltage line of 1000 kV or more could, of course, go farther, but those become more expensive and rare.

Can it be done? Yes.
But again, it's a problem that will need a lot of money and time thrown at it. And, by "money and time" I mean Billion$$ and decades.

If it were a trivial problem, someone would have done it already.

 

[Funkworks]

Can it be done? Yes.
But again, it's a problem that will need a lot of money and time thrown at it. And, by "money and time" I mean Billion$$ and decades.

If it were a trivial problem, someone would have done it already.

Definitely not a trivial problem. But as much as I like billion-dollar, decades-long reusable starship programs and space telescopes, I think efficient, diverse, sustainable and reliable energy distribution networks are also worth the investment. (and are more achievable than room-temp SC)

 

[Peartree]

Definitely not a trivial problem. But as much as I like billion-dollar, decades-long reusable starship programs and space telescopes, I think efficient, diverse, sustainable and reliable energy distribution networks are also worth the investment. (and are more achievable than room-temp SC)

Agreed.

And they've made some amazing progress in superconductivity in the last several deca do I'm not going to give up on that either.

I think, as it often is, the end result will not be "either/or" but "both/and." There will be room for new generation sources, rooftop solar, offshore wind, ammonia,hydrogen, and probably a few we haven't even thought of yet.