Green hydrogen is the latest “energy” fad from the global warming warriors.
Today’s hydrogen hype proposes using wind and solar energy to produce “green” hydrogen by electrolysis of water.
It is mainly hot air.
Hydrogen will NEVER be a source of energy. Unlike coal, oil, or natural gas, hydrogen rarely occurs naturally – it must be manufactured, and that process consumes far more energy than the hydrogen “fuel” can recover.
It’s actually an idea that is quite old and discredited. “Hydro-gen” means “born of water,” but there has been a commercial fuel containing hydrogen that was born of coal. (Maybe it should be called “carbo-gen”?)
In the past, it was called “town gas.” It was manufactured by heating coal to produce hydrogen, methane, and oxides of carbon. The resultant mixture of flammable gases was used for street lighting and domestic heating and cooking.
It was replaced by “clean coal by wire” (electricity), which was less costly and more energy-efficient.
The reality is that all green generators are unreliable and intermittent – they seldom produce rated capacity for more than a few hours.
“Green hydrogen” would create a messy scatter of expensive equipment for panels, turbines, roads, power lines, electrolytic cells, and specialized storage tanks and freighters – all to produce stop-start supplies of a tricky, dangerous new fuel. Risking capital in such ventures is best suited to unsubsidized and well-insured speculators.
There are other problems.
Australia, where I am, is a huge dry continent. Burning hydrocarbons like coal, oil, and gas releases plant-friendly CO2 and water into the atmosphere. (Every tonne of hydrogen in coal produces 9 tonnes of new water as it burns.)
However, every tonne of green hydrogen extracted using electrolysis will remove more than 9 tonnes of fresh surface water from the local environment. That water may be released to the atmosphere far away, wherever the hydrogen is consumed (maybe in another hemisphere).
The tonnage of water thus removed (often from sunny dry outback areas) would be substantial. Farmers will wake up one morning to see their hills covered in wind turbines and power lines, their flats smothered in solar panels, and a huge hydrogen generator draining their water supply. Not green at all.
The hydrogen molecule is tiny, seeking any minute escape hole. Once it reaches the air, one small spark will ignite a violent explosion (once detonated, it burns ten times faster than natural gas).
This makes storage and transport of hydrogen difficult, and the swift destruction of the Hindenburg illustrates the danger.
It cannot be moved safely in natural gas pipelines and exporting it as a liquefied gas just wastes another 30% of the energy and adds another layer of cost, complexity, and danger.
Using hydrogen for fuel cells in vehicles makes a bit more sense than promoting electric vehicles powered by massive flammable batteries made of rare metals.
This green dream faces huge costs and obstacles to generate extra electricity, mine the battery metals, establish reliable battery charging stations all over the country and cope with battery disposal problems.
Hydrogen-fueled cars would improve city air quality at the vast expense of producing, handling, and dispensing this dangerous gas. Hydrogen makes no sense for replacing petrol and diesel on country roads or farms.
For hydrogen to replace coal, oil and gas would require immense quantities of hydrogen, needing huge quantities of reliable electricity to generate it.
So what’s best?
If there was a profitable market for hydrogen it would be far more efficient to use coal, gas, hydro or nuclear power for continuous production of hydrogen in an area well supplied with fresh water.
These same proven, reliable, and abundant fuels are best suited to provide cheap reliable electricity and transport fuel for all factories, smelters, farms, vehicles, ships, and planes.
Forget the global warming religion and get rid of intermittent wind and solar generators from the grid unless they provide their own backup generators.
Cut their subsidies and let them use their intermittent energy to generate unsubsidized green hydrogen for sale to whoever will buy it.
(I have posted this elsewhere previously)
I used to think Hydrogen was the future fuel – alas I have over time come to a different conclusion……
A major problem exists for Hydrogen power – nowhere on Earth can you mine Hydrogen – so you have to synthesise it – first method is electrolysis – fairly efficient (75-80%) – but then you have to compress, cool, store, transport etc. etc. so you are better off going directly to electrically powered cars and skip out all those energy spendthrift transformations in-between the energy source and your car. (At present the only advantage to Hydrogen is that you can fill’er up – as opposed to a lengthy battery recharge.)
Guess what ? Commercially manufactured Hydrogen is produced by reacting Methane and Steam vis :- CH4 + 2H2O = 8H + CO2 well I’ll be hornswoggled – A Hydrogen powered car produces CO2 (in its fuel supply chain – at least) bet you didn’t see that in the brochure. There’s inconvenient truths everywhere.
What should be obvious is that you would be far better off burning the methane directly in an internal combustion engine – thereby eliminating all the energy spendthrift transformations. The alarmists would argue that burning methane still produces CO2 – but from the above it is equally obvious that using Hydrogen will (for the same amount of deliverable energy from methane) actually manufacture more CO2.
So since you can “fil’er up” with methane – that negates the only advantage of using Hydrogen.
Even the “fil’er up” is problematic – taking 5-7 minutes – not really a problem – but the pump requires about 20 more minutes to develop the pressure to fill the next car – so a queue of cars require 25-27 minutes per car to refuel – not acceptable. You might also pull up next to a pump that has just been used – only to hook up and find you have a 27 minute wait.
Third problem – Does the word Hindenburg mean anything to you ?
(The Hindenburg did not blow up it burned – rapidly – the Hydrogen did not get the opportunity to mix with air {other than at the flame front} and thus remained unable to explode.)
We have not yet had a major Hydrogen disaster but given that it is explosive in almost any concentration (4% to 74%), it’s going to happen.
Leeds in the UK is laying down hydrogen supply infrastructure in a test area of the city – I predict a future disaster – we have all seen the damage done by natural gas explosions from leaking infrastructure – hydrogen will be worse and much more likely because of its propensity to leak and its wide explosive limits. It’s only a matter of time.
Sorry it just happened 13 June 2019 :-
https://climatechangedispatch.com/hydrogen-fuel-station-explodes/
I predict a lot more and a lot worse will follow.
Roger Harrabin on BBC on using electricity to produce Hydrogen :- “The process is wasteful because it involves turning electricity into a gas, then back into electricity – a two-step shuffle dismissed by Tesla car chief Elon Musk as ‘staggeringly dumb’. ‘Fool cells’, he calls them.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/03/14/german-energy-expert-agrees-fission-fusion-plus-hydrocarbs-only-realistic-energy-transition-next-50-years/
See above link…
Extract from link :-
“At 200 bars, a 40-ton truck delivers about 3.2 tons of methane, but only 320 kg of hydrogen, because of low density of hydrogen and because of weight of pressure vessels and safety armatures. About 4.6 times more energy is required to move hydrogen through a pipeline than is needed for the same natural gas energy transport.”
It once was my belief that Hydrogen was the fuel of the future but the technological problems piled up against Hydrogen keep piling up with no solutions in sight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen
For me the final nail in the coffin of Hydrogen is the problem of leakage – something engineers have been unable to solve. It is a very small molecule and leaks through most seal materials, some metals and microporosity in welds etc.
The problem: if we start to use Hydrogen as a world wide portable fuel (to replace petrol, diesel & LPG) will be that the loss of Hydrogen through leakage will be appreciable.
Also “unburned” hydrogen on misfires or “rich” running will also be “leakage” to the atmosphere.
Cryogenically stored liquid hydrogen – typically stored in thermos flask type vessels is initially cooled and then kept cold by evaporation – another major source of “leakage”.
Losses to leakage, cryogenic evaporative cooling, coupling & uncoupling etc. can be from 1% to 10% most knowledgeable sources say the 10% end is more realistic.
Hydrogen manufactured by electrolysis is nascent Hydrogen H+ not H2. This is such a small atom (a single proton and an electron – anything smaller is subatomic) it dissolves into steel (causing hydrogen embrittlement) forming a solid solution – it literally can go through metal walls. It eventually stabilises to H2. But is problematical in production and leakage is unavoidable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement
Leakage Hydrogen will rise rapidly through the atmosphere, through the stratosphere and eventually meet the Ozone layer – there it will react with the Ozone to produce water vapour. (6H+O3 = 3H2O)
Even an extremely optimistic 1% loss, if Hydrogen is adopted as a large scale portable fuel replacement, will release sufficient free hydrogen to be extremely damaging.
This will be bad for two reasons :-
Firstly the damage to the Ozone layer – by depleting it will bring about greater UV exposure.
Secondly this water vapour above (and within) the Stratosphere will produce (previously rare) noctilucent clouds which will drastically increase the Earth’s albedo (reflectiveness) thereby causing a significant Global Cooling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctilucent_cloud
See the following article which gives an overview of why Hydrogen is never going to be of much use – it lists considerably more risks and logistic problems than I have mentioned here.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/24/the-pure-evil-of-hydrogen-hyping/
Link to academic paper mentioned in the above (pdf).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232983331_The_Future_of_the_Hydrogen_Economy_Bright_or_Bleak
The problems that beset Hydrogen are based on non-negotiable laws of physics and chemistry – so there is little hope of improvement or significant gains over time.
So my current position is that Hydrogen will not solve our energy problems principally because it is dangerous, grossly inefficient (overall) and a pollutant with real and serious consequences for global climate.
It gose from the Rediculous to the totaly stupid but what else can we expect from a group of Nit-Wits raised on Captain Planet and Granola Bars