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Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

hydrogeninsight.com

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Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#291

Post by Tade0 »

cactusplant7374 wrote: post #279
ekidd wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a fan of hydrogen, because I once worked with a former NASA robotics engineer. We were looking for a way to power terrestrial robots, and we asked him about hydrogen. He told us there were extremely high efficiency hydrogen systems at the time. But they all suffered from similar problems: - Hydrogen is highly flammable (or explosive) in an oxygen atmosphere. - Hydrogen has truly awful power storage density—u…

I totally get the risk. As a consumer I feel similar fear about EV car batteries. Even if you can find the escape hatch in a pinch (some EV doors aren't normally manually opened), your house could still burn down or there could be other life changing property damage. It's a small risk but still feels like a real risk.

This problem is mostly solved by LFP batteries, which have a much lower risk of fire. So much so that you're more likely to have a petrol car spontaneously combust.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#292

Post by flavius29663 »

hammock wrote: post #60
jiggawatts wrote: post #31

Hydrogen is 100% an attempt by fossil fuel companies to remain relevant in a "green energy" world. The primary source for hydrogen would be from methane in natural gas, and they could then sell this as a "zero pollution fuel" while continuing their non-renewable energy business as normal. If you read between the lines and look at the companies involved, they're always linked to fossil fuel companies directly or indir…

Do you hate fossil fuels or do you want to save the planet? I feel your words seem prejudiced against allowing fossil fuel companies to help us fight climate change

this is a very good question, I never thought about it this way. I think it explains a lot of the debate, some people just want to see Exxon, Shell and Chevron crash and burn, rather than switch to green energy production.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#293

Post by fomine3 »

pezezin wrote: post #274
rippercushions wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The very idea of "my car needs to go 300 miles on one charge/tank" just isn't a thing there. Citation needed. No, you don't need to go 300 miles on one charge/tank if you live in a big Japanese city, in fact you don't even need a car in that case. However, if you live in rural areas or need to travel long distances, 300 mi is not a lot to ask for: the main island of Honshu is >800 mi long and 300 won't even get you…

People seem to forget that Japan is not only Kanto and Kansai. I live in Aomori and here everybody needs a car. I have to drive around 500 km per week, and I would really appreciate if my car would have better mileage.

On your use case, you just need to plug in everyday, instead of go to gas station every week. Who often drive above 100km per day is rare in Japan even in rural area.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#294

Post by Gare »

usrusr wrote: post #223
Gare wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the benefit of ammonia vs. turning hydrogen into methane via carbon capture?

Carbon capture is hard, nitrogen is truly abundant. That is unless you happen to have a source of highly concentrated CO2 at hand. Which is certainly true now, but won't be in the endgame. Methane (or something with an even lower H-per-C) will surely be part of the picture, but it can't be the mainstay. I'd expect hydrolizer capacity to cluster around storage opportunities (like salt caverns) within convenient grid r…

Thanks for the detailed reply

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#295

Post by hgomersall »

raphaelj wrote: post #256
TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is disingenuous. Batteries are more convenient for everyday electronics, but not necessarily better for big storage. Reason is, that you can't easily scale a battery storage, while hydrogen can be scaled just by putting more steel tanks.

Will not the H2 tanks scale better than batteries for large scale storage? Battery capacity scales linearly (n) to material requirements , while a gas tank's capacity scales quadrically to material requirements (n^2, because of only using a surface of materials to store a volume). I'd also assume the energy required to keep the tank cold relatively lower as the tanks gets larger.

Why keep it cold? Just fill an enormous balloon...

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#296

Post by Schroedingersat »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #224
eptcyka wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen is a less efficient energy store than a battery, requires high pressure systems, leaks are dangerously explosive, distributing it is more difficult than petrol or electricity. It has applications, but in general, its often significantly worse than any other greener alternative.

Yes but batteries contain toxic materials and rare earth minerals, require lots of energy to make, lots of energy to recycle, etc... So energy to mine the materials, energy to assemble the battery, energy to recycle the battery after it's useful lifespan (5-10 years)... None of these are ever counted in people's calculations. I tried to find data on energy required to produce the batteries and they still didn't count…

> So energy to mine the materials, energy to assemble the battery, energy to recycle the battery after it's useful lifespan (5-10 years)... None of these are ever counted in people's calculations. I tried to find data on energy required to produce the batteries and they still didn't count the mining cost.

This is a standard component of LCA databases and puts the ESOI in the 50-100 range for the first generation of batteries. Subsequent generations are higher.

Electrolysers also require mining, as do fuel cells, as does any source of heat for reverse gas shift or similar.

Your fud about rare earths is also a lie for any chemistry proposed for grid storage. None of them involve rare earths in any measurable quantity (nanoscale films on semiconductors for controllers and such are insignificant)

Hydrogen (or rather hydrogen derived molecules) are a viable method of seasonal storage, but that doesn't mean most of the hype doesn't exist to greenwash gas or that your talking points aren't propaganda.

Hydrogen cars are worse than BEVs and much worse than transit or active transport.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#297

Post by [deleted] »

rich_sasha wrote: post #210

I find it weird how hostile to hydrogen the "renewable energy gang" is. The story of how renewables take over the world and displace fossil fuels and nuclear totally relies on storage, in some cases seasonal storage, IE overproducing in summer and holding on to the energy til the end of winter. Does hydrogen work for it? Well, maybe, it could, there are unresolved issues but hey we are trying to do science here. It's…

[deleted]

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#298

Post by schiffern »

flavius29663 wrote: post #288
ekidd wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a fan of hydrogen, because I once worked with a former NASA robotics engineer. We were looking for a way to power terrestrial robots, and we asked him about hydrogen. He told us there were extremely high efficiency hydrogen systems at the time. But they all suffered from similar problems: - Hydrogen is highly flammable (or explosive) in an oxygen atmosphere. - Hydrogen has truly awful power storage density—u…

There are ways to work around those limitations, basically removing the "very small and very reactive" part of hydrogen. You can bind it with Nitrogen to gen ammonia - which is till very dangerous, but much easier to contain or work with. The problem with H2, ammonia, biofuels and other synthetic fuels is not that they have some limitations, it's that they are not accepted by the green energy dogma. Some green energy…

The problem isn't "dogma," it's inefficiency. Throwing energy away is counterproductive, and Energy-to-Hydrogen-to-Energy throws away lots of it.

If there were no alternative long-term storage plans this might be acceptable, but that's simply not the case.

If you're using hydrogen to smelt steel or make ammonia fertilizer, then there's no energy loss (beyond what's needed to decarbonize petrochemicals anyway). The article aptly refers to these as "no regrets" uses.

Gas stations (ie ground vehicles) are fighting a losing battle. BEVs will eat the sector. They're simply so much less expensive [than hydrogen]: for the vehicles themselves, for the infrastructure, and then of course for the wasteful energy use in operation.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#299

Post by pif »

kibwen wrote: post #290
KSteffensen wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> requires high pressure systems, leaks are dangerously explosive Is this different in some way from natural gas? Why can't we use the existing storage and distribution infrastructure for natural gas for handling hydrogen?

Natural gas distribution infrastructure is far leakier than you expect. It's a massive problem. We really need to get away from solutions that involve pushing gas through pipes.

> We really need to get away from solutions that involve ...

Halt! Propose a working alternative first, we'll talk about banning later.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#300

Post by Tade0 »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #224
eptcyka wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen is a less efficient energy store than a battery, requires high pressure systems, leaks are dangerously explosive, distributing it is more difficult than petrol or electricity. It has applications, but in general, its often significantly worse than any other greener alternative.

Yes but batteries contain toxic materials and rare earth minerals, require lots of energy to make, lots of energy to recycle, etc... So energy to mine the materials, energy to assemble the battery, energy to recycle the battery after it's useful lifespan (5-10 years)... None of these are ever counted in people's calculations. I tried to find data on energy required to produce the batteries and they still didn't count…

Li-ion batteries don't contain rare earths.

Recycling li-ion is currently a booming business because it requires much less energy than processing raw ores - see Redwood Materials for more info.

Everyone takes these calculations into account because batteries come under intense scrutiny from people with ulterior motives.

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