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Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

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

#301

Post by red-iron-pine »

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.

> (some EV doors aren't normally manually opened)

That screams regulation waiting to happen. like, have a lever or something on there. there is no more obvious or easily accessible place to flee a vehicle than the door.

also, which "some". is this just another tesla quirk?

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

#302

Post by Schroedingersat »

rich_sasha wrote: post #253
rgbrenner wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who like hydrogen should show us all that we're wrong. - First hydrogen fuel cell: 1842 - Earliest li-ion battery: 1965~ You've had a 100 year head start, and yet hydrogen fuel cell cars are terrible. Hydrogen planes? Some prototypes are being worked on. I can go buy an entire car with a massive li-ion battery in it right now. I can get batteries to power my house during an outage. Hydrogen? "There are som…

So, the context is: various organisations are researching how hydrogen storage might work. And a gaggle of, hmm, commentators goes "omg did they not get the memo? Hydrogen is stoopid. Batteries much better soon". I'm glad research is funded, because you literally never know where the breakthrough will come. Solar was painfully expensive for most of its history, now it's super-cheap. As far as I'm concerned, a battery…

Funding it is fine.

Funding electrolysers is fine.

Credulously accepting 1 electrolyser as a justification for 10 fossil fuel hydrogen reformers is not.

Accepting hydrogen busses and trucks as green before they actually run on green hydrogen is not.

Letting fossil fuel hydrogen steal funding from renewable projects is not.

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

#303

Post by myrmidon »

sofixa wrote: post #258
teamonkey wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like only a few years ago people were saying that battery powered cars weren't possible, you'd never be able to fit a big enough battery in there, they'd never have the range, weigh too much, be too expensive...

> weigh too much This is still a problem we'll have to face. Road tear and wear grows exponentially with weight, and tire pollution (both noise and particles) is also nothing to be disregarded. Also batteries require all sorts of raw materials with problematic provenance (e.g. lithium mines destroy the nearby environment, cobalt comes from child labour in terrible conditions, etc.). Cars with batteries are better tha…

> Road tear and wear grows exponentially with weight

Road wear actually grows with the 4th power of weight, not the weight in the exponent, but that is a really bad argument regardless because trucks exist.

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

#304

Post by mastax »

KSteffensen wrote: post #272
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.

> 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?

Hydrogen is a much smaller molecule, so it leaks out of much smaller holes. It leeches into metals and causes hydrogen embrittlement. It is about 1/3 the energy density per volume of natural gas.

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

#305

Post by pif »

POPOSYS wrote: post #235
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…

We can not discuss these important issues in a football fan like culture of mutual hostility. We need to collect facts and count numbers and compare which solutions are really helpful in reducing CO2. Hate speech against "the others" does not help at all.

I think I see your point, but let me please interject that your proposal contains itself some hostility.

> which solutions are really helpful in reducing CO2.

There, you have already decided that lowering the amount of CO2 should be our concern, but should it?

I say: let's collect facts and count numbers and compare which solutions are really helpful in enhancing the quality of our life.

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

#306

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

Tade0 wrote: post #300
Mikeb85 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't wrap my head around how much lithium or other rare earth metals will need to be mined to transition entirely to solar, wind, and electric cars. What countries are these mined in? What percentage of the US grid is from wind or solar? Like 10%?

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

#307

Post by theshrike79 »

schiffern wrote: post #298
flavius29663 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ar…

> Throwing energy away is counterproductive, and Energy-to-Hydrogen-to-Energy throws away lots of it.

The current process needs 55kWh of electricity to produce 15kWh of electricity on the other end. Not very efficient at all.

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

#308

Post by AlexandrB »

sofixa wrote: post #258
teamonkey wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like only a few years ago people were saying that battery powered cars weren't possible, you'd never be able to fit a big enough battery in there, they'd never have the range, weigh too much, be too expensive...

> weigh too much This is still a problem we'll have to face. Road tear and wear grows exponentially with weight, and tire pollution (both noise and particles) is also nothing to be disregarded. Also batteries require all sorts of raw materials with problematic provenance (e.g. lithium mines destroy the nearby environment, cobalt comes from child labour in terrible conditions, etc.). Cars with batteries are better tha…

> Road tear and wear grows exponentially with weight

I thought something like 90%+ of road wear and tear was due to tractor trailers, dump trucks, and other massive vehicles. Meanwhile cars were a rounding error. Do EVs change that?

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

#309

Post by goethes_kind »

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…

I think it is mostly people who are invested ($$$) in Lithium batteries who are so loud. It is honestly annoying.

Hydrogen (also including power-to-gas, e-fuels, Ammonia) is the only technology of its kind that we have; a way of storing energy compactly and long term, and also be able to transport it relatively easy.

It is also the only solution to have carbon-neutral aviation, and many industrial processes can also not be easily electrified.

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

#310

Post by sylware »

Hydrogen is just a "mobile" energy storage... but a really hard one to deal with, actually so hard it may be not worth it (too dangerous, and not long term enough) in the end. See Sabine H. video about it, I am sure she'll show you things about hydrogen storage you did not think about).

Ofc, we are talking about the "lowest green-house gas produced" hydrogen (hydro/solar/wind/nuclear).

That said Japan is maybe one of the only countries in the world serious and rigorous enough to pull that off.

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