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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

#411

Post by schiffern »

tuatoru wrote: post #355
schiffern wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Energy to plants to biofuels throws away nearly all the energy. More than all of it, by some accountings. What are the alternatives for those use cases in which batteries are infeasible?

You'll never hear me defend biofuels.

The alternatives are mostly

* better batteries

* heat pumps to replace oil burners

* methane or ammonia for the remaining uses (eg trans-oceanic); globally shipping and aviation together account for only 8% of petroleum use

With a universal carbon tax everything would automatically self-organize into the most efficient solution, but of course we can't do that.

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

#412

Post by TchoBeer »

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.

what does the li in li-ion stand for

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

#413

Post by WorldMaker »

eldaisfish wrote: post #340
schiffern wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn't the whole point of cheap and plentiful renewable energy that inefficiencies in processes like this are irrelevant? Why would long-term storage matter if wind and solar can produce so much energy that we cannot feasibly consume it all? What other long-term energy storage plans are there right now? I would not write off fuel stations just yet. There may well be a future where some renewable fuel powers vehicles.

Cost would be an obvious factor. An inefficient electricity derivative fuel is always going to be more expensive than charging a battery directly from all that cheap/plentiful renewable electricity eliminating the "middle fuel". Especially when vehicle usage curves have a beautiful inverse to electricity demand curves and vehicles are generally parked for hours when electricity rates are at their very cheapest.

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

#414

Post by WorldMaker »

TchoBeer wrote: post #412
Tade0 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

what does the li in li-ion stand for

I don't know if you have glanced at a Periodic Table recently, but Lithium is on the far left hand side and far distant from anything marked "rare earth" much less the "rare earth metals" (which are primarily just right hand of the center-line). As element number 3 on the periodic table it's also per some basic interesting Big Bang statistics the third most common element in the universe. Admittedly most of the universe's Lithium at this point has settled into various compounds which are regularly called "salts" (a short, common name, because they are so common), though household table salt is usually Lithium's "big brother" on the periodic table Sodium, but Lithium itself is still just about as common as dirt on this planet even if don't tend to sprinkle it haphazardly on our foods.

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

#415

Post by ruchir »

danans wrote: post #351
ruchir wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's like saying plastics can be recycled quite easily. only in theory - the real effects on the environment are staggering.

The primary materials in batteries, mostly metals, do not degrade like plastic. Metals are extensively recycled today, unlike plastic. Furthermore, each battery cell has a potential lifetime after EV usage as part of a stationary storage system, before any recycling.

https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/time-serious-re...

"But very little recycling goes on today. In Australia, for example, only 2–3% of Li-ion batteries are collected and sent offshore for recycling, according to Naomi J. Boxall, an environmental scientist at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The recycling rates in the European Union and the US—less than 5%—aren’t much higher."

Until and unless this recycling rate is provably 50% or higher at the time of an EV sale, you should not diss on a 50% loss of efficiency in electrolysis for an FCEV.

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

#416

Post by TchoBeer »

WorldMaker wrote: post #414
TchoBeer wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what does the li in li-ion stand for

I don't know if you have glanced at a Periodic Table recently, but Lithium is on the far left hand side and far distant from anything marked "rare earth" much less the "rare earth metals" (which are primarily just right hand of the center-line). As element number 3 on the periodic table it's also per some basic interesting Big Bang statistics the third most common element in the universe. Admittedly most of the unive…

I was misremembering how the term "rare earth metal" is used, my apologies.

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

#417

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ruchir wrote: post #415
danans wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary materials in batteries, mostly metals, do not degrade like plastic. Metals are extensively recycled today, unlike plastic. Furthermore, each battery cell has a potential lifetime after EV usage as part of a stationary storage system, before any recycling.

https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/time-serious-re... "But very little recycling goes on today. In Australia, for example, only 2–3% of Li-ion batteries are collected and sent offshore for recycling, according to Naomi J. Boxall, an environmental scientist at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The recycling rates in the European Union and the US—less than 5%—ar…

The recycle rate of EVs out of commission is already very high (since the amount of money the battery is worth is high). But what you are asking for is a point where at least 50% of the EVs ever sold have been taken out of commission and are eligible for recycling, which isn't going to happen for a decade or so.

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

#418

Post by elihu »

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 there's a growing sentiment that we need to be decarbonizing our economy right now. We don't need any new technology necessarily (though some technological advances might make it cheaper and/or easier), we just need the will to do it.

In that context, betting on hydrogen is a way of smashing the snooze bar: the technology isn't quite ready, so we'll do some research projects and so on, and maybe we'll have something ready as a mainstream product in a few years, or perhaps a decade.

Same thing with nuclear fusion. I'm all for fusion if it pans out, but we should treat it as something that will make decarbonization a lot easier if it works, but in the mean time we should plan as if we don't expect it to save our bacon. There's an idea that "if climate change is a problem, some currently non-existent technology will save us so we don't need to change what we're doing now." That's what many of the climate-aware public are reacting against.

Hydrogen has some additional problems as well: almost all hydrogen comes from cracking natural gas, so it's effectively a fossil fuel. Green hydrogen is a thing, but it's not very energy efficient to use electricity to make hydrogen from water, and get the energy back by turning it back into water. Lithium ion batteries are in the high 90's percentage in terms of energy out/energy in. Hydrogen is, what, about 60% or so? Or maybe less? That's a lot of lost energy, so anywhere there's a viable alternative that doesn't waste huge amounts of energy we should use that.

As far as storing months worth of grid power: that's a really hard problem but I'm not convinced it's one that we even need to solve. Perhaps we need grid storage more on the scale of 12 or 24 hours to buffer solar variability. For seasonal variability we need better grid interconnection, including long distance HVDC lines to enable buying and selling electricity across time zones and perhaps even between the northern and southern hemisphere if that's what's needed. Keeping fossil fuel plants online as an emergency backup to be used in rare circumstances is also an option, we just have to make sure the rest of the system is able to handle the load the vast majority of the time.

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

#419

Post by credit_guy »

hokkos wrote: post #268
credit_guy wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One large LNG carrier of class Q-Max carries 260000 m3 of liquefied gas. If we stitch to hydrogen, that contains 2.2 million gigajoules of energy, which is 614 GWh, or a bit more than 25 GWd. If we assume a conversion efficiency of 60%, then that's about 15 GWd of electricity after taking into account all the losses. If one carrier arrives every 15 days, then this can produce a sustained 1 GW of electricity, which is…

Except H2 carrier won't carry 1/2 LH2 as LNG but 1/4, liquefaction will consume 35% to 45% of the LHV energy, 9 times more leaks than LNG, completely new infra, and all existing H2 carrier have issues we are nowhere near building them as the same size of LNG and it will cost way more : https://twitter.com/MLiebreich/status/1596449504194367488

Your right, but...

- I never mentioned H2 carriers carry 1/2 the energy of LNG. I used the 8.5 MJ/m3 LHV density of H2, which is 38% of the one for LNG, of 22.2 MJ/m3 [1].

- the 35% to 45% liquefaction energy cost. [2] is a paper written by the Department of Energy stating that the range in the industry (as of now) is 10-20 kWh/kg, which is 30% to 60%. Which means 30% is possible. If we massively scale up this industry, lower values are conceivable

- 1% losses to leaks per day. This number is pulled out of a hat (you didn't mention it, but the tweet you linked to did). The leaks of H2 are not very well studied, so 1% is just a conjecture, and probably a very pessimistic one. [2] is a review of the literature done in July 2022. It finds estimates for lifetime leaks of between 0.2% and 3%. Not daily leaks.

- existing H2 carriers have issues. Of course. The economy is geared towards LNG carriers at this point. 20 years ago LNG carriers were a curiosity, and now they are an essential part of the world's energy infrastructure. LH2 carriers are not needed at this point, since the H2 production is just a drop in the bucket compared to natural gas.

- the H2 infrastructure. We don't need to replace all the natural gas infrastructure with H2 infrastructure. As you may have noticed, there's been some noise recently about retiring natural gas stoves for homes. The move is towards replacing a lot of natural gas infrastructure with power cables. H2 will just be needed at the receiving terminals, where it's going to be stored locally, and converted to electricity based on demand.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#List_of_materia...

[2] https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/research/commentary/hy...

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

#420

Post by Schroedingersat »

panick21_ wrote: post #395
tuatoru wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It ain't the money cost, we have money coming out our ears. It's the time cost. Nuclear takes far too long; geothermal merely takes too long. Same with fancy long-distance HV transmission proposals. Can it be built and commissioned in a year? Do it.

> Nuclear takes far too long; And yet nuclear is the only tech that has proven to decarbonize a major industrial economy within just a few decades. But of course it takes to long. When in reality it has not been proven that anybody has ever used solar and wind to de-carbonize a major economy. But somehow everybody knows that it is 'fast'. Germany could have literally gone to 100% nuclear within the last 20 years and…

That circle you're running around with the goalposts in is getting very small. Multiple countries are installing more new renewable generation every year than new nuclear has ever gone online.

Also it didn't decarbonize france's economy. It partially decarbonized its electricity, this is well under half of the goal. Numerous countries have achieved more with wind and hydro, and the list of countries with higher VRE percent than france's nuclear is growing longer by the month.

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