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Hydrogen: Does Earth hold vast stores of a renewable, carbon-free fuel?

science.org

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Re: Hydrogen: Does Earth hold vast stores of a renewable, carbon-free fuel?

#41

Post by sigmoid10 »

DennisP wrote: post #34
Rimintil wrote: post #27

I think this is important to note about hydrogen as a 'clean' fuel source: > Today’s hydrogen is “gray,” made by reacting methane with steam at high pressures or using fossil fuels in other ways. Those processes emit some 900 million tons of carbon dioxide every year, almost as much as global aviation. In principle, that carbon could be captured and sequestered underground, yielding “blue” hydrogen. But most hopes re…

That has very little to do with the article, which is about actual hydrogen retrievable from underground deposits. It wouldn't be made from anything, just piped out of the ground.

While it would still be an upgrade over fossils, I think that would be a slap in the face for renewables. We need sustainable energy production, not more digging for stuff that is limited by design.

Re: Hydrogen: Does Earth hold vast stores of a renewable, carbon-free fuel?

#42

Post by [deleted] »

pwg wrote: post #33
barathr wrote: post #18

I was hoping to see in the article -- but didn't -- an analysis of the CO2e per KJ produced from natural hydrogen. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas and it'd be important to do the math to see how much better it is vs. other alternative fuels. (I expect it to be better, but how much is the question.)

> Water vapor is a greenhouse gas and it'd be important to do the math to see how much better it is vs. other alternative fuels. With about 71% of the earth's surface covered by water, which constantly emits water vapor due to evaporation, the amount of water vapor added by also burning green hydrogen would likely be minuscule compared to the amount from natural surface evaporation. The huge advantage would be no car…

[deleted]

Re: Hydrogen: Does Earth hold vast stores of a renewable, carbon-free fuel?

#43

Post by rgmerk »

greenthrow wrote: post #23

This is a very poor quality article. Mining the earth for fuel when wind and solar are already the cheapest form of power is really stupid.

Yes, but a) we need a lot of hydrogen for chemical processes such as fertiliser making, and b) particularly in northern latitudes, there’s a mismatch between peak solar production and peak energy demand. If there was abundant cheap clean hydrogen available, it could be used to fill that gap and reduce the amount of overbuild and transmission lines you’d need.

Re: Hydrogen: Does Earth hold vast stores of a renewable, carbon-free fuel?

#44

Post by ch4s3 »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #41
DennisP wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has very little to do with the article, which is about actual hydrogen retrievable from underground deposits. It wouldn't be made from anything, just piped out of the ground.

While it would still be an upgrade over fossils, I think that would be a slap in the face for renewables. We need sustainable energy production, not more digging for stuff that is limited by design.

If the goal is to de-carbonize why is underground hydrogen a bad alternative to natural gas and coal?

Re: Hydrogen: Does Earth hold vast stores of a renewable, carbon-free fuel?

#45

Post by anonymouskimmer »

gilleain wrote: post #36
phkahler wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then we burn all that hydrogen and use up all our oxygen. CO2 may be a greenhouse gas, but plants pull the oxygen back off and return it to the air.

I think that the 21% of the air that is oxygen is unlikely to be used up any time soon? Maybe i'm wrong...

You're right. We would need to burn the equivalent of about 1000 times the total biomass of the earth to convert the majority of the oxygen in the air into carbon dioxide (or water in this process).

I'm moderately interested in how much hydrogen we could burn without noticeably adding to sea-level rise. Probably quite a bit.

Re: Hydrogen: Does Earth hold vast stores of a renewable, carbon-free fuel?

#46

Post by chmod600 »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #41
DennisP wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has very little to do with the article, which is about actual hydrogen retrievable from underground deposits. It wouldn't be made from anything, just piped out of the ground.

While it would still be an upgrade over fossils, I think that would be a slap in the face for renewables. We need sustainable energy production, not more digging for stuff that is limited by design.

"Critically, natural hydrogen may be not only clean, but also renewable. It takes millions of years for buried and compressed organic deposits to turn into oil and gas. By contrast, natural hydrogen is always being made afresh, when underground water reacts with iron minerals at elevated temperatures and pressures."

Re: Hydrogen: Does Earth hold vast stores of a renewable, carbon-free fuel?

#47

Post by _8j50 »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #41
DennisP wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has very little to do with the article, which is about actual hydrogen retrievable from underground deposits. It wouldn't be made from anything, just piped out of the ground.

While it would still be an upgrade over fossils, I think that would be a slap in the face for renewables. We need sustainable energy production, not more digging for stuff that is limited by design.

And geopolitical implications like hydrogen wars.

Re: Hydrogen: Does Earth hold vast stores of a renewable, carbon-free fuel?

#49

Post by rgmerk »

This is interesting, but it does strike me as a little surprising that if there’s a lot of extractable hydrogen available we haven’t had more indications of it already (yes, I read the article).

It’s worth noting here that a disadvantage of hydrogen is that unlike coal, oil, and to a lesser extent natural gas it’s hard to put it in a ship and transport it. So in a world where there’s cheap hydrogen in Mali and few other locations, it’s more likely that some hydrogen-intensive or energy-intensive industries will shift to Mali rather than Mali exporting lots of hydrogen to Europe, North America or Asia.

Re: Hydrogen: Does Earth hold vast stores of a renewable, carbon-free fuel?

#50

Post by Mountain_Skies »

zopa wrote: post #37
panick21_ wrote: post #8

Why this is interesting, we already have such a fuel, we found it 80 years ago and its called Thorium. And Uranium isn't bad either. And we don't have to find it, every rare earth mine thorws out absurd amounts of it. We have to much of it without even trying. We just to dumb and lazy to anything with it.

So many people here cheering for their preferred carbon-free energy source like it’s a sports team. It’s bizarre. We’re going to need to do lots of different things. There’s no need to fight about it; everybody’s favorite will have a chance.

They all require funding for more research to hopefully bring them to fruition. In that sense, it's understandable why people who have joined Team Clean X would want to push the message of how it is better than Team Clean Y.
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