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

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

#121

Post by yellowapple »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #70
senectus1 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is like saying that the knife industry is setup for murders. your statement completely ignores the rapidly developing green hydrogen industry. Those are TODAY sources. just because there are large number of non-clean doesn't mean the clean ones dont exist.

Green hydrogen is not a fuel source. It takes more energy to create green hydrogen than it provides as a fuel, so green hydrogen is a energy transport mechanism, not a source.

That's true of literally any fuel AFAICT, the sole possible exception being naturally-free hydrogen in e.g. space (and even that's ignoring the oxygen needed to combust it). Just because nature paid the energy costs to make that gallon of oil doesn't mean said energy costs are ignorable.

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

#122

Post by troyvit »

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #75
sigmoid10 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well then, why don't we stop digging for lithium for the batteries, rare earth minerals for all electronics, metals etc. Where do you think the resources for renewable energy come from? Windmills and solar panels don't come out of thin air. "No more digging stuff" shows such a disconnected view from reality. Everything is "limited" in some sense. The puritan attitude as if you can somehow avoid using resources, is ju…

A lot of organizations _do_ want to stop digging for lithium for the batteries.[1] Forward thinkers see Lithium (and other rare earth minerals) as a stop-gap to get us off of the more destructive technologies we've been relying on. Yeah yeah we'll always have to do a little digging, but that doesn't mean we can't try to minimize it.[1]

Also, recycling existing renewable resources is another way that Vestas, the largest wind turbine provider, is attempting to pull windmills "out of thin air."[2]

Maybe the way we draw energy will never be perfect but does that mean we shouldn't try?

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/minnesota-iron-air-ba... [2] https://newatlas.com/environment/vestas-cetec-circular-epoxy...

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

#123

Post by b112 »

rgmerk wrote: post #96
b112 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bulk H2 is not currently shipped Sure it is. Just because it ships with other things, eg railcar size but on ship, doesn't invalidate this truth. It is a solved thing, it is not complex, it is merely that we haven't needed whole tanker shipping yet.

That's like pointing to Climeworks and saying that direct air capture is a solved problem. There's no doubt we can do it if money is no object; whether we can do so at scale cheaply enough to be worth doing is another question entirely.

We ship sawdust to China, and it comes back glued into fake wood, as cheap furniture.

If we can do that cost effectively, h2 shipping at immense volume is trivial.

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

#124

Post by AtlasBarfed »

zopa wrote: post #32
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.

Wind and solar are a great source of electricity, but not everything is easy to electrify right now. Also —- we have massive amounts of human and physical capital invested in digging flammable stuff out of the ground. If we can redirect some of that away from breaking the planet and into hydrogen, that’s a huge win, even if it’s not what we’d go after if we were designing our energy mix from scratch.

"awe have massive amounts of human and physical capital invested in digging flammable stuff out of the ground"

And look where we are.

More to the point, the companies that would do this are among the most sociopathic entities in the history of the human race. So we are going to trust that some "big hydrogen find" isn't actually methane that is gray hydrogen extracted?

For the same reason I have ZERO faith that all the schemes for carbon sequestration by pumping a GAS that WANTS TO COME TO THE SURFACE into the ground. Into likely the same formations that were fracked and had groundwater lighting on fire and other signs that there are LOTS of places for the CO2 to escape.

Sure.

To your point, these entities have decades of human capital and bribery to prevent progress on global warming, to prop themselves up with government subsidies that should 100000% be going to alternative energy instead, that avoid carbon taxes, that destabilize governments, corrupt political institutions, and likely outright atrocities in the third world. The ignore regulations, cut short safety, and paper over disasters or make other entities pay for it. Pipeline breaks, train disasters, and, in case we forgot, that little incident in the gulf.

THESE COMPANIES CANNOT BE TRUSTED.

THE HYDROGEN INDUSTRY, which is these companies, CANNOT BE TRUSTED.

This is borne out in the enormous daily quantity of press releases, watered down news articles, etc, all of which have the #1 goal of FUD to slow down the current inexorable economic victory of solar, wind, BEVs, and batteries.

No I do not care what specific industrial use they have. If hydrogen has a legitimate specific use case, guess what? It will get used for that. QUIETLY. Do I see daily articles on refinement in steel production or many other aspects in various industrial processes in HN? No.

Hydrogen? I see it every day, and it is NOT intended to inform people of some obscure industrial application. It is to desperately stall the destruction of the oil and gas global industrial complex and multinational lobby/corruption/bribe structure.

Do not trust these people, do not trust these industries, do not trust these companies, and do not trust these stories.

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

#125

Post by dredmorbius »

Animats wrote: post #97
dredmorbius wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This: "If there was concentrated hydrogen to be found, you'd expect that more would have been found by now." That there are occasional instances of concentrated mineral hydrogen is a new concept to me, but not entirely surprising. That there might exist hydrogen deposits rivaling the largest oil fields ever found seems ... unlikely. Virtually all presently-exploited fossil hydrocarbon reserves were known in antiquity…

Here's a map of drilling density of the world.[1] About a third of the world's land masses have been fairly well explored. In developed countries, even the unpromising areas show considerable drilling. Note the well density in Europe and Japan, areas not noted for oil reserves. Other than in one location in Mali, nobody has found substantial deposits of hydrogen.[2][3] The level of hype associated with this is excess…

Thanks for that, and yes, the odds of there being vast untapped viably accessible hydrogen seems ... low.

One of those books BTW: Abraham Gesner, A practical treatise on coal, petroleum, and other distilled oils.

https://archive.org/details/apracticaltreat01unkngoog>

As the opening pages note, naturally occurring freely-flowing seeps of tars and oils were well known throughout history.

For holes-in-the-ground blowing pure hydrogen ... we've one extant example that powered a Ford for a few years.

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

#126

Post by entropicgravity »

MarkusQ wrote: post #86
DennisP wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plants aren't doing that job all that effectively, or the CO2 levels wouldn't be going up. The entire history of industrial civilization has added 140 parts per million of CO2 to the atmosphere. For CO2, that's too much. But Oxygen is 21% of the atmosphere, or 210,000 parts per million. I think we'll be ok for a while.

Plants do a great job pulling out CO₂ -- that's why CO₂ levels fall in the northern hemisphere's spring and early summer (see https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ ). Unfortunately, insects and fungi are just as good at eating plant matter and exhaling the CO₂ back again (aided somewhat by fires) so it goes right back in to the air again.

Yes my understanding is that before there were fungi that could deal with the fallen trees they just stacked up on the ground and eventually became coal while the earth turned into snowball earth for a few million years. Sucking up CO2 has been too much of a good thing under some past circumstances.

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

#127

Post by _hypx »

dredmorbius wrote: post #94
Animats wrote: post #84

There are startups in this area, but they're kind of sketchy.[1] These people claim to have drilled a well, and are "finalizing plans to conduct an extended flow test". No numbers, though. Desert Mountain Energy has a well that produces about 4% helium, 4% hydrogen, and the rest is mostly nitrogen. They barely mention the hydrogen. The helium is far more valuable. Separating out 4% hydrogen is possible but complicate…

This: "If there was concentrated hydrogen to be found, you'd expect that more would have been found by now." That there are occasional instances of concentrated mineral hydrogen is a new concept to me, but not entirely surprising. That there might exist hydrogen deposits rivaling the largest oil fields ever found seems ... unlikely. Virtually all presently-exploited fossil hydrocarbon reserves were known in antiquity…

Should be noted that natural hydrogen was also known since antiquity: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00128...

The problem is that no one cared or knew what it was. This is not that dissimilar to petroleum itself, which was also ignored until the 19th century. Before then, it was seen as a curiosity and similarly ignored or misunderstood.

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

#128

Post by fock »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #116
fock wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_particle well ...

I don't understand your "well..." Yes, exactly my point, alpha particles are helium nuclei, so I'm assuming that's what the author meant and simply made a mistake highlighting the beta decay of uranium instead of the alpha particles it emits.

where exactly does the electron catch the proton?

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

#129

Post by dredmorbius »

_hypx wrote: post #127
dredmorbius wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This: "If there was concentrated hydrogen to be found, you'd expect that more would have been found by now." That there are occasional instances of concentrated mineral hydrogen is a new concept to me, but not entirely surprising. That there might exist hydrogen deposits rivaling the largest oil fields ever found seems ... unlikely. Virtually all presently-exploited fossil hydrocarbon reserves were known in antiquity…

Should be noted that natural hydrogen was also known since antiquity: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00128... The problem is that no one cared or knew what it was. This is not that dissimilar to petroleum itself, which was also ignored until the 19th century. Before then, it was seen as a curiosity and similarly ignored or misunderstood.

Thanks. That adds another few known cases, but still nothing like the record for coal, oil, and gas prior to the industrial age.

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

#130

Post by Kon5ole »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #70
senectus1 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is like saying that the knife industry is setup for murders. your statement completely ignores the rapidly developing green hydrogen industry. Those are TODAY sources. just because there are large number of non-clean doesn't mean the clean ones dont exist.

Green hydrogen is not a fuel source. It takes more energy to create green hydrogen than it provides as a fuel, so green hydrogen is a energy transport mechanism, not a source.

We can call hydrogen a source or a transport, but it is just semantics. If we call green hydrogen a transport then oil is also a transport, and if oil is a source then green hydro is also a source. It takes more energy to create oil, gas or hydropower than we get out of it as well.

Most of our energy sources are just stored solar energy that would otherwise have gone to waste. The idea with green hydrogen is the same, create hydrogen from energy that would otherwise go to waste.

One can argue that hydrogen isn't the most efficient storage mechanism, but I don't understand why it should be dismissed as a source separately from all other storage mechanisms.

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