Live data from Hacker News

Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

terraformindustries.wordpress.com

311–320 of 331 posts

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#311
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are getting pumped storage and river dams mixed up. It seems mschuster91 also mixed them up. The environmental impact is bad for both . River dams break fish crossings, the dammed up area gets flooded and wipes out nature as well as archeological artifacts and the dams are at constant risk of damage - especially in a war, see Ukraine for multiple examples, but also due to maintenance neglect, negligence duri…

A link to the three gorges dam wikipedia page says exactly nothing about the potential environmental impact of pumped storage but it does confirm that you are confusing the two technologies.

... which is why I linked to the Three Gorges Dam in the paragraph where I described the issues with dammed storage, and made an entirely separate paragraph describing the issues of pumped storage.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not done the math here in a long time, but as I understand it: You could produce about 8KG of CH4 with 2KG of H2 and 6KG of C or 22KG of CO2. At $250/MT would work out to about $5.50 and the 2kg of H2 would be $5 assuming $2.50/kg so lets say $10 for simplicity. 1kg of CH4 at STP is 1,396L (according to GPT since I'm lazy right now) which is about 50cf. That's not even close to $10kcf (assuming that this means…

Interesting, let me try: A tonne of CO2 is 12/44 C, or 273kg. So let's call it $1/kg because 250 ~= 273. A kg of CH4 is 12/16 C and 4/16 H, so a kg is $0.75 for C + $2.50/4 for H = ~$1.40/kg. https://www.epa.gov/cmop/updated-coal-mine-methane-units-con... says 1000 cubic feet of methane is 19.26 kg. Call it 20 because we're doing it in our head. $1.40 * 20 = $28 / kcf.

Arrrg, this is what I get for answering this while distracted, I did not multiply by 8.

So it was 400cf or 0.4kcf for $10, so yeah you are right. That's actually not terribly far off their white paper actually. It's not as good as current market prices $12/kcf but it is not so far off, particularly if you consider potential subsidies for capturing carbon.

Thanks for that.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#313

What are some applications where its worth taking the highest grade energy (electricity) and turning it into a lower grade (eg liquid fuels), rather than electrifying the application? Electricity to motion is significantly more efficient per input energy than burning fuel->heat-> gaseous expansion->drive a piston->convert to rotation chain. What am I missing about this?

- heating a zillion legacy homes using existing gas pipelines - running all the existing fertilizer and other chemical plants - gas peakers/backups for resiliency. Gas storage is much cheaper than batteries. Even if all new construction is electric, we have decades of infrastructure built around gas. Replacing the furnace in every German house with a heat pump just isn't going to happen in 10 years.

> - heating a zillion legacy homes using existing gas pipelines

They dont have electricity to heat with?

> - running all the existing fertilizer and other chemical plants

This takes hydrogen gas from the nat gas, why not just use the electricity for hydrolysis

I think other commenters have said it well. It's really just a storage mechanism. Waste daytime solar for use at non-peak solar production

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The best part about using nuclear for fuel generation The main point of this operation is to utilize free surplus energy from solar and wind to store fuel for days where solar and wind can't produce enough. Free-as-in-beer surplus, since the energy would otherwise be wasted or sold at negative prices, like what we have been seeing lately in certain markets. Nuclear can always produce electricity, so converting to fu…

Nuclear can always produce electricity, but spinning plants up and down takes time. More importantly, a nuclear plant has a design lifetime, and most of the cost comes from building the plant in the first place, not from the fuel. It therefore costs a lot of money to let a nuclear plant sit idle. Furthermore, building a small nuclear plant is almost as expensive as building a large one, because of the regulatory hurd…

>most of the cost comes from building the plant in the first place, not from the fuel.

I don't think that's correct. The costs of handling spent fuel is ongoing for an unknown amount of time. Eventually the running costs add up.

The main storage site in the UK (which admittedly does more than just store waste) costs around USD 3 billion per year, basically as much as building a new nuclear plant every 5 years.

Then you have unforeseen events that can drastically change the calculations. Like the Asse II mine in Germany where a storage site started leaking and has to be relocated at an estimated cost of at least 3.7 billion euro over the coming decades. After that is completed, the relocated waste will continue to cost money to handle as well.

Such cost are generally NOT included, or has a fraction of the true liability included, in the cost estimates of nuclear power.

When you take such things into account it quickly becomes clear that nuclear is not nearly as cheap as many have been lead to believe, but instead very expensive and very heavily subsidized.

Consider also that even if it were cheap, it is strategically (both in a military sense and for reliability) a bad idea to have few large power plants instead of many smaller ones. The most recent nuclear reactor in the EU has had several emergency stops already and causes severe stress on the grid since it provides such a large percentage of the total power.

Having a geographically diverse set of solar and wind plants combined with local batteries, gas generators and small peak-handling gas plants has to be a better solution than nuclear power. More resilient, cheaper and faster to build, easier to maintain, not to mention a much more predictable total cost.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#315
post #14

One can make natural gas from CO2 captured from air and with hydrogen electrolysed form water. But then one has to ask: why not just use hydrogen directly and skip the inefficiency and cost of direct air capture of CO2 and of making methane? If one is dead set on making a carbon-containing synfuel, why methane and not something more storable, like methanol or higher hydrocarbons? Or, why not use the hydrogen to deoxy…

Because the economics of storing and transporting hydrogen are just not great. You need a lot of energy and infrastructure to do it. And while the density per kg is great. The density by volume is absolutely terrible because hydrogen is the smallest and lightest molecule. In liquid and gas form it's nearly 3x the volume of methane (for the same amount of energy). If you are transporting it in compressed gas form (lik…

> their synthetic gas still is an order of magnitude more expensive than natural gas

No it's not. their projections are for $10/kcf.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korea, Japan, China say hello. Much of the world by population and gdp is a ship ride away from their major energy suppliers. Japan imports about half their LNG from Australia. Next largest is Qatar. There are no power lines between Australia and Japan.

Right, but why rely on LNG when Nuclear sources could provide so much more energy and geo-political stability, and promising investment in other avenues (eg Thorium based) could make it even moreso?

Nuclear is better in many ways. It's a shame it costs an order of magnitude more than alternatives.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, let me try: A tonne of CO2 is 12/44 C, or 273kg. So let's call it $1/kg because 250 ~= 273. A kg of CH4 is 12/16 C and 4/16 H, so a kg is $0.75 for C + $2.50/4 for H = ~$1.40/kg. https://www.epa.gov/cmop/updated-coal-mine-methane-units-con... says 1000 cubic feet of methane is 19.26 kg. Call it 20 because we're doing it in our head. $1.40 * 20 = $28 / kcf.

Arrrg, this is what I get for answering this while distracted, I did not multiply by 8. So it was 400cf or 0.4kcf for $10, so yeah you are right. That's actually not terribly far off their white paper actually. It's not as good as current market prices $12/kcf but it is not so far off, particularly if you consider potential subsidies for capturing carbon. Thanks for that.

On https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngCHTImH1g he says the goal is $100/tonne carbon capture and $1/kg H2, which puts those inputs well under the $10/kcf leaving some margin for the cost of the sabatier.

Both processes are directly proportional to the cost of electricity and heat so assuming the thesis of decreasing solar costs holds true, it's a question of when not if.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arrrg, this is what I get for answering this while distracted, I did not multiply by 8. So it was 400cf or 0.4kcf for $10, so yeah you are right. That's actually not terribly far off their white paper actually. It's not as good as current market prices $12/kcf but it is not so far off, particularly if you consider potential subsidies for capturing carbon. Thanks for that.

On https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngCHTImH1g he says the goal is $100/tonne carbon capture and $1/kg H2, which puts those inputs well under the $10/kcf leaving some margin for the cost of the sabatier. Both processes are directly proportional to the cost of electricity and heat so assuming the thesis of decreasing solar costs holds true, it's a question of when not if.

Yeah that would be pretty amazing.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- heating a zillion legacy homes using existing gas pipelines - running all the existing fertilizer and other chemical plants - gas peakers/backups for resiliency. Gas storage is much cheaper than batteries. Even if all new construction is electric, we have decades of infrastructure built around gas. Replacing the furnace in every German house with a heat pump just isn't going to happen in 10 years.

> - heating a zillion legacy homes using existing gas pipelines They dont have electricity to heat with? > - running all the existing fertilizer and other chemical plants This takes hydrogen gas from the nat gas, why not just use the electricity for hydrolysis I think other commenters have said it well. It's really just a storage mechanism. Waste daytime solar for use at non-peak solar production

Half of German homes use gas heat. Replacing half the furnaces in Germany will take a loooong time.

My point isn't efficiency, but the size of the installed plant. I fully expect new infrastructure will use more electricity. But we have accumulated trillions of dollars of infrastructure using natural gas over more than a century. There is absolutely no way we are going to replace it all in 10 years.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#320
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there is. CO2 and methane are not equally bad, methane is about 100x worse initially. After about 60-70 years the lines cross and the impact of a tonne of methane released is less than a tonne of CO2 released at the same date.

> After about 60-70 years the lines cross Methane's global warming potential is estimated to be ten times CO2 after 500 years [1]. > and the impact of a tonne of methane released is less than a tonne of CO2 released at the same date. A ton of methane released into the atmosphere breaks down into 2.75 tons of CO2 [2]. There is no possible way that this statement can be true. [1] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/down…

Seems I misinterpreted. The lines that cross are radiative forcing, not GWP.

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20150116044523/https://www.see.e...

Post reply on HN