121–130 of 133 posts
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It’s mot powered with fossil fuels. It uses fossil fuels as an ingredient.
No it doesn't. It electrolyses water and combines the resulting hydrogen with nitrogen from the air.
A quick refresher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Process
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No they don’t. They remain subsidized. Solar surpassed fossil fuels in efficiency ages ago, and I don’t even LIKE solar. Fossil fuels have no redeeming qualities in the major energy sectors anymore, aside from ONE: the plants are VERY cheap to build.
Surely the redeeming feature is that they are already here...
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No they don’t. They remain subsidized. Solar surpassed fossil fuels in efficiency ages ago, and I don’t even LIKE solar. Fossil fuels have no redeeming qualities in the major energy sectors anymore, aside from ONE: the plants are VERY cheap to build.
>solar surpassed fossil fuels in efficiency What does this even mean? What inputs and outputs are you comparing to get an apples-to-apples comparison between efficiency between fossil fuels and solar?
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> For example, the solar PV when sited in Minnesota is so inefficient just making the electricity from natural gas would produce less CO2 per watt. How does electricity from solar PV ever make any CO2 whatsoever under any circumstances (never mind, somehow more than natural gas)?
Because the PV panel itself has to be manufactured. And under ideal conditions, the amount of power needed to make the panel is about 5 years of what the panel produces. Most of the power goes to purify the poli-silica that makes the bulk of the panel itself. If the PV panel is sited somewhere with less than 25% of the ideal amount of sun, then its manufacture makes more CO2 than the power it will replace on the grid…
Regardless, I don't know where you're getting your information or arguments, but you're way off base. Mining and refinement are more like a quarter of the power input, and many parts of the process can be electrified and don't require high temperatures (i.e. can themselves run on clean power once you bootstrap it). Solar panels typically pay off the energy cost of manufacture within a few years, but are expected to last for 30 (and inverters for 15). IEA studies (e.g. https://iea-pvps.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Slides_IEA-P... ) show a similar story for carbon; amortized over the lifecycle, the carbon intensity is on the order of a few dozen grams/kW, where natural gas is an order of magnitude worse just counting the combustion (and coal is even worse, of course). And those numbers are from 2023; things have only improved (certainly in terms of cost per panel).
They have solar power working effectively across Europe, particularly in Germany (Wikipedia tells us it's about 1/6 of power generation there), despite significantly less sun than Minnesota. It's actually only slightly more cloudy or less sunny in Minneapolis than in Kansas City, MO (again per Wikipedia); cross-referencing a few things, we can easily find that, far from "less than 25%", Minnesota sees almost half the maximum solar yield. As for elevation, that's obviously irrelevant unless you happen to be right next to something taller.
The condescension is really not necessary.
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No it doesn't. It electrolyses water and combines the resulting hydrogen with nitrogen from the air.
Wrong. Natural gas is the most common catalyst, but plenty of plants use oil, coal, and other hydrocarbons. A quick refresher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Process
Perfect project for rural Minnesota, that needs the ammonia, but also has a surprising amount of solar colocated with farms. And a fair amount of wind in the southwest. However there are far far larger projects going on over the world. China is building multiple GW of wind and solar to power a massive ammonia/green hydrogen site right now. I frequently hear of sites in Spain in the hundreds of MW range. The US has be…
I don't support fossil fuels but wind works a small fraction of the time, it is awful to wildlife and it is an eyesore. Instead of wasting the already wasteful energy by making fertilizer out of air, these farms could likely much more efficiently re–capture runoff from their waterways that is now being dumped into the sea harming humans and wildlife alike.
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Wrong. Natural gas is the most common catalyst, but plenty of plants use oil, coal, and other hydrocarbons. A quick refresher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Process
Yes I know how the usual process works. The plant in the article is different, because it uses electrolysis to make hydrogen for the HB plant. You'd have known this if you'd read even the first paragraph of the article.
How are they gonna turn up the damn wind, WJW? Is this a plant that shuts down every time there’s a calm day? Is it a plant for funsies or meant to be a reliable station? Either this is a gigantic art project, or it has hydrocarbon inputs for running on days when the wind is calm.
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The runoff from farms in rural Minnesota is being dumped into the sea? There's almost no place farther from the sea in North America than upper midwest rural farms.
It runs into the Mississippi river, which runs into the sea.
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> hyper-conservatism to protect fossil fuel interests The #1 state, by far, in terms of solar, wind, and energy storage is Texas. There is likely no other state that is also as pro-fossil fuels as Texas. It's also a state known for its conservative stance on almost everything. But the market doesn't care and it flourished without government intervention or significant aid, simply because Texas let's you build things,…
Its mostly because of this guy(1): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_J._Osborne "Renewable Energy Policy. In 1984 Osborne co-founded the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association (now Alliance) (TREIA)[1] with two partners and worked with other key individuals and organizations to bring the nascent renewable energy industry to the attention of policymakers on the state and federal level. " This was a unplanne…
Farmers aren't business owners and the policy helping them isn't pro-business? And the state allowing things to actually be built, unlike California, doesn't make it more pro-business? I don't think that makes any sense at all.
So the only reason that tens or hundreds of billion dollars have flowed into Texas renewables is just a random coincidence and nothing has changed over the last 42 years and the state is actually against it? This is approaching a "who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" type of thing.
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Yes I know how the usual process works. The plant in the article is different, because it uses electrolysis to make hydrogen for the HB plant. You'd have known this if you'd read even the first paragraph of the article.
Right, and if you read the first paragraph, you’d see it’s meant to increase and decrease power consumption based on demand. How are they gonna turn up the damn wind, WJW? Is this a plant that shuts down every time there’s a calm day? Is it a plant for funsies or meant to be a reliable station? Either this is a gigantic art project, or it has hydrocarbon inputs for running on days when the wind is calm.
"In order to somehow absorb the fluctuations in wind availability, you need to have a significant storage of hydrogen to be able to absorb these fluctuations, which is very costly. On the other hand, if you allow the plant to operate dynamically, you minimize the demand for storing hydrogen or storing power and hence, you can have a much tighter design, a much, much more economical design."
This plant is NOT meant to be operating 24/7. It does indeed reduce production when there's less wind, and has been designed to be efficient even at less than 100% capacity. If you look at the project page the University of Minnesota is pretty clear that the goal of the project is to make ammonia without needing any fossil fuel inputs, as Minnesota doesn't have any fossil fuel deposits but plenty of wind power potential.
You seem to be quite keen to keep making the false dichotomy that a project can be either "economically viable with fossil fuel inputs" or "just for fun", but that is obviously not true for research projects. In a world where renewables are becoming cheaper than coal it may not be true for production facilities either, and that is without the added risks of supply chain disruptions for fossil fuels. Not everyone is lucky enough to live in a region where natural gas is plentiful.