Hydrogen Boom Could Lead To New Platinum Bull Market

[Meredith Poor + 898]

"Whereas platinum is losing its most important customer in diesel, it's about to gain an equally impressive one: Green hydrogen."

Vast amounts of work have been done on efficient water electrolysis using non-precious metal or non-metal electrodes. This link describes how this is done with a graphene electrode:

https://phys.org/news/2018-04-holes-graphene-boost-hydrogen-production.html

While platinum may gain new markets for catalysts, electrolyzing water isn't likely to be one of them.

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,194]

On 10/25/2020 at 8:02 PM, Meredith Poor said:

"Whereas platinum is losing its most important customer in diesel, it's about to gain an equally impressive one: Green hydrogen."

Vast amounts of work have been done on efficient water electrolysis using non-precious metal or non-metal electrodes. This link describes how this is done with a graphene electrode:

https://phys.org/news/2018-04-holes-graphene-boost-hydrogen-production.html

While platinum may gain new markets for catalysts, electrolyzing water isn't likely to be one of them.

Nanotech is where the future is and has been there going on 30 years now.  Turning nanoscale into reality on the other hand...

As for the link... That is nice, but no one has been able to create any meaningful amount of Graphene worth mentioning.  Until then, all the wonders of Graphene and its structural, electrical, chemical properties are nothing but dreams. 

Reminds me of old articles in early 2000's of guys who made not only the worlds smallest combustion engine, but also the most efficient... all at nanoscale.... sounds nice but ultimately useless. 

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

That is one awesome looking catalyst.  Wow!

Edited January 1, 2021 by Enthalpic

[markslawson + 1,061]

On 10/26/2020 at 2:02 PM, Meredith Poor said:

Vast amounts of work have been done on efficient water electrolysis using non-precious metal or non-metal electrodes. This link describes how this is done with a graphene electrode:

MP - as with all the other "breakthroughs" reported over the years it doesn't mean much until someone starts doing it commercially. In any case, the production of hydrogen is only one of the barriers to this promised nirvana of green power. My understanding is that they don't know how to store the stuff safely in any volume. The preliminary proposals are that the H2 be converted to ammonia for pumping and storage.

How these guys intend to make H2 production from green energy plants commercially competitive with LNG, of which vast amounts are already being produced and consumed, is beyond me. But reports of breakthroughs like the one you link allow the proponents of the daft ideas about H2 to dream on.  

[NickW + 2,714]

13 hours ago, markslawson said:

MP - as with all the other "breakthroughs" reported over the years it doesn't mean much until someone starts doing it commercially. In any case, the production of hydrogen is only one of the barriers to this promised nirvana of green power. My understanding is that they don't know how to store the stuff safely in any volume. The preliminary proposals are that the H2 be converted to ammonia for pumping and storage.

How these guys intend to make H2 production from green energy plants commercially competitive with LNG, of which vast amounts are already being produced and consumed, is beyond me. But reports of breakthroughs like the one you link allow the proponents of the daft ideas about H2 to dream on.  

Why store it?  Just blend it in with natural gas up to about 20% by volume.

Store natural gas / H2 mix as your back up. 

The Ammonia market is >150mt per year so that would accommodate H2 production for a couple of decades. 

[markslawson + 1,061]

10 hours ago, NickW said:

Why store it?  Just blend it in with natural gas up to about 20% by volume.

Store natural gas / H2 mix as your back up. 

The Ammonia market is >150mt per year so that would accommodate H2 production for a couple of decades. 

Nick - mostly you do have to store it for shipment. The point about H2 is as a store of energy for remote renewable energy projects which can then be sent off for conversion back to energy.. otherwise the projects have to be close enough to pipe the gas in for mixture with natural gas. Okay, assuming you have enough projects producing H2 to link with a pipe to wherever, then sure they can mix it with natural gas up to 20 per cent but why? Unless they can make H2 production competitive with natural gas, which doesn't seem likely, they won't do it. In any case if the renewable projects are close enough then why not just use transmission lines to transmit the energy? Why bother with the H2 phase at all? The renewable energy scene is full of weird proposals and obsessions. H2 is the weirdest obsession of them all.  

[NickW + 2,714]

15 hours ago, markslawson said:

Nick - mostly you do have to store it for shipment. The point about H2 is as a store of energy for remote renewable energy projects which can then be sent off for conversion back to energy.. otherwise the projects have to be close enough to pipe the gas in for mixture with natural gas. Okay, assuming you have enough projects producing H2 to link with a pipe to wherever, then sure they can mix it with natural gas up to 20 per cent but why? Unless they can make H2 production competitive with natural gas, which doesn't seem likely, they won't do it. In any case if the renewable projects are close enough then why not just use transmission lines to transmit the energy? Why bother with the H2 phase at all? The renewable energy scene is full of weird proposals and obsessions. H2 is the weirdest obsession of them all.  

Shipment if you are going to produce it like LNG

If its produced as a byproduct of renewables overbuild in developed countries the easiest thing to do is have the electrolyser plants adjacent to major gas pipelines where they can produce the H2 and inject strain into the gas line. The gas pipe lines themselves act as form of short term storage. 

The UK will have about 40GW of offshore wind by 2030. At certain times of the day it will exceed total demand so there has to be outlets to shed that power

Options aside from conversion to H2 include:

Interconnectors. We are on course to have several GW of interconnection. In particular Norway will buy up cheap wind energy and utilise its huge hydro and pump storage capacity as Europes Battery

Ammonia plants

Green Steel production

EV charging 

 

[markslawson + 1,061]

15 hours ago, NickW said:

Shipment if you are going to produce it like LNG

If its produced as a byproduct of renewables overbuild in developed countries the easiest thing to do is have the electrolyser plants adjacent to major gas pipelines where they can produce the H2 and inject strain into the gas line. The gas pipe lines themselves act as form of short term storage. 

Well, okay, all of that's possible if you do have the surplus.. my distinct impression was that H2 was to be used as a store of energy which made remote green energy projects possible and removed some of the problems of intermittency - the pipelines are not much of a storage - but sure.. if its commercial to do so then go for it.. but of course it remains to be seen whether its commercial.. anyway, that's as far as thic can be taken.. leave it with you..