Exporting hydrogen is a pipe dream

[markslawson + 1,057]

Hydrogen has been talked up as a major storage of energy and one that will form the basis of a major export market to replace LNG. As this article by Professor of Engineering at the Australian National University Andrew Blakers in the Australian edition of the Conversation shows, this export market faces a major hurdle. All the major potential customers for this form of liquified energy can generate their own. They don't need to import the stuff. Here is an extract

"In its latest budget, the federal government has promised hundreds of millions of dollars to expand Australia’s green hydrogen capabilities.

Green hydrogen is made by electrolysis of water, powered by solar and wind electricity, and it’s key to the government’s “technology not taxes” approach to meeting its climate target of net-zero emissions by 2050.

The government aims to create a major green hydrogen export industry, particularly to Japan, for which Australia signed an export deal in January. But as our latest research suggests, the likely scale may well be overstated.

We show Japan has more than enough solar and wind energy to be self-sufficient in energy, and does not need to import either fossil fuels or Australian green hydrogen. Indeed, Australia as a “renewable energy superpower” is far from a sure thing."

In other words why would Japan import horrifically expensive power from elsewhere when they can make horrifically expensive power in their own territory? Why give away the jobs and export earnings to another country? He points out that the same can be said about most Asian countries. They can simply make their own. Granted Australia may have advantages in terms of land and exposure to sun and wind but the hydrogen generated has to be exported over thousands of kilometres and there will be massive losses in the energy stored. Professor Blakers cites an estimate that 70 per cent of the energy generated is lost through being converted to hydrogen, shipped and then converted back into energy.

I don't agree with all the article. The professor talks about creating large off-river pumped hydro to store energy, although creating such facilities is very difficult indeed - not because it can't be done but because the environmental approval systems in developed countries make this option all but impossible. However, it is clear that hydrogen will have only limited local use as a means of storing power, but given the likely losses in such a storage system even batteries would be better.   

  

Edited April 8, 2022 by markslawson
correcting error..

[NickW + 2,714]

I always thought it had been due to the cost of compression.

If you get to a point where you have loads of surplus renewable electricity (or nuclear) and its stranded or can't be consumed on that grid then converting it to Ammonia and selling this on the fertiliser markets is the obvious choice as Ammonia is relatively easy to transport. .

Ammonia can actually be used as a fuel in converted diesel engines. 

[markslawson + 1,057]

7 hours ago, NickW said:

Ammonia can actually be used as a fuel in converted diesel engines. 

Yes, if you've got loads of power than making ammonia might be worth the trouble and it could be used as fuel - good point. There's probably a few other things you can do such as pump water uphill into dams as a means of storage.. but anyway.. 

[nsdp + 449]

22 hours ago, markslawson said:

Yes, if you've got loads of power than making ammonia might be worth the trouble and it could be used as fuel - good point. There's probably a few other things you can do such as pump water uphill into dams as a means of storage.. but anyway.. 

How much do you know about the hydrogen pipeline and storage systems that operate in Texas and Louisiana ?

Nothing apparently and neither does your Australian author.  Hoskins Mound began in 1965, Clemens Dome in 1982,  Moss Bluff in 1990 and Spindletop in 2006.   Try repricing his numbers with $20/mwh  which is $2/kg.  And  bring your technical knowledge into the 21st century.

Edited April 9, 2022 by nsdp
omitted a word

[markslawson + 1,057]

1 hour ago, nsdp said:

How much do you know about the hydrogen pipeline and storage systems that operate in Texas and Louisiana ?

nsdp - please try to be civil when making your points. I have no objection at all to being corrected, especially in areas I know little about and when I was just making tentative suggestions. NH3 has often been suggested as an interim step to the use of H2 so if there is an issue with the use of NH3 then I'm happy to hear about it. But what is it? Less nastiness and more plain writing please. Ammonia pipelines have proved too expensive? Is that what you're trying to say?  

[nsdp + 449]

3 hours ago, markslawson said:

nsdp - please try to be civil when making your points. I have no objection at all to being corrected, especially in areas I know little about and when I was just making tentative suggestions. NH3 has often been suggested as an interim step to the use of H2 so if there is an issue with the use of NH3 then I'm happy to hear about it. But what is it? Less nastiness and more plain writing please. Ammonia pipelines have proved too expensive? Is that what you're trying to say? 

No, hydrogen  H2 pipelines have been in operation from storage facilities for  sixty years.There is a lot of literature out there that neither cesthe author or you ever checked.  Quite a bit of his working his office and a pencil and paper and he is making assumptions  that were proven to be invalid in field testing.  He does not do any comparisons using actual resoures  There exist papers published by the NETL in 1996. ASME national conference of 2018 by Jay Keller and Susan Shoenung in 20 18 (Jay is a retired director of Sandia' National Combustion Lab  which tests combustion applications and equipment for NASA and DARPA).  there is  a very detailed study posted by the University of Freiburg/Fraunhofer-Institut für System- und Innovationsforschung ISI that is 80 plus pages long. https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/business-areas/hydrogen-technologies-and-electrical-energy-storage.html

Ammonia  is not an acceptable medium for energy transfer for safety  reasons.   There was an explosion with a large cloud of ammonia released killing 5 and doing permanent lung damage to 178 others One person was killed in the accident and five people died from inhaling anhydrous ammonia.  This triggered special tank requirements for handling ammonia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OR7A5jWmDs.

As for costs, they will not be materially different from LNG. When you see someone using LCOE instead of LACE http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/asperger2/docs/eia-mar18.pdf tells you that he uses metrics that give the wrong results when the final accounting is done at the end of the life of the project.   Universities and faculty have been slow to recognize that LACE is a better model  than LCOE.   That is simply because that is the way they have always done. $30/mwh is very profitable  because LACE  accounts for the difference in time of day  by substituting the marginal price of electricity at each given hour instead of an annual average price.  A mwh at 1700 hrs in July is worth a lot more(10X) than a mwh at 0400 hours in April.

here is another fundamental error"Essentially, it’s because 70% of the energy is lost by converting Australian solar and wind energy into hydrogen compounds, " In 1996 NETL demonstrated  72.3% efficiency using LHV.  If you capture the oxygen and burn only O2 and H2 with no nitrogen then you use HHV and get an addition recovery of 8% of your losses because you do not have to compress combustion air  and your flame temperature is 3760K vs 3700K using atmospheric sources of O2.   It also raises the efficiency of the electrolyzer from 70% to 94%. This is due to the difference in molecular thermodynamics between combustion in pure oxygen (think the Apollo1 capsule fire) and burning with 80% inert gases that your flame raises to the flame temperature.

[markslawson + 1,057]

18 hours ago, nsdp said:

No, hydrogen  H2 pipelines have been in operation from storage facilities for  sixty years.There is a lot of literature out there that neither cesthe author or you ever checked.  Quite a bit of his working his office and a pencil and paper and he is making assumptions  that were proven to be invalid in field testing. 

Okay - I've got a bit more of what you say in focus and I think this is another case of defending the use of hydrogen no matter what the facts. First off your objections do not touch the basic point made in the post, that there is no reason for international trade in hydrogen as each country can generate its own, so why would they import? This is unanswerable. What seems to have set you off is a throw away remark about using ammonia. It's dangerous, as is hydrogen. No argument there. You then try to claim that the Professor of Engineering's estimate of the energy losses in shipping hydrogen anywhere is wrong, but the link you give is about research into membrane technology. When that project reduces the losses in a real world large-scale project tell me, but not before. Lot of research projects out there. The pipeline reference is also not helpful. A lot of hydrogen is produced for various applications in industry, using methane and steam as that's the cheapest method. Almost all of it is used on the spot but pipelines would still be needed for the comparatively short distances involved. There is nothing like the long distances pipelines used for methane. As for the appeal to a different metric in an effort to prove that a gas that loses 70 per cent of its energy in transit is somehow economic, I'm at a lost for words. nsdp, normally I pay attention for another round of objections but if you're going to be insulting as well, I'll move on. Leave the matter with you.      

[nsdp + 449]

Linde has a pipeline system in the US that runs from Pascagoula Ms to Freeport Tx.   Obviously you missed that one. With a class A rating by NPSA of 1967 that is  a major pipeline. As the natural gas industry has demonstrated with the production in the Uttica trend it is better to go 100-200 miles for supply than 2000 miles.

As to the Fraunhofer link , that was a test of your ability to research a web site. You are too lazy to search or lacking in intelligence.   Did you search for the ASME annual meeeting paper submitted by Dr Jay Kelly(PHD Berkeley) of UC Irvine and Dr. Susan Shoengung PHD Standford in Mechanical Engineering?  Your source is a light weight compared to the retired director of the US government; combustion lab. Your LNG or Ammonia plants dump  exhaust heat and either CO2 or NOX to the amosphere.   Hydrogen/Oxygen in a combined cycle system as as described by DRs. Keller and Schoengung has no exhaust heat  at all. Your source did not consider thermodynamics of waste heat at all.  The use of solar and /or wind results in a NEGATIVE DELTA T for the entire cycle.  It takes heat from the atmosphere and turns it into electricity.

[GCMS Guy + 5]

At present, Hydrogen gas is generated with the consumption of fossil fuels.  So it is not "green" at all.  In principle, hydrogen can be generated from renewable electricity by electrolysis, stored underground, and then oxidized to make electricity with good efficiency.  In fact, the electrolysis equipment, hydrogen storage, and fuel cells don't exist in quantity.  In gigawatt quantities, they won't for decades.  So where are we with the green hydrogen economy?  Perhaps where Thomas Edison was with the electrical economy when he patented the electric light bulb in 1879:  several decades in the future.  By then practical molten-salt reactors may be on the market.  They would be safer, more efficient, and less contaminating than current nuclear plants.  Modern windmills and fields of solar panels?  By the criteria of a society with practical MSR generation, they would seem as quaint as don Quixote's windmills do now. 

     Battery-electric vehicles run primarily on coal- and natural gas-fired electricity.  So their CO2 production is comparable to internal combustion. Perhaps the best compromise at present is the hybrid vehicle.  The Prius, Corolla, and Kia Niro hybrids, for example, all get over 50 mpg in city driving, a substantial reduction in CO2 output.  

Edited April 13, 2022 by GCMS Guy
clean it up

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

4 hours ago, GCMS Guy said:

At present, Hydrogen gas is generated with the consumption of fossil fuels.  So it is not "green" at all.  In principle, hydrogen can be generated from renewable electricity by electrolysis, stored underground, and then oxidized to make electricity with good efficiency.  In fact, the electrolysis equipment, hydrogen storage, and fuel cells don't exist in quantity.  In gigawatt quantities, they won't for decades.  So where are we with the green hydrogen economy?  Perhaps where Thomas Edison was with the electrical economy when he patented the electric light bulb in 1879:  several decades in the future.  By then practical molten-salt reactors may be on the market.  They would be safer, more efficient, and less contaminating than current nuclear plants.  Modern windmills and fields of solar panels?  By the criteria of a society with practical MSR generation, they would seem as quaint as don Quixote's windmills do now. 

     Battery-electric vehicles run primarily on coal- and natural gas-fired electricity.  So their CO2 production is comparable to internal combustion. Perhaps the best compromise at present is the hybrid vehicle.  The Prius, Corolla, and Kia Niro hybrids, for example, all get over 50 mpg in city driving, a substantial reduction in CO2 output.  

Green hydrogen will be in gigawatt quantities next year. two akaline electrolyzer factories of a gigawatt each in India over the next 12 to 18 months to make the lowest cost hydrogen in the country for industrial users.The 2 GW units can potentially help replacing 8% of India’s annual liquified natural gas (LNG) imports. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/renewables/greenko-john-cockerill-to-set-up-2-electrolyser-giga-factories-for-green-hydrogen/articleshow/90784080.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Natural gas emits less carbon than oil and both gas and coal emit less carbon in making electricity for EVs than oil in cars because electric plants have higher thermal efficiency than ICE.

And of course 38% of the global electricity is currently from no carbon sources. But all of a hybrids fuel is from a high carbon source.

Try again.

 

Edited April 13, 2022 by Jay McKinsey

[markslawson + 1,057]

On 4/14/2022 at 8:05 AM, Jay McKinsey said:

Green hydrogen will be in gigawatt quantities next year. two akaline electrolyzer factories of a gigawatt each in India over the next 12 to 18 months to make the lowest cost hydrogen in the country for industrial users

Jay - actually this isn't what's happening, but if you got mixed up I'm not surprised as the reporter seems to have got confused. This project is about making the electrolysers to make hydrogen. Note this excerpt from another report.

The Gigafactory will comprise the complete electrolyzer manufacturing value chain, including state-of-the-art nickel coating. It will produce electrolyzers delivering high-purity H2 at 30 bars at the outlet.

Other reports also freely confuse the making of these electrolysers with the production of H2. But if you look closely you'll see the original statements are talking about making these electrolysers. The press releases then go on to talk about how those electrolysers can then be used to make hydrogen. As I've seen several announcements of electrolyzer factories I have my doubts about how useful this project will be. In any case, there isn't any way green hydrogen can compete with methane without some sort of government intervention, and where would the electricity come from in India which has a pretty bad grid?  

 

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

35 minutes ago, markslawson said:

Jay - actually this isn't what's happening, but if you got mixed up I'm not surprised as the reporter seems to have got confused. This project is about making the electrolysers to make hydrogen. Note this excerpt from another report.

The Gigafactory will comprise the complete electrolyzer manufacturing value chain, including state-of-the-art nickel coating. It will produce electrolyzers delivering high-purity H2 at 30 bars at the outlet.

Other reports also freely confuse the making of these electrolysers with the production of H2. But if you look closely you'll see the original statements are talking about making these electrolysers. The press releases then go on to talk about how those electrolysers can then be used to make hydrogen. As I've seen several announcements of electrolyzer factories I have my doubts about how useful this project will be. In any case, there isn't any way green hydrogen can compete with methane without some sort of government intervention, and where would the electricity come from in India which has a pretty bad grid?  

 

Uh, so you think they are going to make gigawatts of electrolyzer and not do anything with it? They are of course going to make hydrogen with it. (sigh) From their website, carefully read the second sentence:

The cost of H2 will drop dramatically with scale just as what happened with solar, wind and batteries. 

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

8,000% growth | 'More than 100GW of hydrogen electrolysers to be produced annually by 2031'

Sector will experience compound annual growth of 62.6%, with Europe leading the way, says Guidehouse Insights report

The global production of electrolysers — the machines that split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen using an electric current — will grow exponentially over the next nine years, according to a new report by analyst Guidehouse Insights.

https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/8-000-growth-more-than-100gw-of-hydrogen-electrolysers-to-be-produced-annually-by-2031/2-1-1201444

[markslawson + 1,057]

23 hours ago, Jay McKinsey said:

Uh, so you think they are going to make gigawatts of electrolyzer and not do anything with it? They are of course going to make hydrogen with it. (sigh) From their website, carefully read the second sentence

Jay, sorry, but you're clutching at straws. I'm aware of what they said. the fact remains that they aren't building H2 production capacity at the moment but are building the capacity to build the equipment to make H2, as the report you linked (sort of) says. Sure the production of these electrolyzers will increase over the next few years, as your other posts says. They are also building such facilities in Australia. They want to sell equipment to those silly enough, or with enough government support, to make H2. The fact remains that hydrogen production for power storage is, at best, marginal. You're better off with a battery, which would also be safer to operate. I'm not saying that batteries are any good or safe, they are just more efficient and safer than using hydrogen. That's not saying much. An export market is out of the question. Anyway, if you refuse to accept those points that's up to you. Leave it with you..     

[nsdp + 449]

3 hours ago, markslawson said:

Jay, sorry, but you're clutching at straws. I'm aware of what they said. the fact remains that they aren't building H2 production capacity at the moment but are building the capacity to build the equipment to make H2, as the report you linked (sort of) says. Sure the production of these electrolyzers will increase over the next few years, as your other posts says. They are also building such facilities in Australia. They want to sell equipment to those silly enough, or with enough government support, to make H2. The fact remains that hydrogen production for power storage is, at best, marginal. You're better off with a battery, which would also be safer to operate. I'm not saying that batteries are any good or safe, they are just more efficient and safer than using hydrogen. That's not saying much. An export market is out of the question. Anyway, if you refuse to accept those points that's up to you. Leave it with you..     

Mark, you are about as knowledgeable Otto Lilienthal who told the Wright brothers that their machine would never fly and they gave him an hour long demonstration.  Shell Refining has a 10 mw H2 electrolyzer at its Rheinland refinery Shell starts up Europe’s largest PEM green hydrogen electrolyser " Plans are under way to expand capacity of the electrolyzer from 10 megawatts to 100 megawatts."  https://www.shell.com/media/news-and-media-releases/2021/shell-starts-up-europes-largest-pem-green-hydrogen-electrolyser.html  RWE and Total have smaller units. Check this  manufacturer out before you post again. Shell, ITM Power to install 10MW electrolyzer for refinery hydrogen.

 You need a time warp from the 19th to the 21st century.

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

21 hours ago, markslawson said:

Jay, sorry, but you're clutching at straws. I'm aware of what they said. the fact remains that they aren't building H2 production capacity at the moment but are building the capacity to build the equipment to make H2, as the report you linked (sort of) says. Sure the production of these electrolyzers will increase over the next few years, as your other posts says. They are also building such facilities in Australia. They want to sell equipment to those silly enough, or with enough government support, to make H2. The fact remains that hydrogen production for power storage is, at best, marginal. You're better off with a battery, which would also be safer to operate. I'm not saying that batteries are any good or safe, they are just more efficient and safer than using hydrogen. That's not saying much. An export market is out of the question. Anyway, if you refuse to accept those points that's up to you. Leave it with you..     

By clutching at straws you mean reading the English language and understanding the most basic of economics.

What I linked is from the press release on their website. It clearly states that they intend on making hydrogen and associated molecules. Making electricity from H2 is at the bottom of the value chain, seasonal load shifting. It is those associated green molecules that have the greater value for which ESG investors will pay a premium until the price of H2 drops. Think green steel, cement, plastic, fertilizer etc.

It is likely that it is these associated molecules that Australia will export rather than pure hydrogen.

It is up to you if you continue to refuse acceptance of reality. 

 

 

Edited April 16, 2022 by Jay McKinsey

[markslawson + 1,057]

On 4/16/2022 at 2:07 PM, nsdp said:

hell Refining has a 10 mw H2 electrolyzer at its Rheinland refinery Shell starts up Europe’s largest PEM green hydrogen electrolyser " Plans are under way to expand capacity of the electrolyzer from 10 megawatts to 100 megawatts." 

nsdp - like Jay you're clutching at straws to make the hydrogen-for-power argument work, and being pointlessly abusive to boot. I have absolutely no doubt that what you write is correct, but it merely underlines the point I was making in my earliest posts. Go back and look at the article you cite. They are using the hydrogen as a partial substitute for hydrogen produced by the steam-methane method which has been used in industrial processes for decades. Sure they're putting in a 10 MW electroylzer. It looks good in press releases and the addition to costs would be minimal for such a small output. 100 MW might add up to something, if and when they actually expand to that, but again its hardly earth shattering and the methane process is still known to be cheaper. (The business about renewables being cheap is straight moonshine.)  None of this has anything to do with hydrogen being used to store energy. Its you who would have advised the Wright Bros to stay on the ground, not me.