Tom Kirkman

Natural gas is crushing wind and solar power

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2 hours ago, dgowin said:

Really? Hmmm.  Lets see.

https://www.itm-power.com/images/Products/HGasXMW.pdf

Producing 4050 kg of 99.999% pure hydrogen in 24 hours consuming 10 MW of electric power.

And if I purchase a Wind Power Contract from Aces Power Marketing from NextEra Energy for lets say $30 per MW hour.

Page #8 http://www.investor.nexteraenergy.com/~/media/Files/N/NEE-IR/news-and-events/events-and-presentations/2019/08-12-2019/August 2019 Investor Presentation_FINAL.pdf

That should be 10 x $30 per MWh = $300 for 4050 kg of 99.999% pure hydrogen.

Sorry I'm going to have to call BS!

 

So, oil is dead, all hail hydrogen... 

According to your numbers... 1kg H2 =~1gallon gas  = 42 gallons/barrel ~42kg/barrel

$300 = 4000kg

4000kg/42 ~100 barrels equivalent for $300(yea yea gas is not oil)

1 Barrel oil is ~$50 and to get equivalent in Hydrogen you claim would require $5000...

$300 vrs $5000

You are claiming Electricity to Hydrogen is cheaper by greater than an 1.5 ORDERs OF MAGNITUDE...

Yea...
All Hail Hydrogen....

🤣

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1 minute ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

So, oil is dead, all hail hydrogen... 

According to your numbers... 1kg H2 =~1gallon gas  = 42 gallons/barrel ~42kg/barrel

$300 = 4000kg

4000kg/42 ~100 barrels equivalent for $300(yea yea gas is not oil)

1 Barrel oil is ~$50 and to get equivalent in Hydrogen you claim would require $5000...

$300 vrs $5000

You are claiming Electricity to Hydrogen is cheaper by greater than an 1.5 ORDERs OF MAGNITUDE...

Yea...
All Hail Hydrogen....

🤣

This guy didn't even do the thermochemistry right. Check out my numbers.

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(edited)

1 minute ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

This guy didn't even do the thermochemistry right. Check out my numbers.

Well I believe he does not know the difference between MW and MWh...

I think the screwed the power number 10MW number... which is PER HOUR for 24 hours...

Edited by footeab@yahoo.com
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9 hours ago, dgowin said:

Sorry I've been out of this for the last 24 hours.

To those of you quoting the Hydrogen Embrittlement issues. These technical challenges have been resolved! NIST and DOE have publically available databases of materials that are impervious to hydrogen. The below is a Carbon Fiber Tank the DOE developed in 2001. Yes 19 years ago.

dgowin - okay, sure, that technical challenge has been overcome (I was unaware of hydrogen embrittlement until I saw your post, but good to know). So what about all the other huge problems of substituting one sort of fuel that requires specialised equipment and complete revamp of the energy system with others that are already in place? Or are we talking energy storage? If so how many of those special, expensive tanks will be required to even begin to make a difference? 

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9 hours ago, dgowin said:

Its irrelevant how much it costs to produce Hydrogen from PEM Elctrolyzers, when there is effectively free power!

Its not free power - additional unit costs can approach zero but its not the same thing. Those wind turbines depreciate in value. As has been discussed on other threads the expected life is something like 10-20 years depending - and the depreciation cost is everything in these plants. Free fuel is a comparatively small advantage. And when the wind doesn't blow, do you simply switch of the Electrolyzers? You  may find that is very difficult, so the shortfall has to be supplied by conventional power. Please make some effort to check statements before you make them. 

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10 hours ago, dgowin said:

ITM Power makes some great Industrial PEM Electrolyzers.

https://www.itm-power.com/images/Products/HGasXMW.pdf

Producing 4050 kg of hydrogen each day. Thats equivalent to producing 4050 gallons of gasoline per day. And for the cost of a single Fracked Shale Oil well ($10M). I can understand why the banker are not willing to fund fossil fuel anymore.

HGasXMW.jpg

 

Please state the initial production of said ‘fracked shale oil well’ and the production two years later...may need to drill another well...

Yet another unicorn fart.

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Nuclear reactor + thermal production of synthetic fuel = massive profits

solar or wind power + electrochemical production of synthetic fuel = huge opportunity cost and extended payoff period (perhaps beyond the life of the equipment) 

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3 hours ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

Holy hell your figures are way off, and $30 per MWh is pure fantasy for paying off wind or solar. Let me show you what 1000 kg of hydrogen demands at 100% efficiency. 

1000 kg x 1000g = 1,000,000g 

1,000,000 g / 2.0158 g/mol H2 = 496080 mol H2

496080 mol H2 x 292 kJ/mol (energy required to split one mole of water to yield one mole of H2) = 144,855,650 kJ

Divide by 1000 to get MJ, then by 3600 to get MWh = 40 MWh for 1000 kg of Hydrogen gas.

With your power figure, this equates to $1200 per ton, not 300. Oh wait... it's even worse. You said $300 per FOUR THOUSAND AND FIFTY. 

It would be nice if folks would actually look at what vendors publish as facts about there equipment.

https://www.itm-power.com/images/Products/HGasXMW.pdf

These are NOT my facts. Its what vendors are publishing for Multi million dollar pieces of equipment.

"292 kJ/mol (energy required to split one mole of water to yield one mole of H2)"  What is this? A piece of Alkaline electrolysis invented in the 1950s?

ITMLarge.jpg.

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(edited)

2 minutes ago, dgowin said:

"292 kJ/mol (energy required to split one mole of water to yield one mole of H2)"  What is this? A piece of Alkaline electrolysis invented in the 1950s?

No, you complete and utter tit. It's the official heat of formation of water. The numbers are with a system that's 100% efficient. Go back to high school chemistry. Sure the system has that capacity in 24 hours, but you aren't even multiplying the power correctly. 

Edited by KeyboardWarrior

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37 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Please state the initial production of said ‘fracked shale oil well’ and the production two years later...may need to drill another well...

Yet another unicorn fart.

" cost of a single Fracked Shale Oil well ($10M)"

Not my quote. Goldman Sach's has stated the cost of a Horizontally drilled hydraulically fractured tight oil (Shale) is between $8M and $10M.

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6 hours ago, dgowin said:

If it wasn't for the EPA, the refineries would be just flaring this waste gas. Now they transform it using steam reforming into contaminated hydrogen and charge you for it. Its purportedly cheap until you calculate the downstream damage from using it.

https://www.itm-power.com/images/Products/HGasXMW.pdf

This device produces pure 99.999% pure hydrogen from water and electricity.

How? The Proton Exchange Membrain only allows A proton to pass. Therefore pure 99.999% hydrogen.

Look real closely how much energy is consumed producing 4050 kg of hydrogen in 24 hours.

Very interesting but I will wait to see the required selling price for the hydrogen. My criteria are price, abundance, low pollution, vehicle price, availability and the possibility of multifuel capability. Natural gas does well on all those criteria. I do like the idea of adding it to the natural gas pipelines. 

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Financial Times recently had a series of articles on Hydrogen (both pro and con). The most recent:

https://www.ft.com/content/2b0db0aa-4b17-11ea-95a0-43d18ec715f5

Some excerpts:
 

Quote

 


There is a reason why hydrogen accounts for just 4 per cent of final energy use at present: it’s pricey. That’s not simply because of its elevated manufacturing costs. It is also very bulky, making it cumbersome (and expensive) to handle once you’ve made it.


Carbon-free hydrogen is eminently technically do-able, either by making it using fossil fuels and then extracting the carbon through capture and storage technology (so-called blue hydrogen) or by electrolysis powered by renewable energy (the green kind). But neither is likely to make it cheaper. Quite the reverse. So while fossil fuel-based hydrogen can be made for about $1 a kilogramme at best, the average existing European offshore wind farm can technically produce it at closer to $6/kg.


Let’s pause for a second to put that number into a fossil-fuel focus. Take the energy content of that kilo of hydrogen and transpose it into the equivalent energy amount of hydrocarbon. That $6/kg becomes a barrel of recession-inducing $270 oil. Of course, prices will fall through “learning by doing”. Renewable prices are continuing to tumble at quite startling speed. Last year’s Portuguese solar auctions saw bids come in at about $16/MWh, well below the $40-$50/MWh average for the most recent renewable deals. At levels like that, things become more interesting. The other moving part is the cost of the electrolysers needed to turn power into energy. They have already fallen to $1,200/KW from about $1,750 in 2014. McKinsey estimates that with each doubling of capacity, the cost of the equipment should fall by between 9 and 13 per cent. Yet even with those efficiencies, the gold standard production cost is still likely to be about $1/kg — equivalent to $45 oil — in the long term. And that’s before any distribution costs, which make hydrogen relatively uneconomic over anything but short distances.


Much of the cheerleading for hydrogen is coming from gas distribution companies, for whom it could prove a long-term lifeline, or big emitters such as the world’s shipping fleet. The problem, as ever, is who meets the cost of any investment in advance of demand. “Green hydrogen” can only grow at the speed of carbon-free electricity output, which remains a relatively trivial chunk of total energy production. (Alternatives to renewables, such as nuclear or natural gas with carbon capture and storage, will themselves require hefty investment).  Meanwhile, expanding hydrogen’s use into industry, transportation and heating will take gazillions of electrolysers, costing many tens of billions.

 

 

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23 hours ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

Nuclear has difficulty only because of people like you. The upfront investment and time to build is much lower in countries that let this industry thrive (I'm thinking of France, you had best read about that). A decommissioning fund is set aside during the reactor's operating life (demanded by law). Gen IV is what we're shooting for now, and these new reactors make all of the silly old arguments look childish. 

Are you going to talk about waste now? Are you going to ask if I would be okay with a reactor or waste in my back yard? The answer is yes to both. 

I have heard that the French dump their radioactive materials in the ocean. I don't believe that but would like to know the real answer. 

If French reactors are superior, how big of a worldwide market share do they have?

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3 minutes ago, surrept33 said:

Financial Times recently had a series of articles on Hydrogen (both pro and con). The most recent:

https://www.ft.com/content/2b0db0aa-4b17-11ea-95a0-43d18ec715f5

Some excerpts:
 

 

No arguments on any of this. Hydrogen's biggest detractor has been its volume-metric storage.

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Just now, ronwagn said:

I have heard that the French dump their radioactive materials in the ocean. I don't believe that but would like to know the real answer. 

If French reactors are superior, how big of a worldwide market share do they have?

I'll look into that. As far as superiority, they aren't really, but their system works amazingly. They cut down build time by constructing the same plant over and over, which also allows for cost cuts in the long run. They're not using Gen IV tech yet, just gen III (I think).

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7 minutes ago, dgowin said:

No arguments on any of this. Hydrogen's biggest detractor has been its volume-metric storage.

I already gave you the numbers for why this isn't economical with wind or solar. Nuclear can do it because it can use a thermochemical process, and thus avoid the inefficiencies of the brayton cycle and electrochemical cells. 

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16 minutes ago, dgowin said:

" cost of a single Fracked Shale Oil well ($10M)"

Not my quote. Goldman Sach's has stated the cost of a Horizontally drilled hydraulically fractured tight oil (Shale) is between $8M and $10M.

You have not even approached the issue of production! These wells ‘die’ quickly. I do not care about the cost of drilling the ‘initial’ well!

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15 minutes ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

Your still arguing with me about some else's piece of equipment.

I suggest you query ITM Power for the specifics. Maybe they've miss stated the specs? I would lke to know before I complete a equipment order.

Maybe Next Era Energy is under charging me on that 20 year industrial power contract?

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(edited)

5 minutes ago, dgowin said:

Your still arguing with me about some else's piece of equipment.

I suggest you query ITM Power for the specifics. Maybe they've miss stated the specs? I would lke to know before I complete a equipment order.

Maybe Next Era Energy is under charging me on that 20 year industrial power contract?

You don't know what I'm talking about. Let me spell this out for you.

To split a mole of water at 100% efficiency, one hundred and ninety two kilojoules of energy PER MOLE is required AT MINIMUM to break the chemical bond. You are disobeying thermodynamics if you did it with any less.

Edited by KeyboardWarrior
politeness

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3 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

You have not even approached the issue of production! These wells ‘die’ quickly. I do not care about the cost of drilling the ‘initial’ well!

Agreed! A 90% drop in production after the first 12 months is awful. And the average tight oil shale well is completly dry by month 60. How will that initial investment ever be paid back. 

My point is "hydrogen" is not perfect. And the ways we produce it are not either. But it is still a better investment. Something we can improve with time and effort.

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@dgowin

Don't run from me. You're arguing against the laws of physics if you're going to tell me that we can split water with less energy. Do the math with the equipment you quoted. You get numbers that are even greater than what I gave you, as in, MORE EXPENSIVE.

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5 minutes ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

You don't know what I'm talking about. Let me spell this out for you.

To split a mole of water at 100% efficiency, one hundred and ninety two kilojoules of energy PER MOLE is required AT MINIMUM to break the chemical bond. You are disobeying thermodynamics if you did it with any less.

I think your wrapped around the laws of thermal dynamics and not realizing that there are many ways of cracking a water molecule. The Proton Exchange Membrane takes advantage of the ways hydrogen violates the laws of physics. 

I'm sorry I'm just a stupid engineer. I only put to work the inventions of the brilliant people.

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Just now, dgowin said:

I think your wrapped around the laws of thermal dynamics and not realizing that there are many ways of cracking a water molecule. The Proton Exchange Membrane takes advantage of the ways hydrogen violates the laws of physics. 

I'm sorry I'm just a stupid engineer. I only put to work the inventions of the brilliant people.

You're saying we can create energy out of thin air. That's literally what you're saying if you're going to tell me that we're splitting water with less than 292 kJ/mol.

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4 minutes ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

@dgowin

Don't run from me. You're arguing against the laws of physics if you're going to tell me that we can split water with less energy. Do the math with the equipment you quoted. You get numbers that are even greater than what I gave you, as in, MORE EXPENSIVE.

And hydrogen does violate the laws of physics in many ways.

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