Natural gas is crushing wind and solar power

[Sebastian Meana + 278]

On 6/1/2020 at 2:41 PM, Dan Clemmensen said:

From an environmental perspective, the biggest problem with NG is venting and leakage to the atmosphere. CH4 has 80 times the heat-trapping effect of CO2. Fortunately it has a much shorter half-life, but it's still pretty bad when considered across 30 years. The worst offender is venting at the production sites. leakage throughout the system, all the way down to the residential  distribution pipes, is still pretty bad. It needs to be fixed if we intend to keep using CH4.

CH4 is currently the way the world transports and stores a large and increasing percentage of its energy for electricity. The storage capacity is measured in months, not hours.

Solar and Wind are intermittent on several timescales. If  the system must be designed to accommodate one week of operation with almost no solar or wind, then it must rely on "long-term" storage to support the entire load. This says to me that we must have enough CCGT capacity to handle the daily load (short-term storage can level the peaks). A system that can accommodate a one-week renewables outage can accommodate pretty much any longer outage. But this means that solar and wind are not needed at all!

BUT: solar and wind can be used to generate CH4. The current price of NG is artificially low because it is a byproduct of oil production in the Permian. When the Permian eventually goes dry (between 2025 and 2030?), NG prices will rise.  At the same time, the cost of production of CH4 from solar and wind will continue to fall with economies of scale, and the cost of electricity==>CH4 will continue to fall with technological improvements and then with economies of scale. At some point, this cost drop below the cost of production of NG, and producers will invest their capital in solar/wind==>CH4 systems instead of NG wells and will get better returns.

A theoretical future 100% renewable energy economy could have all electricity from CCGT+short-term battery, and all CH4 from wind and solar. But we can optimize this theoretical system: when solar and wind are available, use the electricity directly instead of making CH4. You still need the same CCGT capacity, but the generators are now running less often, so the total amount of wind and solar is somewhat smaller because of the efficiency gain (electric==>electric vs. electric==>CH4==>electric) for this portion of the total electric supply.

To me, the true advantage of this hare-brained scheme is that it can be implemented completely incrementally and driven completely by the market. Each solar or wind producer can purchase and install CH4 generators and connect them into the existing CH4 collection network, just like a new NG well. No grandiose centralized plan is needed. NG drilling gradually ceases, and system reaches 100% renewable when the last NG well is shut in.

Is going to remain hypothetical,  is very doubtull the ability of wind solar and tidal to power the world, even germany after more than 500 billion euros wind and solar is at best 5% of the primary German energy consumption, there, solar power generation has barely increased since 4 years ago, and wind power is starting to stall there, it makes 14.5GWa, in a best case scenario only 7.5-10% of all wind power is actually recoverable in an economical way,germany gross theoretical wind power potential is supposed to be 300GWa, but i can bet you any ammount of money that the generation will NEVER, pass over 30GWa or 263TWh, which is less than 10% of germany primary energy consumption.

Little Denmark with the most wind mills per capita, that is so loved by greenies produced around 16,000GWh from wind power in 2019, that is 1.82GWa, which is 8% of denmark primary energy consumption, of 22.5GWa mostly derived from coal, gas, oil, peat and wood.

the question that always come is, why not hydrogen? Is a shorter path to full decarbonization, is backed by a lot of companies and governments, and since most of the energy consumed is for home heating and cooling, not electricity, is a more effective path. WIndmills and Solar panels are becoming cheaper sure, but it will not become cheaper forever and ever, there's a inflexion point in which keeping improving the technology becomes much more costly, is the same reason why the moore's law died 7 years ago.

Even if the Shale wells "dry up" it doesn't mean the US is going to run out of oil, it only means the oil is now harder to recover, the most likely technology will be to using the other kind of shale oil extraction, high temperature pyrolisis which requires around 24GWh/1GWd of heat for every 100,000BBL/d to produce, either is 100,000BBL of oil, or 100,000BBL equivalent of natural gas, or 1.8MWh for every ton of natural gas that contains 15MWh, the EIA in 2008 estimated that it could be produced at around 15U$S/BBL, which 112 U$S/ton for natural gas, or 2.15U$S/MMbtu, if you convert that to hydrogen is going to be 60% more expensive, but again, in order for Hydrogen to replace natural gas it doesn't need to have lower production cost, it only needs to sell around the same, a CCGT on hydrogen makes 29% more power than on methane, so a 500,000,000U$S 50hz CCGT powerplant that makes 870MW can then make over 1100MW by just switching fuel, produce hydrogen from gas, and then do something with the Carbon like idk, dump it in the soil, we are not going to run out of Methane, even less if "we" can crack the production of Methane hydrates.

At the end of the day is the same question, ¿wHy nOt nUcLeAr?, is clean, if you standardize stuff and build many is veeery cheap to build, and you can use it for high temperature hydrogen electrolysis at efficiencies over 95%, sure is the most statist way of producing energy and hasn't and will never by financed by the private sector because how sensible it is to delays and the cost of capital, but again, if it can produce electricity at less than 20U$S/MWh without losing money who cares?, pyroprocessing will do with Reprocessing spent fuel what centrifuges did with enrichment. at 7500 U$S per kg of plutonium in spent fuel natural gas would need to cost 5$ a ton to be competitive, the main issue to solve is the construction of the powerplants but the japanese are developing ways of making reactors for around 1200U$S/KW, that last 80 years, and can be constructed in 2.5 years, the HP-APWR, and HP-ABWR, to replace their ageing fleet in the next one or two decades

Edited June 13, 2020 by Sebastian Meana

[notsonice + 1,243]

1 hour ago, Sebastian Meana said:

Is going to remain hypothetical,  is very doubtull the ability of wind solar and tidal to power the world, even germany after more than 500 billion euros wind and solar is at best 5% of the primary German energy consumption, there, solar power generation has barely increased since 4 years ago, and wind power is starting to stall there, it makes 14.5GWa, in a best case scenario only 7.5-10% of all wind power is actually recoverable in an economical way,germany gross theoretical wind power potential is supposed to be 300GWa, but i can bet you any ammount of money that the generation will NEVER, pass over 30GWa or 263TWh, which is less than 10% of germany primary energy consumption.

Little Denmark with the most wind mills per capita, that is so loved by greenies produced around 16,000GWh from wind power in 2019, that is 1.82GWa, which is 8% of denmark primary energy consumption, of 22.5GWa mostly derived from coal, gas, oil, peat and wood.

the question that always come is, why not hydrogen? Is a shorter path to full decarbonization, is backed by a lot of companies and governments, and since most of the energy consumed is for home heating and cooling, not electricity, is a more effective path. WIndmills and Solar panels are becoming cheaper sure, but it will not become cheaper forever and ever, there's a inflexion point in which keeping improving the technology becomes much more costly, is the same reason why the moore's law died 7 years ago.

Even if the Shale wells "dry up" it doesn't mean the US is going to run out of oil, it only means the oil is now harder to recover, the most likely technology will be to using the other kind of shale oil extraction, high temperature pyrolisis which requires around 24GWh/1GWd of heat for every 100,000BBL/d to produce, either is 100,000BBL of oil, or 100,000BBL equivalent of natural gas, or 1.8MWh for every ton of natural gas that contains 15MWh, the EIA in 2008 estimated that it could be produced at around 15U$S/BBL, which 112 U$S/ton for natural gas, or 2.15U$S/MMbtu, if you convert that to hydrogen is going to be 60% more expensive, but again, in order for Hydrogen to replace natural gas it doesn't need to have lower production cost, it only needs to sell around the same, a CCGT on hydrogen makes 29% more power than on methane, so a 500,000,000U$S 50hz CCGT powerplant that makes 870MW can then make over 1100MW by just switching fuel, produce hydrogen from gas, and then do something with the Carbon like idk, dump it in the soil, we are not going to run out of Methane, even less if "we" can crack the production of Methane hydrates.

At the end of the day is the same question, ¿wHy nOt nUcLeAr?, is clean, if you standardize stuff and build many is veeery cheap to build, and you can use it for high temperature hydrogen electrolysis at efficiencies over 95%, sure is the most statist way of producing energy and hasn't and will never by financed by the private sector because how sensible it is to delays and the cost of capital, but again, if it can produce electricity at less than 20U$S/MWh without losing money who cares?, pyroprocessing will do with Reprocessing spent fuel what centrifuges did with enrichment. at 7500 U$S per kg of plutonium in spent fuel natural gas would need to cost 5$ a ton to be competitive, the main issue to solve is the construction of the powerplants but the japanese are developing ways of making reactors for around 1200U$S/KW, that last 80 years, and can be constructed in 2.5 years, the HP-APWR, and HP-ABWR, to replace their ageing fleet in the next one or two decades

[notsonice + 1,243]

1 hour ago, Sebastian Meana said:

Is going to remain hypothetical,  is very doubtull the ability of wind solar and tidal to power the world, even germany after more than 500 billion euros wind and solar is at best 5% of the primary German energy consumption, there, solar power generation has barely increased since 4 years ago, and wind power is starting to stall there, it makes 14.5GWa, in a best case scenario only 7.5-10% of all wind power is actually recoverable in an economical way,germany gross theoretical wind power potential is supposed to be 300GWa, but i can bet you any ammount of money that the generation will NEVER, pass over 30GWa or 263TWh, which is less than 10% of germany primary energy consumption.

Little Denmark with the most wind mills per capita, that is so loved by greenies produced around 16,000GWh from wind power in 2019, that is 1.82GWa, which is 8% of denmark primary energy consumption, of 22.5GWa mostly derived from coal, gas, oil, peat and wood.

the question that always come is, why not hydrogen? Is a shorter path to full decarbonization, is backed by a lot of companies and governments, and since most of the energy consumed is for home heating and cooling, not electricity, is a more effective path. WIndmills and Solar panels are becoming cheaper sure, but it will not become cheaper forever and ever, there's a inflexion point in which keeping improving the technology becomes much more costly, is the same reason why the moore's law died 7 years ago.

Even if the Shale wells "dry up" it doesn't mean the US is going to run out of oil, it only means the oil is now harder to recover, the most likely technology will be to using the other kind of shale oil extraction, high temperature pyrolisis which requires around 24GWh/1GWd of heat for every 100,000BBL/d to produce, either is 100,000BBL of oil, or 100,000BBL equivalent of natural gas, or 1.8MWh for every ton of natural gas that contains 15MWh, the EIA in 2008 estimated that it could be produced at around 15U$S/BBL, which 112 U$S/ton for natural gas, or 2.15U$S/MMbtu, if you convert that to hydrogen is going to be 60% more expensive, but again, in order for Hydrogen to replace natural gas it doesn't need to have lower production cost, it only needs to sell around the same, a CCGT on hydrogen makes 29% more power than on methane, so a 500,000,000U$S 50hz CCGT powerplant that makes 870MW can then make over 1100MW by just switching fuel, produce hydrogen from gas, and then do something with the Carbon like idk, dump it in the soil, we are not going to run out of Methane, even less if "we" can crack the production of Methane hydrates.

At the end of the day is the same question, ¿wHy nOt nUcLeAr?, is clean, if you standardize stuff and build many is veeery cheap to build, and you can use it for high temperature hydrogen electrolysis at efficiencies over 95%, sure is the most statist way of producing energy and hasn't and will never by financed by the private sector because how sensible it is to delays and the cost of capital, but again, if it can produce electricity at less than 20U$S/MWh without losing money who cares?, pyroprocessing will do with Reprocessing spent fuel what centrifuges did with enrichment. at 7500 U$S per kg of plutonium in spent fuel natural gas would need to cost 5$ a ton to be competitive, the main issue to solve is the construction of the powerplants but the japanese are developing ways of making reactors for around 1200U$S/KW, that last 80 years, and can be constructed in 2.5 years, the HP-APWR, and HP-ABWR, to replace their ageing fleet in the next one or two decades

[notsonice + 1,243]

[Sebastian Meana + 278]

41 minutes ago, notsonice said:

NIce chart, but i said primary energy consumption not, electricity consumption, electricity is  just a part of your total energy, and there's an error in that last chart you sended me with the larger share of renewables in the primary energy consumption

it doesn't specifically says what is the yellow bar in renewables, because zee germans consider burning forest as renewable, 40GWa of power of germany comes from that.

Burning wood is just going back to before the age of coal, when forest were just a mere resource, enviroment conservation exist thanks to fossil fuels, if it wasn't for coal there wouldn't be more than a few patches of trees, also there is the enviromental damage of destroying places where animals live along with soil degradation, and other stuff, is as enviromentally friendly as hunting whales for oil. 

WInd power generation in 2019 in germany was 127300 GWh if you divide it by 8766, the hours in a year you get 14.6GW during the yearly average, which is 14.6GWa, and with the chart iwht the primary energy consumption in petajoules, i can convert the 13000 Petajoules to GWh, 13000/3.6 = 3612TWh x 1000 = 3612000 / 8766 = 411GWa

14.6GWa / 411 = 0.035 x 100 = 3.5 %

Edited June 13, 2020 by Sebastian Meana

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

2 hours ago, Sebastian Meana said:

Is going to remain hypothetical,  is very doubtull the ability of wind solar and tidal to power the world, even germany after more than 500 billion euros wind and solar is at best 5% of the primary German energy consumption, there, solar power generation has barely increased since 4 years ago, and wind power is starting to stall there, it makes 14.5GWa, in a best case scenario only 7.5-10% of all wind power is actually recoverable in an economical way,germany gross theoretical wind power potential is supposed to be 300GWa, but i can bet you any ammount of money that the generation will NEVER, pass over 30GWa or 263TWh, which is less than 10% of germany primary energy consumption.

the question that always come is, why not hydrogen? Is a shorter path to full decarbonization, is backed by a lot of companies and governments, and since most of the energy consumed is for home heating and cooling, not electricity, is a more effective path. WIndmills and Solar panels are becoming cheaper sure, but it will not become cheaper forever and ever, there's a inflexion point in which keeping improving the technology becomes much more costly, is the same reason why the moore's law died 7 years ago.

Even if the Shale wells "dry up" it doesn't mean the US is going to run out of oil, it only means the oil is now harder to recover, the most likely technology will be to using the other kind of shale oil extraction, high temperature pyrolisis which requires around 24GWh/1GWd of heat for every 100,000BBL/d to produce, either is 100,000BBL of oil, or 100,000BBL equivalent of natural gas, or 1.8MWh for every ton of natural gas that contains 15MWh, the EIA in 2008 estimated that it could be produced at around 15U$S/BBL, which 112 U$S/ton for natural gas, or 2.15U$S/MMbtu, if you convert that to hydrogen is going to be 60% more expensive, but again, in order for Hydrogen to replace natural gas it doesn't need to have lower production cost, it only needs to sell around the same, a CCGT on hydrogen makes 29% more power than on methane, so a 500,000,000U$S 50hz CCGT powerplant that makes 870MW can then make over 1100MW by just switching fuel, produce hydrogen from gas, and then do something with the Carbon like idk, dump it in the soil, we are not going to run out of Methane, even less if "we" can crack the production of Methane hydrates.

At the end of the day is the same question, ¿wHy nOt nUcLeAr?, is clean, if you standardize stuff and build many is veeery cheap to build, and you can use it for high temperature hydrogen electrolysis at efficiencies over 95%, sure is the most statist way of producing energy and hasn't and will never by financed by the private sector because how sensible it is to delays and the cost of capital, but again, if it can produce electricity at less than 20U$S/MWh without losing money who cares?, pyroprocessing will do with Reprocessing spent fuel what centrifuges did with enrichment. at 7500 U$S per kg of plutonium in spent fuel natural gas would need to cost 5$ a ton to be competitive, the main issue to solve is the construction of the powerplants but the japanese are developing ways of making reactors for around 1200U$S/KW, that last 80 years, and can be constructed in 2.5 years, the HP-APWR, and HP-ABWR, to replace their ageing fleet in the next one or two decades

Briefly:

The E==>CH4 does not need to happen in Germany. CH4 can be produced from wind and solar anywhere in the world. It can then be shipped to Germany profitably just as NG is now (or at least , as it was last year and will be again soon).

The economic analyses do not assume continued exponential cost decreases with a constant (More's law type) exponent.

CH4 instead of H2 because using CH4 does not require any infrastructure change. H2 must pay for a huge infrastructure upgrade.

Nuclear is a great option but only if the lead times can be brought down. This is a political problem.  As of now, modular fission and fusion are both research projects and the operational date for the first new plant is one or two decades away. By contrast, wind, solar, and E==>CH4 are already here and can be deployed incrementally.

Liquid fuels will mostly be replaced by EVs. Where this is not feasible (aircraft and possibly some long-haul trucks) will in the aggregate need less than 5% of the liquid fuel we use today, and this can be generated cost-effectively from CH4. The existiing oil infrastructure cannot be supported by that level of fuel usage anyway, so the giant refineries lose their scale advantage.

This entire scenario is likely to be justified on cost alone. However, a whole lot of people think we need to move away from fossil fuels to gain independence from unreliable providers, and a whole lot of people think burning fossil fuels causes global warming. Between these two somewhat overlapping groups, there will be broad support for policies that support the change.

 

[Sebastian Meana + 278]

56 minutes ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

Briefly:

The E==>CH4 does not need to happen in Germany. CH4 can be produced from wind and solar anywhere in the world. It can then be shipped to Germany profitably just as NG is now (or at least , as it was last year and will be again soon).

The economic analyses do not assume continued exponential cost decreases with a constant (More's law type) exponent.

CH4 instead of H2 because using CH4 does not require any infrastructure change. H2 must pay for a huge infrastructure upgrade.

Nuclear is a great option but only if the lead times can be brought down. This is a political problem.  As of now, modular fission and fusion are both research projects and the operational date for the first new plant is one or two decades away. By contrast, wind, solar, and E==>CH4 are already here and can be deployed incrementally.

Liquid fuels will mostly be replaced by EVs. Where this is not feasible (aircraft and possibly some long-haul trucks) will in the aggregate need less than 5% of the liquid fuel we use today, and this can be generated cost-effectively from CH4. The existiing oil infrastructure cannot be supported by that level of fuel usage anyway, so the giant refineries lose their scale advantage.

This entire scenario is likely to be justified on cost alone. However, a whole lot of people think we need to move away from fossil fuels to gain independence from unreliable providers, and a whole lot of people think burning fossil fuels causes global warming. Between these two somewhat overlapping groups, there will be broad support for policies that support the change.

 

Sure, you can produce it from renewable sources, The best ones are Hydropower and Geothermal, Wind and solar? not so much, it should be able to produce it for 20MWh or less, i can bet you that  Wind tidal and solar will never surpass the 10% of global energy demand. And capturing and storing carbon from the air or from the oceans requires quite a lot of power for pumping and distillation, and if you mine it from calcium carbonate rocks then synthetic Methane is not better than the one that comes along with Oil

Yes, Switching from Methane to hydrogen requires a BIG infrastructure upgrades, the current gas pipelines should be lined inside with plastic, and be able to run 3 times more volume, but is not a jump that much bigger than from Oil to Natural gas,.

For airlines hydrogen is an option, was studied by lockheed in the 70's, since is 3.5 times more energy dense than kerosene, if you solve the issues of the cryogenic containment which can be solved with modern understandment of materials, cryogenic insulators, and composite materials.

Again, if people doesn't like the Nuclear option, but wan't clean energy, and they happen to be in a fairly flat not very volcanic central european country where the sun doesn't shine and where winds are mild at best, then hydrogen is a good patch, and if they decide to go full electrification then is a good idea

Edited June 13, 2020 by Sebastian Meana

[Sebastian Meana + 278]

56 minutes ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

CH4 instead of H2 because using CH4 does not require any infrastructure change. H2 must pay for a huge infrastructure upgrade

Well despite the infrastructure challenges, hydrogen is starting to get a good momentum 

https://www.utilities-me.com/news/15468-mhps-pioneers-first-hydrogen-capable-j-series-gas-turbines
https://www.rechargenews.com/transition/edf-plans-vast-hydrogen-production-at-uk-nuclear-plants/2-1-763048
https://blogs.platts.com/2020/03/24/russia-hydrogen-fuel-australia-japan/

Edited June 13, 2020 by Sebastian Meana

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

1 hour ago, Sebastian Meana said:

Sure, you can produce it from renewable sources, The best ones are Hydropower and Geothermal, Wind and solar? not so much, it should be able to produce it for 20MWh or less, i can bet you that  Wind tidal and solar will never surpass the 10% of global energy demand. And capturing and storing carbon from the air or from the oceans requires quite a lot of power for pumping and distillation, and if you mine it from calcium carbonate rocks then synthetic Methane is not better than the one that comes along with Oil

Yes, Switching from Methane to hydrogen requires a BIG infrastructure upgrades, the current gas pipelines should be lined inside with plastic, and be able to run 3 times more volume, but is not a jump that much bigger than from Oil to Natural gas,.

For airlines hydrogen is an option, was studied by lockheed in the 70's, since is 3.5 times more energy dense than kerosene, if you solve the issues of the cryogenic containment which can be solved with modern understandment of materials, cryogenic insulators, and composite materials.

Again, if people doesn't like the Nuclear option, but wan't clean energy, and they happen to be in a fairly flat not very volcanic central european country where the sun doesn't shine and where winds are mild at best, then hydrogen is a good patch, and if they decide to go full electrification then is a good idea

 

The justification for CH4 is that it can use the existing long-range transport and long-term storage CH4 infrastructure. It would be fairly silly to use hydropower and geothermal to generate CH4, since they incorporate their own long-term storage and existing ones are already connected to the electrical grid. Some existing hydropower systems can be upgraded to pumped storage systems, which will reduce the need for CH4 storage, but the hydro storage resource will never be more than a tiny fraction of the existing CH4 storage capacity. For example, Germany currently has more that 200,000 GWh of NG storage, but only 40 GWh of pumped hydro. 

I never advocated the use of any carbon other than C02 in the air, so arguments against the use of fossil carbon are irrelevant. All of the extra energy required turns into the need for more solar and wind generation, which increases the cost. But all that extra solar and wind decreases the total required CH4, because the CCGTs do not need to run as much. The E==>CH4 only uses electricity that the grid cannot use immediately.

My focus is on the electrical grid and on replacing fossil NG with E==>CH4, not on any "jump from Oil to Natural Gas". I see an evolution from ICE to EV as the primary move away from oil. Another evolution is indeed from oil to CH4 for long-haul shipping, but this is already occurring.

H2 for aircraft is a major engineering challenge that has gotten pretty much nowhere so far. I raised the issue of jet fuel for completeness, since it would be the remaining major user of liquid fossil fuel. E==>kerosene at the airport has already been demonstrated: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49725741

That is basically just a demonstration project, almost a marketing gimmick, but as opposed to H2, real commercial aircraft will actually use it.

 

[Mark Gannon 0]

We are already at 40% wind generation in Ireland and on certain days up to 70%.  So it’s not crazy to talk of these kind of targets. Perhaps the characteristics of the US power market make this more difficult? 

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

16 minutes ago, Mark Gannon said:

We are already at 40% wind generation in Ireland and on certain days up to 70%.  So it’s not crazy to talk of these kind of targets. Perhaps the characteristics of the US power market make this more difficult? 

The US has all sorts of strange obstacles, physical, regulatory, and political, but we are making progress as the economics overcomes the obstacles. The problem getting to 100%, year round, is the need for long term storage and the ability to use that storage to provide 100% of the demand on rare occasions.

[Sebastian Meana + 278]

15 hours ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

The justification for CH4 is that it can use the existing long-range transport and long-term storage CH4 infrastructure. It would be fairly silly to use hydropower and geothermal to generate CH4, since they incorporate their own long-term storage and existing ones are already connected to the electrical grid. Some existing hydropower systems can be upgraded to pumped storage systems, which will reduce the need for CH4 storage, but the hydro storage resource will never be more than a tiny fraction of the existing CH4 storage capacity. For example, Germany currently has more that 200,000 GWh of NG storage, but only 40 GWh of pumped hydro. 

I never advocated the use of any carbon other than C02 in the air, so arguments against the use of fossil carbon are irrelevant. All of the extra energy required turns into the need for more solar and wind generation, which increases the cost. But all that extra solar and wind decreases the total required CH4, because the CCGTs do not need to run as much. The E==>CH4 only uses electricity that the grid cannot use immediately.

My focus is on the electrical grid and on replacing fossil NG with E==>CH4, not on any "jump from Oil to Natural Gas". I see an evolution from ICE to EV as the primary move away from oil. Another evolution is indeed from oil to CH4 for long-haul shipping, but this is already occurring.

H2 for aircraft is a major engineering challenge that has gotten pretty much nowhere so far. I raised the issue of jet fuel for completeness, since it would be the remaining major user of liquid fossil fuel. E==>kerosene at the airport has already been demonstrated: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49725741

That is basically just a demonstration project, almost a marketing gimmick, but as opposed to H2, real commercial aircraft will actually use it.

 

Well... The question is, why making synthetic methane if making synthetic hydrogen is easier, you save yourself from a lot of work having to condense the CO2 from the atmosphere, and current pipelines eventually have to be replaced either is in 50 or in 100 years, in that time ammount you can simply make pipes lined internally with polypropylene or other plastic, and since hydrogen is a veery light gas your compressors have to work 3 times less than for natural gas to deliver the same energy.

The reasons why i decided to put geothermal and hydropower as an example for generating electricity is because hydropower sometimes have to reduce their output to cope with electricity demand and dump a lot of water from the reservoir, thing that happens with the 3 gorges tham that could produce 17GWa but instead produces 11.5GWa because of how the demand is set, also not all hydropowerplants have reservoirs, Belo monte dam and the Chief Joseph dam have negible to non existant reservoirs

And with geothermal because like a nuclear powerplant a Geothermal poweplant is fully turned on or turned off, you can't switch off the earths heat, and is come economically sound to use the excess heat and electricity for the production of H2

A solution for the energy storage of renewable energy is either,
1-High temperature hydrogen storage,
2-Pumped heat energy storage,
3-Pumped hydropower
And my bet is on the second one, pumped hydro is not scalable you need a mountaineous region.


The only way synthetic methane is going to become cheaper to produce per MWh than hydrogen is if your electricity, labour and stuff becomes free and productivity raises to the infinite, which is not gonna happen, thats a very big IF

plus if you ever decide to upgrade a CCGT oxycombustion gas turbine to use argon instead of air or co2 as working fluid, and you would do that because argon gas turbines have potentially much higher efficiencies, is then easier to repurify the argon by condensing the water from the exhaust of the turbine to 0°C while for for carbon dioxide either you have to precompress it and then cool it to subzero temps.

Also Gas turbines simply produce more power on hydrogen because from a KG of oxygen in the air you can burn 0.125KG of hydrogen and produce 17.75MJ, while with a KG of oxygen you can burn 0.25KG of Methane and produce 13.75MJ, 

Using hydrogen from natural gas is a much shorter path to decarbonization without denmark like electricity prices to produce little more than 8% of the energy

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

16 minutes ago, Sebastian Meana said:

Well... The question is, why making synthetic methane if making synthetic hydrogen is easier, you save yourself from a lot of work having to condense the CO2 from the atmosphere, and current pipelines eventually have to be replaced either is in 50 or in 100 years, in that time ammount you can simply make pipes lined internally with polypropylene or other plastic, and since hydrogen is a veery light gas your compressors have to work 3 times less than for natural gas to deliver the same energy.

The reasons why i decided to put geothermal and hydropower as an example for generating electricity is because hydropower sometimes have to reduce their output to cope with electricity demand and dump a lot of water from the reservoir, thing that happens with the 3 gorges tham that could produce 17GWa but instead produces 11.5GWa because of how the demand is set, also not all hydropowerplants have reservoirs, Belo monte dam and the Chief Joseph dam have negible to non existant reservoirs

And with geothermal because like a nuclear powerplant a Geothermal poweplant is fully turned on or turned off, you can't switch off the earths heat, and is come economically sound to use the excess heat and electricity for the production of H2

A solution for the energy storage of renewable energy is either,
1-High temperature hydrogen storage,
2-Pumped heat energy storage,
3-Pumped hydropower
And my bet is on the second one, pumped hydro is not scalable you need a mountaineous region.


The only way synthetic methane is going to become cheaper to produce per MWh than hydrogen is if your electricity, labour and stuff becomes free and productivity raises to the infinite, which is not gonna happen, thats a very big IF

plus if you ever decide to upgrade a CCGT oxycombustion gas turbine to use argon instead of air or co2 as working fluid, and you would do that because argon gas turbines have potentially much higher efficiencies, is then easier to repurify the argon by condensing the water from the exhaust of the turbine to 0°C while for for carbon dioxide either you have to precompress it and then cool it to subzero temps.

Also Gas turbines simply produce more power on hydrogen because from a KG of oxygen in the air you can burn 0.125KG of hydrogen and produce 17.75MJ, while with a KG of oxygen you can burn 0.25KG of Methane and produce 13.75MJ, 

Using hydrogen from natural gas is a much shorter path to decarbonization without denmark like electricity prices to produce little more than 8% of the energy

Production of H2 will always be cheaper than production of CH4, I think, and if I were building an entire energy system on a new uninhabited planet, CH4 would probably not be part of it. But we have an existing planet with an existing energy infrastructure, and we need to quit using fossil fuels as expeditiously as economically possible. In this world, we have a world-spanning CH4 infrastructure already in place, with world-spanning CH4 transportation, with sufficient CH4 storage capacity for many months of world CH4 usage, and sufficient CH4-consuming generators to support a substantial percentage of the world's requirement for electricity. The cost of upgrading or replacing this worldwide infrastructure to use H2 instead of CH4 is mind-boggling. The most critical piece to my mind is long-term storage. What would the cost be for your proposed solution (Pumped heat energy storage) for several months of worldwide energy demand?

I agree that any electricity from any source that cannot be immediately dispatched should be converted to CH4, but your examples (some hydro and most geothermal) are a tiny percentage of the required CH4.

Each of your proposed technical efficiency improvements probably make economic sense in the long run and in detail, but I don't see how to implement them on a worldwide scale in less than 50 years.

If the solar and wind were just generating CH4, they would not be competitive with fossil CH4. But in practice much of the wind and solar electricity will be immediately dispatched into the grid, and only the excess which would otherwise be curtailed will be used to produce CH4. This changes the economics.  Yes, the amount of wind and solar overbuild will be higher than it would if there were some magical way to do long-term energy storage at high efficiency at the scale of today's NG storage, but there isn't. Note that the more overbuild, the less need for CH4 in the first place, because the overbuilt wind and solar can handle the electricity demand for a higher percentage of the time. The CH4 that is being produced is made from electricity that would otherwise be curtailed so it's "free" except(!) for capital costs.

For completeness: yes the world uses a lot of H2 already, mostly to make NH3. This H2 is currently made from fossil CH4. Wind and solar can be used to produce this H2 from electricity without going through the intermediate CH4 step. Depending on the location of the NH3 plant, the E==>H2 can occur either at the plant or at the wind or solar field.

I do not consider H2 from NG to be a path to decarbonization.

[specinho + 457]

On 2/23/2020 at 4:11 AM, Tom Kirkman said:

It annoys me that wind and solar enthusiasts typically insist on deliberately omitting the cost of having a fully functioning hydrocarbon or nuclear backup system in place, for when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.

 

On 2/23/2020 at 8:27 AM, Dan Warnick said:

 (...government of the people, by the people, for the people).

We have grown rather enthusiastic to solve problems by targeting the symptoms and not the root cause(s)..... and choosing second hand representatives whom might want us to solve problems they created (not intentionally, hopefully)..........

 

 

Edited June 20, 2020 by specinho

[specinho + 457]

On 2/24/2020 at 8:19 AM, Enthalpic said:

The jungle grows back if they don't install palm oil plantations or ranch land.

secondary forests could be the most fire hazardous shrubs...........  grass and this kind of forest catch on fire whenever the ground temperature is above 40 cummulated degree celcius, no?

 

On 6/2/2020 at 1:41 AM, Dan Clemmensen said:

 CH4 has 80 times the heat-trapping effect of CO2.

CH4 is currently the way the world transports and stores a large and increasing percentage of its energy for electricity. The storage capacity is measured in months, not hours.

 

gas rarely traps heat. Waste heat and waste water vapour generated from burning activities, mushroomed of concrete blocks, towers and buildngs, could be the main reasons for increasing amount of heat trapped.

methane might not be the main cooking or utility gas but Propane, or no??

Edited June 20, 2020 by specinho