[HN Gopher] India's biggest businesses are tapping green hydroge... ___________________________________________________________________ India's biggest businesses are tapping green hydrogen as a future fuel Author : akmittal Score : 59 points Date : 2022-07-03 20:08 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.fortuneindia.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.fortuneindia.com) | lelag wrote: | I don't understand India. They stand to loose everything to | global warming as large part of India could become inhabitable | but they are making all the wrong decisions. They were mainly | responsible for the failure of COP26 as they refused to commit on | getting rid of coal when most other countries were about to reach | an agreement on the matter. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | most emission were made by developed countries, already | screwing India. The omly chance for india is to industrialise | rapidly, so either debeloped nations offer money ans technology | transfer, or India uses the same resources Europe and US did | arcen wrote: | I really do not understand what your argument is here. COP26 | wanted two countries to stall their development + projects to | help the poor in the nation. In addition, no real alternative | was offered. | sbmthakur wrote: | You cannot "get rid" of coal when 70% of your energy comes from | it and there's not enough renewable energy infrastructure. | anon20220703 wrote: | ummonk wrote: | > For energy-starved India, which is aiming for carbon neutrality | by 2070, the path to energy security goes through a mix of oil, | coal, blended fuels, natural gas, renewables and electricity. | | Kind of conspicuous omission not to mention India's nuclear plan | to bootstrap to thorium reactors. | julosflb wrote: | Hydrogen as such can't replace fossil fuels as it needs to be | produced first using energy. It is only a vector. So many people | make the confusion thinking that hydrogen is the solution. | Ma8ee wrote: | I don't think ever had been suggested as a source of energy, | only as a form of storage. | epistasis wrote: | The article goes into deep discussion about this, and is | actually fairly reasonable, and the plan looks fairly realistic | (except perhaps fuel). | epistasis wrote: | The article is much better than the headline. But headlines | always have weaknesses, and can never convey it all. | | Hydrogen will be a great chemical feedstock, and be used in all | sorts of chemical processes that need to be decarbonized. | | But thinking it will be a fuel is pretty clearly not going to | happen. At best it will be one step towards a fuel. Or it will be | a fuel in a few areas with very special geography: salt caverns. | | Or maybe I'm wrong and somebody comes up with an easy and cost | effective way to store significant amounts of hydrogen. That | would be a wonderful way to be wrong. | Ma8ee wrote: | What is hard with storing hydrogen? I've heard that they plan | to use tanks that currently are used to store natural gas. | regularfry wrote: | Hydrogen leaks much more easily than bigger molecules. It's | entirely possible that existing storage systems designed for | natural gas would be completely unusable for H2. | | You've also got to account for hydrogen embrittlement, where | the small size of the hydrogen molecule means that under | pressure it works its way into the crystal lattice of the | metal of the container itself, and changes its mechanical | properties. | tambourine_man wrote: | Basically, everything about it is hard. Very high pressure | and low temperature, leakage, steel walls get brittle, etc. | It's a nightmare, doable, but very hard to scale. | | The most promising solutions I've seen are taking advantage | of the fact that single H+ "dissolves" into metal under | pressure. You store that saturated metal and heat it when you | want to release it. That way energy density starts to make | sense. This video shows one such approach: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0fnEsz4Ks0 | | Binding it with carbon seems promising as well, but I | wouldn't bet on simply trying to jam it as a gas in a tank. | | But I'm not an expert, just very interested on the subject | for many decades. | semi-extrinsic wrote: | > Or maybe I'm wrong and somebody comes up with an easy and | cost effective way to store significant amounts of hydrogen. | That would be a wonderful way to be wrong. | | Liquefaction is the way. We already do it for natural gas | (LNG), we just need to build similar infrastructure for LH2. | tonmoy wrote: | Since this article talks about using renewable electricity to | produce hydrogen, the H2 storage and distribution has to be | more efficient and safer than transmission lines + Li ion | batteries. Note Li ion battery technology is likely to keep | improving for the next decade as well | gruez wrote: | >> Or maybe I'm wrong and somebody comes up with an easy and | cost effective way to store significant amounts of hydrogen | | >We already do it for natural gas (LNG), we just need to | build similar infrastructure for LH2. | | That doesn't address the "easy and cost effective" part. | Current estimates say that the energy required is 30% of the | energy value of the hydrogen itself. | | >But whereas liquefying natural gas only requires | temperatures of -160degC, to liquefy hydrogen you need | refrigeration systems capable of getting down to -253degC. | That is an expensive proposition. Using current technologies | the energy required is 30% of that in the hydrogen being | liquefied. | | https://www.economist.com/technology- | quarterly/2022/06/23/ma... | Reason077 wrote: | > _"Liquefaction is the way. We already do it for natural gas | (LNG), we just need to build similar infrastructure for | LH2."_ | | It take a lot more energy to liquify hydrogen compared to | natural gas. At least 10 kWh per kg. And storing/transporting | it is expensive: you need to maintain cryogenic (-253 deg C) | conditions. | | Even the Space industry has given up on LH2 in favour of | liquid CH4, partly due to all the costs and difficulties in | handling it. | dang wrote: | Submitted title was "India plans to replace fossil fuels with | hydrogen". We've replaced it with a more neutral subtitle from | the article. | themitigating wrote: | Do you record users who modify titles which you later | replace? | epistasis wrote: | Many outlets A/B test headlines, or otherwise change them, | so it can be hard to know what the article's headline was | at submission compared to the eventual headline. | politician wrote: | Ammonia? | epistasis wrote: | We will definitely be making a ton of that for fertilizer, | and use green hydrogen as a feedstock for that. | | Using green ammonia a fuel would be, as I said, using | hydrogen as a step towards other fields. But I sincerely hope | ammonia is never allowed as a fuel near cities, because the | NOx pollution would be horrifying. I think ammonia as a fuel | for shipping might be more realistic. | | But then, I'm just a random guy on the internet who spends an | hour or two a day learning about the energy transition, I | could be very wrong. | franckl wrote: | Low NOx ammonia burner have been demonstrated, and you can | add an SCR filters to filter the rest. Our team at Airthium | is working on a low NOx external ammonia burner tailored to | our energy storage system. | tyronehed wrote: | Hydrogen is not the answer. | | This decision will eventually be seen as a colossal mistake. | | If they plan to use solar photovoltaic to make hydrogen, then | it's much more efficient to just use the electricity directly, | without going through hydrogen. | | They will end up making brown hydrogen and won't admit it, doing | absolutely nothing to help the climate catastrophe--but they will | be able to claim in public that they are. | radicalbyte wrote: | I'm not sure - I could see both India and Australia become | massive energy exporters if they make proper use of their | available resources. In which case Hydrogen makes sense. | adamredwoods wrote: | From the article they're already using brown hydrogen: | | >> Almost all of this demand came from oil refining and | industrial sectors, mainly for production of ammonia and | methane. Hydrogen produced from fossil fuels for these | applications results in close to 900 MT CO2 emissions per year, | according to IEA data. Oil refiners are largest consumers (40 | MT). The gas they use is usually produced onsite by either | steam methane reforming, separated from by-product gases | through petrochemical processes or sourced externally as | merchant hydrogen. Since use of low-carbon hydrogen in refining | is not economically viable yet, refiners are trying to move to | carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) technologies to | lower carbon footprint. In this process, carbon monoxide and | carbon dioxide formed during the 'coal to hydrogen' process are | trapped and stored in an environmentally sustainable manner. | Estimates say use of low-carbon hydrogen in refining rose from | 250 KT in 2019 to more than 300 KT in 2020, and based on the | current pipeline of projects, 1.2-1.4 MT low-carbon hydrogen is | likely to be used in refining by 2030. | jl6 wrote: | Renewables->electrolysis->hydrogen->ammonia could be a viable | energy storage and transport system, regardless of efficiency, | as long as it can be made cheap enough. Not all energy demand | is easy to run a wire to, and those demands will be willing to | pay the cost of inefficiency as long as the absolute price is | bearable. | [deleted] | uthinter wrote: | It is just one of the legs of diversification. India is also | investing heavily into Na-ion batteries. It already has swathes | of solar farms and twenty two working nuclear reactors and 13 | more in the pipeline . | pfdietz wrote: | You are repeating a common, but very flawed and invalid, | argument there. | | Yes, batteries are more efficient than power-to-hydrogen-to- | power. But the "cost of inefficiency" is proportional to the | number of charge-discharge cycles of the storage system over | its economic lifespan. For diurnal storage, you'd be correct, | hydrogen is a poor choice. But diurnal storage is only one | storage use case. For other storage use cases, such as seasonal | storage, or backup against rare prolonged outages of renewable | sources, there are relatively few charge/discharge cycles. For | those uses, hydrogen is vastly superior to batteries. | | The argument that hydrogen would imply use of fossil fuels is | nonsense. Fossil fuels are going to have to be kept in the | ground in general by punishing legal sanction. What makes | production of hydrogen somehow immune to that? | marcosdumay wrote: | You mean seasonal storage near the polar circles and | emergency generation? | | Because in general it's much cheaper to deal with seasonal | variations by adding generation than with storage, and 'rare | prolonged outages of renewables resources' doesn't even begin | to make sense to me. | pfdietz wrote: | Let's look at the cost of providing "synthetic baseload" in | Germany (with production via renewables just in Germany) in | a toy model using real weather data and plausible cost | assumptions for wind, solar, batteries, and hydrogen. | | https://model.energy/ | | If you use just wind/PV/batteries, the cost is almost TWICE | that if you use wind/PV/batteries/hydrogen. This is for a | cost optimized system relative to real historical weather | data, in a solution where one is allowed to overproduce if | that helps. | | So, no, it's not true at all in general that it's much | cheaper to deal with seasonal variations with | overgeneration rather than including storage. | Tade0 wrote: | Seasonal storage of electricity will never be a thing because | nowadays it's easier to just build a large solar array | somewhere sunny and a long HVDC line. The UK is planning on | doing just that: | | https://www.power-technology.com/projects/morocco-uk- | power-p... | | The project is projected to cost close to $22bln, which | sounds like a lot, but is still less than the cost of yet-to- | be-finished Hinkley Point C. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | Seasonal Gas storage will never be a thing, you can just | rely on a gas pipeline from Russia, nothing will ever go | wrong | konschubert wrote: | That's an idea that would make even Gerhard Schroder blush. | ben_w wrote: | The best thing hydrogen has going for it is that it's easy to | scale up without needing significant increases in mining and | processing various minerals. | | If you _are_ willing to increase mining, and want the | cheapest solution, and you can ignore or solve geopolitics, | the "best" solution is neither hydrogen or batteries, it's to | make a several square meter cross-section HVDC loops around | the planet, because nighttime winter is never more than 20 Mm | from daytime summer and the losses are low enough that it is | still worthwhile. | | But: you probably still want hydrogen and batteries for the | vehicles, and vehicles use so much power that solving | transport almost automatically gives you enough used parts to | build the storage capacity for the electricity grid, and that | even with batteries (and over-provisioning PV, which is fine | because of how cheap it is), there would be enough storage | for winter. | WJW wrote: | > and you can ignore or solve geopolitics | | That's a hell of an "if" statement there my friend :) | | I agree though, in a thousand years there will be a | worldwide electricity grid that takes care of the "big | picture" energy flows; hydrogen will be created as needed | to serve as chemical feedstock to make eg plastics or | hydrocarbons for specialized purposes. That or we kill | ourselves in the meantime, but since killing everyone is in | nobody's best interest I don't think that'll happen. | Hopefully. | danuker wrote: | > several square meter cross-section HVDC loops | | Let's take one half-way around the world. | | That's 1 sq m * 20000 km = 20000000 m^3. Let's take | aluminum because it's cheap. 2.7 tons/cubic meter = 54 Mt. | | Multiply by price: $2444 x 54M = $132B for just the wire. | That's $16.5 per capita. | | But you also need insulators, labor, machinery, design, and | so on. | [deleted] | tmaly wrote: | I still think it would be cool to have zeppelins again. I am sure | they could improve the safety of them today. | abraae wrote: | I don't know - it would only take one nutter with a sniper | rifle and an incendiary bullet to cause the next Hindenberg. | You-Are-Right wrote: | jl6 wrote: | I don't recognize the article's definition of blue hydrogen, | which I believe is normally used to refer to hydrogen derived | from natural gas, not "from water" | CyanBird wrote: | Correct, blue hydrogen is hydrogen derived from fossil fuels, | tho it doesn't need to necessarily be directly obtained from | natural gas, could be just that natural gas or even coal is | used for driving electrolysis | shagie wrote: | There's an entire spectrum of hydrogen "colors" - | https://hydrogen-central.com/cummins-hydrogen-rainbow-colors... | and https://rail.ricardo.com/news/opinion-decoding-the- | hydrogen-... | | Getting hydrogen from water is one of: red or purple (nuclear - | depending on process), yellow (solar), green (other | renewables). | bobthepanda wrote: | Question because I'm not familiar: if you need water to make | hydrogen, isn't that an issue in countries that are having water | issues, like India? | kristjank wrote: | I am not familiar either, but I imagine the answer is similar | to the vegan argument against grazing cattle: not all water | sources are made equal. | xyzzyz wrote: | As a very rough approximation (just to get a proper order of | magnitude), to make enough hydrogen fuel through electrolysis | to run a car, you need about as much water as you would need | gasoline. Compared to daily household needs, it's | insubstantial, and compared to agricultural needs, it's less | than rounding error. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-03 23:00 UTC)