Making Filthy Hydrogen Slightly Less Filthy.

[NNadir]

Last edited Fri Nov 24, 2023, 10:32 AM - Edit history (1)

The paper to which I'll point - it's open to public for free reading - is this one: Techno-economic Analysis and Optimization of Intensified, Large-Scale Hydrogen Production with Membrane Reactors Dean M. Sweeney, Victor Alves, Savannah Sakhai, San Dinh, and Fernando V. Lima Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 2023 62 (46), 19740-19751.

The point of this study is to utilize Le Chatleier's Principle, about which one should learn in a high school chemistry class, this shift the equilibrium of steam reforming of dangerous natural gas to more hydrogen by removing hydrogen through a selective membrane.

We have a wide spread myth that hydrogen is a "green" fuel, officially and culturally endorsed all around the world despite the fact that hydrogen is made almost exclusively from dangerous fossil fuels at a thermodynamic loss: Exergy destruction.

We have fossil fuel salespeople and salesbots selling dangerous fossil fuels here on DU by rebranding them as hydrogen: This is pure unadulterated greenwashing of the type associated with "CCS," carbon capture and storage, the building of huge carbon dioxide dumps that despite decades of jawboning, do not exist on any meaningful scale. In fact, if one looks, one will see that the hydrogen chimera is often advertised along with CCS, wishful thinking bullshit that has left the planet in flames.

The introduction of the paper, which I'll excerpt despite anyone can read the full paper themselves, states all of this very well:

Hydrogen (H2) is the main component in numerous industrial processes, such as ammonia and methanol synthesis, oil refining, and steel production. (1) Due to its widespread usage, H2 production has tripled since 1975, reaching ∼70 million tonnes per year (MtH2/yr) in 2018. (1,2) Its versatility in production and transportation makes it an attractive decarbonization technique for various industries, including power generation and fuel supply for vehicles and ships. (1) The increased demand for H2 requires advanced developments for the scaleup of existing production technologies. Currently, 76% of H2 is sourced from natural gas, predominantly steam methane reforming (SMR). (1) SMR involves the reaction between purified natural gas and superheated steam in a high-temperature and high-pressure reformer furnace, producing mainly carbon monoxide (CO), water (H2O), and H2. Due to the high temperatures (800–900 °C) of the system, traditional SMR requires ample heat duties provided by the combustion of fossil fuels. Consequently, global H2 production leads to CO2 emissions of ∼850 MtCO2/yr as of 2017. SMR’s large energy demand and carbon footprint introduce significant challenges when scaling-up its production to meet the increasing H2 demands while prioritizing decarbonization. (2) Alternative low-carbon technologies, such as electrolysis, can mitigate these emissions, but currently are not economically competitive with traditional SMR. To address the challenges associated with the simultaneous scaleup and decarbonization of H2 technologies, the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued seven key recommendations, addressing H2’s role in long-term energy projects, its commercial demand, and the various production and transportation techniques. (1) An essential recommendation outlined the development of current production facilities for less costly and less carbon-intensive H2 production. An alternative IEA study outlines the latter statement by simulating and costing the decarbonization of SMR plants with various carbon capture and storage techniques. (2) The study showed significant capital and operating expenses tied to the integration of various carbon capture technologies. Therefore, addressing the second recommendation for less costly and efficient H2 production is essential to the simultaneous scaleup and decarbonization of SMR.

One particular development in SMR involves process intensification through H2 selective membrane reactors. (3) The continuous equilibrium shift, caused by the removal of H2, significantly increases the efficiency of the traditional reformer and shift reactors. The lower-temperature operation (450–650 °C) promotes a three-reaction system, shown in reactions 1–3, with methane steam reforming (MSR), water–gas shift (WGS), and the overall reaction (OVR)...

I added the bold and the italics. The italics were added to point to the hypocrisy of antinukes, who repeat the idiotic lie that nuclear energy is "too expensive" based on the fact that benefits of nuclear energy will accrue to future generations, about whom antinukes, and the even more dishonest "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes who one sees from time to time couldn't care less. These same people however are fine with handing out "wind and solar" hydrogen lies, although the paper makes clear, electrolysis is "too expensive."

Of the 24% of hydrogen reported in this paper that is not made from dangerous natural gas, the majority is made from coal. This is the preferred source of hydrogen in China, in particular. Our DU fossil fuel sales people rebranding fossil fuels as hydrogen, often posts insipid dishonest videos from marketing organizations from China, often with pictures of solar industrial parks that produce very little energy, and in fact, very little hydrogen.

Hydrogen is made overwhelmingly made from fossil fuels and all of the Potemkin pictures of solar industrial parks will not change that fact.

A Giant Climate Lie: When they're selling hydrogen, what they're really selling is fossil fuels.

Reference 1 is also open sourced. It's an IEA document called "The Future of Hydrogen:" generated and published at the behest of Japan apparently. It is here: The Future of Hydrogen

It contains this interesting bit, alluded to in the introduction of the paper under discussion:

Hydrogen is almost entirely supplied from natural gas and coal today. Hydrogen is already with us at industrial scale all around the world, but its production is responsible for annual CO2 emissions equivalent to those of Indonesia and the United Kingdom combined. Harnessing this existing scale on the way to a clean energy future requires both the capture of CO2 from hydrogen production from fossil fuels and greater supplies of hydrogen from clean electricity.

They speak as if "clean electricity" is a thing. It really isn't, except for the 10% or so produced from nuclear energy, but it is a waste of nuclear electricity to divert it to making hydrogen.


...expanding further to repeat on the above excerpt...

Supplying hydrogen to industrial users is now a major business globally. Demand for hydrogen, which has grown more than threefold since 1975, continues to rise (Figure 1). Demand for hydrogen in its pure form is around 70 million tonnes per year (MtH2/yr). This hydrogen is almost entirely supplied from fossil fuels, with 6% of global natural gas and 2% of global coal going to hydrogen production.1 As a consequence, production of hydrogen is responsible for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of around 830 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year (MtCO2/yr), equivalent to the CO2 emissions of Indonesia and the United Kingdom combined. In energy terms, total annual hydrogen demand worldwide is around 330 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe), larger than the primary energy supply of Germany.

I added the bold.

Look, we are never going to build those CO₂ dumps. It hasn't happened; it isn't happening; and it won't happen.

Nor are we ever going to eliminate dangerous fossil fuels - a dire and exigent task - by making wilderness into industrial parks and mining the shit out of the planet for so called "renewable energy." Repeating this lie in chants that reek of saying the rosary for cancer patients is making things worse, not better.

The climate is degrading at the fastest rate ever observed; we are using more fossil fuels than ever; and we're doing nothing practical to address this.

At the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory, we've again surged past 421 ppm for weekly readings.

I trust you're having a pleasant holiday weekend.

[Think. Again.]

1. I agree...

...that "The climate is degrading at the fastest rate ever observed; we are using more fossil fuels than ever; and we're doing nothing practical to address this."

One of the obvious things we can and should be doing is building out a lot more non-CO2 emitting energy sources like solar, wind, and nuclear so that the green hydrogen we will need for energy storage can and will be made fossil free.

[brush]

2. There have been two recent discoveries of deep, pure hydrogen wells, one in Africa...

and one in Australia. If such sources exist in other places like oil deposits do around the world, isn't that promisin...negating the need to manufacture dirty hydrogen that burns more energy to create than it yields?

[NNadir]

3. This kind of obscure "drill, baby, drill," crap is not something on which the planet should be bet.

To the extent geological hydrogen exists, it is almost certainly the result of thermal supercritical water reformation of dangerous fossil fuels in deep reservoirs.

The Maxwell Boltzmann distribution assures that any hydrogen released into the atmosphere will boil off into space, as does the helium found in dangerous natural gas. This is why, despite being the most common components of the universe as a whole, both are rare on Earth.

We are now approaching half a century since the publication of the first issue of the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy in 1976, 47 years to be exact.

In 1976, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere was measured at the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory for the week beginning November 14, 1976 at 330.19 ppm.

The most recent week:

Week beginning on November 12, 2023: 421.22 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 417.31 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 395.64 ppm
Last updated: November 24, 2023

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

That, my friend, is the real price of dicking around with wishful thinking and hyping obscure but essentially trivial information, a little over 91 ppm of carbon dioxide to the planetary atmosphere in just 47 years.

No one has been able to address the terrible physical properties of hydrogen, its extremely low critical temperature around 33K - only helium has a lower critical temperature - its extremely low viscosity, making it easy to leak, its incompatibility with many metals inducing brittleness and failure, and the high energy costs of pressurizing it for the purpose of transporting it.

We've been drilling the hell out of the planet for over a century. It is possible that there is small amounts of geological hydrogen, again from supercritical water reformation in the hot interior of the planet. We've probably been burning some for decades without even knowing it, since historically gas chromatographs used hydrogen as a carrier gas and wouldn't be detected in natural gas.

So what?

I'll attribute faith in this nonsense as geological hydrogen as a possible "solution" to climate change as stuff appropriate for E&E, Ennui and Excuses. It's meaningless and useless.

[brush]

4. So you're discounting actual discoveries of hydrogen deposits without any curiosity as to...

Last edited Fri Nov 24, 2023, 04:57 PM - Edit history (1)

whether they 're naturally occurring like oil deposits, and can maybe obtained and used like natural gas is?

What's the harm in professional geologists/scientists exploring the possibility of finding green energy sources?

[NNadir]

5. I'm an old man who's lived through more than 100 ppm additions of carbon dioxide. I spend much of my free...

...time in the primary scientific literature thinking about approaches to sustainability.

My ethical purview includes not depleting every damned thing on the planet for short term temporary fixes.

Even if there were meaningful geological hydrogen, if it's mined then it's not in my view "green."

In fact one of the big lies before humanity is that resource depletion, be in metals for the wind and solar scams are "green."

Mining the shit out of the planet is not "green."

Even the fossil fuel salespeople and salesbots who work to rebrand dangerous natural gas and dangerous coal as "hydrogen," don't call this mined hydrogen - to the extent it exists - "green."

The stupid color scheme that's been attached to this unsustainable filthy hydrogen scam, calls putative mined hydrogen "white hydrogen."

Who gives a shit? Half a century of hydrogen bullshit has not made it into a source of primary energy, and efforts to make it into a consumer fuel are dangerous, although it is extremely unlikely that it will happen. The technical issues are too onerous.

All this idiot talk has left the planet in flames.

There is nothing to stop people, including scientists - a class of people to which I belong - from chasing stupid chimeras. We are human beings. I however, am the sort of human being who has some regard for future generations. I oppose unnecessary mining, and as far as energy goes, I oppose bait and switch tactics, including those utilized by fossil fuel salespeople and salesbots here and elsewhere rebranding this fuel, overwhelmingly produced by steam reforming of dangerous fossil fuels, as "green."