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What is white hydrogen? Scientists say the clean-energy gas could save the world.
(www.businessinsider.com)
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this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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Logistically hydrogen is a pretty horrible fuel source. The molecule (H2) is so darn small it leaks past nearly all valves and seals except for those specifically designed (and maintained!) for hydrogen. Its also very low density so trying to store it mean GIANT containers that don't end up holding much hydrogen. You can increase the density for storage by liquefying it, but now your storage requirements for keeping extra cold in its liquid state increase costs. It also takes lots of energy to chill gaseous hydrogen to liquid, so you're spending your fuel your trying to store to make it storeable.
If France can burn this white hydrogen on-site to generate eletricity, then its a good find, but the moment you talk about trying to store hydrogen, and ship it in quantity, the value of this find is suspect.
Not that you're wrong, but you could make the same complaints of any fuel source. Crude oil is caustic and dirty, requiring filtration and chemical separation, special not to mention it must be extracted from the earth, all of which requires energy. Natural gas, nuclear fuel, even solar needs to solve for battery storage. There are storage and production costs associated eith energy. The more investment in the infrastructure, the more efficient it will become. That's why found energy is a boon for the technology in general, even if the benefit is only temporary.
I'm not saying there's a perfect energy source (wind and solar come close but even they require some small amount of dirty manufacturing). What I'm referring to is the proportion of downsides. Hydrogen come with huge huge downsides, with very few upsides. In fact, I think hydrogen has only a SINGLE upside: it burns clean (no carbon).
Thats it though. Thats all. Every other measure its worse than every other mainstream electricity source, and its worse in much much larger proportions compared to other sources.
That "SINGLE upside" is the difference maker. What other criteria is more important?
Really?
Hydrogen fails on every single one of those compared to alternatives.
Additionally nuclear power is also clean in that it produces no carbon emissions. It does produce nuclear waste, but that's easily managed and can even be recycled somewhat. Just the amount of nuclear waste that we have in the US could be reprocessed to produce enough power to meet the entire power demand of the entire US for the next 100 years, to say nothing of new fuel. Nuclear waste is also easier and safer to dispose of than most of the waste that comes out of coal fired plants (which is also radioactive), and somewhat ironically nuclear power plants actually release significantly less radiation into the environment than coal plants do.
Hydrogen power, outside of maybe the highly specific circumstances at play in Japan, just doesn't make any sense. It's hard to get, hard to transport, hard to store, its energy density is relatively poor, and it's even dangerous to be around due to the risk of explosion and fire.
The poster's example of Hydrogen in Japan I wouldn't even call a Hydrogen solution. They're making green hydrogen from some other energy source. Japan isn't even keeping the resulting hydrogen generated, they're immediately turning it into something else for transport and storage.
The thread original premise of white hydrogen, possibly being burned in situ in France for electricity generation, I'd call a real hydrogen solution, but it is so very specific that I'm not sure its applicable anywhere else on Earth.
And yet, being carbon-free, makes it worthwhile.
I don't think you're quite grasping it. There would be an insane amount of carbon used to try to use hydrogen as a primary fuel source in overcoming all the shortcomings of hydrogen.
I read some interesting stuff about how Japan plan to create green hydrogen and convert it into ammonia to send through their existing gas infrastructure. For a variety of reasons for Japan it makes a lot of sense to go all in on hydrogen. It's also a super interesting way for grid scale Energy storage in Europe. There's plenty of sun and wind when it's sunny or windy, using existing gas infrastructure to handle renewably generated ammonia could be a quick win to be able to build up strategic reserves during net positive energy days.
That does sound interesting, but its no hydrogen as a fuel source (like the article), its used in your description as a single link in a chain. So they're creating hydrogen from a process (likely electrolysis) using some other energy source, then nearly immediately converting that hydrogen into ammonia for better storage and transport. That would be a good use of hydrogen, as an intermediate step and not a beginning and end step.
Yeah that's exactly it. Create hydrogen and convert it into ammonia in places with ready access to renewables, then send it and store it via gas infrastructure to where it's needed, and burn it to create power. It's less efficient than straight h2, but the benefits of being able to transport it and store it make up for that. Japan's grid is crazy fractured and they went heavy into gas, so for them it's kind of a no brainer to invest in that tech.
If you Google around there lots of more detailed reporting on the whole process and plan. I can try and dig up the very insightful comment I read on tildes which had lots of citations too if you're interested.