World's Dirtiest Clean Energy Project (and Why I'm a Fan)
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- Опубликовано: 30 сен 2024
- The world's first ever liquid hydrogen transport ship is on its way from Australia to Japan, carrying a cargo of brown hydrogen (made by gasifying brown coal with no carbon capture). Once it gets there, it'll either be used to generate electricity or perhaps to fuel cars. Either way, it'll be more expensive, more complicated and worse for the climate than if Australia just shipped coal for Japan to burn in a coal power plant.
So why am I a fan of this project? Finally we are moving past the talking phase of the hydrogen economy and into the testing phase. How much energy will it take to transport liquid hydrogen thousands of kilometres? Will most of the liquid hydrogen boil off and leak out during the trip? Is there any way liquid hydrogen transport can ever be cost effective? This project will help us answer these questions.
Just don't called it "clean" energy.
An earlier written version of this is published on Medium, and it has links to sources for most of the details. / the-dirtiest-power-pro...
If you would like to help develop the Engineering with Rosie channel, you could consider joining the Patreon community, where there is a chat community (and Patreon-only Discord server) about topics covered in the videos and suggestions for future videos and production quality improvements. / engineeringwithrosie
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A wise perspective. I just hope they are forthcoming and honest about the results of the project.
Yeah, I'm not super optimistic, but I think it will prove so expensive that no one is very keen to keep trying down this route. Let's wait and see.
Thanks Daniel, my question exactly. Transparency.......🤔
You mention in the film that you don’t know of any ongoing tests of storing and transporting H2. Actually there is an ongoing pilot project that includes storing H2 underground. It’s part of the so called Hybrit project in the north of Sweden. The underground cave is finished (or next to be finished) and different types of coating and safety measures will be tested during 2022. The project doesn’t include any transportation since the gas will be produced and consumed locally. I have no idea of how new this idea of storing H2 underground is, but it is at least new in Sweden.
Thanks for sharing this! I'll look it up.
so its not exporting it but using locally
It seems like most hydrogen projects are based on how to get government money to earn a living for a while.
In academia getting money from the tax payer ('government' is just the conduit) is called 'soft money' getting money from industry is called 'hard money'. 🙂
One step forward, two steps back. Sounds like a plan to me!
I agree!!!!!
'One step forward, two steps back.' is that the new dance move of the antiarchy? 🙂
@@BernardLS
What's the antiarchy?
@@grahammewburn That portion of society who are opposed, does not really matter what, they are just opposed. Could be driving on the left, not eating meat, education, making recreational chemicals illegal, roads, railways, airports, plastic et cetera. Some times called 'rent a mob', 'professional protesters' or 'crusties' a combination of 'anti' & 'archy' like democracy but with out bothering about the will of the people.
one step diagonally, two steps sideways, one step down the z-axis… and everyone involved has a different coordinate system. Rosie has chosen one where the net outcome is less than a complete disaster, and I agree here… but you got to feel pity for people affected by other decisions that these numbnuts make….
Great insight as always Rosie :D It is often easy to look at projects short term and not consider how useful they will be as part of the bigger picture. Many clean energy projects could benefit from doing a 'minimal viable product' to test technical challenges much earlier than they currently are!
Did you miss the point completely? This isn't a clean energy project. The reason she thinks it's good is because it works against hydrogen.
Ziroth's comment makes sense, and so does yours @Qk This project I think will fail and prove liquid hydrogen is not worth pursuing further. But you can apply the same strategy to any tech with unknown risks, inculding ones you think will work. Trying a minimum viable product (as fast as possible) makes sense whether you're trying to prove or disprove a theory.
@@4drops Apologies if the comment wasn't clear, but my point was two fold. Firstly, that people generally look at projects in isolation, but forget that they are smaller parts of a bigger plan. In this case, it is likely that this project will show liquid hydrogen is not worth pursuing, but the fact it comes from black hydrogen gas is not really the point imo, hence we need to consider the bigger picture of what the project is actually trying to do! And secondly, there are some projects that want to use "clean technology" to solve a problem and they attract millions of dollars of funding before they have done a 'quick and dirty' minimum viable product, which in some cases could show the whole idea is unfeasible anyway and save a lot of investors money!
@@ZirothTech But why would the people behind the project care about saving the investors money? Some projects appear to be so likely to fail in the long run that one suspects that the people behind them know that and just want to trick investors into investing so they can use some of that money to pay themselves salaries for a few years for as long as they can keep up the pretence that it might still work. Under the venture capitalist system there is no incentive to fail fast. That's what Theranos turned out to be and I strongly suspect that's what Hyperloop is as well.
@@adrianthoroughgood1191 This is very true, sadly! You would hope people would want to try an idea and move on if it wasn't feasible to start a new project that could actually work! But I think you are right, often that is not peoples incentive...
Hi Rosie, I definitely agree but is it part of this project’s mandate (sorry if this was explained elsewhere) to test that transportation and importantly engineer solutions to improve it? I guess I have seen the constant spend on carbon capture and storage with what feels like no progress. Anyway thanks again for your channel and work in this area.
I do NOT think so. Most of the hydrogen production is from oil and will make pollution as well. The clean energy is windfarm and PV instead of hydrogen.
@@hotchi1566 windfarm and PV is electricity production, hydrogen is storage. Batteries are limited (you can't take a ship full of batteries around the world to charge in Australia and discharge in Japan).
@@philherb3843 Battery has much higher energy efficiency than hydrogen. To be honest, hydrogen is a joke.
@@hotchi1566 Not for far distance transportation or seasonal storage. But yes, the losses are too big, most use cases today are more efficent with batteries or grid (bus, train, truck, car or heating).
The lack of carbon capture is pretty bad. Kinda hoping that this is entirely a test case and not like Japan's whaling research.
Has there ever been a successful carbon capture project at scale? Not that I know of. Just lots of pilot projects that never lead anywhere. Because carbon capture is a scam - the engineering problems are just not practical. It's an empty promise: "Just keep burning the cheap fossil fuels, and trust that we have some really smart people who will fix the problems."
Something I’ve wondered for a while: Is it feasible to transport the electrolyte fluid of flow batteries? Would it keep charge and could you transport a significant amount of energy with it?
Interesting idea. I saw a project where they were putting batteries on ships and driving then to charge from offshore wind and then discharge onshore. So I guess that's somewhat similar. I find it hard to imagine that will work out to be the easiest way of getting electricity between turbines and shore though.
The problem is the low energy density. I've read about 50Wh/l, which is in the ballpark of lead-acid batteries. I assume it's possible, but just doesn't make sense economically
Yeah, it probably wouldn’t make sense for offshore wind, I was thinking more as an alternative to making hydrogen with electricity, liquefying it, shipping it across the world and then burning it in a gas plant.
Liquid flow batteries would at least be closed cycle with much lower conversion losses.
Though the low energy density probably kills it… if it is really 50Wh/l, then a 200,000t tanker could carry… 10GWh, if my math is correct. That’s like the daily output of one gas power plant - not super promising, I guess 😐
Technically it could be, but flow batteries are still on developmental stage, and any alternative needs to be able to transport a lot more usable energy than what the transport requires to be viable. So, the electrolyte needs really high energy density, and still not to difficult to transport.
As with the hydrogen, the need for diesel engines for the transport should rise some flags. They should have started with the transport energy. If hydrogen has such a great potential, they should be able to power the ship with it, only, both ways, and still be able to deliver relevant amount of hydrogen, otherwise it's a dead end.
If flow batteries that are viable for this purpose is ever developed, they should definitely be used for things like powering ships before used for distributing energy by diesel powered ships.
@@fishyerik The energy requirement for transportation is a good point. As you say, if you can't use the hydrogen to transport itself, none of this really makes sense
If this had been done 20 years ago then it would have been OK, but at the moment there are 100MW scale hydrogen electrolyzer projects popping up around the world, especially around the North Sea, the EU has a target of realising 40GW of hydrogen electrolysers by 2030, post Glasgow and the agreement to phase out coal, this is just the wrong way to do your testing! In reality, most of the new hydrogen electrolyzers are taking green electricity that could otherwise have been put into the grid and so reduced use of fossil fuels for electricity production, but that is not the case for all of it, there are infrastructure problems with getting all the current North Sea wind power to where it is needed, Orkney regularly has too much wind power for the export cables, and their use of hydrogen does make use of excess green power that would otherwise have been wasted. Of course excess green power is very cheap green power, and produces hydrogen vastly cheaper than coal can produce hydrogen, so this coal project is guaranteed to fail as soon as there is sufficient hydrogen from excess wind power, and in a few years time there will be vast amounts of excess wind power because there must be in order for the wind turbines to produce enough electricity to 100% power the grid 90% of the time. There will be a huge demand for hydrogen over the coming years, but everyone wants the green stuff, for producing green steel, green fertiliser, green aviation fuel, green rocket fuel, green concrete, green ship fuel, etc. Time to shut down the coal!
Preach!
informative VID ! Would U Consider doing a series of vids on "Methane Capture and Utilization"
since uncontrolled methane emissions are far more desrtuctive tnan CO2 and methane is increasing daily (e.g. Artic Thaw)]
!?!?!
Rosie: "I like this test because it will prove that hydrogen is not the solution."
Comment section: "Good point, transport tests are good for the hydrogen economy." 🤦
Is that really what she said? Have another go at watching the video.
Yes, you got it. I always think I'm being too blatant in my scripts and then find that I've been misunderstood. I am gradually learning the right balance I think 😀
@@EngineeringwithRosie did you mean it to be as negative as Qk is suggesting? I had interpreted your closing remarks as being like when a scientist conducting a particle physics experiment doesn't find the particle they are looking for. Although it's technically a failure, it's still a useful result because it means the properties of the particle are differerent than they were expecting. Success or failure will both give data useful to guide how best to move forward. I didn't think you meant: "Hydrogen is obviously impractical and this project will prove that so then people will stop wasting time on it". Maybe I'm just coming at it from a scientific frame of mind rather than an engineering frame of mind?
@@adrianthoroughgood1191 I think that exporting hydrogen as a liquid is clearly impractical. But I am happy to be proven wrong by this project. I accept it's up for debate, and I won't dig in if this project shows it is more efficient that I currently believe it will be. I also think that making hydrogen from brown coal is clearly impractical, uneconomical, damaging to the climate. I don't think we can draw conclusions about other aspects of hydrogen from this trial. So I think in a narrow sense, yes I meant to be that negative. But in the broader sense of "should hydrogen be part of the energy transition?" I don't have anything to say about that in this video. I think we will get a little closer to finding the best way to use hydrogen after this trial, so in that sense it's a bit like your particle physicist.
Liquid hydrogen transport can never succeed in a market economy. Using the hydrogen to make synthetic petrol (gasoline) and transporting and storing that is way cheaper (both in money and in energy), and gasoline technology has a long history of safe, reliable operation. But even doing that with your hydrogen will send you broke because of the cheapness of renewables.
This project has been a waste of money and precious engineering time from the very start.
One thing I do not understand is whether you consider this is a valid option (even just for its informative content) when also taking into account alternative decarbonisation solutions. In other terms, given a sum of public money $X, do you think this hydrogen creation and transportation project the best alternative? (I suppose I revealed myself as an economist)
I was going to dislike the vid when I just started watching it! Nice way of thinking! Good job
I definitely agree with you!
A world where we have ships that can economically transport H2 is much better than one where we don't.
Areas with lots of renewables will be able to sell green hydrogen onto the global energy market.
But, if it's not practical or economical, we need to invest much more in undersea electrical transmission lines, and other storage methods like pumped hydro
I agree the information that impacts the next 30 years of decisions is well worth the emissions from this specific project
Transmission lines don't help in this case. We need H2 as fallback when renewables don't produce energy, not when we already have our own production running. Those lines would only move the H2 production into the receiving countries. That is what this test is about. Checking out if Hydrogen transport with all it's energy losses is still economically sounder than building thousands of km of HVDC lines for local H2 production.
What do h2 transports back haul?
So if it is a failure it will ultimately be a success. It will prove it wont wok.
I'm going to throw a "yeah, but" on this one. We have been "engineering" on this basis for a long time- it got us to here. What happens to this technology and it's expansion if we do this and a breakthrough regarding that costing comes about- do you think 21st century utility operators, private or otherwise won't adopt it? I grew up in and around oil people- a buck is a buck is a buck and it only matters how many bucks you made today. You've a point though, until we prove it unfeasible financially, there will be that resistance till we do. I do hope we don't spend the next half century on this "temporary problem" as we have with the plastics we have been "losing" into our oceans. FR
Rosie I agree with your outlook. The big thing I can see and worry about is in the "Green Economy' it is more about how BIG business & Governments can make money from Clean Energy generation and not what is most feasible/economical and best for the climate. More of the Big guy stepping on the little guy for a buck. Love your videos. 👏👏
Australia has a lot of sun? Can't they use solar and electrolysis to make hydrogen?
We absolutely can and will. Another reason why this specific project makes no sense in the long term. But for now we don't have been hydrogen capacity. So I can accept them using dirty hydrogen for this trial, but not into the future.
They would be able to do it with large scale biogas plants and the reforming the biogas to hydrogen or even better store and transport the biogas which is exactly the same as natural gas. With this solution use can use existing technology and infrastructure. Just before you want to use hydrogen use steam reform the biogas and like magic, you get hydrogen.
Or use solar and electrolysis to not make hydrogen but instead use the electricity directly.
We have a sustainable energy problem, not a storage problem.
electrolysis requires water which is in such short supply in Australia they have to survive on beer when hydration is required. 🙂 The process described a means to turn the brown coal, which in a clean green future would be a 'stranded asset', in to money.
@@josvanos6599 You make a good point, but if we can prove that we can export internationally, we get more access to international capital for our own green energy transition.
Let’s rule out infeasible ideas asap.
Nice video however this is just something that actually happening in a mass way, projects are being built to supply the world. CH2 vs Cryogeninc vs amonia if you really look at the costs and performance the CH2 works out better there is a greay area in distance when it comes to Cryo vessels. it crasses the line at about 5000 miles. It needs to be viewed as a relacement for liguid and gas fossil fuels not s a project. Its not as it is all here and happening.
To do the transport experiment and still have some bragging right for “clean” or “green”, why not make the hydrogen with solar electric energy?
The cynic in me thinks the funding, or at least part of it, was provided by the lignite mining industry. Your suggestion is valid, it just takes the project in a different direction.
If hydrogen is to be meaningful in the “save the planet” context, it can only be produced by electricity (obviously electricity from other than fossil fuel sources). And it will always be very inefficient in terms of electricity in vs energy out. Thus it does not make any sense for things that can be directly powered by electricity, or easily powered by batteries, as electricity can easily and efficiently be conveyed over significant distances, and hydrogen cannot. So it might (someday) make sense for things like ships and planes that can never run on batteries, but it has no place being used in cars or boilers (lol), ever.
I think if they could get it to work for aviation that would be a win. Domestic heating would be better, as renewables or just electricity in general are woefully inadequate and/or expensive for that purpose (unless you live somewhere like California). We'll see...
From the standpoint of testing the feasibility of this type of electricity creation and distribution, I can understand the why, and research/testing is always a good endeavor! But to me, I don't see any chance of success. There are just too many other, cleaner, cheaper ways to generate electricity. Honestly, the only avenue I see for hydrogen use is for long-haul shipping, and maybe for flight- but the problem there is that hydrogen may not have the energy density to make pushing cargo ships non-stop halfway around the world, or further. I see the same issue with using Ammonia for the same thing- but I fear that it also will suffer from too little energy density as compared with the current fossil fuels in use. I have a tiny investment in a start-up trying to bring to market a way to create clean ammonia, which may work fine for fertilizer- but I have little hope of its use as a fuel (and side concerns with Nitrous Oxide emissions as well). That said, we may need to rethink how goods are shipped, and either use smaller ships, slower ships, or less cargo/more fuel on current ships- either way, the world will face higher transportation costs, which I am fine with- but many are not.
The 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) held in Glasgow between 31 October 2021 & 13 November 2021 established requirements and targets for mitigation of the production of GHG and easy steps to take to reduce atmospheric pollution to these levels include: -
1) Abolish the cruising fraction of marine transport;
2) Abolish recreational boating;
3) Reduce 'freight mile' distances;
4) Reduce freight carrying capacity;
4) Improve fuel quality;
5) De'fossil'ise the fuel chain;
6) Localise production to consumption;
7) Reduce the global population of consumers.
Transporting Hydrogen when electrical hydrolysis is available anywhere is dumb.
I find it difficult to believe that there is a lack of engineering knowledge when it comes to all these issues around hydrogen.
There have been massive industries working with other gases, for example in the UK we have north sea gas pumped out from under the north sea, it's stored and then it's pumped around the country into people's homes so they can cook or heat their home.
This technology for natural gas is extremely well established.
Other industries work with other gases. There are a wide variety of engineers who work with all sorts of gases.
I just can't believe the problems that the hydrogen economy will face are problems that haven't already been solved years ago.
I know there is political will not to solve this, with the fossil fuel industry pumping massive amounts of money into politics around the world.
Hydrogen is the smallest atom in the universe. Methan is huge in comparison, and we already have a significant amount of leakage in the gas pipes that deliver it all over the world.
@@Psi-Storm So methane has a significant amount of leakage and yet there is an entire industry based around it, which keeps functioning regardless. The methane industry keeps trying to improve but their pipes still leak and everyone still uses it all ok with no problems.
I don't doubt your engeneering knowledge. But your history and politics of capitalism are sure lacking...
I agree with the notion of "doing not talking". BUT could they not have started with steam reformation of natural gas instead of brown coal? One could still test the liquification and transport parts of the engineering test. My worry here is the the coal producers will latch onto this and continue to burn coal.
They will certainly try. My hope is that the countries we export to won't accept blue hydrogen imports if green hydrogen is available. Japan might do this. Other countries .... >.> Maybe not
Honestly, it's just going to be so damn expensive and complicated to do it this way. It is possible that the Aus gov will continue to prop it up, but if we don't at least get CCS working I can't imagine any other country is going to fall for the line that buying offsets makes this "blue" hydrogen. I mean, you could just buy offsets for anything. If you sent brown coal to Japan to burn there would be less offsets needed than for this project. Why would anyone buy this when actual green hydrogen will be cheaper. And using electricity directly will be cheaper again anywhere that is possible.
A Disgraceful Project by Victoria, Australia and Japan.
Firstly Japan's Efforts to Produce Genuine Green Energy is Pathetic.
Secondly, How Victoria and Australia can Justify this Project Ahead of Numerous other Genuine Green Energy Opportunities is More Bad Governance by Australia.
No Wonder We Continue to Underachieve.
Green H2 needs 50KW to produce 1kg H2 at 33KW. Not counting H2 capital cost, compression cost, storage cost. High risk even to transport Compress H2 even for 8 tons storage trailer will have 227 tons of TNT equivalent. Economically not feasible.
I see, ..then the Fuel Cell Electric Power will be used to operate the Fusion Reactors Superconductors to make the Grant Money Application process complete...
Disproof Methodology applied to Engineering, or still the Exhaustion technique?
Fantastic presentation. Saying like it is.. sense of humour… great information with sources…
Tops! Really!
If you'll forgive my exasperation at carbon sequestration… maybe the chart (5:54) isn't the full picture but $1053,000,000! For diddly squat?
How many trees is that?
How many solar panels is that? Wind turbines? Pumped hydro?
Or how about funding for research - which Australia is particularly good at by the by..
And how much of that coin is subsidies that come ultimately from the tax payers pocket…
Oh my giddy aunt!
Solar panels, electricity, stick electrodes in water, make hydrogen and oxygen.
Local, simple, cheap, no transport. Produce hydrogen when the sun shines, use hydrogen when no sun.
Sorry. It's a too convoluted and messy project in my opinion. Thumbs Up though. Your RUclips Channel and videos are excellent and insightful. I'm looking forward to learn much more from watching your channel.
Hi Rosie, and thanks for covering this topic. You're so right, and so forward thinking for covering this topic. I would love to dialogue with you, as so many of the negatives are readily addressed.
First, why transport only hydrogen? LNG and hydrogen require so much of the same or similar equipment/infrastructure that they should be transported on the same ship.
Next, and here is where I think you will be most interested, if the LNG is used to fuel the voyage...supplemented by any outgassed LNG/hydrogen, there is a way to capture the CO2. This then rebuilds your ravaged coral reefs, and builds new ones.
Let's talk. I hope you see this, but fear you won't as your popularity, and abundant comments must be daunting in sheer volume.
After reading further into this issue over the past year since your "4 Red Flags About the Hydrogen Economy" and now this video, I agree with the conundrum regarding a hydrogen economy. But it is very much like bio-medical research. There are a lot of time iterative technologies, breakthroughs, and paradigm shifts that must come about to fulfill objectives for cures, vaccines and therapies. Your "Why I'm a Fan" sentiment is similar to what's behind the 40 year of iterative innovations (including digital engineering) and convergence to quickly create, test and safely dispense the COVID19 vaccine. And yes, confidence in the economic risks we see being taken by both private entities and our governments is the only way we'll come close to emulating nature's engineering of the energy cycle. The hard obstacle is industry focus and public influence. Your engineering-for-the-layperson and citizen scientist forum here is worthwhile and important!
Pleeze don't bring up "hydrogen" AGAIN as a viable storable fuel for the "masses" or anybody else.
Years ago I used to work for a company that made hydrogen fuel cells for NASA and military spacecraft. It seemed like a good idea at the time. NASA bought an l lots of liquid hydrogen for upper stages of some rockets so it was there to feed fuel cells.
Those fuel cells were really expensive, but per pound better than Nicad or any other batteries.
My company tried to sell the military on fuel cells using reformers to extract hydrogen from other fuels. That was found to make no sense for a military environment . Next, they tried to sell public utilities fuel cells that had Natural Gas reformers to extract the hydrogen. The arithmetic didn't work out after they built several units. There may be some large installations still running that were built with Fed Government subsidies. If they break, the original designers and engineers may be dead or in an "old age home". I think they are in various stages of getting scrapped.
Lately "Nicola" built some hydrogen-electric fuel cell fueled trucks. The KW output of those cells and motors develops only 250HP which for a class 8 truck (80,000# GW) is pitiful. The equipment on the trucks is enormously complex and uses eight "super pressure" storage tanks operating at 750bar to 950 bar (a goal anyway). That's beyond 10,000psi! The recoverable energy stored in those tanks isn't that much after the fuel cell losses. That's because the amount of energy in a given volume is pretty low. Natural gas is much more compact, but it has to go through a "reformer" and that is more energy waste.
Nicola buys gaseous hydrogen on big trailers for lots of $$$ and has to compress the gas which is a huge energy waste. There are no real "hydrogen depots" except for specialized purposes (another cost).
I'm placing my bets on Tesla for now. They and their partners have proved that they can build extremely efficient long-lived batteries. Tesla also builds extremely efficient long-lived motors and powertrains and power controls. Unfortunately (for now) Tesla's best batteries (energy to weight ratio) will go into their most popular (and highest profit car) "model Y" for now. When their 4680 battery production is sufficient to support the long awaited class 8 semi-trucks and "cyber-trucks", those will appear in a "rush" since production cost and energy density will be ideal using the 4680 batteries. The pre-orders (with deposits) are "stacked up". There are at least three massive battery plants under construction. A large "test" production line is already "stocking the shelves" with those batteries. In the next two months or so, the Krakken will be released! 4680 powered model Y's will appear as "Giga Texas" ramps up production!
Darn. I thought you had lost your marbles!
Yes, it's dirty! Yes, it's expensive.
You held back from saying it's also a dumb idea :)
Doing this project should provide convincing proof. And hopefully losing millions of dollars in the process will mean people take notice of the results.
I'm sure some good modelling could prove it's a rabbit hole to go down. But way too cheap & less convincing.
So yes, let's prove this is an expensive, dirty & dumb idea.
A mature and intelligent take on the project. The problem is projects and ideas like this have a nasty tendency to develop a life of their own regardless of whether they are sensible.
I like the perspective, but it is also a bit naive imo. 30 years ago I was fascinated about the report of reaching more than 100m degrees in a fusion reactor. At that time I didn't know, that there is something which is (mockingly) called the fusion constant - fusion is always 20 years away.
So let's be vigilant that we won't see a 5 year hydrogen transport 'constant', when all issues have been miraculously solved. Similar to CCS, where everyone is talking about it, but no O&G company has been forced to do it properly and no government is even been talking about such a step to make it mandatory. If O&G executives would be personally liable in such projects, then nobody would take the risk to further pursue this path.
Has anyone thought about mixing the Hydrogen with Oxygen (maybe a 2:1 ratio). That would surely solve the transport problem.
The CO2 at the coal gassification end needs to be captured. Do CO2 polluters get penalized carbon credits in Australia?
Reef bleaching is already epidemic, no?
I've forgotten its name, but there's a German startup that combines Magnesium with an ester (to protect against Oxygen, I think) to produce a paste ("pumpable" but a bit "sticky") that can be reacted on demand, on site, with water, to generate Hydrogen. Given your interests, I'd guess you've heard of it, so I'd be interested to hear your opinion on it. (No news leads me to guess there's some or other problem with the stuff.)
Build ThorCon Liquid metal Thorium ion molten sodium fluoride salt burner energy converters and Manufacture Green Ammonia or green JP3 jet fuel for local or export
It’s always good to try things as a test. Then take the history of what has worked and apply it. So, is there a history of successful decarbonization in a modern nations economy? Hmm. Oh yeah. There are a few. France is a good example. How did they do it? Hmmmmm……
Ive thought about this a bit. SK/japan have decided on hydrogen going forward I think for two reasons and they will invest massively into this to make this work.
1) this is where most of the small engines in the world come from, their industry is already heavily invested in that technology, and burning H2 instead of hydrocarbons isnt "hard".
2) the cost to outfit africa/south america/rural parts of asia with a reliable high capacity electric grid is going to cost (a lot) more than putting a tank in the ground which you send a truck to every other week.
Whether or not you can make it clean, I dunno, can you make it cleaner than gas? probably.
Is this a better compromise than cutting the developing world off from any chance of developing? probably.
Making coal to H2 in a country of water and sun (Australia), reminds me on some similar funny water power plant projects in Afganistan, financed by german development funds :,-D
Incredible framing, well done, there is value in failure, and I often overlook that. I do hope the results of the project are public though, oftentimes we see new hydrogen projects get all the press when announced, but barely a mention when they either don't happen, happen much smaller, or get cancelled. I'm thinking of a fair few hydrogen bus projects for instance.
I'm really confused about co2 capture and storage. Specifically: why are we looking at storing/burying instead of using it for industry? We use it for all sorts of stuff surely we should be looking at capturing it in a usable form?
I'm not saying we should keep burning fossil fuels to generate the stuff but if we're generating it as a byproduct for hydrogen from fossil fuels and we're building the capability from scratch why arent we leveraging the "waste" outputs?
Hi Rosie. I'm a solar installer near Chicago and am very optimistic about hydrogen. I've heard that steel and fertilizer are likely the first commercial applications for green hydrogen. I've heard 10-30% hydrogen/methane blends are ok to use in existing nat gas infrastructure. Then it is also possible to eliminate natural gas extraction and instead synthesize methane from biogas digesters and through the Sabatier process. I'm optimistic that carbon capture tech will improve. Rather than direct air capture, we could capture emmisions from methane/hydrogen plants using carbon neutral fuel. If we capture the CO2 as well as use the waste heat to produce biochar from the anerobic digestor waste as well as other biomass sources then we could make these methane/hydrogen plants carbon negative.
With all the melting permafrost, maybe there's an argument to try to capture the methane and burn it to mitigate the stronger warming effects of the CH4
I don't get how this stupid stunt can possibly be less expensive, than generating H2 from Solar in Australia of all places? I sometimes think the general incompetence of the financial industry to deal with write off periods larger than years is the only problem keeping us from being CO2 free tomorrow.
Thanks Rosie. I would prefer Hydrogen produced from electrolysis of water with solar energy on an industrial scale
A thing that gets left out a lot is that green hydrogen is required to decarbonize the Harber Bosch process which is where the bulk of our fertilizer comes from.
Hydrogen is also my bet for green aviation, reaction engines is deep into developing hypersonic hydrogen powered space planes. It's also my bet for trucking too, Mercedes has a great vision and see pushing for liquid H2 trucks.
Electricity storage/generation from hydrogen I feel will be a side effect from decarbonizing other industries where batteries are a poor alternative.
Just thinking how much more vs hydrocarbon fuel this hydrogen will cost and any issues will we be looking at prices x16 or x20 like a few years ago the USA and on top of this price spike all the hydrogen car users in CA had up to 16 hours wait for fuel and for a year and more they were limited on how much they could buy… by the way the normal price of hydrogen vs hydrocarbon fuel is between x2 and x4 the price but currently it’s lot more due to the current price of natural gas
Can you make an analysis of the recently signed Canada-Germany hydrogen project that should be for "Green" hydrogen?
I always wondered if here in the UK anyone had actually added electrical requirement for our 'transition' to heat pumps + cars +++? Probably not we are all led by donkeys (no offense to donkeys)
Maybe on a commercial or industrial platform it might work but hydrogen cars seem too risky to me. Tiny molecule’s are hard to keep from leaking. Besides being an explosion hazard imagine getting in your car and discovering the fuel has all leaked out. Filling up could be dangerous too.
Hi Rosie! Perhaps you could look into H2-industries' LOHC technology.
If trade and transport H2 make sense, I hope the are fast on removing Coal and replace it with solar.
H2 storage made me think of old towns that had propane grid and storage. The storage was very big metal buckets upside down in water. Gas was pumped into the bucket and it did rise. The ratio between weight and area of the bucket decided the pressure, witch was very low. Because of that they needed many of these big storage units.
ROISE What is New Zealand amoa to liquid hydrogen.
Living in the Netherlands i can tell you the the project for heating homes using hydrogen is marketed as a green technology! It is of course far from green: it is far better to just use electrical heat-pumps for heating because electricity is readily available, especially because it is a newly build suburb. Heating is more or less the most stupid thing you can do with hydrogen. It also distracts from things that do make sense, especially for politicians who do not understand the technical implications anyways.
I agree with you. The problem at the moment in the western world ( I don't know exactly whats happening in Australia ) is that they all are competing to become the first fossile free country in the world. That is an extremely stupid competition because they override the natural development of new technology and the risk is of a major backlash that is happening at the moment in Sweden for wind farms. So we engineers need to take back the control from politicians. Let thousands of new ideas flourish!
What is the "natural development of new technology"? Is that the development process that lead us to a situation where we realised that we'd better 'de-carbonise' ASAP to avoid massive environmental and social disruption and economic destruction?
Politicians are trying to achieve 'useless but perfect, engineers would just want things 'perfect but useless' 🙂
@@BernardLS Trust the market economy. So far it has delivered.
@@gunnarbech8147 WADR the defect in an unregulated market is that it will externalise anything that will not generate a revenue stream. So in a situation where the atmosphere is used as a free resource (provides oxygen) and a free depository (waste sink for low grade heat energy and the products of combustion such as SOx, NOx and COx) the global population gets to contribute to the sellers benefits; a properly regulated market is desirable but the sellers dislike paying for the use of common goods and their is no way of limiting the depredations of common resources solely to the buyers of private goods.
It's true that transportation itself causes more emissions. But hydrogen technology is still under development phase and still trials are being conducted to improve efficiency and storage issues. Somewhere experiments must be carried out to get something new in to the market.
how about you just creat it local without the 8000 km transport, then you dont have to test how to transport it? Hydrogen should only be used in steel production and similar where it makes sence.
If humans were able to establish a low or no carbon energy source, it would only accelerate biosphere collapse, not necessarily due to climate change but due to the consequences of other areas of ecological overshoot, of which climate change is only one. An infinite growth economy that runs on hydrogen is still an infinite growth economy, and it's not possible for the human civilization organism to grow infinitely within a closed system, like the planet Earth. A cheap, clean fuel will only encourage even more economic production and consumption, leading to even faster depletion of non-renewable resources, even more land use and soil degradation, even more deforestation, and even more biodiversity loss.
Imagine how much faster the world could develop green energy and climate change fighting solutions if it wasn't for intellectual property rights, patents and limitless capitalist greed in general...
Let's put solar panels on every home, business and covered parking rooftop and switch to electric vehicles making nearly everything we do solar powered while completely decentralizing our power supply and empowering everyone as power generation owners.
Solar power is CHEAPER and electric vehicles are soon to be CHEAPER to make and already are considerably CHEAPER to maintain and operate, especially if charged from your own solar power.
A 3-5 year ROI (return on investment) for a solar array that will generate power for decades is a no-brainer and the panels can even be made locally too.
#EndFossilFuels #SwitchToSolar #SwitchToElectric #GreenNewDeal #EmpowerEveryone #DEMEXIT #StillSandersPlatform
Why is the hydrogen not being produced through electrolysis? Given year-round free access to solar energy in Australia, why are we not using that green power to make green hydrogen and then make boats that run on hydrogen electric motors to transport the hydrogen?
Hi Rosie - It has been a year since you made the great video. Is the Hydrogen export to Japan now occurring?
I suspect that this project will be a failure but will also not dissuade additional investment into an ultimately doomed or, at best, niche technology.
The liquid hydrogen is permanently coocking inside the ship. The more heat gets in the tank, the more hydrogen goes to gas. The ship could use this hydrogen to feed the engines or use some for electricity in a fuel cell. The rest could be re-liquified and put back in the ships storage tanks.
Ok, we will need a power source for those applications where batteries etc don’t work.
Be interesting to know how it compares with e-fuel.
I do NOT think so. Most of the hydrogen production is from oil and will make pollution as well. The clean energy is windfarm and PV instead of hydrogen.
I agree that testing the feasibility of hydrogren infrastructure to get real data will give more accurate results than any amount of theoretical conversation. However, I'm a software engineer and one thing we do in software engineering is write unit tests for components that run quickly before adding big integration tests for the entire system. It doesn't make sense to run a more expensive test when the unit tests already don't pass. I think that's essentially what's wrong with this project. It's not that testing is bad, it's that this end to end hydrogen test doesn't make sense to run when individual components of the system still have issues to be solved.
It may be about the cost of testing just for the sake of testing. Maybe doing the whole project was the only was to get enough funding to do the serious large scale tests? Or it may also be a scam, in that it's pretending to be a green energy project and is attracting green funding under somewhat false pr pretenses.
Think of it as Agile development. Unit tests are great, but often it turns out the properties you tested and the properties the user actually needs are different. You can never know before you actually _ship the real thing_ - the quicker the better, and this project is doing exactly that: using a dirty but effective hack to generate hydrogen on a scale that is so far infeasible with green sources, to load it into a ship big enough to actually make a non-negligible contribution to a country's energy supply.
Honestly, I think it's probably the latter. But I think we will learn real information from the project regardless of whether that was their intention.
The only use I see for coal is to use it to make kerosene from C+H locally.
Coal belongs underground!
It makes me smile. Indeed, human society itself is a heat engine. And one could well argue that if humans have a purpose, it is to get stalled solar enery to a higher degree of entropy.
I saw one scientist talking about how seriously dangerous hydrogen gas is when compared to any other gas you could transport and store.
Doing not talking works but please tell me all these projects have done extensive calculations on a forrest worth of envelopes
Very informative expose. Hydrogen promoters need to rethink.
I'm sorry but why use such a bad method to produce hydrogen when one of the best and easiest ways was invented over 100 years ago (although they didn't see the hydrogen production as a benefit) in the form of NiFe batteries? Simply create a battery energy storage site and collect the gas they give off when charging and now you have lots of stored electricity and hydrogen.
The Rube Goldberg approach to clean energy...
Proton technologies work in Canada might be of interest to you.
I disagree and would never spend a single penny on a project like this. its too obvious
"The right thing for the wrong reasons." I totally agree with you. (Especially the bit about, "doing not talking" in engineering.)
This project is nonsensical; better to make the H² as close to point of use as possible.
This is indeed and incredibly important project.
Mam after mechanical engineering is it good to take renewable energy as masters ?
Hope green tree project get up running it take in more carbon than tree then problem is what do with it.
"Offsetting public outrage" love it
Got room for a still to fuel my furnace and run my water heater. No coal needed.
Rosie, you have completely flipped your lid.
Unfortunately, every time I think of hydrogen storage, I think of the Hindenburg. It's so volatile, I wonder if the technical hurdles for storage and transportation will ever be overcome. And right now, it seems like the focus is using the hydrogen in hydrogen-powered automobiles. IMO the money being invested in hydrogen tech would be better spent on an increase in efficient mass transportation so that people weren't so dependent on automobiles.
Nobody want's to use hydrogen for cars, except maybe the Japanese. Hydrogen is needed for long time energy storage, heavy transportation, green steel, low co2 concrete and the chemical industry.
Hope they find out it’s a Fools Errand
Hydrogen, so clean, is hard to store and transport
While I'm impressed by your insight, knowledge, intelligence, balanced explanations, and more, in this case I think you underestimate the level of dishonesty involved in such projects. I could be wrong, it happens, but not very often.
*IF* they do an objective cost-benefit analysis based on that project, the idea will be abandoned. But then again, it wouldn't have been tried for practicality in the first place based on what is already old knowledge about hydrogen.
The only significant technical practical advantage of hydrogen as an energy carrier is it's fantastic gravimetric energy density, which isn't purely unproblematic. Sure, the hydrogen itself has no carbon, so you can use it without emitting CO2, while using it, but I don't consider that to be a significant advantage because you can make hydrocarbons with hydrogen and CO2 that otherwise would be released. Even in a fossil free future we will produce concentrated CO2, if you stick that carbon to hydrogen for a while instead of releasing it, you just delay the release, slightly, but you're not adding CO2 [net] to the atmosphere.
Also, the CO2 from using the synthetic fuel could be collected, at least if the fuel is used in large stationary power plants, and not vehicles, and for almost all vehicles, batteries are already much better than combustion engines or fuel cells.
Hydrogen fuel is the last big hope for the fossil fuel industry as a whole, a way to hide the problems, and delay actual "decarbonisation".
I think solving the problems with hydrogen as a energy carrier, for other than niche applications, isn't a task for engineers, it's a task for magicians. The idea of a hydrogen economy was presented 99 years ago, tomorrow, as I'm writing this, by J. B. S. Haldane. The specific term "hydrogen economy" is at least over half a century old. The fuel cell was invented in 1838, over 2 decades before the first rechargeable battery was invented. And, it hasn't been forgotten since then and rediscovered recently, billions of dollars has been invested in R&D related to hydrogen fuel. And, except for niche applications we're still *very* far from making "green", or "blue", hydrogen fuel a viable alternative.
Producing hydrogen through electrolysis is not just expensive in energy losses, the equipment is expensive, not only in upfront cost, there's also significant costs in maintenance. And then there's the huge problem of storing hydrogen, even in liquid form the density of hydrogen is only about 0.071, that is, 71 grams per litre, due to the high gravimetric energy density that's about 2.3 kWh, before conversion losses, and about 1 kWh power can be retrieved from that, and about as much possibly usable waste heat is produced. That is after spending roughly 1 kWh just for liquefying the hydrogen, and lost almost a kWh in the electrolysis.
So, electricity, to liquid hydrogen, and back to electricity, it takes about 4 kWh to get 1 kWh usable power back, and 1 kWh potentially somewhat useful heat.
And that is just the pure process energy, not counting any transport, or any energy represented in equipment or leakage and so on, I think the issue of whether a 25% round trip efficiency can be achieved in reality now, or if we might be able to achieve in the vicinity of 30% in the future, is irrelevant. A complete LCA would show that reaching even 10% would take a long time, and we're currently far from having a relevant excess of renewable power to produce hydrogen from, and CCS is, as a general solution, largely a scam.
Instead of examine ways to export fossil energy, disguised as an attempt to find ways to export future excess of renewable energy, of which Australia seems to have great potential for, why not just have the energy intensive industries in Australia? Sure, Japan still needs energy, and they have an absurd population density, but extracting whatever energy they need from fossil free sources in and around Japan is going to be a lot easier than producing the same amount of usable energy from actual "green" and or "blue" hydrogen in Australia and ship it to Japan.
' I could be wrong, it happens, but not very often.' Är du svensk? Den meningen översätts på ett mycket arrogant sätt.
@@4drops Given that there is a great deal of merit in the contents of Åslund's rebuttal it still misses the point that though 'bad' the 'project' still has merit, if only to establish how bad 'bad' really is. My initial response was more linguistic than factual his remark 'I could be wrong, it happens, but not very often.´ could be humorous (if softened with a smiley), inadvertent due to transposing between a first & second language or arrogant. Arrogance can be counter productive in any debate 🙂 (yep, you see what I did there).
@@BernardLS I see how it can be interpreted as somewhat arrogant, but not that "very arrogant", as in "mycket arrogant", is the interpretation, that's not on me, in my opinion. But hey, I could be wrong, and so on... 😁
I wasn't trying to debate Rosie, especially not in a polemic way.
About hydrogen, It seems to me that you missed my point, after billions of dollars spent, over decades, hydrogen still needs multiple extreme technological breakthroughs for green or blue hydrogen to become a reasonable widely used alternative for storing and transporting energy. Spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a project that will confirm once again, that green or blue hydrogen won't be a relevant alternative for general energy storage or transport in the foreseeable future.
Extreme resources are required, to produce, store and then use hydrogen. And it's actually dangerous, it's not comparable to petrol or diesel fuel in that regard. And, round trip efficiency is ridiculous. One or two of those aspects being somewhat problematic doesn't have to be a dealbreaker, but when all three, cost, danger and losses, all are om absurd levels.
BTW, the ambiguity, and room for interpreting that single sentence as slightly provocative, if you choose to was not entirely accidental, that usually separate people with other opinions that still wants to debate me into two groups, one that at least think they have actual arguments about the subject, and the other, that direct their attention towards me.
To be very clear, this is a somewhat nice version of me trying to make you understand that I don't appreciate being told that what I wrote can be misinterpreted, especially not in a condescending way. Was that a machine translation to Swedish? As if I somehow gave you the impression that I'm unable to comprehend short, simple sentences in English?
But at least your intentions were good, you cared about the success in my future debates, or so you imply. I don't even want to know how you reached the conclusion that want or need you to teach me how to debate.
@@fishyerik well that went well, as you surmise Swedish is not my mother tongue. A fact my wife usually points out by saying 'you are talking like an 08, again' or 'stop you are making my ears hurt'. When I did work the agreement with my colleagues was I would not correct their Swedish if they did not correct my English. hej då!
New subscriber here form Saudi Arabia
Nice one Rosie, many thanks for this.
El mercado siempre utilizara la opcion de energia mas economica, segun el limite legal imperante
This extends the old engineering adage ‘If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly’ to ‘If a *bad* job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly’ !
Also the corollary, 'any job that fills my pocket is a good job'
From the data available at Internet, I concluded the vessel "Suiso Frontier" will not use the boil-off gas to fuel the engines. It states the propulsion is diesel-electric and the BOG will be burned in the GCU. A missed opportunity. Most LNG vessels use the BOG for propulsion and/or generators.
With 85 tons H2 in store, he cannot even reach Japan.
Knowing what will not work is a very big step to seeing what will work. One addition: In transporting liquid hydrogen, some amount inevitably boils off. It so happens that Sir Harry Ricardo had much the same situation with lighter-than-air craft that used hydrogen for lift. As the craft's engines consumed liquid fuel, the craft became lighter. To maintain altitude, they had to eject hydrogen -- a great waste and cost factor. Ricardo found that he could use that hydrogen by feeding it to the engines, and in the process, greatly improve their thermal efficiency. The reason is that thermal efficiency improves as the air:fuel is made leaner. No hydrocarbon can get below an equivalence ratio of about 0.65, as it will not ignite or combustion will be incomplete. With 5-10% (BTUs) of the fuel in hydrogen, the equivalence ratio can drop below 0.20, with an improvement in efficiency of up to 30%. So, the transportation of liquid hydrogen could very much improve the efficiency of the ships. Of course, all the other issues that you mention remain.
WADR to Ricardo the Otto cycle engines of today would be able to burn the hydrogen more efficiently. Advances have been made in combustion technology rather in the same way that the containment of the hydrogen would probably not now be in cow stomachs. The boil off would also aid cargo system cooling but the low point would need to be arrival at the loadport so ROB after discharge to achieve that would represent a reduction in overall transport efficiency,