Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

Australia is continuing to research and expand the use of hydrogen. The idea being to ship sunlight around the world - solar leccy used to produce hydrogen.

'The perfect storm': hydrogen gains ground on LNG as alternative fuel

pile-o-stone

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Australia is continuing to research and expand the use of hydrogen. The idea being to ship sunlight around the world - solar leccy used to produce hydrogen.

'The perfect storm': hydrogen gains ground on LNG as alternative fuel

They could fill large dirigibles with hydrogen and use solar powered engines to fly the hydrogen overseas. What could possibly go wrong?



Or alternatively:

"Another option is to combine the hydrogen with nitrogen to make ammonia. It’s a technique that is well-established, and has been done on an industrial scale for nearly a century, Dolan says. Ammonia can be compressed into a liquid at much more moderate temperatures, and is relatively easy to transport.

What was missing – until recently – was the technology to extract the hydrogen back out of the ammonia at the other end of the export equation. However CSIRO recently announced the establishment of a pilot plant to test technology that can refine a 100% pure stream of hydrogen from gasified ammonia using a metal membrane.

The pilot will start by generating just five kilograms of hydrogen a day from ammonia, but it is hoped this proof of concept will be the last link in the chain exporting Australian sunshine to Japanese, Korean or even European shores."

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/may/19/how-australia-can-use-hydrogen-to-export-its-solar-power-around-the-world

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Australia is continuing to research and expand the use of hydrogen. The idea being to ship sunlight around the world - solar leccy used to produce hydrogen.

Won't work

There is sunshine everywhere why turn high grade fuel (electricity) to much lower grade fuel (hydrogen) to even lower grade fuel (ammonia) with each step requiring chemical plants, people and capital, time and losses along the way

mmmmikey

GreatApe wrote: »

There is sunshine everywhere why turn high grade fuel (electricity) to much lower grade fuel (hydrogen) to even lower grade fuel (ammonia) with each step requiring chemical plants, people and capital, time and losses along the way

The answer to your question is fairly simple


Although there is sunshine everywhere, where I live there's rather more of it in the summer than the winter, with my solar panels generating on average 10 times more energy per day in June than December. And that sunshine isn't very evenly districuted globally either.



Any technology that allows my summer energy to be bottled up and used when I need it rather than wasted has to be a good thing. Similarly, I'd be very happy to buy in solar energy from Australia once the science has been developed enough for that to happen. Granted, when you take into account conversion efficiencies, pollution, etc. the economics & benefits may not be there yet (and may or may not ever get there) the potential benefits are so obvious and huge that it has to be worth investigating.


A few years ago people were saying wind energy was a waste of time and we'd have to have solar farms the size of Wales to make it worthwhile, but those folks have certainly been proved wrong.


These things take time and take patience and acceptance that the goal is worth the risk of the occasional false start. Much easier to stand on the sidelines and make negative comments than to actually get these things working!

Martyn1981

mmmmikey wrote: »

The answer to your question is fairly simple

Yep, fairly simple, plus it's also interesting to compare the two countries, one having a relatively small population and vast amounts of open land, the other having a large population, high density and quite a lot of mountains. It's also a reason why one of them is looking into off-shore wind and floating off-shore wind more than the other - almost sounds a bit like the UK?

But there's also another answer - Japan is not stupid, neither is Australia, so if they can both see a market that has potential value, then presumably they know more about this than we do.

Edit - Also, this isn't new news, it's been talked about for several years, and I've definitely posted 'stuff' in the past, and mentioned Japan and Australia formulating new shipping rules to apply to transporting Hydrogen. The new news bit is at the start of the article:

In March, the Queensland University of Technology made history when it achieved the first export of a small quantity of clean, green hydrogen produced in Australia from renewable energy, to Japanese energy giant JXTG – proving that it was in fact possible.

GreatApe

mmmmikey wrote: »

The answer to your question is fairly simple

Although there is sunshine everywhere, where I live there's rather more of it in the summer than the winter, with my solar panels generating on average 10 times more energy per day in June than December. And that sunshine isn't very evenly districuted globally either.

Any technology that allows my summer energy to be bottled up and used when I need it rather than wasted has to be a good thing. Similarly, I'd be very happy to buy in solar energy from Australia once the science has been developed enough for that to happen. Granted, when you take into account conversion efficiencies, pollution, etc. the economics & benefits may not be there yet (and may or may not ever get there) the potential benefits are so obvious and huge that it has to be worth investigating.

A few years ago people were saying wind energy was a waste of time and we'd have to have solar farms the size of Wales to make it worthwhile, but those folks have certainly been proved wrong.

These things take time and take patience and acceptance that the goal is worth the risk of the occasional false start. Much easier to stand on the sidelines and make negative comments than to actually get these things working!

It will never be able to beat inter connectors

What would be more sane?

To build a worldwide electricity grid so solar can act as base load (or even load following) and these inter connectors might have 5-10% losses and are for all intents just pieces of inert copper that will last hundreds of years and emit no pollutants

Or to build masses and masses of chemical plants to distill water, create hydrogen, create ammonia, liquefy the lot, build ships, docks, ports, chemical plants, offloading ports, pipelines for all this, then CCGTs to convert the lot back into electricity and going from electron to electron losing perhaps more than 75%. And paying for all the people to manage run and maintain this massive infrastructure?

It is not about research getting chemical plants cheaper, no amount of research is going to beat thermodynamic limits no amount of research is going to make the above cheaper than pieces of copper stick in the ground.

If you need summer to winter you stick a piece of copper in the ground from the southern hemisphere to the northern. If you need to shift peak output by 8 hours you stick a piece of copper in the ground going east or west by 8 hours of timezone


But having said this, much more likely is you do none of this instead you opt fro 50% capacity factor offshore wind with 80% correlation over a country the size of the UK with some inter-connectors to nearby nations and accept some curtailment and the result is you can electrify more or less all needs (electricity transport and heating) without having to magic up high grade fuel to low grade fuel mass chemical industries or a worldwide grid

zeupater

pile-o-stone wrote: »

They could fill large dirigibles with hydrogen and use solar powered engines to fly the hydrogen overseas. What could possibly go wrong?



Or alternatively:

"Another option is to combine the hydrogen with nitrogen to make ammonia. It’s a technique that is well-established, and has been done on an industrial scale for nearly a century, Dolan says. Ammonia can be compressed into a liquid at much more moderate temperatures, and is relatively easy to transport.

What was missing – until recently – was the technology to extract the hydrogen back out of the ammonia at the other end of the export equation. However CSIRO recently announced the establishment of a pilot plant to test technology that can refine a 100% pure stream of hydrogen from gasified ammonia using a metal membrane.

The pilot will start by generating just five kilograms of hydrogen a day from ammonia, but it is hoped this proof of concept will be the last link in the chain exporting Australian sunshine to Japanese, Korean or even European shores."

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/may/19/how-australia-can-use-hydrogen-to-export-its-solar-power-around-the-world

Hi

Seeing that triggers memories of totally apt lyrics ..."Lots of people talk ... and few of them know", particularly for some that spin so much that they must be really D&C most of the time ... :cool:

HTH
LZ

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Yep, fairly simple, plus it's also interesting to compare the two countries, one having a relatively small population and vast amounts of open land, the other having a large population, high density and quite a lot of mountains. It's also a reason why one of them is looking into off-shore wind and floating off-shore wind more than the other - almost sounds a bit like the UK?

But there's also another answer - Japan is not stupid, neither is Australia, so if they can both see a market that has potential value, then presumably they know more about this than we do.

Edit - Also, this isn't new news, it's been talked about for several years, and I've definitely posted 'stuff' in the past, and mentioned Japan and Australia formulating new shipping rules to apply to transporting Hydrogen. The new news bit is at the start of the article:

Most ideas go nowhere surely you know that?

Martyn1981

For those that will recall the first subsidy free contracts for off-shore wind, well here is more meat on the bones for the one that will be completed first (2024).

[Fingers crossed, the upcoming UK CfD auction in May may bring in close to subsidy free bids with caps of £56/MWh (2024) and £53/MWh (2025). The UK prices include the cost of infrastructure build out of the grid, whereas the German and Netherlands prices don't.]

Siemens Gamesa 10 Megawatt Wind Turbine Set For World’s 1st Zero-Subsidy Offshore Wind Farm

Martyn1981

Sometimes we need cheering up, so here's a study explaining how we can meet 2050 Paris targets (even achieve it sooner), and how it will mean cheaper energy costs. So it's all doable ...... if we want to do it.

Also, and just a personal thought, but as we hit the 2020's, I'd suggest that whilst still new, the idea of RE, EV's and heat pumps, is no longer 'new' news, just the direction of travel which we are staring to get used to already. I think 'normalizing' is the word I'm looking for.

Want To Limit Global Warming? Electrify Everything, Finds Study