Australia Goes All-in on Green Hydrogen

Season’s greetings, ATSers!!

For those who have not been following, Australia has created a membrane for hydrogen fuel cells that was hailed as a breakthrough for CISRO (I have a thread about that around here). One of the issues was/is storage and shipping of hydrogen. Storage can explode (has in the past) with either gas or liquid forms. And shipping has the same issues (a diffuse flammable gas, or cryogenic liquid gas that is expensive to keep cold) is problematic too. Then, Aussie scientists figured out how to convert hydrogen gas to ammonia!

Problem solved right? We can outfit vehicles with HFCs that use hydrogen from ammonia. Simple!

Well, current hydrogen producers were POd at the government for backing the new hydrogen initiative. Most hydrogen producers create hydrogen gas from natural gas [correctin: methane is cracked, not natural gas]. This generates CO2 and waste heat. This is known as “blue” hydrogen production. Australia was backing wind/solar hydrolizers or “green” hydrogen production.

The following article explains how Australia is going all in on green hydrogen production!

Welcome to Australia, where a green-hydrogen boom is in full swing. Both the massive and the toy-size vehicles are about selling Australians on the transformative potential of green hydrogen—hydrogen gas produced from renewable energy—to decarbonize their fossil-fuel-based economy.

IEEE Spectrum (spectrum.ieee.org), 25-12-2022: Australia Goes All-in on Green Hydrogen.

This is good news for those us [who are] tired of the sad, tired, arguments about “that stupid gas” (Elon Musk, source). Here is a huge foot forward.

It won’t be smooth. It won’t be pretty. But such a huge shift in focus by an entire country can show other countries (ahem, Merica) that it can be done!

All the nay sayers can do is wait until they can say, “I told you so”!

Merry Christmas! Happy reading! And may this be a crack in Big Oil and the final nails in coffin for coal.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
Oh thanks for posting a good news story!
All my electricity has come from the sun for 2 years now, so if green hydrogen can heat my home and boil my water, well it really will feel like Christmas to me then!
S&F

Hydrogen is recognized as the “future fuel” and the most promising alternative of fossil fuels due to its remarkable properties including exceptionally high energy content per unit mass (142 MJ/kg), low mass density, and massive environmental and economical upsides. A wide spectrum of methods in H2 production, especially carbon-free approaches, H2purification, and H2storage have been investigated to bring this energy source closer to the technological deployment. Hydrogen hydrates are among the most intriguing material paradigms for H2storage due to their appealing properties such as low energy consumption for charge and discharge, safety, cost-effectiveness

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...#:~:text=Hydrogen%20hydrates%20are%20among%20the,effectiveness%2C%20an d%20favorable%20environmental%20features. Bob Lazar uses hydrogen hydrate for his corvette.

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
Then, Aussie scientists figured out how to convert hydrogen gas to ammonia!

Problem solved right? We can outfit vehicles with HFCs that use hydrogen from ammonia. Simple!

Well, not quite. First off, making ammonia with hydrogen is no great trick. Just add nitrogen. I grant that transporting and storing ammonia is safer and easier than hydrogen. But then, storing water is safer and easier than ammonia. The trick is separating the hydrogen out when you want to.

As the owner of an early 80s "computer" controlled carburetor car, I studied the emissions controls in depth to make sure they were all working properly. The two main gases the emission controls were focused on reducing were carbon monoxide and nitrous oxides.

If you're going to strip the hydrogen out of ammonia to use as fuel, that's going to leave a lot of free nitrogen. That will produce more nitrous oxides than a conventional gasoline engine. Of course, you'd get less carbon monoxide, if any, since you're not using a fossil fuel.

Plus, you still have the same problem as with any hydrogen combustion engine. Hydrogen / Oxygen combustion produces a LOT of heat. 2,182C vs. 232C for gasoline. Engine components made of aluminum alloys are not going to cut it. Thermal expansion of things like pistons, rings, and bearings would also be a factor. Don't count on a hydrogen combustion engine with a long lifespan unless you could make it out of tungsten or platinum alloys.

a reply to: angeltone

The article mostly focuses on industrial use and creation of a market for a non-existent industry (and how much more renewables are needed).

Although not front and center in the article, the side benefit is less carbon emissions by current industries including power generation. And that is 2030s-40s range. On the plus side, there arehydrlyzers for home use to help power both your vehicle and home!

I am sure that more products will come out as H2 is adopted around the region.

Yeah, a ray of sunshine in the darkest of winter is welcome!!

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

What you do not seem to realize is that hydrogen, unlike natural gas or coal, is not a primary energy source. It is merely and energy transport medium.

There is not doubt hydrogen can be generated from a variety of methods.
The issue is does it make sense ?

Think about it logically for a moment:
Option A
- you will generate electicity using wind or solar
- you will then use that electricity to create hydrogen
- you will spend a lot of energy moving this low density hydrogen by truck OR add an extra step and convert this hydrogen to ammonia and then move that by truck
- you will build a service station infractrure to feed this hydrogen/ammonia to cars
- hydrogen/ammonia cars will then convert this to hydrogen and then back to electricity to power electric car motors

And you get power losses at each of those steps above

Or
Option B
- you will generate electicity using wind or solar
- you will then transmit this electricity via the existing electric grid
- you will build a service station infractrure to feed this electricity to cars whose motors use electricity directly
This option has far less conversion losses

Option A is clearly more wasteful than Option B

Elon is right
QED

a reply to: VictorVonDoom

There are newer capture devices and re-catalyzers that can help.

IIRC, they are not burning ammonia because of that fact (nitrogen oxides), but “cracking” it back to H2. The leftover nitrogen is dealt with (recirculating back into the ammonia formation stream).

But, the waste is known and can be dealt with. Without some super engineered materials to hold hydrogen, it looks like ammonia is the way to go since it is already being used.

Another thing not mentioned often is how hot HFC run. Again, we should learn from the internal combustion engine and not pump waste materials into the atmosphere.

One of the nice things is we have an entire country attempting to do this first. And one of them ngs that I know are risk and business processes. Risks are costs and have to be assumed by the producer for new products. When you see what works, how it succeeded, then you learn from your predecessors. And you can reduce some costs and some risks.

It will be interesting to see what happens and how these hurdles are dealt with!

Australia Goes All-in on Green Hydrogen

I would be very wary of green hydrogen .

originally posted by: VictorVonDoom

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
Then, Aussie scientists figured out how to convert hydrogen gas to ammonia!

Problem solved right? We can outfit vehicles with HFCs that use hydrogen from ammonia. Simple!

Well, not quite. First off, making ammonia with hydrogen is no great trick. Just add nitrogen. I grant that transporting and storing ammonia is safer and easier than hydrogen. But then, storing water is safer and easier than ammonia. The trick is separating the hydrogen out when you want to.

As the owner of an early 80s "computer" controlled carburetor car, I studied the emissions controls in depth to make sure they were all working properly. The two main gases the emission controls were focused on reducing were carbon monoxide and nitrous oxides.

If you're going to strip the hydrogen out of ammonia to use as fuel, that's going to leave a lot of free nitrogen. That will produce more nitrous oxides than a conventional gasoline engine. Of course, you'd get less carbon monoxide, if any, since you're not using a fossil fuel.

Plus, you still have the same problem as with any hydrogen combustion engine. Hydrogen / Oxygen combustion produces a LOT of heat. 2,182C vs. 232C for gasoline. Engine components made of aluminum alloys are not going to cut it. Thermal expansion of things like pistons, rings, and bearings would also be a factor. Don't count on a hydrogen combustion engine with a long lifespan unless you could make it out of tungsten or platinum alloys.

shhh, they're the government, right? they want what's good for their people.

just let them burn a few billions on research first, then they'll be able to come to the same conclusions.

What's the energy return? We need 15 or better globally, and increasing to meet greater demand.

a reply to: M5xaz

Plan A uses known production and transport methods (the same arguments can be said about petroleum production, but that happens). This is not full replacement for the population (did you read the article?) but supplementing the transportation of goods, first, setting up the infrastructure for future development into the public sector.

Plan B ain’t a plan at all. You lose 15-20% of your electricity pushing it down the wire, which is a waste of energy, money, and time.

Build up the infrastructure, the public will come.

Who says wind and solar are the only options to energy production? Didn’t you see the nuclear fusion announcement last week?? So, A + B, equals C. So to utilize fusion as an energy source when you are generating it 24x7 at a larger rate than you can consume, then you will need both a method of storage (flow batteries, hydrogen/ammonia, heat, kinetic energy, but in this case, look, here is how to do it with hydrogen), and transport.

As far as fusion goes, watch for superconducting transmission lines. Then your Plan A will make sense.

Power generation is not one technology takes all! It will take everything, even LNG (used correctly), to rein in the global toxic soup we are drowning in.

And all it takes is one good example of how to do it right and then everyone else will follow.

At least that’s the idea. I suppose we can just keep doing what we are doing and say dumb things like “plant more trees”…

originally posted by: jedi_hamster

shhh, they're the government, right? they want what's good for their people.

just let them burn a few billions on research first, then they'll be able to come to the same conclusions.

Sometimes I think of two really great things from the past, CD drives for computers and compact fluorescent light bulbs.

CD drives were the bees knees when they first came out. Over 400 times the storage space of a floppy. Every computer had to have one. Within two years you could get one with 2x the speed. A year later 4x. Then in a few months 6x, 10x, and on. I forgot what the final speed was before DVD drives became available and it was rinse and repeat.

It helped the economy, I suppose. Everyone had to constantly upgrade, spent money, created jobs, etc. Now imagine if they put a couple more years in R&D before they came out with the first CD drive. Start off with the 24x CDRW drive and put that on the market. Think how much money would have been lost not selling the 1x, 2x, 4x, 10x, and so on. It's called Planned Obsolescence, make something that will have to be replaced even if it's fully functional.

Compact Florescent Bulbs were done the same way. Many advantages over incandescent, so everyone bought them. But even then, LEDs were on the horizon. After everyone had bought CF, then there was talk of the problems. The radiation, the mercury, disposal, etc. LEDs weren't great at the time, but slowly they became much better and totally replaced CFs.

Imagine if researchers had recognized the trend and we skipped the CF bulbs altogether. Consumers would have saved a lot of money, but corporations would have lost a lot of money.

----------------

When it comes to burning hydrogen for energy, I think it's a great idea. The only byproduct is water, no pollution, good deal. There are three problems to overcome.

First, of course, is getting the hydrogen. While it is the most abundant element on Earth, it is usually already bound to other atoms, like oxygen or nitrogen. It takes energy to separate from other atoms.

Second, if you're going to chemically combine hydrogen with oxygen (or another element) to produce energy, you need a way to extract that energy for your useful purpose, like kinetic energy. A steam turbine can use heat to create kinetic energy. An internal combustion engine, on the other hand, uses the expansion of the burning fuel for kinetic energy. Let me just cut this paragraph short by saying that steam turbines are not very practical when it comes to small scale transportation like cars or trucks. You would need an internal combustion engine capable of handling the temperatures created by burning hydrogen. I'm not sure if metallurgical science has caught up with that yet.

Third, you need a way to store and transport the hydrogen itself; no mean feat. Lots of physical and safety issues there.

That seems to be what the OP is addressing. If taking hydrogen and combining it with nitrogen to make ammonia makes it safer and easier to transport, well, OK, that's a step in the right direction, right? But is it a step that we will step beyond very soon? Obviously, ammonia has it's own problems when it comes to storing and transporting.

Is ammonia the CF lightbulb of hydrogen storage, or the CD drive? Obviously, it is something we will have to move beyond at some point. More importantly, we need to solve points 1 and 2 before point 3 becomes a problem. The question for the taxpayers and consumers is, how much money will we have to spend before the upgrades are available?

a reply to: VictorVonDoom

i disagree about the CD drives, partially about the CF lightbulbs as well.

first CD drives came out very long time ago. main usage of CDs was music storage, not data storage, and while data storage worked a bit differently (constant linear vs constant angular speed iirc), the 1x speed was more or less related to that baseline. not sure what was the max speed in the end (48x? 52x?), but i doubt earlier PCs could keep up with it.

many different things were advancing at once and CD drives were used in many different devices (heck, even older computers like amiga cdtv and cd32, had one, then later on came first sony playstation). delaying them would delay ton of other stuff.

as for CF lightbulbs, they were ok for that time. LEDs weren't there yet, and CF lightbulbs were efficient. some are working fine to this day.

sure, when there's a profit to be made, corporations take the chance, no arguing about that. but still, not releasing some product because "we'll develop newer, better thing later on" makes people use older technology for longer, holding adoption of what's available because of something that's yet to be developed. it makes little sense.

where's the limit? why release CD drives, when DVD clearly was to be expected? heck, why not wait for bluray? why do we even have gasoline-powered cards, why didn't we wait for electric ones to make sense?

we don't need hydrogen fuel cells. we need ZPE. everything else is BS.

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
a reply to: M5xaz

Plan A uses known production and transport methods (the same arguments can be said about petroleum production, but that happens). This is not full replacement for the population (did you read the article?) but supplementing the transportation of goods, first, setting up the infrastructure for future development into the public sector.

Plan B ain’t a plan at all. You lose 15-20% of your electricity pushing it down the wire, which is a waste of energy, money, and time.

Build up the infrastructure, the public will come.

Who says wind and solar are the only options to energy production? Didn’t you see the nuclear fusion announcement last week?? So, A + B, equals C. So to utilize fusion as an energy source when you are generating it 24x7 at a larger rate than you can consume, then you will need both a method of storage (flow batteries, hydrogen/ammonia, heat, kinetic energy, but in this case, look, here is how to do it with hydrogen), and transport.

As far as fusion goes, watch for superconducting transmission lines. Then your Plan A will make sense.

Power generation is not one technology takes all! It will take everything, even LNG (used correctly), to rein in the global toxic soup we are drowning in.

And all it takes is one good example of how to do it right and then everyone else will follow.

At least that’s the idea. I suppose we can just keep doing what we are doing and say dumb things like “plant more trees”…

You again miss the point
The energy originally created by wind and solar is electrical. Same for nuclear, fusion or what have you
The point is that "green hydrogen" is just a energy distribution method. Green hydrogen take the place of the copper wires in the electrical grid
There is just no way something as convoluted a green hydrogen can be as efficient as copper wires.

Let's calculate the efficiency of each process. Assume you start with 10 kW of electricity from wind/solar/whatever


For option A, "green hydrogen" even assuming an optimistic 90% efficient energy conversion at each step

Option A
- you will generate electricity using wind or solar 10kW
- you will then use that electricity to create hydrogen - 0.9 x 10 kW=9kW
- you will spend a lot of energy moving this low density hydrogen by truck OR add an extra step and convert this hydrogen to ammonia and then move that by truck- 0.9 x9kW= 8.1kW
- you will build a service station infrastructure to feed this hydrogen/ammonia to cars
- hydrogen/ammonia cars will then convert this to hydrogen- 0.9x 8.1kW=7.2 kW
- and then back to electricity to power electric car motors - 0.9 x 7.2kW= 6.3 kW available at the motors
Efficiency Overall= 6.3kW/10kW = 63 % efficient

Option B Electric from source to consumption
Taking your figure of 15% losses on transmission grid to car battery - generating 10kW by wind or solar becomes 8.5 kW
Taking your figure of 15% losses from car battery to car motors - that 8.5kW becomes 7.2 kW
Efficiency Overall becomes 7.2 kW/10 kW =72 % efficient

Like Elon, I just don't see the point of hydrogen as a method to transfer energy. The eventual arrival of superconducting wires like you suggest weakens the case for hydrogen even more.

Cheers

Another brick in the wall…

Sciencedaily.com, Feb 1, 2023: Seawater split to produce 'green' hydrogen.

Which was the WHOLE post’s point: Australia has figured out how to make hydrogen as an energy source and is working on making it a nationwide source of energy (despite all the losses in energy conversion because it is “green”).

ETA:

"The performance of a commercial electrolyser with our catalysts running in seawater is close to the performance of platinum/iridium catalysts running in a feedstock of highly purified deionised water.”

(same source)