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

[NNadir]

Last edited Mon Jul 17, 2023, 06:34 PM - Edit history (1)

The original working title for this long post was this:

"2022 Primary Energy Sources for Making Hydrogen, Exergy Destruction, and Climate Denial."

I will discuss a number of papers from the primary scientific literature in this post, beginning with this one: Muhammad Arfan, Ola Eriksson, Zhao Wang, Shveta Soam, Life cycle assessment and life cycle costing of hydrogen production from biowaste and biomass in Sweden, Energy Conversion and Management, Volume 291, 1 September 2023, 117262

This paper contains statements of reality – it gives the current sources of primary energy to make hydrogen for the industries that rely on it, the ammonia industry, the dangerous fossil fuel refining industry, and (the only application with potential energy implications) the methanol industry. The paper then goes into some soothsaying about making hydrogen by the steam reforming of biomass. (I think that the steam reforming of biomass may be a good idea as a minor component of air capture of atmospheric carbon dioxide, if, and only if, the steam's primary energy source is nuclear.)

It is, in my opinion, a fine paper.

Before going much further, let me define a word in the abandoned working title of this post that may not be familiar, even though it’s probably one of the most important words in the English language given the importance of climate change. The technical term for wasted energy in a process, energy lost to entropy, is "exergy destruction." Exergy is the amount of any form of primary or secondary energy - stored energy is never primary energy - that can be made useful, generally described as "work," i.e. energy consumed to accomplish a task, propelling a car, lighting a room.

I will use this term, exergy, below to show how much energy is wasted to make hydrogen from all sources of primary energy. Hydrogen and, for that matter, charging batteries are not primary energy, although regrettably people act as if they are. Storing energy in batteries or as hydrogen always results in exergy destruction. In any process, including but not limited to processes that consume energy to make hydrogen, energy recovery is never 100%. This is a consequence of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, a law not subject to repeal by wishful thinking. In undergraduate courses in thermodynamics, the ideal case wherein 100% energy recovery in a process is discussed in theoretical terms, the purpose of the discussion is to show that the result of 100% energy recovery is impossible. It follows, continuing with "percent talk" that any discussion of energy, including those about environmental impact, that ignores the laws of thermodynamics is nonsense and useless. In the case of the much hyped "hydrogen economy" this ignorance of the laws of thermodynamics lapses easily into climate denial.

I previously discussed, in the simplest terms accessible to me, entropy here: The Difference Between Thermodynamically Rich Heat and Heat as a Thermodynamic Degradant.

Recently I stepped into a firestorm of hydrogen worship over in GD where advocates for the fraudulent claim that hydrogen is "green" energy got into paroxysms of profound anger, some of it of the "kill the messenger" type, because their dogmatic denial of reality was being confronted with facts. I hate to say it, but in this, they sort of reminded me of people screaming at doctors and nurses in the hospital room of a dying Covid victim because the patient wasn't given the horse dewormer Ivermectin (or having bleach injections).

From my perspective, as will be clearly shown below, any ridiculous claim that hydrogen is "green energy" constitutes climate change denial. I personally am fed up with climate denial, with climate denial on my own end of the political spectrum, the left, as I am with climate change denial on the right. In many ways, climate denial on the left is worse for me, since it reflects on all of us, and shows us to be fools, easily led by cheap marketing.

It's no small matter.

Hydrogen is not primary energy, and all the screaming in the face of this fact will not change it, nor will screaming in the face of any person reporting as much will change it.

To make these points, that hydrogen is made using dangerous fossil fuels involving exergy destruction of the energy content in dangerous fossil fuels, in some of my own threads and in many others threads posted here by fossil fuel salespeople selling fossil fuels by rebranding them as hydrogen, lowering their energy output and greenwashing them - I've been regularly posting this graphic with numbers and a reference:

The caption:

Figure 1. Global current sources of H2 production (a), and H2 consumption sectors (b).

Progress on Catalyst Development for the Steam Reforming of Biomass and Waste Plastics Pyrolysis Volatiles: A Review Laura Santamaria, Gartzen Lopez, Enara Fernandez, Maria Cortazar, Aitor Arregi, Martin Olazar, and Javier Bilbao, Energy & Fuels 2021 35 (21), 17051-17084]

I referred to this graphic, and reproduced it, discussing a paper in the journal I discussed above here: The current sources and uses of hydrogen.

I keep this text handy because there are so many horrible "hydrogen is green" fantasies running around, this while the planet burns, that an assertion of reality seems required. Many of the people who nonetheless insist that the destructive and highly dangerous fantasy they have, or sell, hydrogen cars, hydrogen trucks, hydrogen ferries, hydrogen lawn mowers, hedge trimmers blah, blah, blah, respond to this reality by saying hydrogen could be made without fossil fuels.

One of the many reasons - an important reason, I think - that the planet is in flames is confusion between the conditional word "could" with the statement of reality connected with the verb form of being represented by the word "is".

Confusion rhymes with delusion. We're living in a delusional world, this at peril to the future of the planet.

In fact, trivial tiny amounts of it are made without fossil fuels, and the point of this post is to put numbers on how much hydrogen may be so made by appeals to numbers, using data obtained from references from reputable sources, these being the primary scientific literature (which is not oracular, but is nonetheless reputable) and sources like the International Energy Agency, staffed by competent scientists and engineers from almost all the world's nations.

I know I can expect further outrage, dogmatic unreferenced unsupported assertions, soothsaying, spin, and chanting. No amount of information can address dogma, be it religious or otherwise.

It goes with the territory, but silence is complicity. Embracing reality is the most important psychological issue of our times, and I consider it a duty to report reality.

Anyway, text from the paper cited at the outset of this post, published online last month but dated for the "September 2023" issue of Energy Conversion and Management,:

As of 2021, approximately 94 million tons (Mt) of hydrogen was produced globally. Of this, 47 % was generated from natural gas (NG), 27 % from coal, 22 % from oil as a byproduct, 3.7 % from water-electrolysis, and less than 1 % from bioresources [11]. The use of fossil-based hydrogen has raised environmental concerns, which can be addressed by the development of bioresources-based hydrogen technologies [12]. However, despite the advancement of bioresources-to-hydrogen and other transport fuel conversion technologies, there are still challenges regarding process optimization and scale-up [13]. As such, the sustainability of these routes, particularly in terms of economic and environmental factors, may vary depending on the substrate type, processing technology, energy source, and end-use. These aspects are typically assessed from a system perspective, using tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost assessment (LCC) [14].

The added bold is mine.

The first bold statement probably includes only people who abhor, as I do, fossil fuels. The second bolded statement is simply a statement of the fact that one requires energy to make hydrogen, to repeat and repeat and repeat - not that repeating facts matters in our culture anymore, not here, not anywhere - hydrogen is not primary energy.

Note that the authors, who are engaging in analytical soothsaying, as opposed to blind dogmatic soothsaying, honestly report that less than 1% - probably much less than 1% - of hydrogen is made by the reformation of biomass, and their fine paper is a discussion of what a large scale biomass based hydrogen source would look like in terms of environmental impact. "Would" like "could" is a conditional word and is not synonymous with "is."

There are small differences in the reported amounts sources of energy to produce hydrogen between the Energy and Fuels paper whose graphics I must have posted in this space well over 50 times, which works out to one time each for each of the ppm rises in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere in the 20 years I've written uselessly here and the paper cited at the outset of this post. The largest difference is in the amount of hydrogen produced by using coal as a primary energy source, which in "percent talk" is 9% higher. This may reflect an effect of time and the rising price of dangerous natural gas owing to the Ukraine War, a war funded by German antinukes who have been misrepresenting themselves as "going green." It may also represent the addition of hydrogen production in China. Both cases are somewhat speculative, but reasonable. In this post I will use the numbers from the Energy Conversion and Management paper for two reasons, one it is the most recent, and secondly because it goes beyond sometimes meaningless and/or misleading "percent talk" to give an absolute number for the amount of hydrogen being produced on this planet 94 million (metric) tons. With number we can calculate, in absolute terms, how much exergy is destroyed by making hydrogen on this planet.

The source for reference 11 in the paper is this one, from the IEA: IEA 2022 Global Hydrogen Review

The report there contains the following text:

Current status of hydrogen production

Demand for hydrogen is met almost entirely by hydrogen production from unabated fossil fuels. In 2021, total global production was 94 million tonnes of hydrogen (Mt H2) with associated emissions of more than 900 Mt CO2.30 Natural gas without CCUS31 is the main route and accounted for 62% of hydrogen production in 2021. Hydrogen is also produced as a by-product of naphtha reforming at refineries (18%) and then used for other refinery processes (e.g. hydrocracking, desulphurisation). Hydrogen production from coal accounted for 19% of total production in 2021, mainly based in China[. Limited amounts of oil (less than 1%) were also used to produce hydrogen.

Source: IEA: IEA 2022 Global Hydrogen Review, pg. 71.

Excepting the section title, I added the bold.

World carbon dioxide emissions in 2021 were roughly 36 billion tons, meaning that in "percent talk" that hydrogen related emissions of carbon dioxide amounted to about 2.7%, consistent with many figures I've seen over the years.

Oh, and all those hydrogen filling station in China ads posted here? They're advertisements for coal.

A figure:




IEA 2022 Global Hydrogen Review, pg. 71.

The LHV for hydrogen is said to be around 120 MJ/kg, suggesting that the energy content of this hydrogen - it's actually not used very much for energy purposes - is about 11.3 Exajoules (EJ). (Source: Engineering Tool Box) This is just 0.7 Exajoules less than the energy the solar and wind scam produced, after an expenditure of trillions of dollars on this junk. Obviously not all of the solar and wind energy on the planet, as useless as it is, went to produce hydrogen. The hydrogen must come from somewhere else, which is what I'm exploring here. The last data from the IEA World Energy Outlook, 2022, published this past November (as is a typical month for the release of the annual report) reported that world energy demand was 624 EJ. Thus the energy content of hydrogen production represents in "percent talk" about 1.8% of world energy demand. Again, however, hydrogen is mostly used for synthetic purposes, despite all the stupid ads one sees all the time here and else where for hydrogen cars, hydrogen trucks, hydrogen lawn mowers, etc.


Of course, this energy content involves exergy destruction of the energy content of dangerous fossil fuels, and so the task is to demonstrate how much exergy was destroyed to make hydrogen and account for the 900 MT of CO2 released in 2021, how much dangerous fossil fuel energy and how much electrical energy consumed at a thermodynamic loss to make hydrogen.

Let's start with the main fossil fuel from which hydrogen is made with exergy destruction:

There are a number of papers on this subject, some suggesting process improvements, but I chose this one Adam P. Simpson, Andrew E. Lutz, Exergy analysis of hydrogen production via steam methane reforming, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, Volume 32, Issue 18, 2007, Pages 4811-4820 because it's 16 years old and thus may well describe the design of new plants that function today, assuming that hydrogen reforming plants last longer than wind turbine junk does.

All we really need from this paper is to look a graphics from the paper:

The process system diagram, which looks totally reasonable to me:



The caption:

Fig. 2. Detailed schematic of SMR system. Dashed line represents system boundary.

The caption:

Fig. 3. Distribution of exergy flows into and out of the modeled SMR system.

We have, between exhaust and exergy destruction (lost heat) about 62.70% efficiency for the production of hydrogen from dangerous natural gas, 44 million tons from the percentage of hydrogen made this way, again at 120 MJ/kg having an energy value of 5.3 Exajoules, suggesting that the energy consumed to produce it involved 5.3/.627 = 8.5 EJ, with 3.2 EJ of the energy content of the dangerous natural gas destroyed.

Next let's turn to the dangerous fossil fuel coal and the exergy destruction associated with it.

For an account of exergy destruction by the steam reformation of coal, I'm turning to a more recent paper, this one by Chinese authors, this paper: Song He, Lin Gao, Rui Dong, Sheng Li, A novel hydrogen production system based on the three-step coal gasification technology thermally coupled with the chemical looping combustion process, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, Volume 47, Issue 11, 2022, Pages 7100-7112.

Hydrogen salespeople who come here to run ads about Chinese hydrogen stations, always take the time to show large tracts of Chinese land wasted to make solar cell industrial parks. This as a marketing tool, frankly a fraudulent marketing tool, to imply, without proof, that hydrogen and the useless solar industry are hand in hand, which of course, as noted by reference to the IEA, they are not. Nevertheless, here, in this paper, we have highly trained chemical engineers devoting effort to improving the process for making hydrogen from coal. I hate to push for critical thinking, which can be very unpopular, but if the solar and wind fantasy is so great and so cheap - neither are either - how is it that Chinese scientists are actively researching ways to make the production of hydrogen from coal more efficient?

Once again, at hydrogen stations in China, what is being sold is thermodynamically degraded coal made by wasting coal, and as the reference immediately above suggests, the Chinese intend to keep selling coal as hydrogen, by making it slightly less horrible than it already is.

How horrible is it?

I'll get to that in a minute. The introduction to the paper would be amusing, as contains deliberate dishonest marketing of the type that hydrogen salespeople here display, except there is no longer anything funny about climate change denial marketed with wishful thinking and delusion. Here is the text in question:

Hydrogen is a flexible energy carrier with potential applications across all energy sectors including electricity generation, alternative fuel and so on [1]. Besides, hydrogen offers significant advantages in controlling greenhouse gas emissions at the point of end-use. Therefore, hydrogen may not play a vital role in the future until key technologies and economic issues are solved [2]. Hydrogen production from fossil fuels with CO2 capture and storage (CCS) is considered as the cheapest and the most mature way not only for hydrogen production [3,4], but also for low-carbon utilization of high carbon fuel. Among these fossil fuels, coal is of great abundance and low cost, and about 18% of the world's hydrogen is produced from coal without CCS currently [5]. The hydrogen from coal inevitably results in CO2 emission, which mainly contributes to global warming [6,7]. Therefore, Hydrogen from coal with CCS will play an important role during the transition to the “Hydrogen Economy” [[8], [9], [10]]...

...at the point of use?...

You don't say? Given that the manufacture of hydrogen is rather dirty, isn't this qualifier more than a tad dishonest. It's what's the paper's about after all, exergy destruction, the wasting of energy.

It should be obvious, although hydrogen salespeople will deny this because -let’s face it, as we’re seeing, the whole hydrogen game is “bait and switch” – moving pollution somewhere else is not stopping pollution. It’s simply hiding it for marketing purposes. It’s climate denial; it’s lying.

As for CSS - the idea that we'll just build huge carbon dumps someday, somewhere, somehow, and all of our carbon dioxide problems will go away - this has proved as useless a fantasy as solar, wind, and oh yeah, the "hydrogen economy." All of these marketed but never useful schemes have been actively discussed and discussed and discussed, and then discussed again, and again and then again, in this century, with the result that since the week of July 2, 2000 and the week of July 2, 2023, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide has risen 52.37 ppm. There are still no carbon dioxide dumps on any scale that matters; there is no so called "renewable energy" nirvana on any scale that matters, and there certainly isn't any "green hydrogen," despite 50 years of bullshit about it.

The whole idea behind the concept of “chemical looping” – oxygen is carried by a metal, often iron – and then used to oxidize an organic fuel essentially in the solid phase is to produce pure carbon dioxide from the fuel, rather than a dilute solution of carbon dioxide, typically on the order of 5 to 10% in flue gas, in a smokestack. The driving notion behind this idea is to greenwash fossil fuels by claiming that huge carbon dioxide dumps (aka sequestration) will someday be practical, but all efforts to build them have lapsed into some space between ridiculous and absurd. Like hydrogen, solar and wind energy, evocations of CSS are wishful thinking substituting for reality, an effort to greenwash dangerous fossil fuels and the status quo.

This said, oxyfuel combustion, the combustion of organic matter is an atmosphere of pure oxygen, can do the same thing with the advantage of being amenable to flow systems, which are inherently superior in continuous flow systems. It is possible, albeit to a limited extent, to make oxyfuel combustion of biomass and other organic wastes, to produce pure carbon dioxide not for dumps, but for use.

Before turning to the exergy destruction associated with what remains as of now a trivial but overhyped means of hydrogen production, electrolysis, let’s complete a discussion of the true source of hydrogen from dangerous fossil fuels by turning our attention to exergy destruction where the hydrogen source is petroleum.

For this discussion, the paper I’ll choose refers to the gasification of oil residuals (almost certainly representing the bulk of oil gasified to hydrogen) to make hydrogen. The paper in question is this one:

Aldemar Martínez González, Electo Eduardo Silva Lora, José Carlos Escobar Palacio, Syngas production from oil sludge gasification and its potential use in power generation systems: An energy and exergy analysis, Energy, Volume 169, 2019, Pages 1175-1190

Exergy destruction – this is a cogeneration system producing electricity as a side product by the direct burning of syn gas, syngas being a mixture of hydrogen and carbon oxides, monoxide and dioxide that is actually useful, as opposed to pure hydrogen:



The caption:

Fig. 13. Energy and exergy distribution of the integrated gasification-power plant.

In this system the syn gas, without the separation of carbon oxides and hydrogen - said separation is another exergy destroying system - the syn gas is burned directly. This adds a layer to the previous two examples from coal and gas, which is that the hydrogen destroys exergy when it is burned, just like a battery destroys exergy when it is discharging. Energy storage is wasteful, particularly when the energy is stored by chemical means, as in a battery or in hydrogen. (The exergy destruction associated with the use of hydrogen, seen in this way, will actually be worse than what I've shown in the gas and coal reforming situations.)

The total exergy destroyed is 64.4%.

The nature of the wastes of this dirty process is shown in the Grassman diagram (a form of Sankey diagram that focuses on exergy destruction):



The caption:

Fig. 14. Grassmann diagram for exergy rate balance of the integrated gasification-power plant. (A) Oil sludge, (B) Gasifying agents, (C) Gasifier input, (D) Syngas, (E) Destroyed exergy from gasifier, (F) Ash production, (G) Tar/liquid mixture, (H) Cooling/Cleaning syngas, (I) Treated syngas, (J) Destroyed exergy from syngas treatment, (K) Destroyed exergy from ICE, (L) Power, (M) Exhaust gases.

An ugly mess is involved in producing hydrogen in this case, tar, ash, and of course, exhaust of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide.

Now let’s turn to electrolysis, the smallest source of hydrogen; much of it, I suspect, is tied to the chlorine industry, where hydrogen is an inevitable side product, although there are some tiny Potemkin plants hyped by hydrogen salespeople to divert attention from how dirty hydrogen is.

For electrolyzer efficiency, I will rely on the figures from the following paper, which evaluates the solar hydrogen fantasy that’s been kicking around for decade after decade of hype – I remember this from my youth and am now an old man – but has not produced significant hydrogen, is not producing significant hydrogen and will not produce significant hydrogen, all mindless soothsaying to the contrary:

Valeria Juárez-Casildo, Ilse Cervantes, Carlos A. Cervantes-Ortiz, R. de G. González-Huerta, Key aspects in quantifying massive solar hydrogen production: Energy intermittence, water availability and electrolyzer technology, Journal of Cleaner Production, Volume 371, 2022.

2.7. Production and cost scenarios

Different scenarios of production and costs were analyzed to compute the sensitivity index. The first one corresponded to different electrolyzer technology and therefore electrolyzer efficiency. Efficiencies of 75% and 65% were considered in this work as these values constitute extreme typical values of new and used electrolyzers of PEM and Alkaline type (Schmidt et al., 2017).

For calculation purposes, I will use the intermediate figure, 70%.

For the primary energy sources for electricity, I will rely on the data published in the IEA's 2022 World Energy Outlook, which includes both reality, and soothsaying, about a putative "energy transition" that is supposed to be underway, although there are no numbers to support that claim. That table, Table A.a3 found on page 438 of that report is here:



Note that this document includes two sections, one based on reality and the other based on soothsaying about "stated policies." What are "stated policies?" They are the policies announced by public officials are very similar to the "stated policies" that have been going on for a very long time predicting an outbreak of a so called "renewable energy" nirvana "by 1990," then "by 2000," then "by 2010," then "by 2020" and now "by 2030," and "by 2050." I've been following these "by 'such and such a year'" stated policies since I was a young man; and now I'm an old man, listening to statements about how an "energy transition" is well underway, even though the accumulation of just one of the dangerous fossil fuel wastes, carbon dioxide, is occurring at the fastest rate ever observed.

And then, to distract from all this prayer, posturing, pronouncements, predictions, and other pissant pontifications, there's something called "reality." "Reality" can be shown by comparing 2020 with 2021 in the table, collated "data." The fastest growing source of electricity generation on this planet, measured, was coal, even though people chant day after day after day after day that so called "renewable energy" is reducing reliance on coal.

On what planet?

Not this one.

Coal based power generation grew by 762 TWh, in "percent talk" 426% faster than solar energy, which grew by 179 TWh, faster than wind, which grew, again in "percent talk," 279% faster than wind energy. Overall, led by coal, dangerous fossil fuel generated electricity grew by 1001 TWh.

Electricity is a thermodynamically degraded form of energy; it's production always wastes energy, consistent with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. For thermal Rankine plants, those run on petroleum, coal and nuclear, in my calculation for the exergy destruction connected with the trivial 3.7% of the world's hydrogen produced by electrolysis, I will use 33% Rankin efficiency, thus implying a exergy destruction of 67% for generation. Then 30% of the energy is subject to exergy destruction for electrolysis. Thus the fraction of energy represented by exergy destruction for these plants will be (1-(.33*0.7) = .77. For dangerous natural gas, allowing for the fact that some dangerous natural gas plants are combined cycle plants, I will assume, somewhat arbitrarily without digging too deep into data, that the overall thermal efficiency is higher, averaging 45%. Thus the fraction of exergy destroyed by electrolysis using dangerous natural gas derived electricity will be (1-.45*.07) = 0.69. For solar and wind, I have ignored the thermodynamic values for electricity production, since these generally show up in terms of the land destroyed for this useless and expensive affectation, and treated them as if they were 100% efficient, which of course, they are nowhere near being. Thus the fraction of exergy destroyed in my calculation is simply that of electrolysis itself, 1-0.7 = 0.3

From the above numbers and references, it is now possible to determine the exergy destruction connected with the wasteful synthesis of hydrogen by the reformation of dangerous fossil fuels, both in the reforming case, and the electrolysis case. The result is shown from the following table from an Excel spreadsheet I prepared:



The overwhelming majority of the world's hydrogen, 90.2 million tons out of 94.0 million tons is made from the reformation of dangerous fossil fuels. Although the bulk of this hydrogen is decidedly not used for powering cars, trucks, buses as in the cheap ads posted here by hydrogen/fossil fuel salespeople/salesbots, the energy content if it were burned rather than used for ammonia synthesis, petroleum refining and methanol synthesis, the energy content of this hydrogen would be 10.8 Exajoules, produced at a cost of 20.6 Exajoules, with the exergy destruction, heat rejected to the environment and wasted, amounting to 9.7 Exajoules. The overall cost of producing 10.8 Exajoules of hydrogen by reformation of dangerous fossil fuels is 20.6 Exajoules.

The exergy destruction of this process is 47.4%

About 3.3% of the world's energy supply, the last data point being 624 Exajoules produced in 2021, goes into making hydrogen; this figure is entirely consistent with what I've seen in the general literature over the last 20 to 30 years while assholes prattled on, nonsensically, about hydrogen being "green."

But of course, the hydrogen made from dangerous fossil fuels is not limited to reformation, but includes electrolysis. As shown above in the WEO 2022 Table A.3a, the bulk of the world's electricity is made by combusting dangerous fossil fuels. Using the WEO fractions from Table A.3a for sources of electricity, we can now calculate the exergy destruction associated with the trivial 3.7% of the world's hydrogen produced by electrolysis. (Note: The Hydrogen Salespeople/Salesbots that advertise here want you to believe that all of the world's hydrogen is made by electrolysis, a bald faced marketing lie. It's not even close.)

A table of exergy destruction I've prepared from Excel for the worse case wherein hydrogen is manufactured via electrolysis:



The exergy destruction is 66.94%. Electrolysis is even dirtier than reformation.

It is now possible to add to the amount of hydrogen produced by the direct (and cleaner) reformation of dangerous fossil fuels, the amount of hydrogen produced by electrolysis using electricity generated by the combustion of dangerous fossil fuels. Again, from an Excel spreadsheet I've prepared:



And finally the reality connected with the bullshit handed out about "green hydrogen" going back over half a century, both in private belief systems, and worse, by prominent morons like Amory Lovins of the bourgeois antinuke cult called the "Rocky Mountain Institute" whose nonsense is sometimes posted by hydrogen salespeople/salesbots in a festival of destructive marketing, the amount of hydrogen that is produced by so called "renewable energy."



Combined, the materially and financially expensive land use nightmares of solar and wind energy, produced 0.37% of the world's hydrogen, at an exergy destruction penalty of 30%, 0.35 million metric tons out of 94 million tons of hydrogen now produced.

Anyone who is familiar with my writings, whether they are hostile people like the fossil fuel/hydrogen salespeople and salesbots who advertise here, "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes hyping the useless wind and solar industries, or straight up ignorant radiation paranoid antinukes or whether they are people who value what I say, will know that I consider that the only sustainable tool we have to address climate change is nuclear energy.

Via electrolysis, nuclear energy is responsible for the production of 0.34 million metric tons of hydrogen. Often people say that I should approve of hydrogen produced by nuclear energy via electrolysis, but I don't so approve. Making hydrogen from nuclear energy wastes the energy of this valuable infrastructure which should be applied in all cases involving electricity, on the reduction of the use of fossil fuels on electrical grids.

I do not favor, and never will favor, the use of hydrogen as a consumer product. It is too dangerous and far too expensive in terms of environmental and financial terms to even be considered, even though - to my horror - it is being considered, and vast sums of money is being squandered on it. What I have not covered in this post is the appalling energy cost of hydrogen compression and liquefaction, which would make this popular nonsense even worse, far worse.

A valued correspondent and I in the thread associated with one of my recent posts here nominally not about hydrogen at all, but about the mobilization of natural radium by the fossil fuel industry and chemical industries, had an exchange about the energy and environmental costs. That thread is here: Elevated Radium Activity in a Hydrocarbon-Contaminated Aquifer

In the comments of that thread, by appeal to references, I showed that the compression and liquefaction of hydrogen would require raising all of the figures described above for exergy destruction by about 30%.

An excerpt of a comment:

As it turns out, the US EIA has a nice webpage showing the theoretical minimum energy cost of the compression and liquefaction of hydrogen, as opposed to the real cost but I'm going to this open source paper, Aziz, M. Liquid Hydrogen: A Review on Liquefaction, Storage, Transportation, and Safety. Energies 2021, 14, 5917, which gives a figure of 10 kWh (36 MJ) per kg of hydrogen, consistent with other references indicating about a 30% energy loss to produce liquid hydrogen having an energy content of roughly 120 MJ/kg.

Now let me turn to a wiser approach to the use of nuclear energy to make hydrogen for captive industrial use, since hydrogen is a valuable industrial product with many uses, including it's current and potentially much larger use in the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide.

A caveat: I am now entering the realm of discussing could which is not and never should be confused with the word is.

The interior of nuclear fuels, depending on their structure and the heat exchange properties associated with their chemical nature, when in operation, are at temperatures of well over 1000°C, often approaching 2000°C. At Chernobyl, after the destruction of the heat removal system, and to a lesser extent, Fukushima, the melting of the fuels which are designed to be refractory, after the destruction of the heat sinks, shows this much.

If we were to exploit these temperatures we could - there's that word "could" again - greatly reduce the exergy destruction associated with the mere production of electricity, in a much discussed technique in the literature called "process intensification." I carry on about "process intensification" quite a bit here.

To give the general idea, I will reproduce two graphics from this paper: Reuben Joseph Soja, Muhammad Bello Gusau, Usman Ismaila, Nuraddeen Nasiru Garba, Comparative analysis of associated cost of nuclear hydrogen production using IAEA hydrogen cost estimation program, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, Volume 48, Issue 61, 2023, Pages 23373-23386:





To be clear, in these graphics, I oppose any pathway to includes reference to electricity and electrolysis, with the possible exception of more efficient high temperature electrolysis, and this only in the case where electricity is a side product produced to prevent exergy destruction of primary nuclear heat.

As I've noted in many posts here, my favorite thermochemical cycle is the "SI" cycle - the sulfur iodine cycle - because it involves fluid matrices and is thus subject to continuous operation once the materials science applications are all addressed, a process well underway.

One step of the SI cycle involves the thermal decomposition of sulfuric acid resulting in a hot stream of SO2 and O2 gas with a little steam, which must be rapidly cooled to prevent recombination in the reverse chemical reaction. The heat exchangers to do this can obviously use the heat for other purposes, one of which, but only one of which, would be the generation of electricity, which in a modified Allam cycle can actually be used for the dry reforming of waste materials, notably plastic waste, but also biomass waste.

A relatively recent review of thermochemical hydrogen cycles can be found here: Farid Safari, Ibrahim Dincer, A review and comparative evaluation of thermochemical water splitting cycles for hydrogen production, Energy Conversion and Management, Volume 205, 2020, 112182.

There are many such reviews, and many thermochemical cycles which feature low exergy destruction, higher efficiency, and thus cleaner energy. There are also equivalent - via the water gas shift reaction - carbon dioxide splitting reactions, one of which is a modified Allam cycle, but others involving high temperatures, such as the cerium oxide based cycles.

I have discussed these in other posts in this space.

Via mechanisms of this type, it is possible to utilize nuclear primary energy for all energy purposes at low environmental impact, thus eliminating all energy related mining - if uranium is recovered from seawater as side product of nuclear desalination - all of the destruction of wilderness and other valuable land for so called "renewable energy," and all drivers of climate change.

That's a could, not an is. What is happening is an unfortunate and highly destructive embrace of stupidity and wishful thinking, here and elsewhere driven by sophisticated but toxic marketing - tobacco quality marketing - driven by dishonest salespeople/salesbots of whom the hydrogen/fossil fuel salespeople/salesbots are only a subset.

I trust you have had a pleasant weekend. Here in New Jersey we are experiencing extreme weather, heavy flooding rain. As long as we continue to embrace ignorance driven by marketeers, the extreme weather will only get worse.

History will not forgive us, nor should it.

[Faux pas]

1. Kickin'

[Think. Again.]

2. Hydrogen is made from ANY source of energy...

The majority of Hydrogen is currently made from fossil fuel sources for the only reason that fossil fuels are the majority source of our energy generation.

Hydrogen CAN BE and IS made from fossil-free sources of energy through electrolysis powered from non-fossil fuel sourced electricity, and that fossil fuel free production of hydrogen will continue to grow as our fossil fuel free sources of electricity grow.

New Hydrogen productions plants are being built with their own dedicated non-fossil fuel electric generation plants specifically to create "green hydrogen"

Hydrogen CAN BE and IS also made from the refinement of fossil fuels themselves. This is the older method of hydrogen production and is being phased out in preference for non-CO2 emitting method of electrolysis powered by non-fossil fuel sourced electrolysis.

The phrase "Energy Transition" literally means transitioning our energy sources and uses away from fossil fuels and toward non-CO2 emitting sources and uses.

The hydrogen industry is included in that transition.

[Caribbeans]

3. Your title is a lie, according to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm

Go ahead and call her a liar

Call Mike Strizki a liar too

Some people just can't understand that hydrogen does not have to come from fossil fuels

No matter, who cares. Not a single person in China (or Japan) cares what this Nuclear Fanatic says about H2. Not one.

It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It

[NNadir]

4. No, my title is a true statement with references to the primary scientific literature, numbers...

...and data.

The very bad thinking utilized by fossil fuel/hydrogen salespeople and salesbots here who post dishonest marketing videos all the time in this case is the well known, and highly fraudulent argument known as "Appeal to Authority."

"Appeal to Authority" arguments are known to be garbage thinking.

Secretary Granholm is a fine politician, and she serves in an important role in a great administration, but she is a politician, who is subject to the whims of public opinion, one of which is the common fraud that hydrogen is "green energy."

People believe that hydrogen is "green energy" because they have been subject to dishonest marketing, most of this by people who couldn't care less about climate change or environmental issues.

The references to the primary scientific literature, the numbers, and the data in the OP are not invalidated because of videos posted by fossil fuel marketeers/salesbots here or elsewhere.

The references to the primary scientific literature, the numbers, and the data, stand for themselves, and no level of "tobacco type" marketing of fossil fuels with bait and switch hydrogen "The Three Monte" games can change the facts.

Anyone who sells hydrogen is selling fossil fuels. This is a fact.

I wouldn't expect anyone pushing the lie that "hydrogen is green" to embrace facts. Indeed the essence of dishonest marketing is to avoid facts where they do not advance the goal of the marketing, where they obviate the dishonesty of the marketing, or where they demonstrate the toxicity of the marketing.

In the 1940's and 1950's cigarettes were marketed as being "good for health."

.webp

Facts matter and can help address cheap marketing and the cheap marketeers who push what are clearly lies.

Numbers don't lie. Marketeers lie, including about who and what they are, as well as what their purposes are, but numbers don't lie.

Selling hydrogen is selling fossil fuels.

Have a very pleasant Sunday evening..

[Think. Again.]

5. Not exactly...

You write:

"Anyone who sells hydrogen is selling fossil fuels. This is a fact."

This is a lie.

Here are 3 examples of proof that you are lying when you say: "Selling hydrogen is selling fossil fuels."...

https://m.

3 Nuclear Power Plants Gearing Up for Clean Hydrogen Production
November 9, 2022 Office of Nuclear Energy

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/3-nuclear-power-plants-gearing-clean-hydrogen-production

-snip-

DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (EERE) and the Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) have already started teaming up with utilities to support three hydrogen demonstration projects at nuclear power plants.

The three projects include:

Nine Mile Point Nuclear Power Station (Oswego, NY)

DOE supported the construction and installation of a low-temperature electrolysis system at the Nine Mile Point nuclear power plant. The project is the first nuclear-powered clean hydrogen production facility in the U.S. and will use the hydrogen to help cool the plant.

Constellation started generating hydrogen in February 2023.

The utility also partnered with NYSERDA

on a separate project to power a fuel cell at the facility and will start providing additional power to the grid in 2025.
Nine Mile Point Nuclear Power Station
Nine Mile Point Nuclear Power Station
Constellation Energy

Davis–Besse Nuclear Power Station (Oak Harbor, OH)

Energy Harbor is working to demonstrate a low-temperature electrolysis system at the Davis–Besse Nuclear Power Station.

The goal of the project is to prove the technical feasibility and economic benefits of clean hydrogen production, which could facilitate future opportunities for large-scale commercialization.

The single unit reactor is expected to produce clean hydrogen by 2023.

World's first offshore green hydrogen pilot production facility now online

A follow-up project will generate four tonnes of green hydrogen a day.
Ameya Paleja Jul 03, 2023 10:48 AM EST

-snip-

Founded in 2017, Lhyfe aims to reduce emissions to the tune of one billion tonnes and has been working on generating hydrogen using renewable sources of energy. In 2021, the group inaugurated the world's first hydrogen production site powered directly by a wind farm. Two years later, it has repeated this achievement but at an offshore facility, more than 12 miles off the coast of France

Full article: https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/worlds-first-offshore-hydrogen-production-online

"...embrace facts."

[Bernardo de La Paz]

9. Present day production is not the same as 2050 production

Present day R&D is done with an eye to the future.

[NNadir]

10. The confusion of soothsaying with reality is why we're in this horrible mess.

I wasn't living in 2010 in 1990, although all kinds of soothsaying went on in 1990, then in 2000, then in 2010, now in 2023.

My whole adult life has been involved in this absurd soothsaying; I used to be dumb enough to accept it, which I regret.

In 2050, by the way, the second law of thermodynamics will still apply, and the manufacture of hydrogen will still involve exergy destruction if electrolysis is involved. (There are subtle ways involving high temperatures by which exergy might be captured, but any discussion of them would in and of itself be soothsaying, to which I object.)

I'll be dead in 2050, and I am comfortable enough with soothsaying to say that my generation will be cursed for what it did.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. Because of issues like which infrastructure and consumer preferences,

... sometimes stuff just has to be tried.

For example, with fueling vs recharging, consumers have needs and desires that favour one form over another (H2 fueling vs e^- charging).

Scientists and engineers are very good at quantifying costs, tradeoffs, and drawbacks of proposed systems, but much less so with customer preferences. Soothsaying is hard stuff and it is easy to get wrong.

It may be that consumers would prefer H2 for those issues, even though it is not an efficient energy carrier, not as efficient as charging a battery. But it is hard for consumers to be able to choose between systems based on simulations or mock-ups or descriptions. Daily use, long term use, and sustained use are the real determinants. Consumers might love and use system B over A, but sour on it if hit with heavy repair bills. Thus sometimes society does have to throw a couple or a few systems against the 'wall' and see what sticks. An imperfect way forward, but sometimes necessary.

After all, steam and electric cars were available in the early days simultaneously with gas and diesel, but consumers made choices based on what was available. It took time for preferences to become clearer / settle out.

[NNadir]

12. It is obscene to make hydrogen for fuel purposes when fossil fuels dominate the energy supply.

I consider it a crime against humanity in fact.

It is tantamount to announcing that one is organizing an expensive party to celebrate one's cure when one is terminally ill, spending all one's resources on it, because one earnestly believes that praying to the Virgin Mary will result in a cure.

I read the scientific literature every damned day, for the record, including all kinds of LCA papers.

Anyone, and I do mean anyone, pushing this half century old line of shit is selling fossil fuels, accelerating climate change, and valuing wishful thinking over a very dire and increasingly exigent reality.

No amount of absurd apologetics and wishful thinking will change this reality.

If some day, primary energy is clean - which is to say 100% nuclear - consumer hydrogen will still be a terrible idea because of its horrible physical properties and chemical incompatibility, although captive hydrogen, as is the case with the 94 million tons made each year now, albeit overwhelmingly with vast amounts of exergy destruction of the fossil fuel source, will still be an important chemical intermediate.

Consumer fantasies generally suck and are based on extreme ignorance in general, and the cheap advertising put forth by fossil fuel sales people and sales bots here and elsewhere who are attempting to rebrand fossil fuels as "green." It's a fucking lie.

Numbers don't lie: A Giant Climate Lie: When they're selling hydrogen, what they're really selling is fossil fuels.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

13. If we don't start finding out now what infrastructure works

If we don't start finding out now what infrastructure ('service stations', repair jobs, durability, etc.) works, then it will not be possible to suddenly pop up the right systems when H2 becomes predominantly not sourced via fossil fuels.

Hydrogen is less efficient than direct use of electricity, but (despite its horrible physical properties) it might be preferred in many applications. Only way to find out what works for users is to try. H2 will be part of the mix, but it is unknowable now just how much.

No amount of soothsaying can reliably predict future preferences, especially when there will be a lot of development in the R&D (research and development).

[NNadir]

14. Um, the Journal of Hydrogen Energy has been in continuous print since 1976, almost half a century.

I have been reading some papers in The Journal of Hydrogen Energy for decades, not because I'm attached to dumb ideas like hydrogen cars or hydrogen lawn mowers or hydrogen powered food processors, but because I am interested in hydrogen thermochemical cycles and, thermodynamics, as well as important tasks in chemical engineering for which captive hydrogen is a useful intermediate.

If one looks, one can see that all of the problems with this putative "infrastructure" have been understood for decades.

The very first of these is that the critical temperature of methane, from which hydrogen is mostly made, is 191 Kelvin, that of hydrogen is 33 Kelvin. What part of a difference of 158 kelvin in temperature is difficult to understand?

Moreover, liquid methane has a higher viscosity than hydrogen, and methane does not diffuse into metals and cause embrittlement.

These are facts. They will not be changed by advertising, wishful thinking, day dreams, or cheap marketing.

One can ignore reality because one is engaged in wishful thinking or one can face reality. If one does the former, one isn't involved in helping but is, in fact, promoting the lie that is killing the planet.

The hydrogen scam is, to repeat, a crime against humanity where one is proposing it as a consumer product as an energy carrier. It's dangerous, misleading, expensive and it's a front for the fossil fuel industry.

If one makes a prediction based on scientific principles, the principles are shown to be wrong if and only if experiment disagrees. Maybe there are people who don't read very much or know very much who have not familiarized themselves with the results of literally millions of experiments involving hydrogen and, indeed, industrial processes, but it's not like it's some kind of deep unknown mystery.

Now of course, there are people who actively engage in denial of these well known and well understood facts. I would certainly include the fossil fuel sales person here rebranding fossil fuels as hydrogen and its slightly amusing "I agree with you" sales bot here for which a human sometimes logs on to place doubts around the obviously failed Turing tests.

I would note that if one predicts that if one predicts that methane will liquefy at a temperature of 191 Kelvin at a pressure greater than 4.6 MPa, one is not engaged in soothsaying, since one's understanding of physical laws can lead to prediction as opposed to mystical magical thinking. Methane is liquified, at a lower energy cost than can be achieved for hydrogen, every damned day on this planet, and no soothsaying is involved. Engineers doing so because the experiment is repeated industrially regularly and never fails.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

15. Yes, one can see problems, but nobody knows what choices will be chosen

A careful reading of my posts would see that I am not discussing hydrogen production of today. I dealt with that in a way that you acknowledge by reference to nuclear power. Yet you continue flogging hydrogen production of today in posts to me. Flog it elsewhere. A reading also sees me refer to "hydrogen's horrible physical properties". Yet you keep responding to me with that point. Your points would have more impact and less preaching to the choir if you repeated them to others and not to the people who have stated that hydrogen has horrible physical properties.

You call hydrogen dangerous. Many things we use are. Gasoline is dangerous. Unlike hydrogen which disperses vertically very quickly, gasoline vapors are heavier than air and can pool and accumulate. We deal with it in daily life.

Methane is a non-starter as a fuel source or energy carrier since, as you know, it is dozens of times more potent than CO₂ as a greenhouse gas. That currently many sources of hydrogen involve methane does not dictate what the future holds. Direct production of hydrogen does not involve methane.

There are no easy or obvious solutions. 2060 (to pick an arbitrary point) is 37 years away. 37 years ago (1986) nobody knew that entities like Amazon, Twitter, Google, and Meta would have the role they have now because of choices made by consumers and businesses. The tech needed was vaguely imagined, but unknown. Nobody knows what choices consumers and business users will make regarding which systems in which applications in which situations with which technologies existing and yet to be developed.

Physics rules matter and energy but does not dictate what we choose. It only influences. Technology also greatly influences. The physics of energy sources and carriers is well known, but technology is far from finalized.

[NNadir]

16. It's a very poor analogy that stuff about Meta etc.

While it is true that gasoline I'd far more dangerous than, say, nuclear power, and climate change is more dangerous than either, I would say that if anything is being flogged, it's soothsaying and magical thinking.

It is true that consumers chose gasoline over the requirement to clean up horse manure in the cities but the consequences are now well understood.

Given the state of the world, in particular the atmosphere, future generations, the generations we screwed with magical and often reactionary thinking may have other priorities than consumerism, survival for instance.

Of course hydrogen can be made from nuclear power. General Atomics was exploring the SI thermochemical cycle in the 1960s. It's 2023. Only one nuclear plant has piloted the SI cycle, the 10 MW(th) plant HTR-10 plant in China.

You have a very naive, in my opinion, on consumer choice. It's hardly driven by wisdom. It's driven by marketing. The very stupid discussion of hydrogen as a fuel is a marketing effort. It's being marketed here by fossil fuel interests in my view.

If anyone here works to endorse this wasteful scheme, this late in the game, in my view they are working to the detriment of humanity, not It's benefit.

You have also, I note, misconstrued, what I was saying about methane. My point was that the hydrogen industry destroys exergy of methane now, but they do so for a purpose, to make hydrogen for the production of important industrial chemicals, the most critical being ammonia on which our food supply depends. A methane, hydrogen to methane cycle would be unbelievably stupid, but if there's one thing about hydrogen fantasies, they clearly generate huge amounts of stupidity. Hydrogen production on this planet consumes about 20 Exajoules of energy to produce a gas with an energy content of slightly more than 10 Exajoules.

You know even an intellectually challenged fool like Joe Romm was able to see through the hydrogen scam, this about 20 years ago. Vast sums of money and resources are being squandered on hydrogen fantasies. To the extent these efforts in square pegs hammered into round holes are driven, the worse it will be for the future of humanity.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

17. You are very wrong to twist my words

You have a very naive, in my opinion, on consumer choice. It's hardly driven by wisdom. It's driven by marketing. The very stupid discussion of hydrogen as a fuel is a marketing effort. It's being marketed here by fossil fuel interests in my view.

I did not say or imply consumer choice is driven by wisdom. Consumer choices have to be lived with or the alternative is communism. The existence of marketing has to be accepted or you would be against free speech.

Give up on pushing anti-methane source/carrier at me. You are preaching to the choir and uselessly raising the choir's hackles. Pointless in both regards.

2023 is not the future. Capiche?

[NNadir]

18. Oh please...

Anyone referring to 2050 has no fucking better idea of the future than anyone else engaged in soothsaying.

I happen to know that it's 2023 thank you. I'm a grown up. As a grown up, and old man in fact, I happen to have been hearing predictions about the 2020's back in 1980, and before that in 1970. I take that realization as a QED on how useful vague "they'll figure it out" mindless crap. I've been listening to soothsaying for 50 years, including for the majority of that time, soothsaying about hydrogen.

It's always "by 1990" until 1990 comes, and then its "by 2000" until 2000 comes, and then its "by 2010" until 2010 comes...

...ad nauseum.

I was once so poorly educated I actually took this hydrogen shit seriously. In 1980 I was a gullible fool mostly because I didn't know shit from shinola about the topic and I had only a vague and rather insipid notion of thermodynamics. I would submit anyone predicting a grand future for this line of crap about hydrogen is either a gullible fool, a fossil fuel salesperson, or a sales bot run by a fossil fuel salesperson.

As for marketing, and this rather silly claim about "free speech," one can object to marketing, say, cigarettes, guns, and gasoline, and for that matter fossil fuels by greenwashing them as hydrogen. I object to the marketing of all of these. It's not about "free speech." It's about decency.

If I object to the marketing of Naziism, this doesn't make me a communist, although I am amused at this late age to be called a communist. It's been a long time since that happened, at DU no less.

The OP here was about numbers, not hair splitting rhetoric, or for that matter about "choirs." The numbers are clear, including the physical properties of hydrogen. There is no rational reason, none, to market hydrogen, based on its physical properties and its material incompatibility, all of which are easily measurable, well known, facts.

Facts exist and facts matter.

Somehow a round of soothsaying about fucking 2050 entered into the conversation with complete disregard for the numbers in the OP, with a vague ill informed "it has to happen" because, well, it's just so cool and magical people will magically discover how to make it workable "by 2050."

I invite anyone interested in how fucking stupid and inane soothsaying is to read any of the "genius" "futurist" Amory Lovins, who was pushing hydrogen in the 20th century, and the fact that marketing his soothsaying "ideas" has left the planet in flames.

In 2000, Vaclav Smil mocked the shit out of Lovins, specifically referring to his hydrogen nirvana:



Rocky Mountain Visions V. Smil Population and Development Review Volume 26, Issue1, March 2000, Pages 163-187.

The distance between March 2000 and December of 2023 is not hugely shorter than the distance between December of 2023 and March of 2050. A "hydrogen economy" was bullshit in 1980, bullshit in 2000, bullshit in 2020 and in 2023, and it will remain bullshit in 2050.

The reason is physics and nothing else.

Got it? No? Well that's not my problem.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

19. Nice strawman you got there. Nobody called you a communist

Further, the only one soothsaying is you, making predictions about 2050.

But it is clear you didn't read carefully. I wasn't even talking about 2050 or making predictions about 2050 or 2060 other than it would have different technology than what is available now.

[NNadir]

6. Updated to include link to the first referenced paper, and to make a minor cosmetic change.

[Think. Again.]

7. The intent of this post is to mislead...

The intent of this post is to mislead readers into thinking that Green Hydrogen produces CO2 emissions.

This is not true.

"Using the color-coding designations for hydrogen, green is a good way forward since it doesn’t contribute to global warming by way of carbon emissions. This is achieved by switching the source of the energy required to generate the electrolysis reaction from fossil fuels. Instead, this hydrogen uses renewable energy sources to power the conversion, which means there are no carbon emissions to deal with, and water is the only byproduct."

From: https://now.northropgrumman.com/green-hydrogen-explained-how-it-can-help-reduce-emissions/

[Think. Again.]

8. Another pretty chart...

Note that "Green Hydrogen" produces NO CO2