The Hydrogen Risks For Homeowners & Public Money — CleanTech Talk

Hydrogen diffuses through pipes, explodes more easily and under more conditions, and takes 3 times the energy to ship or pipe.

ByMichael Barnard

In the first half of the podcast, Paul Martin and I talked about the newly formed Hydrogen Science Coalition, of which Paul is a founding member, embrittlement of steel and increased leakage in transmission. In this second half, we delve into more on hydrogen leakage, especially in homes, the problem of increased risks from hydrogen in buildings, shipping boil-off rate, global supply implications, and more.

We start with a discussion of the end-to-end losses of natural gas vs hydrogen across transmission and distribution. In the first half we had discussed the problem with the transmission piping network for natural gas, but the distribution network is a big problem as well. Much modern piping is polyethylene, replacing cast iron pipes which constantly break. While it has advantages, hydrogen diffuses through polyethylene without any cracks at all. That means that we can’t reuse existing piping in many, many cases, a fundamental disconnect on claims of reuse of infrastructure assets by natural gas utilities.

We digressed into hydrogen boil-off in shipping. When you have a gas stored as a liquid by keeping it cold at reasonable temperatures, the cryogenic liquid turns into gas with any heat coming in. With ammonia and LNG, you can run compression and cooling equipment and return it, as they are liquids at much higher temperatures than hydrogen with its 24° Kelvin boiling point. The way to deal with this is to create the biggest, spherical, vacuum-insulated tanks possible, but even so, the boil-off rate is 0.2% per day. Shipping hydrogen tanks ones are likely to be worse because they can’t be as big. At the scale of trucks, the surface area to volume ratio leads to 1% losses per day.

This is true for hydrogen storage tanks at airports, where liquid hydrogen is the only option. Every airport would have to make hydrogen near the airport and have a hydrogen liquification facility at every airport, in Martin’s opinion. This eliminates economies of scale for centralized hydrogen manufacturing and liquification, making it even more expensive as an aviation fuel.

Hydrogen has another pernicious problem, that of spin of the electrons in hydrogen atoms. Basically, they have different spins at different temperatures, and as you cool the hydrogen, it gives off heat due to changes in spin. When the first people made liquid hydrogen at 24° Kelvin, it turned back to gas the next day due to this problem. This means more equipment, energy, and expense.

Liquifying hydrogen takes 3 times the energy as liquifying natural gas, then you lose 0.2% to 1% of the hydrogen per day due to boil-off. Shipping hydrogen would be 5-7 times as expensive as shipping LNG as a result.

And of course, putting it into pipes and moving it requires 3 times the energy to compress and move the hydrogen, so all compressors would have to be replaced.

So there are multiple loss problems along the supply chain, but when we get it into homes, things get even more problematic. We’ve had 100 years of experience making natural gas appliances safe in homes. There are no certified home appliances for hydrogen today, and no jurisdiction has existing building codes that support hydrogen appliances. As I’ve pointed out a few times, building codes and approvals are a patchwork that vary by municipality, not by country. Every city would have to update its building codes and processes to allow hydrogen appliances, a massive regulatory burden.

The next problem is that hydrogen has a much wider explosive range than natural gas. The lower explosive limit of methane is 6% while hydrogen is 4%. The upper explosive limit of hydrogen is 75%, vastly higher than natural gas’ 15%. This means that there is a much broader range of leaked hydrogen that will explode in homes. And hydrogen ignites with a third of the energy of natural gas as well. The odds of an explosion in buildings with hydrogen vs natural gas are much higher.

But wait, there’s more. Natural gas smells not because methane smells, but because we add odorants as a safety feature. The mercaptans we use in natural gas can’t be used with hydrogen because they react to it. While there are odorants that work with hydrogen, they cause fuel cells to fail. That means that two hydrogen distribution networks would be required, one for hydrogen appliances and one for fuel cells, and fuel cells would have to be outside of the home, not inside. The requirements for a hydrogen odorant are very high, and Martin doesn’t think they’ve found one, and that there might not be one.

We shifted into a discussion of engineers being paid a great deal of money to do interesting work to try to figure out the problems with hydrogen, among other things, where the problems and economics make the effort not worth doing. Martin has been one of them in the past, and I’ve dealt with numerous aerospace engineers who wasted a lot of time in airborne wind energy, and many of them pivoted to the electric vertical take-off and landing space, both of which I’ve written about extensively.

Martin’s concern isn’t about engineers wasting their time, but about public money going into these realms. If rich people and venture capitalists want to make very low probability bets, that’s their business. Public money that could be spent earnestly solving the decarbonization problem ends up being spent on the emperor’s new clothes instead. Right now the hydrogen #hopium epidemic are the missing clothes de jour, and they mostly aren’t earnest at all. While there are individuals who actually are earnest about hydrogen as a fuel, the fossil fuel industry isn’t earnest. To paraphrase Michael Liebreich, hydrogen is a no-lose bet for the fossil fuel industry. Either they push hydrogen and it delays decarbonization and hence the fossil fuel industry wins, or the fossil fuel industry gets dragged into the future with tens of billions of public money for blue hydrogen, and they win.

As a case in point, the Suncor-ATCO proposed facility in Edmonton is asking for CAD$1.3 billion from the government to build a blue hydrogen facility for hydrogen to be used in an Edmonton refinery. Alberta’s crude is sour, which is to say it has a lot of sulphur, and hydrogen is used to desulphurize it. As per my projection of hydrogen demand through 2100, high-sulphur crude will be off the market first, and we have to stop refining crude oil into fuels regardless.

Bunker fuels and asphalt for roads and roofing shingles are effectively waste products of refinery, residuum, so with the radical reduction in refining, we’ll have to find replacements for roads and roofs as well, while the shipping industry will have to refuel regardless.

One mystery Martin keeps poking at is the lack of any movement in global bunker fuel markets with the banning of residuum as a shipping fuel that came in in 2020. Martin has customers who expected a glut on the residuum market who were going to take advantage of it to process residuum into allowed products, but the glut never appeared. The assumption is that marine shippers are simply still burning it in international waters, flouting the unenforced rules.

The cost of shipping per ton mile is 40%-60% fuel, even using the cheapest fossil fuels available, slow-sailing to conserve fuel, and treating the atmosphere and oceans as open sewers. Every fuel alternative is going to be more expensive. Of course, 40% of all shipping is oil, gas, and coal, so that’s going away. Another 15% is raw iron ore, and with increased shipping costs, much more local processing of iron ore and other products will be done, so more finished, higher-value products will be shipped instead.

Right now we use cheap energy as a mask for poor organization. Absurd supply chains that jump all over the earth are coming to an end. In a future where fossil CO2 emissions are expensive, recycling of materials will become more prevalent. Steel and aluminum are already among the most recycled materials in the world, and that will simply increase. Electric minimills near to the sources of scrap, powered by renewables, will radically reduce the shipping of steel and its constituents.

Aluminum is easier to decarbonize than steel, so Martin projects that per unit of strength, aluminum will be used a lot more as a structural component. The direct electrolytic process for aluminum running on renewables has been around for 70 years. Some of the steps in aluminum which currently use fossil fuels can be replaced more easily than the blast furnace for steel.

Martin ended with his thoughts for policy makers and those who have their ears. First, it’s as simple as the Drake wince vs approve meme. In the top panel, Drake is wincing and in the bottom, he’s nodding in approval. Hydrogen as a fuel is in the top of the meme, and replacing current black hydrogen use with green hydrogen is the approval in the bottom. Second is no to hydrogen blending, it’s just hydrogen as a fuel. And finally, no to hydrogen as a transportation fuel, because it’s both ineffective and inefficient.

Originally published on CleanTechnica Pro.

CleanTech Talk — EVs, Solar, Batteries, AI, Tesla · New Hydrogen Science Coalition Busts #hopium with Paul Martin — Part 2

AUSTRALIA

Emission Control: Goldman Sachs estimates hydrogen generation could become a

$1tn per year market

Energy
March 18, 2022 | Jessica Cummins

Goldman Sachs says hydrogen generation could become a $1 trillion per year 

market

Queensland Government announces $3,000 rebate for EV purchases under 

$58k

Billionaire backed Sun Cable raises $210mn

Yep, you heard that right.

Green hydrogen, the ultimate de-carbonisation solution, and its market share has the potential to reach US$1tn by 2050, according to Goldman Sachs latest report Carbonomics: The Clean Hydrogen Revolution.

As policy support continues to gain pace around the world, with roughly 30 national hydrogen strategies and roadmaps pledging a >400-fold increase in clean hydrogen installed capacity this decade compared with 2020, the American multinational investment banking firm says policy, affordability and scalability seem to be converging to create “unprecedented momentum for the clean hydrogen economy.”

It says green hydrogen’s total addressable market (TAM) has the potential to double to US$250bn by 2030 and reach US$1tn by 2050, on top of a net zero by 2050 scenario calling for US$5tn of cumulative investments.

These investments would be focused on the direct supply chain of clean hydrogen, it said, specifically the investments required for its production, storage, distribution, transmission, and global trade.

Investments required in the clean hydrogen supply chain for net zero.

“We view these as solely capex investments (not including opex or other costs) in the direct supply chain of clean hydrogen and not including capex associated with end markets (industry, transport, buildings) or upstream capex associated with the power generation plants required for electricity generation for green hydrogen,” Goldman Sach highlighted.

“This corresponds to an annual average of US$55/165 bn per annum required to 2030/50E, respectively.”

Average annual hydrogen investment requirements for net zero by 2050
(US$bn).

Goldman Sachs states four interconnected technologies are emerging as “transformational” in the path to net zero and have a key role to play in the next frontier of clean tech – renewable power, clean hydrogen, battery energy storage, and carbon capture technologies.

The total installed electrolyser capacity for green hydrogen production was only around 0.3 GW by the end of 2020 but the industry is moving at a remarkable pace, Goldman Sach notes, with the current projects pipeline suggesting an installed electrolysis capacity of close to 80 GW by end-2030.

This includes projects currently under construction, having undertaken FID (final investment decision) and pre-FID (feasibility study), and assuming projects meet the guided start-up timeline.

“If we were to consider projects in earlier stages of development (pre-feasibility study stage, ‘concept’ projects), then this figure would go close to 120 GW,” the authors explained.

Under all three of the firms’ global hydrogen demand paths – the bull, base, and bear – global hydrogen demand increases at least 2-fold on the path to net zero.

Queensland supercharges the future of electric vehicles

This week, the Queensland State Government announced a $3,000 subsidy for drivers who choose to switch to an electric vehicle as part of a new package to help reach the state’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2032.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk revealed on Wednesday the government will spend $45mn on subsidies for upfront car purchases over the next three years and another $10 mn spent building more charging stations.

The $3,000 subsidy will be available for anyone buying an electric vehicle worth a total of $58,000.

While the move marks a positive step in the right direction, Electric Vehicle Council head of policy Jake Whitehead says Australia needs federal leadership to get the level of support required to drive uptake, attract more EV models into the Australian market, drive down prices through increasing competition, and ultimately align uptake with Net Zero by 2050 while reducing the cost of transport and energy for Australian households and businesses.

“The key barrier is getting more vehicles supplied to our market and as long we don’t have a fuel efficiency standard, or some kind of sales mandate, combined with significant incentives, we are just going to be an afterthought for manufacturers of electric vehicles around the world,” he said.

“At the moment we don’t have the settings to encourage those vehicles to be sent here.”

Aussie EV sales accounted for a 1.95% market share of new vehicles in 2021, up from 0.87% in 2020, and although it demonstrates a clear improvement, it is clear there is still a serious amount of work that needs to be done.

“EV sales need to be over 50% by 2030 to be on a trajectory to net zero – we are at 2% now, we have eight years to get to 50%.

“Even though there has been a vocal voicing of this need to have a fuel efficiency standard, we haven’t seen any policy to introduce a zero-emission sales mandate where we would see more electric vehicles encouraged into the Australian market,” he said.

Location to be a key driver in green hydrogen economics

In January this year, British oil giant BP and the Ministry of Energy and Minerals in Oman signed a strategic framework agreement and Renewables Data Collection Agreement, outlining the potential development of a multiple, gigawatt, world-class renewable energy and green hydrogen facility by 2030.

As part of the agreement, BP will capture and evaluate solar and wind data from 8,000km of land – an area more than five times the size of Greater London – which will be used to approve the future developments of renewable energy hubs at suitable locations within this area to take advantage of these resources.

The renewable energy resources could also supply renewable power for the development of green hydrogen, targeting both domestic and global export markets.

BP’s CEO said at the time the company is not “just investing in energy” but investing in Oman to create and develop infrastructure and support local supply chains needed to users in “this next generation of energy leaders.”

Global energy, renewables, and mining research consultancy group WoodMac says the agreement highlights how location will be critical to green hydrogen project economics.

“With the entire green hydrogen value chain being nascent, getting access to the best location for consistent renewable power has a significant impact on project values,” it said.

“The importance of capturing and analysing the renewables data on a large scale is analogous to geological surveys aimed at identifying technically and commercially visible hydrocarbon reserves.

“The 8000km in the BP/Oman project aims to map the best spots and locations for renewable development.

“Our analysis indicates that Oman’s green hydrogen levelised costs could reach US$2/kg by 2030, which positions Oman very favourably.”

Cannon-Brookes and Twiggy lead Sun Cable raising

Billionaire backed Sun Cable, the proponents of a subsea cable that will transfer Australian solar power 4200km from Darwin to Singapore has completed a $210mn Series B capital raise this week led by Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures and Twiggy Forrest’s Squadron Energy.

Sun Cable says funds will support its +$30bn Australia-Asia PowerLink (AAP) project, which will include a 17-20GW solar array, the world’s biggest battery at a scale of 36-42GWh and the world’s longest subsea cable.

Once fully developed, the project will be seven times the size of the largest solar generation sites of Bhadla Solar Park (2.7 GW) of 160km2 in India and the Golmud Desert Solar Park 2.8 (GWAC) in China and 25 times the size of the largest existing battery storage system of 1.6GWh in Moss Landing, California.

Grok Ventures principal Cannon-Brookes, one of the two bidders rejected by AGL to take over its coal assets, said Sun Cable’s project brings Australia one step closer to realising its renewables exporting potential.

“We can power the world with clean energy and Sun Cable is harnessing that at scale,” he said.

“It’s a blueprint for how we export energy across the world, we fully back this vision.”

Scientists Discover a New, Sustainable Way To Make Hydrogen for Fuel Cells and Fertilizers

By RIKEN MARCH 17, 2022

A new sustainable and practical method for producing hydrogen from water has been discovered by a team of researchers at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS) in Japan led by Ryuhei Nakamura. Unlike current methods, the new method does not require rare metals that are expensive or in short supply. Instead, hydrogen for fuel cells and agricultural fertilizers can now be produced using cobalt and manganese, two fairly common metals. The study was published in Nature Catalysis.

Unlike conventional fossil fuels that generate carbon dioxide upon combustion, hydrogen is a clean fuel that only produces water as a byproduct. If hydrogen can be extracted from water using renewable electricity, the energy grid can be made clean, renewable, and sustainable. Additionally, hydrogen is the key ingredient needed to produce ammonia, which is used in virtually all synthetic fertilizers. But instead of cleanly extracting hydrogen from water, currently, ammonia plants use fossil fuels to produce the hydrogen they need.

So why are we still using fossil fuels? One reason is that the hydrogen extraction process itself—electrolysis—is expensive and not yet sustainable.

“This is primarily due to a lack of good catalysts,” says Nakamura. “In addition to being able to withstand the harsh acidic environment, the catalyst must be very active. If not, the amount of electricity needed for the reaction to produce a given amount of hydrogen soars, and with it, so does the cost.”

Currently, the most active catalysts for water electrolysis are rare metals like platinum and iridium, which creates a dilemma because they are expensive and considered “endangered species” among metals. Switching the whole planet to hydrogen fuel right now would require about 800 years’ worth of iridium production, an amount which might not even exist. On the other hand, abundant metals such as iron and nickel are not active enough and tend to dissolve immediately in the harsh acidic electrolysis environment.

In their search for a better catalyst, the researchers looked at mixed cobalt and manganese oxides. Cobalt oxides can be active for the required reaction, but corrode very quickly in the acidic environment. Manganese oxides are more stable, but are not nearly active enough. By combining them, the researchers hoped to take advantage of their complimentary properties. They also had to consider the high current density needed for practical application outside the laboratory. “For industrial scale hydrogen production, we needed to set our study’s target current density to about 10 to 100 times higher than what has been used in past experiments,” says co-first author Shuang Kong. “The high currents led to a number of problems such as physical decomposition of the catalyst.”

Eventually, the team overcame these issues by trial and error, and discovered an active and stable catalyst by inserting manganese into the spinel lattice of Co₃O₄, producing the mixed cobalt manganese oxide Co₂MnO₄.

Testing showed that Co₂MnO₄ performed very well. Activation levels were close to those for state-of-the art iridium oxides. Additionally, the new catalyst lasted over two months at a current density of 200 milliamperes per square centimeter, which could make it effective for practical use. Compared with other non-rare metal catalysts, which typically last only days or weeks at much lower current densities, the new electrocatalyst could be a game changer.

“We have achieved what has eluded scientists for decades,” says co-first author Ailong Li. “Hydrogen production using a highly active and stable catalyst made from abundant metals. In the long run, we believe that this is a huge step towards creating a sustainable hydrogen economy. Like other renewable technologies such as solar cells and wind power, we expect the cost of green hydrogen technology to plummet in the near future as more advances are made.”

The next step in lab will be to find ways to extend the lifetime of the new catalyst and increase its activity levels even more. “There is always room for improvement,” says Nakamura, “and we continue to strive for a non-rare metal catalyst that matches the performance of current iridium and platinum catalysts.”

Reference: “Enhancing the stability of cobalt spinel oxide towards sustainable oxygen evolution in acid” by Ailong Li, Shuang Kong, Chenxi Guo, Hideshi Ooka, Kiyohiro Adachi, Daisuke Hashizume, Qike Jiang, Hongxian Han, Jianping Xiao and Ryuhei Nakamura, 14 February 2022, Nature Catalysis.
DOI: 10.1038/s41929-021-00732-9