Hydrogen

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Scotty T
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Hydrogen

Post by Scotty T »

Hydrogen will no doubt be a part of the future of energy and electric vehicles, especially with renewable energy powering production. This research is interesting:

CSIRO research

I'm not however a fan of fuel cells in cars, it makes as little sense to me as a hybrid. I think the application in industrial scale energy storage to power EV charging stations is a better overall solution.

Thoughts?
Last edited by Scotty T on Wed, 03 May 2017, 07:34, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by coulomb »

Scotty T wrote: Thoughts?

I predict that natural gas exports will go the way of coal exports and the dinosaur. So I wonder if we can repurpose those giant, super expensive compressor facilities and the giant gas tankers to carry hydrogen, and thus export some of our excess renewable energy (solar and wind) overseas. We'd use renewable power to split hydrogen from water (via electrolysis).

I suppose it depends on whether large industry overseas can use hydrogen, and whether the tiny H₂ molecule will seep out of the gas tankers too fast.

[ Edit: I don't see how a membrane can break the N-H bonds in ammonia (NH₃). The article makes it sound like a membrane can "separate" hydrogen gas from ammonia, as if ammonia was a mixture of nitrogen and hydrogen gas. ]

[ Edit 2: It seems that catalytic decomposition is possible. ]
Last edited by coulomb on Wed, 03 May 2017, 11:00, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Rusdy »

It would be ground breaking if there is a portable (or not so portable for industrial scale) device to convert Ammonia to H2 (and vice versa) safely.

Unless, someone managed to find a material that enable batteries with energy density that is cost effective to transport (complete with LCOE to boot).

Too bad we (humanity) use the most excellent form of hydrocarbon by simply burning them...

The most sensible book about renewable future, opened my eyes a bit how wonderful hydrocarbons are: http://ourrenewablefuture.org/
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Post by Richo »

Rusdy wrote: It would be ground breaking if there is a portable (or not so portable for industrial scale) device to convert Ammonia to H2 (and vice versa) safely.


Well I think that IS the point.
The way I see it CSIRO are just copying others.
The article below makes more sense than that CSIRO write-up.
https://phys.org/news/2014-06-hydrogen- ... e-car.html

Fuel cells have been around for a while.
Last I remember you could buy a unit for your house suck in natural gas and produce electricity for your house and heat your water.
The costs and maintenance weren't exciting.

Regardless of how they get the H2 unless they can get the initial cost of the fuel cell down and the life span up it won't compete with battery systems.
So the short answer is NO but the long answer is YES.
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Post by Scotty T »

Rusdy wrote:
The most sensible book about renewable future, opened my eyes a bit how wonderful hydrocarbons are: http://ourrenewablefuture.org/


Thanks for the link, I have started reading it and will share with some friends who are interested in renewable energy.
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Post by coulomb »

coulomb wrote: I suppose it depends on whether large industry overseas can use hydrogen, and whether the tiny H₂ molecule will seep out of the gas tankers too fast.

It seems I missed the point completely. The point is that ammonia can be used to transport the hydrogen, using existing facilities such as those already established in the Pilbara region (Western Australia), which exports natural gas, as well as oil and iron ore.

[ Edit: and the CSIRO membrane can be used to split off the hydrogen gas at the point of use, overcoming the horrible problems of transporting highly compressed H₂ gas. Presumably, the hydrogen gas could be burned as a clean fuel in IC engines, or used to produce electricity directly, e.g. recharging a battery EV on the run. ]

Here is a more readable ABC article on the process.

[ Edit 2: Another small article, also by the ABC. Beware of units errors (e.g. "10 megawatt-hours" should presumably be "10 megawatts"; the figure near the end of the article seems to have left off "per year"). ]
Last edited by coulomb on Fri, 12 May 2017, 05:05, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by nuggetgalore »

Edit 2: Another small article, also by the ABC. Beware of units errors (e.g. "10 megawatt-hours" should presumably be "10 megawatts"; the figure near the end of the article seems to have left off "per year"). ]

It is sad that reporting of technical things is often very sloppy.
I have pointed out to reporters of quality newspapers in the past that they used incorrect terms.They thanked me for pointing this out and made the same mistake in their next article! It was not concerning the ever present confusion between W with Wh (or KW/MW/GW etc).
The main reason that itirks me is that on a topic where I have no knowledge of the facts,how can I trust the reporting?
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Post by weber »

These guys are so desperately flogging a dead horse that it's almost funny. So first they want to use renewable electricity to generate hydrogen, then fuel cells to convert the hydrogen back to electricity, losing half the energy in the process. Now they find hydrogen storage isn't convenient so they want to use the hydrogen to generate ammonia and then crack the ammonia back to hydrogen. I wonder how much of the energy will be left after that?

The Lithium battery horse has bolted and there's no catching it.
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Post by woody »

It would make sense when we have too much energy to use - e.g. off-peak when we have enough solar for 100% of peak load.

There are long journeys where this could make sense (shipping, interstate rail).

On a smaller scale - when you are off-grid with too much solar to use, it would be nice to turn it into something saleable.

Ammonia is US$300/tonne = 30c/kg, 22c/L.
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Post by jonescg »

woody wrote: It would make sense when we have too much energy to use - e.g. off-peak when we have enough solar for 100% of peak load.


And at that point you might as well pump water uphill for hydro later on, or desalinate seawater if you're in WA.
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Post by Scotty T »

jonescg wrote:
woody wrote: It would make sense when we have too much energy to use - e.g. off-peak when we have enough solar for 100% of peak load.


And at that point you might as well pump water uphill for hydro later on


Yeah less trouble and more efficiency. All this talk of exporting our renewable energy while we still burn coal is a bit of a joke too.
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Post by Richo »

jonescg wrote:you might as well pump water uphill for hydro later on,


Except we can't export our precious water that is up a hill.
The whole point is to remove the export of coal and O/S counties using coal.
Presumably to make less of an impact to climate change.
I guess some scientists do have a conscious.

If we provided/sell them with a fuel cell that converts ammonia to Electricity we can then just ship them Ammonia.
The ammonia trade already exists.
Think of it as a transition off coal to Ammonia.
weber wrote:The Lithium battery horse has bolted and there's no catching it.


True I completely agree but again we can't export tech we don't have.
And the issue is other countries don't have nice sunny days like we do.
So having a lithium battery for them is a waste of space if they can't get the solar power to charge them.

Sure it's a complex and probably not very efficient process of turning free Australian sunlight into electricity via ammonia for another country.
But it seems plausible and profitable.
So the short answer is NO but the long answer is YES.
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Post by Scotty T »

Is there enough ammonia to make a dent?
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Post by Richo »

Scotty T wrote:All this talk of exporting our renewable energy while we still burn coal is a bit of a joke too.


We will either run out of coal or political changes will mean we can sell it.
So better start talking about alternatives now.
Probably 10-15 years before they get Ammonia fuel cells usable anyway.
So the short answer is NO but the long answer is YES.
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Post by jonescg »

Yes I think an ammonia can be used in a fuel cell directly, and it may well have more potential (pardon the pun).

Another export industry would be HVDC electricity into our neighbouring countries. I can see a global electricity grid in the next 100 years, allowing renewable energy to supply the dark side of the planet when we're in full sun. We have the technology to do it now, it's just a matter of funding it's construction.
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Post by nuggetgalore »

https://nh3fuelassociation.org/introduction/

many uses for ammonia apart as a cleaner etc and fertiliser (88%of world production).

[ Edited Coulomb: clickable link ]
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Post by coulomb »

Scotty T wrote: Is there enough ammonia to make a dent?

We can make ammonia (NH₃) from sea water (H₂) and air (N₂) with just energy and some equipment that isn't terribly complex. Sea water and air are obviously extremely abundant in supply. So ammonia production is limited only by available energy.

Australia has more clean energy potential than any other country. So yes, I think it could make a dent, but it takes some will-power, or at least some opposition to the entrenched "don't-power". Without the entrenched industry holding it back, the economics seem likely to be such that it will happen.
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Post by weber »

To clarify: The original post was not merely about using otherwise-unusable renewable energy to produce ammonia (I have no problem with that). It also proposed that the ammonia should then be used to power electric vehicles by being cracked onboard to produce hydrogen which is then used in a fuel cell.

It is the fuel-cell vehicle that is the dead horse. And giving it a whiff of ammonia is not going to revive it.

P.S. If this thread was merely about producing ammonia from renewable energy, it would be off topic.
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Post by Richo »

True on all points.

Well ammonia fuel cell could be useful
It's just CSIRO's narrow mindedness to think that it's main purpose would be for ev's.
So the short answer is NO but the long answer is YES.
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Post by weber »

Thanks Richo.

As Chris Jones mentioned, ammonia was already usable in fuel cells directly. However not in the kind of fuel cell used in EVs (Proton Exchange Membrane). Only in the Solid Oxide kind, because they already operate at the high temperatures required to crack the ammonia into hydrogen and nitrogen.
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Re: Hydrogen

Post by Scotty T »

Moved this comment here and deleted the new topic...

Looks promising: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-08/h ... l/10082514
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Re: Hydrogen

Post by jonescg »

Yeah there's a whole industry dedicated to extracting, compressing and even liquefying gases. Hardly a surprise the industry sees hydrogen as their last chance for relevance in a changing energy/transport world.

The heart of this issue is a viable export industry - we currently export billions of dollars worth of energy in the form of gas and coal, but once this market is self-sufficient with EVs (charged by wind and solar) we have nothing left to export. Apart from undersea cables to NZ, PNG and Indonesia, we won't be able to export energy like we used to.

That said, exporting ammonia is a profitable industry. But using NH3 as the carrier of hydrogen energy... well that's an awfully complicated way to do it.
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Re: Hydrogen

Post by Richo »

CSIRO announce quite some time ago that they were working on this.
They weren't specific in that article what they had achieved recently.
I'm guessing it's that they have a prototype to show people - one step up from vapourware.

You'd hope that it would "rival our LNG export industry."
That's the whole point.
We won't be sucking gas out the ground forever.
So the short answer is NO but the long answer is YES.
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Re: Hydrogen

Post by PiMan »

Richo wrote: Thu, 09 Aug 2018, 12:39 CSIRO announce quite some time ago that they were working on this.
They weren't specific in that article what they had achieved recently.
I'm guessing it's that they have a prototype to show people - one step up from vapourware.

You'd hope that it would "rival our LNG export industry."
That's the whole point.
We won't be sucking gas out the ground forever.
Please tell me "vapourware" was an intentional pun.
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Re: Hydrogen

Post by T1 Terry »

PiMan wrote: Thu, 09 Aug 2018, 18:15
Richo wrote: Thu, 09 Aug 2018, 12:39 CSIRO announce quite some time ago that they were working on this.
They weren't specific in that article what they had achieved recently.
I'm guessing it's that they have a prototype to show people - one step up from vapourware.

You'd hope that it would "rival our LNG export industry."
That's the whole point.
We won't be sucking gas out the ground forever.
Please tell me "vapourware" was an intentional pun.
Yeah, I got a smile from it too so even if it was an unintentional pun it worked well so you still get the points on the pun-a meter :lol:

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