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Robert Hargraves's avatar

To make cheap hydrogen we need cheap THERMAL and ELECTRIC energy, such as from nuclear power at 1 cent/kwh(e) and 3 cent/kWh(t) -- possible but not with US NRC. BUT even cheap hydrogen is an awkward fuel, costly to liquify, or compress, or transport to fueling stations, or carry in a vehicle. Here's an application that requires none of those. https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2024/06/05/bury_co2_or_revive_it_1036137.html

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Carl Wurtz's avatar

Any evaluation of hydrogen as a clean liquid fuel requires a brief review of its history.

As the 1990s drew to a close, it became increasingly clear that electric vehicles were the way of the future. Oil majors knew that with the decline of their #1 product, gasoline, they would have nothing to sell at 50,000 U.S. gas stations; that they would have to come up with a clean alternative fuel to compete with EVs, and do it in a hurry, or their primary retail outlets would soon be converted to convenience stores.

Enter hydrogen, which could easily be manufactured from their #2 product, natural gas (methane) by a process known as steam reformation. When the resulting hydrogen was oxidized in a fuel cell vehicle (FCV), electrical energy would be produced leaving only water as a byproduct. "All that comes out of your tailpipe is a whiff of water vapor," exulted advertising from the California Fuel Cell Partnership, a non-profit organization formed by oil majors Exxon and Shell.

But is hydrogen really "clean"?

Not to anyone with a fundamental understanding of thermodynamics. Steam reformation is an endothermic reaction that emits copious quantities of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, both of which are potent greenhouse gases (GHGs). In effect, carbon emissions that would have come from your tailpipe are being "pre-emitted" at a refinery. The net effect is even more net GHGs than a comparable high-compression, internal-combustion vehicle burning gasoline.

Renewables advocates will correctly point out clean hydrogen can be made by using wind and solar energy to separate hydrogen from water. The problem is, it isn't. 95% of industrial hydrogen is made from natural gas, for the simple reason it's far more profitable to do it that way. And because it is impossible to determine the providence of hydrogen once it is made, it is safe to assume dirty hydrogen will be labeled as clean, with no way to verify which is which.

For other reasons hydrogen is an awful choice for a liquid fuel. It must be compressed and/or refrigerated to store or move it, at enormous penalty in energy and external GHG emissions. But it was never intended to be a clean fuel anyway, only as another way to market natural gas. Hydrogen, for all its contemporary buzz and allure, is Just. Another. Fossil. Fuel.

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