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+--- Thread: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread (/thread-4986.html)
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - LP - 03-07-2023
Methane, everywhere I look!
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - LP - 03-07-2023
Of course we won't talk about steel production, CO2 emissions, collection, conversion and methanol, something that has been an integral part of the process for nearly 2 decades, an uncomfortable truth for the green lobbyists.
Because as you all know, the reduction of CO2 emissions, collection and conversion of waste gases, and the production of energy from the surpluses, can't be done.
Just ban the bastards, we don't need them, we can all drive EVs made of bamboo, for the life of me I can't work out why I aren't bashing this out on a paper mache keyboard!
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - Mav - 03-07-2023
(03-07-2023, 05:47 AM)LP link Wrote:If they could get a license, but the political will is not there, lobbyists are too powerful, the engineering and science doesn't really matter.So when you claimed blue hydrogen production wouldn’t produce methane emissions because the methane would be catalysed into commercially saleable byproducts, you were being a bit disingenuous as you knew the political will isn’t there and the lobbyists are too powerful?
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - LP - 03-07-2023
(03-07-2023, 05:57 AM)Mav date Wrote:So when you claimed blue hydrogen production wouldn’t produce methane emissions because the methane would be catalysed into commercially saleable by-products, you were being a bit disingenuous as you knew the political will isn’t there and the lobbyists are too powerful?No not at all, I'll reiterate the point you like to ignore, hydrogen as a by-product of mining is only the start up fuel, the ignition phase for a hydrogen economy. I have no idea why you are so hell bent on selectively spreading fear of some technologies, I'll presume you must have big shares in a competitive technology like solar or wind, as it can't be hydro.
Trying to paint blue, grey, technicolour hydrogen whatever you would like to laughingly label it as the one and only source is the misleading part of this debate. I've stated that before and I'll state it again whenever you make a point that seems to imply otherwise.
Nobody I have talked to in the industry expects hydrogen from methane to ever be more than a very small fraction of the bigger economy. But that doesn't mean methane can't be collected, converted or used for other chemical or energy sources. In fact one way to reduce methane emissions is to do just that, turn it into something of greater value, it's fairly obvious. We will never stop producing methane it's a fundamental by-product of human agriculture, chemical industries, pharmaceuticals, materials processing, etc., etc., in fact a fundamental by-product of life!
Yes, lobbyists are powerful, no matter how stupid they are they have clout, for example some are now try to ban nitrogen, yes that is correct there are lobbyists on the anti-nitrogen bandwagon, it must be very profitable, the band wagon is profitable not the nitrogen because we need to ban that!
Ar5es up, line up for your annual methane emissions check! ;D
I don't think you'll find anyone on the planet who thinks methane or any other chemical leak is OK. But I'm sure you'll find plenty of profiteers on both sides of the debate about leaks or spills and what to do about them.
Leaks and spills are not what would fuel the hydrogen economy, by the very definition of leak or spill!
If we stop the mining of rare-earths because of associated methane emissions, what then happens to those noble plans of growing the SolarPV market to the required 80% level, up from the current 3% level? That is right, the very latest figures from the EU itself on energy suggest total wind and solar is less than 3% of the global energy market, and has to get to 80% to reach net zero carbon! But if you genuinely followed that issue you would know that there was a international conference on this very issue right here in Victoria last week. In fact it was so low profile we didn't even have protestors, they must be still OS on holidays from attending COP, but those environmental bastards like BHP, Shell and Fortescue did attend. Real people, discussing real issues with real solutions, and not just a lot of bureaucratic or lobbyist hot air!
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - Mav - 03-07-2023
Assume away. As Felix Unger noted, when you ass-u-me, you make an ass out of u and me. Why don’t you buy me a huge tranche of shares just so you can make it so
. Maybe you’ll have to sell off your big stake in the HESC project to do so though:Japan to spend $2.35bn on turning Victorian Latrobe valley coal into ‘clean hydrogen’, The Guardian.
Quote: Critics have previously described the project as “just a new fossil fuel industry” that would see Australia generating greenhouse gas emissions onshore while exporting a cleaner fuel.Yep, nothing in there about converting methane into useful product or other means of disposing of it. And we have the pie-in-the-sky assumption that CCS will work even though there’s no CCS as yet. But we do note at least 10% of the carbon dioxide will be emitted. And we know damn well that if the scheme is approved, governments won’t allow the failure to make the CCS system operational to derail the project (given that it allows Victoria’s coal resources to be exploited and it’ll provide jobs in the Latrobe Valley). And that’s assuming that the government won’t be locked in by guaranteed contracts/subsidies and/or investments. As the final comment in the quote notes, ‘investment in producing hydrogen from fossil fuels “risks locking us in to using fossil fuels for longer” when costs of producing hydrogen from renewable energy were falling fast … There’s a risk of stranded assets in this area.’
Neither of the two carbon storage sites identified by the project are close to being operational, yet are key to the project’s goals of producing cleaner hydrogen.
…
Stone said the project would bring coal gasification technology from J-Power’s Osaki CoolGen facility to Australia which, he said, was able to capture 90% of CO2 emissions from the process of turning the coal into synthetic gas and then extracting the hydrogen.
Stone said there were still investment decisions and government approvals to be gained, but the project was looking to produce its first hydrogen before the end of the decade.
Capturing and storing the CO2 “has to be part of the project” because without it “we can’t reach the carbon intensities that countries want” from clean hydrogen, Stone said.
The project’s target was to produce hydrogen clean enough to meet emerging benchmarks, he said, such as those of the US government which is providing tax breaks for hydrogen that emits less than 4kg of CO2 for every kilogram of the gas produced.
“We’re doing everything possible to make this as clean as possible. We’re trying to minimise CO2 in all elements of the project. Right now there’s 90 million tonnes of hydrogen being made every year with no abatement at all. That’s about 11.5kg of CO2 for every kilo of hydrogen.”
Captured CO2 would be sent by pipeline, Stone said, with two potential offshore storage facilities in the Bass Strait – Exxon’s Bream field project using depleted oil reservoirs or the Victorian and federal government-backed CarbonNet project. Neither project has been given the go-ahead.
Harada said: “This is a complex project and there is still some way to go in terms of approvals, design, construction and commissioning but this is a major boost for the Victorian economy on its journey towards a clean energy future.”
Dr Fiona Beck, an ANU expert on hydrogen’s role in the low carbon energy transition, said investment in infrastructure to liquefy, store, load and transport hydrogen was “really welcome”.
But she said investment in producing hydrogen from fossil fuels “risks locking us in to using fossil fuels for longer” when costs of producing hydrogen from renewable energy were falling fast.
“There’s a risk of stranded assets in this area,” she said.
In reality, we’ll just be extending the life of fossil fuels so we can make a product which can be shipped overseas as a clean energy source. We’ll have to hope that Australia or its customers won’t be forced to account for the emissions when climate change obligations tighten.
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - LP - 03-07-2023
(03-07-2023, 06:41 AM)Mav date Wrote:Yep, nothing in there about converting methane into useful product or other means of disposing of it.How dare they fail to talk about a technology that has been around for almost a hundred years as part of an article on new technologies, shocking!
As for the other part of the debate, hydrogen as a form of renewable energy for transport and storage, it's just absurd that someone would waste time developing energy resources from something as scarce as hydrogen, it's not like the universe is made from it! :o
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - Mav - 03-07-2023
(03-07-2023, 09:44 AM)LP link Wrote:How dare they fail to talk about a technology that has been around for almost a hundred years as part of an article on new technologies, shocking!Then why the hell is no one doing it? As you say, it isn’t as though producers that are heavy emitters of methane wouldn’t be aware of a century-old technology.
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - Mav - 03-07-2023
How green is blue hydrogen?, R.W. Howarth et al, Cornell University:
Quote: AbstractWow, that’s quite a take-down ?
Hydrogen is often viewed as an important energy carrier in a future decarbonized world. Currently, most hydrogen is produced by steam reforming of methane in natural gas (“gray hydrogen”), with high carbon dioxide emissions. Increasingly, many propose using carbon capture and storage to reduce these emissions, producing so-called “blue hydrogen,” frequently promoted as low emissions. We undertake the first effort in a peer-reviewed paper to examine the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of blue hydrogen accounting for emissions of both carbon dioxide and unburned fugitive methane. Far from being low carbon, greenhouse gas emissions from the production of blue hydrogen are quite high, particularly due to the release of fugitive methane. For our default assumptions (3.5% emission rate of methane from natural gas and a 20-year global warming potential), total carbon dioxide equivalent emissions for blue hydrogen are only 9%-12% less than for gray hydrogen. While carbon dioxide emissions are lower, fugitive methane emissions for blue hydrogen are higher than for gray hydrogen because of an increased use of natural gas to power the carbon capture. Perhaps surprisingly, the greenhouse gas footprint of blue hydrogen is more than 20% greater than burning natural gas or coal for heat and some 60% greater than burning diesel oil for heat, again with our default assumptions. In a sensitivity analysis in which the methane emission rate from natural gas is reduced to a low value of 1.54%, greenhouse gas emissions from blue hydrogen are still greater than from simply burning natural gas, and are only 18%-25% less than for gray hydrogen. Our analysis assumes that captured carbon dioxide can be stored indefinitely, an optimistic and unproven assumption. Even if true though, the use of blue hydrogen appears difficult to justify on climate grounds.
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - LP - 03-07-2023
(03-07-2023, 10:27 AM)Mav date Wrote:How green is blue hydrogen?, R.W. Howarth et al, Cornell University:Wow, that’s quite a take-down ?Do you know what steam reforming actually is?
The paper you cite assumes future hydrogen production comes by steam reforming of methane using natural gas or fossil fuels as the energy source for the process, so they allocate the total carbon emissions from the energy production and the miniscule by-product CO2 from steam reforming as a hydrogen CO2 emission, you have to be guidable to swallow that pill.
Why would any industry pay for energy if SolarPV or Solar Thermal is effective and viable, unless of course you think Solar energy is a mirage and there is a need to use a higher calorific energy source to produce hydrogen. Or unless you plan nuclear and need base load demand such as desalination or hydrogen production to draw down the surplus.
As I have stated, hydrogen production from non-renewable sources is expected to be a very very small percentage of the larger hydrogen economy, there is nothing to fear. Long term the vast bulk of hydrogen will come to market using renewable resources, it'll be a compact, energy dense, transportable source free of carbon emission.
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - LP - 03-07-2023
(03-07-2023, 10:11 AM)Mav date Wrote:Then why the hell is no one doing it?Methane capture and conversion is done pretty much everywhere big industry exists, just because you just haven't heard about it doesn't mean it is not being done!
Within a few hours drive of where you are right now there are probably hundreds of sites doing it 24x7. You find it in all sorts of smelters, mills, food processing, energy production, chemical production, agriculture, the crime isn't that it's not being done but that it's not compulsory to do it and that there is no infrastructure to deal with the hydrogen produced.