I’m guessing you know that the garbage dumps collecting methane propose to burn it as fuel to provide power. As you know, that’s an aerobic process.
And it’s wonderful that science has methods to break down methane. But real world economics has a way of spoiling things. What would be the cost of catalysis on the industrial scale needed to deal with the methane produced in the production of blue hydrogen? And again, would there be sufficient demand for this new industrial scale production of end products aggregated across the world? Surely the latter question impacts the former as sale of the end products would underpin viability. And how much power would be required for the large-scale catalysis process? After all, the fact blue hydrogen requires less power to produce than green hydrogen production requires is one of its selling points. But when we add in the power required to process the byproducts, maybe that pro turns into a con. Maybe blue hydrogen would then be a con?
By the way, science also gives us the ability to split carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen. In theory, we could deal with this byproduct of blue hydrogen production. But the power required to achieve this in order to produce power makes it impractical. So let’s focus on practicality rather than theory.
Maybe rather than trying to cut the Gordion knot by searching for ways to minimise the impact of greenhouse byproducts, we should simplify the problem by producing green hydrogen. As you’ve already noted, hydrogen will only meet a tiny fraction of the world’s energy needs, so let’s not get tied up in knots over it.
Quote:Aerobic
relating to, involving, or requiring free oxygen.
"simple aerobic bacteria"
And it’s wonderful that science has methods to break down methane. But real world economics has a way of spoiling things. What would be the cost of catalysis on the industrial scale needed to deal with the methane produced in the production of blue hydrogen? And again, would there be sufficient demand for this new industrial scale production of end products aggregated across the world? Surely the latter question impacts the former as sale of the end products would underpin viability. And how much power would be required for the large-scale catalysis process? After all, the fact blue hydrogen requires less power to produce than green hydrogen production requires is one of its selling points. But when we add in the power required to process the byproducts, maybe that pro turns into a con. Maybe blue hydrogen would then be a con?
By the way, science also gives us the ability to split carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen. In theory, we could deal with this byproduct of blue hydrogen production. But the power required to achieve this in order to produce power makes it impractical. So let’s focus on practicality rather than theory.
Maybe rather than trying to cut the Gordion knot by searching for ways to minimise the impact of greenhouse byproducts, we should simplify the problem by producing green hydrogen. As you’ve already noted, hydrogen will only meet a tiny fraction of the world’s energy needs, so let’s not get tied up in knots over it.