I saw the headline for the Telegraph article, but didn't attempt to look behind the paywall. Interesting that you highlight that the hydrogen "appears to be self-sustaining" -- seems like that would be critical and we would need to have high confidence in that continuing to be the case. (BTW, "natural hydrogen" seems to be a so much more meaningful term than "white hydrogen", that I wouldn't be worried I was being woke if I used the former.)
I pin more hopes on nuclear power and renewables, combined with a huge move towards mass transit (away from individual car ownership), but if this passes peer review it can be part of some solutions too.
Re: "combined with a huge move towards mass transit (away from individual car ownership)"
I look forward to our politicians fully explaining this position together with its costs and benefits and how they will be playing their parts... and then giving us a vote on whether that's the direction we collectively want to go.
We never voted on the decision to go road-centric in the 20s/30s. It was just something that happened as urban planners fell in love with the idea of suburbs, and they ripped up public transit and built the suburbs in responses. There's a lot that can be done without an explicit programme to fix it too. Stop subsidising petrol. Reduce parking. Stop making it so easy to own a car or build/live in suburbs. Re-urbanise. And so on.
If you want examples of subsidised fuels, go to petro-states like Kuwait, UAE, Saudi, Oman, Libya, Venezuela - I've been to all and bought fuel for the equivalent of cents per litre.
We have a special tax on it, yes. But we also put a lot of direct and indirect economic investment in the petrol supply chain - it's not simply a "sin tax" like alcohol. And if we look at things outside of what's strictly petrol (oil politics, strategic reserve, etc) and towards everything we do for the automotive industry, private roads, and so on, we're very much a pro-private-car-ownership country. And we shouldn't be.
Mass transit is fine where there are "masses" in close proximity who share common destinations (e.g. buses/trams/tube in cities) or for long distance travel to 'hubs' (e.g. inter-city rail) but that's only a small proportion of the journeys that people make for all sorts of reasons, a very large proportion of which are occupational (e.g. trades people attending places of work). Mass transit is not an option for those journeys.
True, but about a century ago we reorganised American life to create the suburbs, which led to the sprawl that made mass transit viable for fewer people. We can start reversing that. It will take many decades to do so, but pulling people back into cities (not necessarily huge cities, but out of suburbs) and rebuilding mass transit in cities is worthwhile. It's the real long-term solution, not better cars.
I must admit that I had dismissed Hydrogen as a non-starter for energy - a tank of the stuff at 700 atmospheres under the back seat of my car is a little off-putting. Also the need to completely replace existing natural gas infrastructure to contain and transport H2 efficiently would seem to make it uneconomical. I guess that's why Nature invented fuels like methane!
However, in looking at some of the links in your article I came across radiolysis - which I was unaware of before . It seems to be a mechanism by which H2 is formed by radioactivity dissociating water molecules deep underground.
As a really off-the-wall thought I wondered if anyone had investigated doing this within a conventional nuclear reactor - or even with nuclear waste.
Re: natural gas infrastructure, pls see my comments to Jacqueline.
Re: hydrogen for cars, absolutely 'no way Jose'. As I've commented recently on LinkedIn, possibly the best transition mode for personal transport - to minimise lifetime [material + energy] consumption - may be plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs).
Re: radiolysis, in-ground versus in a nuclear reactor.
*If* radiolysis in-ground is a/the mechanism for replenishing H2 coming out of the ground, great! It costs 'only' what it costs to drill for and collect and distribute it.
If, however, you have constructed a nuclear power plant from which you can generate electricity, you would probably not want to downgrade its performance by extracting energy for radiolysis to produce H2 instead... at least until you have a surplus of low-warming power generation, i.e. not in my lifetime. With nuclear waste instead? No idea whatsoever.
I thought the same when I read Ambrose's article. Was convinced it must be a hoax, checked the date, etc. (Btw the Telegraph does not seem to be paywalled at the moment, at least I've been able to read without interruption this week while they plug their 3 months trial for £1 offer). Hydrogen will still be tricky to tame though however it's done.
Re: "Hydrogen will still be tricky to tame though however it's done."
Yes, but the O&G industry has been taming it for decades in refineries, and the fertilizer industry in ammonia production for as long.
The big thing that will influence cost in a given consuming country, is whether their 'natural' gas grid infrastructure could be re-used for transmission of hydrogen. I've seen conflicting opinions on that, I think partly derived from different jurisdictions using different codes and standards for high-pressure distribution piping.
The other big cost factor is where these hydrogen 'fields' are discovered, and whether they'll need a whole new hydrogen-spec gathering system. And of course if they are too far from consumers for a pipeline to be economic, liquefying hydrogen takes (wastes) around 30% of the energy it embodies. Also, shipping it would entail far higher losses than for liquefied natural gas (LNG) because of the much lower absolute temperature of Liquid H2.
I saw the headline for the Telegraph article, but didn't attempt to look behind the paywall. Interesting that you highlight that the hydrogen "appears to be self-sustaining" -- seems like that would be critical and we would need to have high confidence in that continuing to be the case. (BTW, "natural hydrogen" seems to be a so much more meaningful term than "white hydrogen", that I wouldn't be worried I was being woke if I used the former.)
I pin more hopes on nuclear power and renewables, combined with a huge move towards mass transit (away from individual car ownership), but if this passes peer review it can be part of some solutions too.
Hello Improv, thank you for your comments.
Re: "combined with a huge move towards mass transit (away from individual car ownership)"
I look forward to our politicians fully explaining this position together with its costs and benefits and how they will be playing their parts... and then giving us a vote on whether that's the direction we collectively want to go.
We never voted on the decision to go road-centric in the 20s/30s. It was just something that happened as urban planners fell in love with the idea of suburbs, and they ripped up public transit and built the suburbs in responses. There's a lot that can be done without an explicit programme to fix it too. Stop subsidising petrol. Reduce parking. Stop making it so easy to own a car or build/live in suburbs. Re-urbanise. And so on.
Just one of your points: 'subsidising petrol"??
Not taxing fuels at quite as high a rate as it seems you'd prefer https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/extending-the-cut-to-fuel-duty-rates/temporary-extension-to-the-cut-in-fuel-duty-rates
is *not* subsidising them.
If you want examples of subsidised fuels, go to petro-states like Kuwait, UAE, Saudi, Oman, Libya, Venezuela - I've been to all and bought fuel for the equivalent of cents per litre.
We have a special tax on it, yes. But we also put a lot of direct and indirect economic investment in the petrol supply chain - it's not simply a "sin tax" like alcohol. And if we look at things outside of what's strictly petrol (oil politics, strategic reserve, etc) and towards everything we do for the automotive industry, private roads, and so on, we're very much a pro-private-car-ownership country. And we shouldn't be.
Mass transit is fine where there are "masses" in close proximity who share common destinations (e.g. buses/trams/tube in cities) or for long distance travel to 'hubs' (e.g. inter-city rail) but that's only a small proportion of the journeys that people make for all sorts of reasons, a very large proportion of which are occupational (e.g. trades people attending places of work). Mass transit is not an option for those journeys.
True, but about a century ago we reorganised American life to create the suburbs, which led to the sprawl that made mass transit viable for fewer people. We can start reversing that. It will take many decades to do so, but pulling people back into cities (not necessarily huge cities, but out of suburbs) and rebuilding mass transit in cities is worthwhile. It's the real long-term solution, not better cars.
I must admit that I had dismissed Hydrogen as a non-starter for energy - a tank of the stuff at 700 atmospheres under the back seat of my car is a little off-putting. Also the need to completely replace existing natural gas infrastructure to contain and transport H2 efficiently would seem to make it uneconomical. I guess that's why Nature invented fuels like methane!
However, in looking at some of the links in your article I came across radiolysis - which I was unaware of before . It seems to be a mechanism by which H2 is formed by radioactivity dissociating water molecules deep underground.
As a really off-the-wall thought I wondered if anyone had investigated doing this within a conventional nuclear reactor - or even with nuclear waste.
Hello Jim, thank you.
Re: natural gas infrastructure, pls see my comments to Jacqueline.
Re: hydrogen for cars, absolutely 'no way Jose'. As I've commented recently on LinkedIn, possibly the best transition mode for personal transport - to minimise lifetime [material + energy] consumption - may be plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs).
Re: radiolysis, in-ground versus in a nuclear reactor.
*If* radiolysis in-ground is a/the mechanism for replenishing H2 coming out of the ground, great! It costs 'only' what it costs to drill for and collect and distribute it.
If, however, you have constructed a nuclear power plant from which you can generate electricity, you would probably not want to downgrade its performance by extracting energy for radiolysis to produce H2 instead... at least until you have a surplus of low-warming power generation, i.e. not in my lifetime. With nuclear waste instead? No idea whatsoever.
I thought the same when I read Ambrose's article. Was convinced it must be a hoax, checked the date, etc. (Btw the Telegraph does not seem to be paywalled at the moment, at least I've been able to read without interruption this week while they plug their 3 months trial for £1 offer). Hydrogen will still be tricky to tame though however it's done.
Thank you for your comments, Jacqueline.
Re: "Hydrogen will still be tricky to tame though however it's done."
Yes, but the O&G industry has been taming it for decades in refineries, and the fertilizer industry in ammonia production for as long.
The big thing that will influence cost in a given consuming country, is whether their 'natural' gas grid infrastructure could be re-used for transmission of hydrogen. I've seen conflicting opinions on that, I think partly derived from different jurisdictions using different codes and standards for high-pressure distribution piping.
The other big cost factor is where these hydrogen 'fields' are discovered, and whether they'll need a whole new hydrogen-spec gathering system. And of course if they are too far from consumers for a pipeline to be economic, liquefying hydrogen takes (wastes) around 30% of the energy it embodies. Also, shipping it would entail far higher losses than for liquefied natural gas (LNG) because of the much lower absolute temperature of Liquid H2.
Thanks for the extra information, was aware of some of these issues but not knowledgeable enough to know the answers.