Electricity Or Hydrogen?

securespark · 15 Jul 2021

Which is the greenest option?

Electricity is still polluting to produce.

There will be strain on electricity distribution systems as uptake increases. It is unclear whether there will be enough investment in those and charging networks to cope with demand.

Hydrogen vehicle's only by-products are heat and water.

But what is the environmental cost of hydrogen production?

When weighing up all the pros and cons of both fuels, which do you think is best?

IT Minion · 15 Jul 2021

Electricity beats hydrogen every time if all things are equal. There's a few areas it might make sense in the future but it'll almost alway be more expensive and less efficient.

At the moment hydrogen is almost all made from natural gas, which means it's a fossil fuel. Electricity from the grid has a lower carbon footprint now, and is improving every year. So right now, electricity all the way.

In theory we might see green hydrogen made by splitting water into oxegen and hydrogen, powered by renewables. But it is currently absurdly expensive so it isn't a significant factor right now.

Even when the price drops in five to ten years the process is inefficient to split water, transport the hydrogen and then convert it back to electricity for use, compared to storing in a battery and then using electricity. Which means it's more green to use batteries in nearly all cases.

The exceptions are when batteries aren't an option and you can't connect to a grid. Seasonal storage for example, there batteries or grid electricity can't work, so hydrogen might be useful.

Burnerman · 15 Jul 2021

Hydrogen seems to be produced just now by splitting the molecules of methane...CH4 (a much simplified equation).
So, there’s a lot of hydrogen to be had.
However, the remaining CO2 is then pumped back from whence it came

Yeah, great

John

ellal · 15 Jul 2021

Interestingly on googling the subject...

Linky

"Icelandair Group has made preliminary deals with both Universal Hydrogen and Heart Aerospace with the goal of using planes fuelled by hydrogen and/or electricity on domestic routes.
Universal Hydrogen has developed a technology that could be used to retrofit Icelandair‘s Dash-8 passenger planes to have them run on hydrogen while Heart Aerospace plans to build passenger aircraft that will run on electricity"

Of course Electricity generation over there is free of fossil fuels, and there is ongoing work to discover how hydrogen is being produced under the glaciers by microbes.

SirGalahad · 15 Jul 2021

Both

Hydroelectric ....

/s

Gasguru · 15 Jul 2021

The whole point of using a hydrogen/methane blend is your can recover some of the carbon from the methane at source...with the possibilty of storing it rather than release the carbon at the home.
However, the eco warriors want to jump straight to electric everything without understanding the necessary interim steps or practicalities.
Heat pumps (to operate efficiently) are currently only suitable for perhaps 0.1% of homes without significant upgrading.

IT Minion · 15 Jul 2021

Carbon Capture? We might as well start discussing how fusion power will effect things.

But the difficulty in reducing our heating carbon footprint is real. I'm not convinced hydrogen will help much there but it might work as a methadone style substitute until we do sort out the rubbish state of our housing stock. Green hydrogen would help drop it, but again we're miles away from economic green hydrogen at the moment, it's just fractionally closer than cost effective CCS.

troutybrown · 15 Jul 2021

https://ryzehydrogen.com/about/

ajohn · 15 Jul 2021

Hydrogen powered trains have already been ordered. Long haul not electrified that usually use diesel. Fuel cells rather than burning it. I was a bit dismayed by the voltage they produce. They must use rather a lot of them. Some may be running. Not sure if it was evaluation or actually in use. The train came from Germany.

If everybody drives around as they currently do the electricity supply the country will need must be rather enormous. Charging at home - one answer is a unit that monitors what is being used by the house and charges with what's left.

Going green has been costed and comes to billions 3/4 falling directly on the public. No way of knowing if this is entirely true but when central heating upgrades and things like that are included it may well be. The UK is currently greener than many for the simple reason we export it elsewhere to more polluting countries however this makes it easier to go green in the first place. There is currently some argument about not dropping gas. Seems petrol and diesel cars have had it. Hydrogen to allow things like HGV's to do what they normally do as batteries just like trains aren't currently feasible.

ajohn · 15 Jul 2021

I thought there was a high temperature water electrolysis technique. Hydrogen production is covered here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production

Captain Nemesis · 15 Jul 2021

IT Minion said:
it might work as a methadone style substitute

Lends a whole new meaning to "getting high"

Captain Nemesis · 15 Jul 2021

ellal said:
"Icelandair Group has made preliminary deals with both Universal Hydrogen and Heart Aerospace with the goal of using planes fuelled by hydrogen and/or electricity on domestic routes.
Universal Hydrogen has developed a technology that could be used to retrofit Icelandair‘s Dash-8 passenger planes to have them run on hydrogen while Heart Aerospace plans to build passenger aircraft that will run on electricity"

Nohing new about hydrogen powered flight...

Untitled-design-2020-06-19T080924.141.jpg

ajohn · 15 Jul 2021

Train and HGV crashes might get interesting. Remember why balloons use helium.

I know of a company that has been working on sodium sulphur batteries for a very long time - use those, crash and the fire brigade needs to spray water ....................

Captain Nemesis · 15 Jul 2021

ajohn said:
Train and HGV crashes might get interesting. Remember why balloons use helium.

An airship-sized bag of low-pressure hydrogen is very different from a vehicle sized tank of compressed.

OK - I dont know about large vehicles like trains and HGVs, but I read a few years ago that if a cars hydrogen tank ruptured the gas would disappear in a matter of seconds.

ajohn · 15 Jul 2021

Captain Nemesis said:
gas would disappear in a matter of seconds.

Especially if you lit it.

Electricity Or Hydrogen?

Captain Nemesis

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