Limitless ‘white’ hydrogen under our feet may soon shatter all energy assumptions

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 49 points – Limitless ‘white’ hydrogen under our feet may soon shatter all energy assumptions
telegraph.co.uk

Limitless ‘white’ hydrogen under our feet may soon shatter all energy assumptions::undefined

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White hydrogen is still a non-renewable energy and exploiting it will lead to environmental pollution.

Moreover countries with more hydrogen will gain leverage in the political game just like OPEC has currently, which has only been problems for everyone because of the tensions surrounding oil demand.

Solar and wind on the other hand can be harvested pretty much everywhere, which will give autonomy to most country and thus balance geopolitics.

Tldr: white hydrogen should keep sleeping underground

I don't know that I entirely agree - yes white hydrogen is non-renewable and yes there are environmental concerns over harvesting it, but I don't see as much of a risk in demand, given that anyone with a solar panel and some water can produce their own hydrogen.

My fear is that white hydrogen will be used as an excuse for continuing to harvest carbon-based fossil fuels - "we're trying to extract hydrogen in this field but we've just gotta extract these pesky hydrocarbons in the process". There would need to be a metric fuckton of regulations in place to get me even close to on board with the process, and odds are these regulations would make it much less "cost competitive" than promised.

It kind of screams co-opting by the fossil fuel industry, doesn't it. Just like all of the efforts to make Alberta tar sands oil sound environmentally friendly, by pointing to the strong regulatory environment. Rather than focus on what will actually improve things the most, they want something that keeps them in business

Anyone can produce green hydrogen Indeed, but it will be much more expensive and therefore states will probably choose the cheapest option. I really fear it would just be "oil 2" with only a few a the issues of oil resolved. I agree it needs a lot of régulation to avoid doing the same errors all over again

Yeah, agreed. The biggest difference though is that green hydrogen provides a price ceiling that we don't really have with oil currently

anyone with a solar panel and some water can produce their own hydrogen.

But we can't, at least not in usable quantities. Electrolysis is extremely slow.

a non-renewable energy and exploiting it will lead to environmental pollution.

But that is a 'pollution' with pure H2O.

It doens't come out the ground as pure hydrogen

Of course not. Like everything else that you dig out of the ground.

But if you burn it in combustion engines or fuel cells, it must be cleaned before. You don't want to kill your engines.

The point is the "other stuff" coming out of the ground is still very likely pollution.

So we trade one polluting mining operation for another, but we get a fuel that burns cleaner and doesn't produce greenhouse gasses.

Look, I'd much prefer we switch to solar/hydrogen, but we can't say that X is bad because X isn't perfect, especially when the alternative is far worse.

Pretty hypetrain article without much to back it up. No commercial drilling potential sites found yet. Sounds like someone needs investor money.

Hydrogen is a pretty complicated gas to deal with. The flame is nearly invisible in daylight meaning you could be standing in a Hydrogen fire and only tell because your skin is burning off. The molecule is so small that its hard to contain it because seals leak. Storage of hydrogen is also a problem. The density is also very very low in both gaseous and cryogenic liquid form which means you have to have very large containers compared to most other fuels.

The article proposes to graduate hydrogen to a utility grade fuel, which isn't impossible, its just really really hard, and other alternatives are much easier to accomplish the same goal.

One approach may be to located hydrogen combustion or hydrogen fuel cells very close to the point of extraction turning it into electricity as soon as possible. That would bypass most of the storage challenges at least. However, this idea comes with its own challenges as hydrogen extraction points may not be near utility grade power lines for transport of the electricity produced.

Everytime I read about hydrogen being the future I get the feeling of oil lobby selling the next "oil" because thats all they understand. Hydrogen has a future where its energy to weight ratio counts and that is aviation fuel. For now.

Limitless

It annoys me that the meme's quote is wrong. It's "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means".

The quote is totally messed up for sure. What annoys me as well is that image is not even from that scene or the same person. Doesn't it come from the "inconceivable" poison cup scene?

I think the scene is when Wesley's sailboat is catching up on Vidzini's boat and the Giant corrects Vidzini who repeated that yes! ... "inconceivable"

Correct, but it's when Wesley is climbing the rope and they are at the top looking down at him.

Hydrogen is going to be abused to white wash fossils, no doubt. It will also keep consumers dependent on gas station distribution. Certain types of companies like both of these things very much.

I don't believe the prices presented in the article. P2X will eventually be able to produce much cheaper green hydrogen than the costs of drilling for white hydrogen. There really isn't a limit to how cheap it can get.

White hydrogen is fine to replace the production of gray hydrogen right now, but I doubt it will continue to be the cheapest method in just a few years.