Robert Bryce what a beautiful summary! You are absolutely right on the money!
If I could make a minor correction, and I quote you at 1:16 in the video
"Hydrogen does NOT occur Naturally - you have to Manufacture it like Electricity or like gasoline"
That's not True
In fact, Hydrogen has The Atomic No. 1 on the Periodic Table, and has 3 naturally occurring 𝙞𝙨𝙤𝙩𝙤𝙥𝙚𝙨.
Basically an isotope indicates the number of neutrons in the Nuclei, and is denoted by a superscript "x" before the element symbol, i.e. [ˣH]
Below are the 3 Isotopes for Hydrogen
[¹𝗛]: aka Protium
[²𝗛]: aka Deuterium
[³𝗛]: aka Tritium
[¹H] and [²H] are both stable, where as [³H] is radioactive with a half-life of ~12.32 years. Most Hydrogen in nature is found as [¹H] with 99.98%
Unlike other elements and isotopes, and an exception to the Periodic Table, Hydrogen [¹H] is the ONLY element isotope that has ZERO neutron. That is, [¹H] atom has 1x proton in the nuclei and 1x electron in the 𝒔-𝒐𝒓𝒃𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒍 energy field
Here is the key from the article: “…Instead, like electricity and gasoline, it must be manufactured. The most common ways are by splitting water through electrolysis, or via steam-methane reforming, which uses high-pressure steam to produce hydrogen from methane. …”
The first and second laws of thermodynamics tell us that every time you convert one type of energy to another, you lose energy…
And yet, even the ‘highly educated’ products of our school systems don’t seem to understand this…
Clearly if it takes more energy to generate hydrogen than it delivers then, all other things being equal, it would be foolish. But they aren’t are they? There is such a thing as energy waste such as wind, sun or sea.
It seems so simple. Why take a perfectly useful hydrocarbon, in this case, methane (or natural gas) and spend extra energy (and cost) to strip the hydrogen from the methane molecule to make "green" fuel. This makes absolutely no sense. Naturally occurring hydrogen is very rare because it is extremely reactive (It after all, makes compounds like methane and propane). Use in fuel cells is probably the best but that is like batteries - expensive and resource intensive. Probably the stupidest idea (it has no scalability). The only thing that is worst is direct CO2 capture from the atmosphere for subsurface injection. That really is the definition of economic insanity.
Earth is cooler with the atmosphere, water vapor, 30% albedo not warmer.
Ubiquitous GHE heat balance graphics use bad math & badder physics.
The kinetic heat transfer modes of the contiguous atmospheric molecules render impossible a BB surface upwelling and looping “extra” LWIR energy for the GHE.
Consensus science has a well-documented history of being wrong & abusing those who dared to challenge it. (Bruno, drawn & quartered)
GHE & CAGW are wrong so alarmists resort to fear mongering, lies, lawsuits, censorship & violence.
Induction and natural gas stove top burners deliver almost all of their heat to the point-of-use pots or pans.
Converting NG to electricity loses 70% up the stack of a combustion turbine and 20% up the stack & 50 % out the condenser of a steam turbine.
Include station auxiliaries and transmission losses and maybe 25% of the NG energy makes it to the meter and stove top.
Switching NG stove tops for induction stove tops for some vague medical and environmental conjecture is really^4 dumb.
But what else should we expect with the snake oil hustle of the climate change scam?
Regarding fuel cells, the Space Shuttle generated its electricity with three redundant fuel cells. The cells were extremely subject to catalyst contamination and had to be refurbished or replaced after every single flight.
They were lucky to get a week of use out of them. From what I have heard the delicate catalyst problem has not been solved.
What I've been posting to Twitter, SeekingAlpha, et al for the past few years regarding H2. Phrasing may vary.
Hydrogen as a fuel makes zero sense. The only way in which any of these schemes will make any money is through government subsidies. As soon as the subsidies stop, or if the support is loans instead of grants, so will the hydrogen.
This is an idea that gets floated once a decade, every decade since at least the 70s and is (in the past) quickly slapped back down where it belongs by the laws of thermodynamics, chemistry and material science.
This time there's massive propaganda money pushing it, certainly in the hopes of generating returns in the form government largesse. Also, it is cover for the wind/solar scheme as the public and even some decision makers are finally realizing that there is no viable battery technology that can make up for the unreliable nature of wind and solar on a reliable grid. So after 20 years of promising magic batteries, they've switched to promising magic hydrogen.
H2 is almost impossible to store, it embrittles most materials, it burns with an invisible flame and it has a ridiculously low volumetric energy content, unless one cools it to temperatures not far off of absolute zero.
The round trip ecomonics of hydrogen are breathtakingly terrible.
The entire premise is based on the wrong view that CO2 at certain levels in the troposphere is some kind of problem. That and grifters gonna grift on tax credits. Sheesh.
My favourite part is where they use methane to make hydrogen, and tout this as a way to reduce carbon emissions. But... the summary of the process is,
Methane + water + energy --> hydrogen + carbon dioxide
whereas burning methane is,
Methane + oxygen --> Carbon dioxide + water + energy
so that turning methane into hydrogen so you can burn it is just a roundabout way of burning methane to get less energy. Either way you get carbon emissions - in fact it's worse, because the net energy per unit of emissions will be less.
Which is, of course, not even considering all the compression and refrigeration the hydrogen needs to be transported, and the embodied energy in all that machinery.
Electrolysis is a bit different, but it relies on having a large surplus of electricity generated by some other means. And we're not seeing that anywhere worldwide.
"Consume less" does not seem to be an alternative considered by anyone.
Hydrogen is not all roses when it comes to the climate:
"In the upper atmosphere, hydrogen may moisten and cool the stratosphere, slowing down the recovery of the ozone layer. In the lower atmosphere, hydrogen may hasten the build-up of the greenhouse gases: methane and ozone and hence contribute to climate change"
I am unsure about hydrogen only being an "energy carrier" and not a "source" and those definitions. Maybe its just semantics?
For example:
Hydrogen can be directly combusted or oxidized. A material that can be combusted and typically generates heat may be known as a fuel. Fossil fuels do the same, right? Direct burn.
In contrast, wind turbines and solar panels create electrons which must be collected and used via voltage drop to do work. Same with a a nuclear plant. It generates heat from splitting U-235 (fuel) which generates heat and then electrons.....That is obviously different than a direct fuel burn or combustible material that an engine directly digests, and why EVs are always less efficient than ICE, despite 90 % electric motor efficiency.
Hydrogen doesn't occur naturally in industrially-significant quantities, it must be manufactured. In the proposed applications it's acting as a store of energy, like a battery. No sensible person calls a lithium-ion battery an energy "source". It's storage.
A lithium-ion battery doesn't spring fully-made from the ground, either.
In both cases, we don't pretend that the thing is a source of energy, it's storage of energy. We then proceed to look at whether the work is worth it. With lithium-ion batteries it can be worth it, since they can be made in different sizes and are easily-transportable. That's why you'll have a small lithium-ion battery in my watch or mobile phone, and a large (or more accurately, a bunch of small ones stuck together) one in a car. But you can't have liquified hydrogen in your mobile phone, and if you had some in your car there would be significant safety concerns, and the range would be shit anyway.
In terms of energy storage and transport, hydrogen has only ever been used for rigid balloons and NASA rockets and spacecraft. But zeppelins proved to be uneconomic, and NASA is not required to be practical or turn a profit since they're doing science and prestige missions. It's notable that commercial rocketry, where they are actually required to turn a profit (more or less, they're heavily-subsidised after all) has stepped away from hydrogen and goes for kerosene and methane - fossil fuels.
One could think in terms that a lithium battery is a storage medium, but contains lithium metal, which an oxidizable material, and can be thought as a fuel.
To that point, the energy density of a charged lithium battery is almost 100 x less than a kg of gasoline or diesel, and is why EVs weigh at least 1000 lbs more than ICE Vehicles to get any range at all.
Yes, lithium-ion batteries are terrible. Indeed, depending on how they're manufactured and used, in some circumstances they can cost more energy to manufacture than they are ever able to store in their various charges.
However, that lithium-ion batteries are so terrible and yet are chosen over hydrogen shows how truly woeful hydrogen is.
It also shows how desperately attached we are to our automobiles, among other things. I have often teased my fellow car-owners with, "If you think it's too expensive, get out and push." I wonder: just how expensive does it have to be before people give up on it?
But people stay even with abusive spouses, so something can be a huge negative in their lives and they'll persist with it. I work as a trainer, and just today a fellow trainer was talking about "miserable certainty" - people prefer their current misery because it's certain and known, over trying the unknown, even though the unknown is likely to be less miserable.
I think it's semantic because, in this case, hydrogen is an energy carrier specifically because it took 1.5x the energy to make it. We call wood a fuel but if I declared I would exclusively use wood that required an oz of uranium to transmute carbon into 1lb of wood then it's not going to really be a fuel in the sense that I get net positive work out of it. It may even be fair to call it negative fuel or simply an inefficient energy carrier.
Thank you for the informative article regarding the "Hydrogen Hype." Safety of hydrogen? My thoughts immediately went to the 1937 Hindenburg disaster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster. I have a healthy first-hand respect for the danger of hydrogen fires.
I have “deja vu all over again” every day with this stuff. Robert’s writeup is spot on. But in 1973-1974 as a freshman in Mechanical Engineering at Kansas State I had to research and write a paper for an Engineering Intro course. The title of my paper was “The Hydrogen Economy”, and aside from the obvious upside (endless supply of hydrogen) most of these downsides were generally known and I addressed them. The only possible way of producing hydrogen with a positive energy balance was in combination with nuke power. Why, in God’s name are we finding ourselves in this delusional space 51 years hence? Also, in Engineering Honors course I was made to read “The Limits to Growth”, which explains a lot of the anti-human energy policies we’re now seeing…again, 51 years hence.
Thank you for sharing the details about the hype. Like fusion, there is a lot of hand waving and outlandish assumptions made about its feasibility.
Robert Bryce what a beautiful summary! You are absolutely right on the money!
If I could make a minor correction, and I quote you at 1:16 in the video
"Hydrogen does NOT occur Naturally - you have to Manufacture it like Electricity or like gasoline"
That's not True
In fact, Hydrogen has The Atomic No. 1 on the Periodic Table, and has 3 naturally occurring 𝙞𝙨𝙤𝙩𝙤𝙥𝙚𝙨.
Basically an isotope indicates the number of neutrons in the Nuclei, and is denoted by a superscript "x" before the element symbol, i.e. [ˣH]
Below are the 3 Isotopes for Hydrogen
[¹𝗛]: aka Protium
[²𝗛]: aka Deuterium
[³𝗛]: aka Tritium
[¹H] and [²H] are both stable, where as [³H] is radioactive with a half-life of ~12.32 years. Most Hydrogen in nature is found as [¹H] with 99.98%
Unlike other elements and isotopes, and an exception to the Periodic Table, Hydrogen [¹H] is the ONLY element isotope that has ZERO neutron. That is, [¹H] atom has 1x proton in the nuclei and 1x electron in the 𝒔-𝒐𝒓𝒃𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒍 energy field
here is my post on this very subject ;)
𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗖𝗵𝗲𝗰𝗸: 𝗛 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗛𝘆𝗽𝗲 [𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘁 𝗕𝗿𝘆𝗰𝗲]
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aalshehabi_reality-check-h-for-hype-robert-bryce-activity-7196619584693563393-8irb
Here is the key from the article: “…Instead, like electricity and gasoline, it must be manufactured. The most common ways are by splitting water through electrolysis, or via steam-methane reforming, which uses high-pressure steam to produce hydrogen from methane. …”
The first and second laws of thermodynamics tell us that every time you convert one type of energy to another, you lose energy…
And yet, even the ‘highly educated’ products of our school systems don’t seem to understand this…
Absolutely my friend! That's because of ignorant Sh33P Think!
Unfortunately, Science has hijacked to the highest bidder and for a long time now.
The result is indoctrinated SH33Ps that are incapacitated to think clearly and critically for themselves.
Classic! Those who don't learn from History are bound to repeat it
Clearly if it takes more energy to generate hydrogen than it delivers then, all other things being equal, it would be foolish. But they aren’t are they? There is such a thing as energy waste such as wind, sun or sea.
It seems so simple. Why take a perfectly useful hydrocarbon, in this case, methane (or natural gas) and spend extra energy (and cost) to strip the hydrogen from the methane molecule to make "green" fuel. This makes absolutely no sense. Naturally occurring hydrogen is very rare because it is extremely reactive (It after all, makes compounds like methane and propane). Use in fuel cells is probably the best but that is like batteries - expensive and resource intensive. Probably the stupidest idea (it has no scalability). The only thing that is worst is direct CO2 capture from the atmosphere for subsurface injection. That really is the definition of economic insanity.
Kinda like biofuels only hypier
Earth is cooler with the atmosphere, water vapor, 30% albedo not warmer.
Ubiquitous GHE heat balance graphics use bad math & badder physics.
The kinetic heat transfer modes of the contiguous atmospheric molecules render impossible a BB surface upwelling and looping “extra” LWIR energy for the GHE.
Consensus science has a well-documented history of being wrong & abusing those who dared to challenge it. (Bruno, drawn & quartered)
GHE & CAGW are wrong so alarmists resort to fear mongering, lies, lawsuits, censorship & violence.
Induction and natural gas stove top burners deliver almost all of their heat to the point-of-use pots or pans.
Converting NG to electricity loses 70% up the stack of a combustion turbine and 20% up the stack & 50 % out the condenser of a steam turbine.
Include station auxiliaries and transmission losses and maybe 25% of the NG energy makes it to the meter and stove top.
Switching NG stove tops for induction stove tops for some vague medical and environmental conjecture is really^4 dumb.
But what else should we expect with the snake oil hustle of the climate change scam?
Regarding fuel cells, the Space Shuttle generated its electricity with three redundant fuel cells. The cells were extremely subject to catalyst contamination and had to be refurbished or replaced after every single flight.
They were lucky to get a week of use out of them. From what I have heard the delicate catalyst problem has not been solved.
What I've been posting to Twitter, SeekingAlpha, et al for the past few years regarding H2. Phrasing may vary.
Hydrogen as a fuel makes zero sense. The only way in which any of these schemes will make any money is through government subsidies. As soon as the subsidies stop, or if the support is loans instead of grants, so will the hydrogen.
This is an idea that gets floated once a decade, every decade since at least the 70s and is (in the past) quickly slapped back down where it belongs by the laws of thermodynamics, chemistry and material science.
This time there's massive propaganda money pushing it, certainly in the hopes of generating returns in the form government largesse. Also, it is cover for the wind/solar scheme as the public and even some decision makers are finally realizing that there is no viable battery technology that can make up for the unreliable nature of wind and solar on a reliable grid. So after 20 years of promising magic batteries, they've switched to promising magic hydrogen.
H2 is almost impossible to store, it embrittles most materials, it burns with an invisible flame and it has a ridiculously low volumetric energy content, unless one cools it to temperatures not far off of absolute zero.
The round trip ecomonics of hydrogen are breathtakingly terrible.
The entire premise is based on the wrong view that CO2 at certain levels in the troposphere is some kind of problem. That and grifters gonna grift on tax credits. Sheesh.
My favourite part is where they use methane to make hydrogen, and tout this as a way to reduce carbon emissions. But... the summary of the process is,
Methane + water + energy --> hydrogen + carbon dioxide
whereas burning methane is,
Methane + oxygen --> Carbon dioxide + water + energy
so that turning methane into hydrogen so you can burn it is just a roundabout way of burning methane to get less energy. Either way you get carbon emissions - in fact it's worse, because the net energy per unit of emissions will be less.
Which is, of course, not even considering all the compression and refrigeration the hydrogen needs to be transported, and the embodied energy in all that machinery.
Electrolysis is a bit different, but it relies on having a large surplus of electricity generated by some other means. And we're not seeing that anywhere worldwide.
"Consume less" does not seem to be an alternative considered by anyone.
Hydrogen is the fuel of the future, and it always will be.
Hydrogen is not all roses when it comes to the climate:
"In the upper atmosphere, hydrogen may moisten and cool the stratosphere, slowing down the recovery of the ozone layer. In the lower atmosphere, hydrogen may hasten the build-up of the greenhouse gases: methane and ozone and hence contribute to climate change"
“If you like $6-per-gallon gasoline, you’re gonna love $14-to-$20-per-gallon hydrogen. A thermodynamic obscenity,” indeed!
{...a thermodynamic obscenity...}
BINGO !!!
Because it's gonna burn through your wallet !!!
I am unsure about hydrogen only being an "energy carrier" and not a "source" and those definitions. Maybe its just semantics?
For example:
Hydrogen can be directly combusted or oxidized. A material that can be combusted and typically generates heat may be known as a fuel. Fossil fuels do the same, right? Direct burn.
In contrast, wind turbines and solar panels create electrons which must be collected and used via voltage drop to do work. Same with a a nuclear plant. It generates heat from splitting U-235 (fuel) which generates heat and then electrons.....That is obviously different than a direct fuel burn or combustible material that an engine directly digests, and why EVs are always less efficient than ICE, despite 90 % electric motor efficiency.
See: https://tucoschild.substack.com/p/eviscerated-ice-vehicles-are-more
Hydrogen doesn't occur naturally in industrially-significant quantities, it must be manufactured. In the proposed applications it's acting as a store of energy, like a battery. No sensible person calls a lithium-ion battery an energy "source". It's storage.
A lithium-ion battery doesn't spring fully-made from the ground, either.
In both cases, we don't pretend that the thing is a source of energy, it's storage of energy. We then proceed to look at whether the work is worth it. With lithium-ion batteries it can be worth it, since they can be made in different sizes and are easily-transportable. That's why you'll have a small lithium-ion battery in my watch or mobile phone, and a large (or more accurately, a bunch of small ones stuck together) one in a car. But you can't have liquified hydrogen in your mobile phone, and if you had some in your car there would be significant safety concerns, and the range would be shit anyway.
In terms of energy storage and transport, hydrogen has only ever been used for rigid balloons and NASA rockets and spacecraft. But zeppelins proved to be uneconomic, and NASA is not required to be practical or turn a profit since they're doing science and prestige missions. It's notable that commercial rocketry, where they are actually required to turn a profit (more or less, they're heavily-subsidised after all) has stepped away from hydrogen and goes for kerosene and methane - fossil fuels.
Good points and interesting.
One could think in terms that a lithium battery is a storage medium, but contains lithium metal, which an oxidizable material, and can be thought as a fuel.
To that point, the energy density of a charged lithium battery is almost 100 x less than a kg of gasoline or diesel, and is why EVs weigh at least 1000 lbs more than ICE Vehicles to get any range at all.
Yes, lithium-ion batteries are terrible. Indeed, depending on how they're manufactured and used, in some circumstances they can cost more energy to manufacture than they are ever able to store in their various charges.
However, that lithium-ion batteries are so terrible and yet are chosen over hydrogen shows how truly woeful hydrogen is.
It also shows how desperately attached we are to our automobiles, among other things. I have often teased my fellow car-owners with, "If you think it's too expensive, get out and push." I wonder: just how expensive does it have to be before people give up on it?
But people stay even with abusive spouses, so something can be a huge negative in their lives and they'll persist with it. I work as a trainer, and just today a fellow trainer was talking about "miserable certainty" - people prefer their current misery because it's certain and known, over trying the unknown, even though the unknown is likely to be less miserable.
Cars are a lot like that.
"Truly woeful"👍😁
I think it's semantic because, in this case, hydrogen is an energy carrier specifically because it took 1.5x the energy to make it. We call wood a fuel but if I declared I would exclusively use wood that required an oz of uranium to transmute carbon into 1lb of wood then it's not going to really be a fuel in the sense that I get net positive work out of it. It may even be fair to call it negative fuel or simply an inefficient energy carrier.
Thank you for the informative article regarding the "Hydrogen Hype." Safety of hydrogen? My thoughts immediately went to the 1937 Hindenburg disaster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster. I have a healthy first-hand respect for the danger of hydrogen fires.
I have “deja vu all over again” every day with this stuff. Robert’s writeup is spot on. But in 1973-1974 as a freshman in Mechanical Engineering at Kansas State I had to research and write a paper for an Engineering Intro course. The title of my paper was “The Hydrogen Economy”, and aside from the obvious upside (endless supply of hydrogen) most of these downsides were generally known and I addressed them. The only possible way of producing hydrogen with a positive energy balance was in combination with nuke power. Why, in God’s name are we finding ourselves in this delusional space 51 years hence? Also, in Engineering Honors course I was made to read “The Limits to Growth”, which explains a lot of the anti-human energy policies we’re now seeing…again, 51 years hence.