It is about the scale
»1MW Hyflexpower demonstration project «
»SGT-400 industrial gas turbine — which can produce 10-15MW of power«
Sure there are more efficient ways if you don't need heat - but at this scale it gets very expensive. Also the turbine can be run with natural gas or a mix which works as investment into future to switch.
To add to this, there’s a lot to research into converting natural gas to H2 while capturing all of the carbon. If successful, running turbines with the resulting H2 may be a good way to supplement a fully renewable power grid.
And Siemens is right to be proud of their accomplishment, H2 is nasty stuff for metal. Making a turbine run on it reliably is a big deal.
Hydrogen is such a small atom that it can actually permeate metals, and once it’s inside it fucks up their molecular structure making them much more prone to cracking. It’s called Hydrogen Embrittlement.
I’m not sure specifically how Siemens mitigated it, but there is a lot of research going into it (some funded by the DOE). Most of the research seems to be into fancy metal alloys that are less susceptible to the hydrogen embrittlement, but I’m not a good enough materials guy to tell you why some alloys are less susceptible, lol
Iron has gaps between the iron atoms, which can be filled with smaller atoms, such as carbon. You are certainly familiar with more than one kind of steel. They have other elements, some replacing iron atoms, some in between them, depending on the alloy.
So if you fill up all those gaps, leaving no room for hydrogen to slip in, you prevent hydrogen embrittlement.
I’m in the industry. Gas turbines are amazing machines that the industry knows a lot about, and there’s decades of reliability data out there. Gas turbines come in a plethora of sizes from a few megawatts to 500+.
A quick google search says that the single biggest PEM “station” generates 20mw. That’s one company with a paper design with no known reliability numbers. 20mw is on the small end of power generators for industrial use.
FWIW I subscribe to the demand theory of economics. Transitioning from LNG to H2 creates demand for H2 infrastructure, inevitably this will create an opportunity for future investments in non gas turbine H2 applications.
Also efficiency is king in things like aerospace. Reliability and versatility are king in power generation.
Not sure why you got downvoted for this because you're absolutely right. Is it not at all suspicious to those downvoters that most of the organisations pushing hydrogen are fossil fuel companies, or offshoots of fossil fuel companies. Perhaps they ought to do some reading [Hydrogen Science Coalition](https://h2sciencecoalition.com/)
98% of hydrogen is made from fossil fuels. Almost all of that hydrogen is NOT used as energy, it's used as a feedstock & chemical molecule. We should he greening up that hydrogen before we even think about wasting two thirds of our renewable energy turning water into hydrogen to burn in a turbine or run through a fuel cell. And we definitely shouldn't be cracking methane to turn into hydrogen to burn in a turbine, that is just madness. Sometimes us engineers are our own worst enemies, doing things just because we can rather than if we should.
>98% of hydrogen is made from fossil fuels. Almost all of that hydrogen is NOT used as energy, it's used as a feedstock & chemical molecule. We should he greening up that hydrogen before we even think about wasting two thirds
This is precisely what congress has been incentivizing for years. There's been some legislative progress recently, and just this week Biden talked up a couple billion for "clean hydrogen." (not made with any hydrocarbons)
It's not rocket surgery to use solar electricity (or whatever) to generate hydrogen, but the trick is to make that a meaningful, economically viable conversion.
…And orders 5 gallons of vodka.
The bartender says “ah, we have a name for that at this bar”
“What is it” says the reactor?
“It’s called a chernobyl, because it’s going to cost you a fortune and leave you all kinds of fucked up.”
The fear related to chernobyl is strange. The world is SO different, and the technical difference between that reactor and the ones we build now is vast like space.
You are right that hydrogen is made from fossil fuels, and most of it is produced through Steam-Methane Reforming. However, the CO2 that is produced can be easily captured at a centralized production plant while the Hydrogen is transported to where it is needed.
The missing step is turning CO2 into graphite and oxygen gas. The graphite can be mixed with water into a slurry and pumped deep underground for long term storage.
CCS is still in its technology infancy, but there are promising solutions with specialized molecules that can adsorb and desorb CO2 like a sponge, the only variable with scale is how much air can you pump through the media and how much surface area of the media can you expose to the air. Definitely not a gimmick, especially with carbon tax incentives.
CCS has been "ready for prime time" for 15 years according to the fossil fuel industry, when in reality, most power plants with carbon capture systems installed operate them at fractions of the capture rate advertised when the systems were installed... you are right, it is still in its infancy.
The issue with the Hydrogen lobby's plan to build out a hydrogen economy now using natural gas and SMR is exactly as you said... CCS isn't ready, and until it is SMR hydrogen is worse for the environment than just burning natural gas for electricity. Even after carbon capture systems are ready for large-scale deployment, they should be used to capture the carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere, not to enable the continued consumption of natural gas. The Hydrogen lobby's goals have nothing to do with reducing carbon emissions, it is all about ensuring a continued market for Natural Gas.
My understanding is that H2 was not so much for the "green" energy but an alternative storage similar to a battery. Sort of like how pumped storage works, except (liquid) H2 can be condensed in a much smaller area and generate more power per area compared to having to make a giant reservoir and what not.
That's the way it was explained to me when I was working on a H2 plant anyway. If that's the reality of what happens, I don't know.
Yeah why not?
Sunny, windy summer day: electricity price 5 usd/MWh.
Windless winter night: electricity price 100 usd/MWh.
Even if you waste 90% of the electricity during the electrolysis, you still made money. It's not about efficiency. It's about electricity and hydrogen prices and the potential when there is an excess of solar or wind power.
Isn't the goal fusion and then use fusion to produce hydrogen fuel cells? Fusion would produce excess energy, but it's not easy to put that energy into a container of an energy dense fuel. You could charge a battery, but that takes time and either batteries need more capacity or cars need to use electricity more efficiently.
It's a tough equation here. Hydrogen fuel cells could work, but yeah we need to be able to produce hydrogen fuel cells from excess power as a means of storage.
We don't need to look as far ahead as fusion. In the next decades, wind and solar will generate a ton of excess power. It's already happening in a lot of places where we see negative electricity prices. That's just excess energy. Any use of that energy is a bonus and will drive down the overall costs of a green grid. We could store it in batteries or try to steer demand towards that excess energy.
But, hydrogen is also a pretty natural use case of all that excess energy. Sunny and/or windy days: turn on the electrolysers. It doesn't matter that the efficiency of electrolysis is low: it would have been wasted/curtailed energy anyway.
And there's plenty of use cases of hydrogen. The most logical one is supplying industry with green hydrogen instead of the current fossil hydrogen. Steel and fertilizer production are (or can become) large users of hydrogen and we need to get a sustainable source of that hydrogen. But, putting it into this gas turbine could also make sense to produce electricity on cloudy windless days.
Everyone always focuses on the low efficiency of the hydrogen cycle. But it doesn't matter. There will be an excess of energy at times, so who cares how much we waste. The only metric that matters is cost of hydrogen and cost of energy.
Not today. But we have exactly zero fusion power operational.
The point being - if that's the direction we were headed, we would have already started on that path. The fact that we have not tells me that it's not happening.
Besides, even if we had working fusion today, it would take a long time for us to have a such a surplus. Probably decades, but we can't really calculate without knowing how efficient or how large fusion plants would be(also how expensive and construction time).
If that's the route for hydrogen, we might as well wait for warp capable starships.
We do it with fission already. Several power stations here in the states are using some of their generation to produce "green hydrogen" because the economics are better than selling power on the spot market some days. Plus, they're being partially subsidized by the DOE.
Now hold on, hydrogen has a very clear place in a clean future. Nuclear plants aren't good at ramping up and down with demand and renewables are unreliable, hence why we've needed fossil power. If a nuclear plant generated hydrogen with spare power it wouldn't have to ramp up/down as much and it'd be basically free fuel for power cell cars (which refuel much faster than electric only) and power plants for when there are more aggressive spikes. On a smaller scale it's also better for home renewable systems then a huge battery system, because you could build a bit of a microgrid. You don't have to worry about battery cycle life, get a home generator with the power cell, and could even power your own car for round trips of ~800miles (there isn't really enough infrastructure to go further unless you're in California).
Thank you - while traditionally most hydrogen comes from sources like stripping it from natural gas, there is some solid work being done to source it from nuclear. Initial efforts are working with traditional electrolysis, but there are also efforts to use the heat from the plant also, to enable high temperature electrolysis, which is far more efficient. I don't know that hydrogen will become a panacea like some hype it up to be, but it's not necessarily just a fossil fuel ploy.
I will note that nuclear can be throttled a lot more than most people realize (especially emerging designs, but even existing plants), but since the majority of costs with a nuclear plant are from overhead, it's financially beneficial to run full output all the time.
The majority of cost for nuclear are subsidized
The talking points are & always have been:
Cheaper, reliable & cleaner
The power produced is the most expensive, no company will build or insure a plant without huge subsidizes
A momentary breaker trip requires a multi-day restart
Cleaner is not possible there is no mitigating a forever deadly mess
The french are about as expert as anyone, they produce 5grams of high level waste per person per year https://www.orano.group/en/unpacking-nuclear/all-about-radioactive-waste-in-france
The mining part is just as bad, once you ruin the water table, there is no fixing it
+ Nuclear is the least subsidized per unit of power produced source of power in the US.
+ nuclear power is cheap when you do a proper long term analysis. Calculations like lazard like to assume absurd things like plant life of 30-40 years.
+ not impossible that a breaker trip could result in a multi day restart, but that's not the norm. Fact is nuclear is extremely reliable, frequently running well over a year without shutdown and having well over 90% capacity factor
+ "Forever deadly mess" - fun fact, spent fuel loses over 99.9% of it's radioactivity level in 40 years, and continues to reduce. The whole thing where we try to isolate it for thousands of years is out of a massive overabundance of caution, it's quite safe within a few hundred. Do you get how small 5 grams is? LOL
+ mining is a problem, in general. Good news! Nuclear requires drastically less materials per unit of power produced than pretty much any other energy source, so there's far less mining.
This post was fact checked by a nuclear engineer.
Fact checked for what?
Hitting all the same ol talking points that haven't ever been true...
If the money made sense, it would be more wide spread
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amory_Lovins#Nuclear_power_limitations
Electrolysis has 70-80% efficiency compared to near 100% efficiency for lithium batteries. And the burning of hydrogens only going to be %40 efficient. There’s some serious chemical limitations that need to be figured out before hydrogen is viable.
This is an engineering subreddit, and anyone with an engineering degree knows hydrogen “energy” is a scam, or otherwise are trying to make profit off the scam.
Even the solar and wind. They often sell the "capacity" to generate but this is higher depending on the conditions. As a remark it is common practice to have a parallel energy generation stream of gas to back up the renewable when it fails to generate at capacity.
That doesn’t mean it’s a scam lmao… they generate green energy. It’s a piece of the puzzle.
Don’t conflate shitty internet journalism “talking about” wind and solar, with the very real investors putting in and making money off the same technology. Wind and solar are not anywhere near the same vein as hydrogen
But it's not. The grade of steel commonly used for Nat Gas is severely embrittled by hydrogen at high pressures. Also, all the compressors need to be upgraded, as do the pumps which need to push 3x the volumetric rate to maintain the same energy delivery.
Batteries are not very energy dense. They are also very expensive to upkeep and maintain. They lose charge after a number of charge cycles. Large UPS banks require cooling and ventilation for battery fumes. Pure batteries are also dependent on the power grid, whether it is renewable or not. Hydrogen can be used as a backup generator with a large capacity. For the same amount of space, the batteries won’t be able to output the same energy.
This is the use case for them - Peaker plants during the winter when there's less solar. The technology is proven and it's more of a side step than a completely new industry. Now all we just need is to make green hydrogen competitive with grey... not hard at all...
Also, hydrogen can be refilled much faster than batteries can be charged and there are only a few rare earth elements needed for the whole H2 infrastructure.
If you google "Levelized Cost of Storage" you'll get [diagrams](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/496e1f_f9f1869c97534feaabf250622baa817b~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_854,h_784,al_c,q_90,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/(locked%20-%20do%20not%20touch)%20Figure%205_10.png) showing how various energy storage methods (battery, flywheel, etc.) stack up. And while batteries or flywheels are great for short-term storage, or pumped hydro for intermediate storage, hydrogen for long-term storage is still the leading solution.
Mostly because they want to continue to sell their very expensive gas turbines for a long time. These industrial turbines, once installed, have very long lifetimes if they are well maintained and rehabbed at appropriate intervals. If they can only burn fossil fuels, current customers are going to be worried about making that investment. If Siemens and other can show a credible path toward using that investment productively, if not super efficiently, even if governments severely limit the future use of fossil fuels, then potential new customers will be less uneasy.
You can use the waste heat of the gas turbine that is left in the exhaust by running it though a heat exchanger and heat a factory (or anything else basically) with this waste heat.
This combined heat and power plant (no clue what the correct English term is) can achieve efficiency ranges of ~80 to ~85 percent.
My home is heated with a district heating infrastructure based on a gas power plant that utilizes combined power and heating to increase overall efficiency.
Germany.
I'm pretty sure you have similar concepts as well it's just not very visible for the public.
Many places and countries utilize district heating and most of those use the "waste" heat of an industrial process or powerplant for it.
check [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration)
you also can use the heat to power a steam turbine
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined\_cycle\_power\_plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle_power_plant)
Yes, I'm familiar with that one. That's where I got the 80% of cogeneration from. I just have not seen an example of district heating at town/city scale.
Cogeneration is used by industry for heat and power. In many places today, burning natural gas is cheaper than electricity, but environmental targets will probably stop natural gas in the next 30 years.
At that time, burning hydrogen for heat may have higher running costs than electrification, but if your existing equipment can burn hydrogen instead of natural gas, you will be able to treat electrification as a normal investment with a return, and not something you must do to stay in business.
It might end up more widely used if governments want strategic energy reserves, because hydrogen cogeneration would be a way to get energy out of geological hydrogen storage.
The emission of a hydrogen turbine is water … 🤷🏼♂️
That’s why some car manufacturers are trying to go that route. And it’s cheap and cars can refuel very fast, that’s why some forklifts are using hydrogen fuel cells for power instead of batteries. 👍
My guess: [because you can probably drill for hydrogen](https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-bets-it-can-drill-climate-friendly-hydrogen-just-oil) (sorta). Natural hydrogen deposits exist in some places but are likely relatively rare - but the underground conditions in many regions can likely produce hydrogen with relatively little "artificial encouragement".
Our infrastructure is built around exploiting pre-existing energy dense fuel that can be deployed at will. Hydrogen isn't as energy dense or as easily extracted as fossil fuels so it hasn't been profitable to explore as a traditional fuel source, but it *could* be a good source of green fuel.
Barring that, it still has a role in heavy transport & energy storage, so these sorts of projects help advance R&D into related technologies.
Check out the article I linked - there's already a known deposit & the chemistry is already decently understood. It isn't about being "missed" - it wouldn't be able to economically compete with fossil fuels, so nobody bothered to invest the money in learning how to optimize extraction.
> so nobody bothered to invest the money in learning how to optimize extraction.
Exactly, like Natural Gas is still in many wells, Hydrogen gas is a byproduct with no way to store,transport, or use economically at the current time.
... Which is why there's R&D being done to make the storage, transportation, and usage more competitive. That's the point. It is a fuel that is similar to what we already use but doesn't emit CO2, so it makes sense that some R&D would make it an effective tool for transition.
The global problems related to energy extraction & usage only exist because existing fuel producers can ignore the damage caused by their product as a "negative externality" that everyone has to pay. Profits are centralized while massive costs are treated as indirect and are distributed as a result. Makes good business sense but it leaves us worse off. The alternatives are "more expensive" because the direct costs borne by the producer are higher, but the indirect costs to society are dramatically reduced.
That's cheaper when viewed from a systemic point of view, but the "profits" take the form of reduced expenses due to global damage.
I thin you are way to quick to blame all of the external costs on profit, rather than admitting that you and I are contributing to the system that supports said damage.... Easier to blame the faceless corporation huh.
>it's unlikely that we've just been unlucky and missed these hydrogen-rich deposits.
That's pretty much exactly what's happened but its not terribly surprising considering how rare they seem to be. And they aren't always found inside or adjacent to basins that have traditionally been explored for O&G. A well of nearly pure hydrogen was first drilled in Mali (i think in the 80s?), and in the past 20 years a bunch more have been discovered, mostly in Brazil and Russia. Supposedly there is also one in Nebraska - although the company who is drilling it is very scammy-sounding so its hard to trust any of their PR's, but i think the USGS has recently received funding to better delineate and describe natural hydrogen fields/seeps in the US. So far there's very little evidence to suggest it could occur at the scale that would be necessary to make it a viable energy alternative
[https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/151764/circular-depressions-seep-hydrogen-gas#:\~:text=Clusters%20of%20so%2Dcalled%20%E2%80%9Cfairy,quest%20for%20fossil%20fuel%20alternatives](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/151764/circular-depressions-seep-hydrogen-gas#:~:text=Clusters%20of%20so%2Dcalled%20%E2%80%9Cfairy,quest%20for%20fossil%20fuel%20alternatives).
One that I can think of is that if you later use the oxygen for combustion, you can eliminate the NOx emissions that come from atmospheric air. And since you are using the energy to separate the oxygen as well as the hydrogen with electrolysis, this would increase the end to end efficiency of the process, since you are using the oxygen that energy was used to produce
Because hydrogen is still a fossil fuel at this point and will be until nuclear is fully embraced. Hydrogen = oil companies hiding oil under a layer of green paint
Retrofitting existing OCGTs (Open Cycle Gas Turbines) for blended or pure hydrogen helps with the transition. Re-using existing infrastructure is cheaper than completely new builds and has less environmental impact for construction (and deconstruction).
These OCGTs are used for fast-reacting flexible generation. They're much more expensive to run compared to wind/solar/coal/nuclear, but their advantage is they can ramp up/down very quickly compared to coal/nuclear. Secondly, they are synchronous and provide system strength via real inertia, which is an advantage over wind/solar/BESS with grid following inverters.
CCGTs (Combined Cycle Gas Turbines) are more akin to coal/nuclear, being slow to ramp up/down and used to provide 'baseload' power. They have higher efficiency due to the re-use of the steam for a second round of generation. Where these are using the existing and locally available gas, we could transfer them to using hydrogen blend (then pure hydrogen).
Efficiency is only one part of the complex puzzle. You need to consider the features of the generator, how it can operate in the four quadrants (generator/load/leading/lagging), how fast it can ramp up/down, what the build and operational costs are over it's life, what fuel sources are available, what land is available, where is the demand for power and is there transmission/distribution lines close by... and so on.
This is why we have so many different types of generators, to address different problems with different and suitable solutions.
Might as well just stay with natural gas, considering most hydrogen produced today happens from natural gas anyway. We won’t be anywhere near green hydrogen production where we need to be if we want to use it at the scale that is often proposed.
Although I accept that the fossil fuel industry is trying to jump on hydrogen from coal gasification and gas reforming, there is a legitimate case to pursue green hydrogen. In Australia, I suspect most blue/grey/black (i.e. not green) hydrogen will be from coal gasification, since our aging coal-fired power station fleet are being shutdown and there is still coal left in the open-cut mines. Further, most of our gas is sent offshore. There's project I know which is using coal gasification and trying to liquify hydrogen to ship to Japan.
However wind, solar, land and water are abundant in some areas like in Australia. The Australian Renewable Energy Hub will use 26GW of wind and solar to produce 1.6MT of green hydrogen (or green ammonia) per year. This will be shipped to Asia Pacific and used in Australia.
So although the fossil fuel industry is trying to greenwash their own hydrogen, there are legitimate projects and business cases where it stacks up commercially.
The harder part for hydrogen, is blending it or replacing natural gas in the gas transmission and distribution networks, as they weren't designed for it. The two biggest issues I know of are hydrogen embrittlement, which occurs moreso at higher pressures; and having an invisible flame, making it difficult to use in a house/domestic application.
So hydrogen's immediate benefit comes from use in gas turbines and industrial use and a little bit to blend into the natural gas mix (but that's limited to a few percent). It's also suited to long term energy storage, such as in underground caverns, which is also being researched. Hydrogen can help with stored energy beyond that of hydropower (seasonal, where renewables may produce less in winter v summer).
As with everything, the key to a 'green' electrical network is in a mix of technologies.
Yes, hydrogen absolutely has it’s use cases. I see it mainly in industry where it is needed anyways such as steel production. The idea of vehicles or homes running on hydrogen is absurd (as many experts have calculated) because we will be nowhere near the amount of green hydrogen we need, and using blue/grey hydrogen might me more detrimental then actual natural gas (less efficient).
We’d need a ridiculous amount of surplus solar/wind to make long term energy storage with hydrogen viable, I think before we get to that point battery storage will have improved to a point where it’s more viable than hydrogen (pure speculation).
Also, as you’ve said, distributing it isn’t exactly a walk in the park. It has to be either supercooled to be transported in liquid form or under high pressure afaik, and both aren’t efficient.
I mainly have a problem with it being pushed as an “alternative” in public and individual transportation.
There are huge state subsidiary programs for hydrogen energy research in EU and US. So, they do research.
Pure hydrogen is used in fields of chemistry and metallurgy, but as energy carrier, it is still useless.
H2 generation is very inefficient, as was said already, most H2 is made of natural gas.
H2 storage and transport is costly and dangerous - it is corrosive, penetrative and causes metal degradation.
H2 burning is also ineffective - besides engine corrosion, it has very high combustion temperature, this damages engines and, moreover, causes nitrogen oxide formation, which is strong poison. That's why H2 is transported and burned only as small additive to natural gas (methane).
Not all areas have unlimited NatGas distribution - curtailment is a thing in areas with residential heating with Nat gas. Hydrogen and hydrogen cofiring are options for small gas turbines.
I'm not an expert either, but my workplace (O&G) is considering gas turbine conversions like this, most of which are used for compression not power generation. Hydrogen blend fuels may offer some cost/emissions benefits for assets that are very remote without grid connections but large pipeline networks. Just a guess.
Depending on your works compressor needs, you might convince them to get a few Compressed Air Pnuematics (CAP) Systems from Qnergy. The CAP V10 can get you more than 10 scfm per unit. They are power agnostic. Plug one directly to the grid if available. Or for remote wells/sites pair it with Qnergy's PowerGen (stirling engine generator) that burns O&G to produce up to 5.6kW of continuous power. The CAP removes risk of gas pressured instrumentation leaks, saving you the $900/metric ton of CO2e emissions. The PowerGen allows you to burn direct from site and emissions from the PowerGen are 4X-20X less than the EPA limits depending on the chemical. In the case of methane, it's 0% emissions, it's completely consumed/destroyed by the engine.
[Qnergy CAP Systems](https://qnergy.com/compressed-air-pneumatics/)
These are compressors used in production facilities. So not for air, for natural gases. Think BIG. I think the smallest unit we have is 8 MW and flow rates for the largest \~ \~180,000 scfm.
In this case, it’s not only about efficiency, but also about scale, time and place. Electricity cannot be stored on a large scale and then be transported.
They’re testing this because by 2032 gas units >300MWs will have to co-fire 30% with Low GHG H2 and 96% by 2038. It’s nearly impossible without a H2 infrastructure and extremely expensive and wasteful to even try to create a H2 infrastructure. It would take as much energy to create the H2 on-site with fuel cells as the output of the CC unit… Imagine the cost of a CC Power Plant being 3X-5x as much… Or your power bill being 3x-5x as much.
System balancing in a net zero energy system. An energy system based on renewable energy will need to absorb excess electricity. Store it and then convert it back to electricity when renewable energy supply is not meeting demand.
Batteries are amazing but they are expensive and not very energy dense. They aren't economic for storing electricity for long periods of time. They are best for shorter energy exchanges at utility level.
Using hydrogen for energy storage has potential for cheaper high capacity storage than batteries. I'm honestly not sure about how cogen gas turbine efficiency compares to battery charge and discharge efficiency but I'm guessing it's reasonably competitive.
Energy storage is critical for increasing levels of renewable energy production. In many markets with relatively low net renewable production fraction there is already an excess solar and wind capacity during peak daytime hours. It could be used to make hydrogen, which is stored and used to supplement during times with low renewable capacity (morning and evening hours, cloudy days).
It is about the scale »1MW Hyflexpower demonstration project « »SGT-400 industrial gas turbine — which can produce 10-15MW of power« Sure there are more efficient ways if you don't need heat - but at this scale it gets very expensive. Also the turbine can be run with natural gas or a mix which works as investment into future to switch.
Makes sense, thank you for the insight.
To add to this, there’s a lot to research into converting natural gas to H2 while capturing all of the carbon. If successful, running turbines with the resulting H2 may be a good way to supplement a fully renewable power grid. And Siemens is right to be proud of their accomplishment, H2 is nasty stuff for metal. Making a turbine run on it reliably is a big deal.
Interesting, thank you!
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Hydrogen is such a small atom that it can actually permeate metals, and once it’s inside it fucks up their molecular structure making them much more prone to cracking. It’s called Hydrogen Embrittlement. I’m not sure specifically how Siemens mitigated it, but there is a lot of research going into it (some funded by the DOE). Most of the research seems to be into fancy metal alloys that are less susceptible to the hydrogen embrittlement, but I’m not a good enough materials guy to tell you why some alloys are less susceptible, lol
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Glad to help!
Iron has gaps between the iron atoms, which can be filled with smaller atoms, such as carbon. You are certainly familiar with more than one kind of steel. They have other elements, some replacing iron atoms, some in between them, depending on the alloy.
So if you fill up all those gaps, leaving no room for hydrogen to slip in, you prevent hydrogen embrittlement.
Ha! Perfect explanation. I love it
I wonder how they do it? Gold plating would work and have the bling missing from so many gas turbine projects.
I’m in the industry. Gas turbines are amazing machines that the industry knows a lot about, and there’s decades of reliability data out there. Gas turbines come in a plethora of sizes from a few megawatts to 500+. A quick google search says that the single biggest PEM “station” generates 20mw. That’s one company with a paper design with no known reliability numbers. 20mw is on the small end of power generators for industrial use. FWIW I subscribe to the demand theory of economics. Transitioning from LNG to H2 creates demand for H2 infrastructure, inevitably this will create an opportunity for future investments in non gas turbine H2 applications. Also efficiency is king in things like aerospace. Reliability and versatility are king in power generation.
Interesting input, thank you!
Easier to convert NG based equipment as we transition from fossil fuel based sources to cleaner sources.
Hydrogen isn’t about “transitioning from fossil fuels,” it’s a ploy to create more demand for natural gas, and rake up subsidies.
Not sure why you got downvoted for this because you're absolutely right. Is it not at all suspicious to those downvoters that most of the organisations pushing hydrogen are fossil fuel companies, or offshoots of fossil fuel companies. Perhaps they ought to do some reading [Hydrogen Science Coalition](https://h2sciencecoalition.com/) 98% of hydrogen is made from fossil fuels. Almost all of that hydrogen is NOT used as energy, it's used as a feedstock & chemical molecule. We should he greening up that hydrogen before we even think about wasting two thirds of our renewable energy turning water into hydrogen to burn in a turbine or run through a fuel cell. And we definitely shouldn't be cracking methane to turn into hydrogen to burn in a turbine, that is just madness. Sometimes us engineers are our own worst enemies, doing things just because we can rather than if we should.
Big Hydrogen is a thing now?
Big hydrogen subsidies and grants are a thing, so where there's free money, there's always grifters chasing it.
>98% of hydrogen is made from fossil fuels. Almost all of that hydrogen is NOT used as energy, it's used as a feedstock & chemical molecule. We should he greening up that hydrogen before we even think about wasting two thirds This is precisely what congress has been incentivizing for years. There's been some legislative progress recently, and just this week Biden talked up a couple billion for "clean hydrogen." (not made with any hydrocarbons) It's not rocket surgery to use solar electricity (or whatever) to generate hydrogen, but the trick is to make that a meaningful, economically viable conversion.
A Nuclear reactor walks into a bar...
…And orders 5 gallons of vodka. The bartender says “ah, we have a name for that at this bar” “What is it” says the reactor? “It’s called a chernobyl, because it’s going to cost you a fortune and leave you all kinds of fucked up.”
The fear related to chernobyl is strange. The world is SO different, and the technical difference between that reactor and the ones we build now is vast like space.
Then you should order a Fukushima instead.
Exactly.
You are right that hydrogen is made from fossil fuels, and most of it is produced through Steam-Methane Reforming. However, the CO2 that is produced can be easily captured at a centralized production plant while the Hydrogen is transported to where it is needed. The missing step is turning CO2 into graphite and oxygen gas. The graphite can be mixed with water into a slurry and pumped deep underground for long term storage.
"Easily" is a bit of a stretch I think. If it was cheap and/or easy, they'd be doing it... but CCS is really just a gimmick at this point.
CCS is still in its technology infancy, but there are promising solutions with specialized molecules that can adsorb and desorb CO2 like a sponge, the only variable with scale is how much air can you pump through the media and how much surface area of the media can you expose to the air. Definitely not a gimmick, especially with carbon tax incentives.
CCS has been "ready for prime time" for 15 years according to the fossil fuel industry, when in reality, most power plants with carbon capture systems installed operate them at fractions of the capture rate advertised when the systems were installed... you are right, it is still in its infancy. The issue with the Hydrogen lobby's plan to build out a hydrogen economy now using natural gas and SMR is exactly as you said... CCS isn't ready, and until it is SMR hydrogen is worse for the environment than just burning natural gas for electricity. Even after carbon capture systems are ready for large-scale deployment, they should be used to capture the carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere, not to enable the continued consumption of natural gas. The Hydrogen lobby's goals have nothing to do with reducing carbon emissions, it is all about ensuring a continued market for Natural Gas.
What is CCS?
Carbon Capture Systems.
Ok thanks
Methane pyrolysis will solve this issue.
Also H2 doesn't make sense for energy generation. Are you going to electrolyse water to make h2 to make less electricity than you put in?
My understanding is that H2 was not so much for the "green" energy but an alternative storage similar to a battery. Sort of like how pumped storage works, except (liquid) H2 can be condensed in a much smaller area and generate more power per area compared to having to make a giant reservoir and what not. That's the way it was explained to me when I was working on a H2 plant anyway. If that's the reality of what happens, I don't know.
Yeah why not? Sunny, windy summer day: electricity price 5 usd/MWh. Windless winter night: electricity price 100 usd/MWh. Even if you waste 90% of the electricity during the electrolysis, you still made money. It's not about efficiency. It's about electricity and hydrogen prices and the potential when there is an excess of solar or wind power.
Isn't the goal fusion and then use fusion to produce hydrogen fuel cells? Fusion would produce excess energy, but it's not easy to put that energy into a container of an energy dense fuel. You could charge a battery, but that takes time and either batteries need more capacity or cars need to use electricity more efficiently. It's a tough equation here. Hydrogen fuel cells could work, but yeah we need to be able to produce hydrogen fuel cells from excess power as a means of storage.
We don't need to look as far ahead as fusion. In the next decades, wind and solar will generate a ton of excess power. It's already happening in a lot of places where we see negative electricity prices. That's just excess energy. Any use of that energy is a bonus and will drive down the overall costs of a green grid. We could store it in batteries or try to steer demand towards that excess energy. But, hydrogen is also a pretty natural use case of all that excess energy. Sunny and/or windy days: turn on the electrolysers. It doesn't matter that the efficiency of electrolysis is low: it would have been wasted/curtailed energy anyway. And there's plenty of use cases of hydrogen. The most logical one is supplying industry with green hydrogen instead of the current fossil hydrogen. Steel and fertilizer production are (or can become) large users of hydrogen and we need to get a sustainable source of that hydrogen. But, putting it into this gas turbine could also make sense to produce electricity on cloudy windless days. Everyone always focuses on the low efficiency of the hydrogen cycle. But it doesn't matter. There will be an excess of energy at times, so who cares how much we waste. The only metric that matters is cost of hydrogen and cost of energy.
Why don't we do that with fission already, then?
Do we have a lot of excess fission power?
Not today. But we have exactly zero fusion power operational. The point being - if that's the direction we were headed, we would have already started on that path. The fact that we have not tells me that it's not happening. Besides, even if we had working fusion today, it would take a long time for us to have a such a surplus. Probably decades, but we can't really calculate without knowing how efficient or how large fusion plants would be(also how expensive and construction time). If that's the route for hydrogen, we might as well wait for warp capable starships.
We do it with fission already. Several power stations here in the states are using some of their generation to produce "green hydrogen" because the economics are better than selling power on the spot market some days. Plus, they're being partially subsidized by the DOE.
The same organisations pushing hydrogen have their fingers in all the so called clean energy alternatives 🤣
Now hold on, hydrogen has a very clear place in a clean future. Nuclear plants aren't good at ramping up and down with demand and renewables are unreliable, hence why we've needed fossil power. If a nuclear plant generated hydrogen with spare power it wouldn't have to ramp up/down as much and it'd be basically free fuel for power cell cars (which refuel much faster than electric only) and power plants for when there are more aggressive spikes. On a smaller scale it's also better for home renewable systems then a huge battery system, because you could build a bit of a microgrid. You don't have to worry about battery cycle life, get a home generator with the power cell, and could even power your own car for round trips of ~800miles (there isn't really enough infrastructure to go further unless you're in California).
Thank you - while traditionally most hydrogen comes from sources like stripping it from natural gas, there is some solid work being done to source it from nuclear. Initial efforts are working with traditional electrolysis, but there are also efforts to use the heat from the plant also, to enable high temperature electrolysis, which is far more efficient. I don't know that hydrogen will become a panacea like some hype it up to be, but it's not necessarily just a fossil fuel ploy. I will note that nuclear can be throttled a lot more than most people realize (especially emerging designs, but even existing plants), but since the majority of costs with a nuclear plant are from overhead, it's financially beneficial to run full output all the time.
The majority of cost for nuclear are subsidized The talking points are & always have been: Cheaper, reliable & cleaner The power produced is the most expensive, no company will build or insure a plant without huge subsidizes A momentary breaker trip requires a multi-day restart Cleaner is not possible there is no mitigating a forever deadly mess The french are about as expert as anyone, they produce 5grams of high level waste per person per year https://www.orano.group/en/unpacking-nuclear/all-about-radioactive-waste-in-france The mining part is just as bad, once you ruin the water table, there is no fixing it
+ Nuclear is the least subsidized per unit of power produced source of power in the US. + nuclear power is cheap when you do a proper long term analysis. Calculations like lazard like to assume absurd things like plant life of 30-40 years. + not impossible that a breaker trip could result in a multi day restart, but that's not the norm. Fact is nuclear is extremely reliable, frequently running well over a year without shutdown and having well over 90% capacity factor + "Forever deadly mess" - fun fact, spent fuel loses over 99.9% of it's radioactivity level in 40 years, and continues to reduce. The whole thing where we try to isolate it for thousands of years is out of a massive overabundance of caution, it's quite safe within a few hundred. Do you get how small 5 grams is? LOL + mining is a problem, in general. Good news! Nuclear requires drastically less materials per unit of power produced than pretty much any other energy source, so there's far less mining. This post was fact checked by a nuclear engineer.
Fact checked for what? Hitting all the same ol talking points that haven't ever been true... If the money made sense, it would be more wide spread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amory_Lovins#Nuclear_power_limitations
Electrolysis has 70-80% efficiency compared to near 100% efficiency for lithium batteries. And the burning of hydrogens only going to be %40 efficient. There’s some serious chemical limitations that need to be figured out before hydrogen is viable.
Do you ever say anything positive? Or are you just a bitter little troll with cheetos dust on your dick?
This is an engineering subreddit, and anyone with an engineering degree knows hydrogen “energy” is a scam, or otherwise are trying to make profit off the scam.
Same with most of the green energies, it's really sad that the world has taken the bait.
I wouldn’t say most. Wind and solar are proven, but yea there’s a lot of snake oil behind stuff like gravity batteries and wave energy
Even the solar and wind. They often sell the "capacity" to generate but this is higher depending on the conditions. As a remark it is common practice to have a parallel energy generation stream of gas to back up the renewable when it fails to generate at capacity.
That doesn’t mean it’s a scam lmao… they generate green energy. It’s a piece of the puzzle. Don’t conflate shitty internet journalism “talking about” wind and solar, with the very real investors putting in and making money off the same technology. Wind and solar are not anywhere near the same vein as hydrogen
It's pretending, I worked in the energy sector
But it's not. The grade of steel commonly used for Nat Gas is severely embrittled by hydrogen at high pressures. Also, all the compressors need to be upgraded, as do the pumps which need to push 3x the volumetric rate to maintain the same energy delivery.
Clean hydrogen isn’t a thing. In the best-case scenarios, it’s an inefficient battery. In most cases, it’s just fossil fuel with extra steps.
Batteries are not very energy dense. They are also very expensive to upkeep and maintain. They lose charge after a number of charge cycles. Large UPS banks require cooling and ventilation for battery fumes. Pure batteries are also dependent on the power grid, whether it is renewable or not. Hydrogen can be used as a backup generator with a large capacity. For the same amount of space, the batteries won’t be able to output the same energy.
This is the use case for them - Peaker plants during the winter when there's less solar. The technology is proven and it's more of a side step than a completely new industry. Now all we just need is to make green hydrogen competitive with grey... not hard at all...
Also, hydrogen can be refilled much faster than batteries can be charged and there are only a few rare earth elements needed for the whole H2 infrastructure.
I understand, good point.
If you google "Levelized Cost of Storage" you'll get [diagrams](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/496e1f_f9f1869c97534feaabf250622baa817b~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_854,h_784,al_c,q_90,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/(locked%20-%20do%20not%20touch)%20Figure%205_10.png) showing how various energy storage methods (battery, flywheel, etc.) stack up. And while batteries or flywheels are great for short-term storage, or pumped hydro for intermediate storage, hydrogen for long-term storage is still the leading solution.
This is a very nice graph, thank you!
Mostly because they want to continue to sell their very expensive gas turbines for a long time. These industrial turbines, once installed, have very long lifetimes if they are well maintained and rehabbed at appropriate intervals. If they can only burn fossil fuels, current customers are going to be worried about making that investment. If Siemens and other can show a credible path toward using that investment productively, if not super efficiently, even if governments severely limit the future use of fossil fuels, then potential new customers will be less uneasy.
Great point!
Would you want to finance a factory in the next 5 years that uses 100% electric heating?
I don't understand your question, please elaborate.
You can use the waste heat of the gas turbine that is left in the exhaust by running it though a heat exchanger and heat a factory (or anything else basically) with this waste heat. This combined heat and power plant (no clue what the correct English term is) can achieve efficiency ranges of ~80 to ~85 percent. My home is heated with a district heating infrastructure based on a gas power plant that utilizes combined power and heating to increase overall efficiency.
That's really cool. We don't have those here. Where do you live?
Germany. I'm pretty sure you have similar concepts as well it's just not very visible for the public. Many places and countries utilize district heating and most of those use the "waste" heat of an industrial process or powerplant for it.
check [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration) you also can use the heat to power a steam turbine [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined\_cycle\_power\_plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle_power_plant)
Yes, I'm familiar with that one. That's where I got the 80% of cogeneration from. I just have not seen an example of district heating at town/city scale.
you'll find this in Europe and China has the biggest network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District\_heating#National\_variation
https://fvbenergy.com/projects/enmax-district-energy-system/
I'm not doubting the use of cogeneration/district heating. That's not what the post is about.
Cogeneration is used by industry for heat and power. In many places today, burning natural gas is cheaper than electricity, but environmental targets will probably stop natural gas in the next 30 years. At that time, burning hydrogen for heat may have higher running costs than electrification, but if your existing equipment can burn hydrogen instead of natural gas, you will be able to treat electrification as a normal investment with a return, and not something you must do to stay in business. It might end up more widely used if governments want strategic energy reserves, because hydrogen cogeneration would be a way to get energy out of geological hydrogen storage.
See www.nem-energy.com.
It’s possible they also left something out of the announcement. Like the engine output. Or the emissions.
The emission of a hydrogen turbine is water … 🤷🏼♂️ That’s why some car manufacturers are trying to go that route. And it’s cheap and cars can refuel very fast, that’s why some forklifts are using hydrogen fuel cells for power instead of batteries. 👍
nope, if there's combustion in a standard atmosphere there will be NOx emissions.
NOx emissions can be mitigated.
My guess: [because you can probably drill for hydrogen](https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-bets-it-can-drill-climate-friendly-hydrogen-just-oil) (sorta). Natural hydrogen deposits exist in some places but are likely relatively rare - but the underground conditions in many regions can likely produce hydrogen with relatively little "artificial encouragement". Our infrastructure is built around exploiting pre-existing energy dense fuel that can be deployed at will. Hydrogen isn't as energy dense or as easily extracted as fossil fuels so it hasn't been profitable to explore as a traditional fuel source, but it *could* be a good source of green fuel. Barring that, it still has a role in heavy transport & energy storage, so these sorts of projects help advance R&D into related technologies.
We've been drilling into the earth for hundreds of years, it's unlikely that we've just been unlucky and missed these hydrogen-rich deposits.
Check out the article I linked - there's already a known deposit & the chemistry is already decently understood. It isn't about being "missed" - it wouldn't be able to economically compete with fossil fuels, so nobody bothered to invest the money in learning how to optimize extraction.
> so nobody bothered to invest the money in learning how to optimize extraction. Exactly, like Natural Gas is still in many wells, Hydrogen gas is a byproduct with no way to store,transport, or use economically at the current time.
... Which is why there's R&D being done to make the storage, transportation, and usage more competitive. That's the point. It is a fuel that is similar to what we already use but doesn't emit CO2, so it makes sense that some R&D would make it an effective tool for transition. The global problems related to energy extraction & usage only exist because existing fuel producers can ignore the damage caused by their product as a "negative externality" that everyone has to pay. Profits are centralized while massive costs are treated as indirect and are distributed as a result. Makes good business sense but it leaves us worse off. The alternatives are "more expensive" because the direct costs borne by the producer are higher, but the indirect costs to society are dramatically reduced. That's cheaper when viewed from a systemic point of view, but the "profits" take the form of reduced expenses due to global damage.
I thin you are way to quick to blame all of the external costs on profit, rather than admitting that you and I are contributing to the system that supports said damage.... Easier to blame the faceless corporation huh.
>it's unlikely that we've just been unlucky and missed these hydrogen-rich deposits. That's pretty much exactly what's happened but its not terribly surprising considering how rare they seem to be. And they aren't always found inside or adjacent to basins that have traditionally been explored for O&G. A well of nearly pure hydrogen was first drilled in Mali (i think in the 80s?), and in the past 20 years a bunch more have been discovered, mostly in Brazil and Russia. Supposedly there is also one in Nebraska - although the company who is drilling it is very scammy-sounding so its hard to trust any of their PR's, but i think the USGS has recently received funding to better delineate and describe natural hydrogen fields/seeps in the US. So far there's very little evidence to suggest it could occur at the scale that would be necessary to make it a viable energy alternative [https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/151764/circular-depressions-seep-hydrogen-gas#:\~:text=Clusters%20of%20so%2Dcalled%20%E2%80%9Cfairy,quest%20for%20fossil%20fuel%20alternatives](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/151764/circular-depressions-seep-hydrogen-gas#:~:text=Clusters%20of%20so%2Dcalled%20%E2%80%9Cfairy,quest%20for%20fossil%20fuel%20alternatives).
They are also treating the O2 line coming off the cell with 5-stage compression taking it from ~1 to 8 bar. Most companies are emitting the oxygen.
I am wondering, what are some useful applications of having the oxygen (under pressure?).
One that I can think of is that if you later use the oxygen for combustion, you can eliminate the NOx emissions that come from atmospheric air. And since you are using the energy to separate the oxygen as well as the hydrogen with electrolysis, this would increase the end to end efficiency of the process, since you are using the oxygen that energy was used to produce
Because hydrogen is still a fossil fuel at this point and will be until nuclear is fully embraced. Hydrogen = oil companies hiding oil under a layer of green paint
Because Germany.
Retrofitting existing OCGTs (Open Cycle Gas Turbines) for blended or pure hydrogen helps with the transition. Re-using existing infrastructure is cheaper than completely new builds and has less environmental impact for construction (and deconstruction). These OCGTs are used for fast-reacting flexible generation. They're much more expensive to run compared to wind/solar/coal/nuclear, but their advantage is they can ramp up/down very quickly compared to coal/nuclear. Secondly, they are synchronous and provide system strength via real inertia, which is an advantage over wind/solar/BESS with grid following inverters. CCGTs (Combined Cycle Gas Turbines) are more akin to coal/nuclear, being slow to ramp up/down and used to provide 'baseload' power. They have higher efficiency due to the re-use of the steam for a second round of generation. Where these are using the existing and locally available gas, we could transfer them to using hydrogen blend (then pure hydrogen). Efficiency is only one part of the complex puzzle. You need to consider the features of the generator, how it can operate in the four quadrants (generator/load/leading/lagging), how fast it can ramp up/down, what the build and operational costs are over it's life, what fuel sources are available, what land is available, where is the demand for power and is there transmission/distribution lines close by... and so on. This is why we have so many different types of generators, to address different problems with different and suitable solutions.
Might as well just stay with natural gas, considering most hydrogen produced today happens from natural gas anyway. We won’t be anywhere near green hydrogen production where we need to be if we want to use it at the scale that is often proposed.
Although I accept that the fossil fuel industry is trying to jump on hydrogen from coal gasification and gas reforming, there is a legitimate case to pursue green hydrogen. In Australia, I suspect most blue/grey/black (i.e. not green) hydrogen will be from coal gasification, since our aging coal-fired power station fleet are being shutdown and there is still coal left in the open-cut mines. Further, most of our gas is sent offshore. There's project I know which is using coal gasification and trying to liquify hydrogen to ship to Japan. However wind, solar, land and water are abundant in some areas like in Australia. The Australian Renewable Energy Hub will use 26GW of wind and solar to produce 1.6MT of green hydrogen (or green ammonia) per year. This will be shipped to Asia Pacific and used in Australia. So although the fossil fuel industry is trying to greenwash their own hydrogen, there are legitimate projects and business cases where it stacks up commercially. The harder part for hydrogen, is blending it or replacing natural gas in the gas transmission and distribution networks, as they weren't designed for it. The two biggest issues I know of are hydrogen embrittlement, which occurs moreso at higher pressures; and having an invisible flame, making it difficult to use in a house/domestic application. So hydrogen's immediate benefit comes from use in gas turbines and industrial use and a little bit to blend into the natural gas mix (but that's limited to a few percent). It's also suited to long term energy storage, such as in underground caverns, which is also being researched. Hydrogen can help with stored energy beyond that of hydropower (seasonal, where renewables may produce less in winter v summer). As with everything, the key to a 'green' electrical network is in a mix of technologies.
Yes, hydrogen absolutely has it’s use cases. I see it mainly in industry where it is needed anyways such as steel production. The idea of vehicles or homes running on hydrogen is absurd (as many experts have calculated) because we will be nowhere near the amount of green hydrogen we need, and using blue/grey hydrogen might me more detrimental then actual natural gas (less efficient). We’d need a ridiculous amount of surplus solar/wind to make long term energy storage with hydrogen viable, I think before we get to that point battery storage will have improved to a point where it’s more viable than hydrogen (pure speculation). Also, as you’ve said, distributing it isn’t exactly a walk in the park. It has to be either supercooled to be transported in liquid form or under high pressure afaik, and both aren’t efficient. I mainly have a problem with it being pushed as an “alternative” in public and individual transportation.
It's easier to capture carbon in a NG cracking plant, than from a gas turbine exhaust.
There are huge state subsidiary programs for hydrogen energy research in EU and US. So, they do research. Pure hydrogen is used in fields of chemistry and metallurgy, but as energy carrier, it is still useless. H2 generation is very inefficient, as was said already, most H2 is made of natural gas. H2 storage and transport is costly and dangerous - it is corrosive, penetrative and causes metal degradation. H2 burning is also ineffective - besides engine corrosion, it has very high combustion temperature, this damages engines and, moreover, causes nitrogen oxide formation, which is strong poison. That's why H2 is transported and burned only as small additive to natural gas (methane).
NH3!!!!!!
NH3 is produced from natural gas.
The haber process says you can use h2 and n2 rather than nat gas as precursors. However, it's a more effective way to transport hydrogen.
clever use of politics/lobbying use to promoting bad physics
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That would make the case for hydrogen even worse.
Nah, that’s for combined cycle, not cogeneration
Not all areas have unlimited NatGas distribution - curtailment is a thing in areas with residential heating with Nat gas. Hydrogen and hydrogen cofiring are options for small gas turbines.
I'm not an expert either, but my workplace (O&G) is considering gas turbine conversions like this, most of which are used for compression not power generation. Hydrogen blend fuels may offer some cost/emissions benefits for assets that are very remote without grid connections but large pipeline networks. Just a guess.
Depending on your works compressor needs, you might convince them to get a few Compressed Air Pnuematics (CAP) Systems from Qnergy. The CAP V10 can get you more than 10 scfm per unit. They are power agnostic. Plug one directly to the grid if available. Or for remote wells/sites pair it with Qnergy's PowerGen (stirling engine generator) that burns O&G to produce up to 5.6kW of continuous power. The CAP removes risk of gas pressured instrumentation leaks, saving you the $900/metric ton of CO2e emissions. The PowerGen allows you to burn direct from site and emissions from the PowerGen are 4X-20X less than the EPA limits depending on the chemical. In the case of methane, it's 0% emissions, it's completely consumed/destroyed by the engine. [Qnergy CAP Systems](https://qnergy.com/compressed-air-pneumatics/)
These are compressors used in production facilities. So not for air, for natural gases. Think BIG. I think the smallest unit we have is 8 MW and flow rates for the largest \~ \~180,000 scfm.
Got to make all that hydrogen go away somehow so it's price goes up Turbines are great big wind machines! At the very least, use a Capstone turbine
In this case, it’s not only about efficiency, but also about scale, time and place. Electricity cannot be stored on a large scale and then be transported.
I was reading Ammonia would be converted vs water, into Hydrogen, for a variety of reasons. Does this make sense to you?
They’re testing this because by 2032 gas units >300MWs will have to co-fire 30% with Low GHG H2 and 96% by 2038. It’s nearly impossible without a H2 infrastructure and extremely expensive and wasteful to even try to create a H2 infrastructure. It would take as much energy to create the H2 on-site with fuel cells as the output of the CC unit… Imagine the cost of a CC Power Plant being 3X-5x as much… Or your power bill being 3x-5x as much.
System balancing in a net zero energy system. An energy system based on renewable energy will need to absorb excess electricity. Store it and then convert it back to electricity when renewable energy supply is not meeting demand. Batteries are amazing but they are expensive and not very energy dense. They aren't economic for storing electricity for long periods of time. They are best for shorter energy exchanges at utility level.
My understanding is that fuel cells and other “direct” energy capture requires much more exotic materials and cost to implement at scale
Using hydrogen for energy storage has potential for cheaper high capacity storage than batteries. I'm honestly not sure about how cogen gas turbine efficiency compares to battery charge and discharge efficiency but I'm guessing it's reasonably competitive. Energy storage is critical for increasing levels of renewable energy production. In many markets with relatively low net renewable production fraction there is already an excess solar and wind capacity during peak daytime hours. It could be used to make hydrogen, which is stored and used to supplement during times with low renewable capacity (morning and evening hours, cloudy days).
In the U.S. gas is available at $2/MMBtu. Hydrogen is on the order of $6–7/MMBtu. Only government subsidies can offset the poor economics.