Hydrogen boilers

[Andehh]

16 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

A gas boiler could be converted to run on just about any fuel.

 

Hydrogen has some specific challenges that need to be overcome first:

 

Production in a zero carbon and energy efficient manner.  This is not easy as there will be many calls on power being generated, and until some catalyst made from unobtanium comes along, it is more efficient to just store thermal energy in bricks and water, like 7 million homes already do.

 

Transmission.  Natural gas is a large molecule that is fairly inert, so is easy to pump, pipe and store.  Hydrogen, at 101.3 kPa has a 0.01188 MJ.l^-1, Natural Gas, at the same pressure, has 0.0364 MJ.litre^-1.  So you have to pump more litres as the existing gas system cannot be run at a greater pressure than it already is.

 

Hydrogen Embrittlement.  Because hydrogen is a tiny molecule/atom that is reactive, it wants to attach to other molecules/atoms.  This can significantly change a material's properties.  So reliability could be a problem (though I am told gas boilers are pretty unreliable anyway, usually the control systems).

 

Cost.  Even the cheapest hydrogen is expensive, and then the CO₂ has to be captured and processed and put into long term storage (some real prices in this show https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0010qb7 )

 

It sounds a great idea, couple of wires into a bucket of water, tap of the gas from one electrode and put it into the gas grid.

 

If it was that easy, we would have done it decades ago.  Not as if we have just discovered hydrogen, been about since the second second of the universe's creation, well the middle bit was, the outer bit took 370,000 more years to combine with it.

This is a very good post! Sums it up well. 

[Stones]

 

16 hours ago, IanR said:

20% hydrogen can be run into standard boilers without any changes. Green hydrogen at 20% blended gives about a 7% reduction in CO2 due to the lower calorific value of Hydrogen.

 

The Gas industry is lobbying the government hard to get Hydrogen as an option for heating homes, without it the gas network asset they own has no value. Blended grey Hydrogen is being pushed as a stepping stone to, blended blue hydrogen (made from gas but with CCUS), and on to 100% green hydrogen (produced from electrolysis using renewables).

 

The lobbyists are pushing hard for a door to be left open for Hydrogen "ready" boilers. A recent unofficial press briefing is suggesting they've got their way. My view is this is a disaster for Net Zero by 2050 if they have.

 

Blue hydrogen is being mis-sold and over-promised by the gas industry. The process releases more climate change gasses than burning natural gas directly, when you include the fugitive methane released.

 

Heating your home with green Hydrogen would require 6 times more renewable energy than heating it with a HP. We will struggle to build the amount of renewables required to achieve Net Zero by 2050, without needing 6 times more of them for the heat in buildings part of the equation.

(Unless the Unobtainium catalyst is discovered mentioned by @SteamyTea)

 

Green Hydrogen is definitely needed, to replace the 70,000,000 tonnes of grey hydrogen current produced plus de-carbonising the industries that are hard to electrify. Unless there is a breakthrough in green hydrogen research that significantly reduces that amount of energy it takes to produce it, its going to struggle to replace the existing uses for hydrogen, let a lone find new uses.

 

If a door is left open for hydrogen ready boilers, in the hope of a research breakthrough, there's going to be a very low take up of ASHPs in the existing housing stock, and ASHPs are the only current clean technology that can get close to the the day-to-day running costs of a gas boiler.

 

 

My understanding was that the attraction of 'green' hydrogen production was the use of 'excess' electricity production generated by renewables.  As more renewables are brought online, so the potential for more excess, and rather than turning the turbines off, you use that extra energy to produce hydrogen, which should in theory, bring the cost of it down.  

 

On the lobbying side, we have just returned from holiday, back to Glasgow airport.  The first thing you see when you walk out of customs through the arrivals door is a huge hoarding promoting Hydrogen (sponsored by Ineos, who have of course just announced a £2bn investment)

[SimonD]

3 hours ago, MikeSharp01 said:

True but the thing that caused the problem was yesterday's technology

 

I disagree. Yesterday's and today's technologies could have been implemented in such as way as to avoid where we are at today. We've had both the technology and knowhow to avoid this for a very long time. The problem has been entrenched thought and behaviour, socially, culturally and economically especially in the western developed nations, together with a serious lack of ability to learn from previous mistakes. You only have to go back about a hundred years to look at the environmental consequences of using horse transport en masse to see what happened then, only to replaced by short term thinking around the benefits of the internal combustion engine and thus the rapid transformation of transport to what we have today. Back then there were some fierce critics who foresore where we are today but of course they were silenced...

 

3 hours ago, MikeSharp01 said:

So people, perhaps wrongly, look to technology for solutions but of course it won't on its own

 

Again, I disagree. Our behaviour drives what is causing the environmental situation we're in. For example, the agricultural sector around the world produces more than enough food to feed the entire world's population, yet we're still destroying the environment to produce more and letting vast populations starve. The only reason we need to produce more is due to the wastage caused by both inefficient systems (which claim they're efficient) and a lack of awareness on the part of those populations who waste so much unnecessarily - e.g. mostly the western developed nations. The same goes for so many other natural resources, including fossil fuels.

 

Now one of the major hindrances of progress towards environmental goals again has nothing to do with technology but a fear by leading developed nations that moving from fossil fuel dependence might in some way lead to a reduction in GDP growth and that some other country might overtake them. i.e. ludicrous ideology like neo-liberalism.

 

3 hours ago, MikeSharp01 said:

if you don't think behavioral engineering is not already happening then you need to get off social networks!

 

Unless you consider this forum a social network, thankfully I don't spend any time on them ? However, we can look to them for some very clever behavioural engineering, but with the unfortunate outcome of stoking the base instinctual emotions of anger and fear together with undermining some fundamental social structures. This is not too dissimilar to what is going on with net-zero and the environmental crisis, which I think is problematic and the wrong way to go with it. It's quite clear that our current goverment is relying a lot on behavioural nudging, but the fundamental problems are systemic, rather than individual.

[IanR]

1 hour ago, Stones said:

My understanding was that the attraction of 'green' hydrogen production was the use of 'excess' electricity production generated by renewables.

 

Not for then pumping into homes for heating, as far as I know.

 

It seems to be being considered as part of the energy storage mix for power generation, although co-located with Nuclear and powered by excess Nuclear, when renewables are fulfilling the demand.

 

Whichever way, you can't then consider the excess usage for hydrogen production to be free or low cost, if you're able to make use of more of the renewable energy generated, then it lowers the overall cost of that energy, which is a good thing, but it still requires 6 times more of that energy to heat a house with hydrogen, than it does with a heat pump.

[Ferdinand]

8 minutes ago, IanR said:

 

It seems to be being considered as part of the energy storage mix for power generation, although co-located with Nuclear and powered by excess Nuclear, when renewables are fulfilling the demand.

 

 

I'm inclined to export the excess renewables through our rapidly increasing portfolio of interconnectors.

 

There's a large opportunity.

 

In the last 24 25 hours EuCo has been talking about the need to maintain Gas as a "transition fuel", which was the argument for fracking (now dead) here.

 

 

[SteamyTea]

I have just had a 5 hour car journey (68.7 MPG, with 3 paving slabs in the boot, shall take the seat out next weekend, save a bit of mass).

I have had many thoughts on how we should be tacking our environmental problems.

The first is to split it up into the main areas:

Energy

Food

Nature

 

Too often I think 'commentators' are talking about different things when they get into debate.

 

5 hours ago, SimonD said:

The only reason we need to produce more is due to the wastage caused by both inefficient systems (which claim they're efficient) and a lack of awareness on the part of those populations who waste so much unnecessarily - e.g. mostly the western developed nations.

I heard on the radio recently, think it was about plastic packaging, that there is serious food waste in developing countries.

Think this was also mention in my weekly comic a while back.  They don't have the infrastructure to harvest effectively, transport, store and process.

I am not blaming developing countries, just highlighting that a relatively small investment can go a long way in some places, and not very far in others.

Edited October 24, 2021 by SteamyTea

[Stones]

12 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

 

I have had many thoughts on how we should be tacking our environmental problems.

The first is to split it up into the main areas:

Energy

Food

Nature

 

Too often I think 'commentators' are talking about different things when they get into debate.

 

I heard on the radio recently, think it was about plastic packaging, that there is serious food waste in developing countries.

Think this was also mention in my weekly comic a while back.  They don't have the infrastructure to harvest effectively, transport, store and process.

I am not blaming developing countries, just highlighting that a relatively small investment can go a long way in some places, and not very far in others.

 

This is really a very important point - the law of diminishing returns. As you say, significant gains possible from small investments.  I can't think of anything I've read in the climate debate which considers that.

[Ferdinand]

16 minutes ago, Stones said:

 

This is really a very important point - the law of diminishing returns. As you say, significant gains possible from small investments.  I can't think of anything I've read in the climate debate which considers that.

 

I think the other side of that is technology transfer of separable reusable / recyclable packaging. Plastic hi-tech packaging is difficult,, as it has a big role in preservation.

 

I had a salad lunch from a local cafe the other day, and it came in a beautiful corrugated cardboard 'bowl', with lid, folded from a flat sheet, which I can just shred and compost. I think Maccie Ds will do something like this soon. Perhaps we need a Pigou tax on foam boxes.

 

 

 

Quote

They don't have the infrastructure to harvest effectively, transport, store and process.

I am not blaming developing countries, just highlighting that a relatively small investment can go a long way in some places, and not very far in others.

 

And the way forward on that (and to reduce fertility) is emission-efficient development.

 

Roll on solar farms in Equatorial Africa. I am wondering if such could be a good new focus for our strategic Overseas Aid effort.

 

[SteamyTea]

43 minutes ago, Stones said:

can't think of anything I've read in the climate debate which considers that.

It is were the corporation's step in. It is easier and cheaper to built RE in developing countries, and also much easier to rewild.

We, in the UK, are often hampered by our own rules to protect nature  why we have not had any new, onshore, windfarms for nearly a decade. Can blame Cameron for that.

[SimonD]

13 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Too often I think 'commentators' are talking about different things when they get into debate.

 

Yeah, and the terminology gets pretty mixed up in those debates too.

 

13 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

I heard on the radio recently, think it was about plastic packaging, that there is serious food waste in developing countries.

Think this was also mention in my weekly comic a while back.  They don't have the infrastructure to harvest effectively, transport, store and process.

I am not blaming developing countries, just highlighting that a relatively small investment can go a long way in some places, and not very far in others.

 

Totally, E F Schumacher in the 1970s who was known for highlighting that one of the big mistakes we make in international development is to focus on large-scale, high capital value, complex programmes that yield underwhelming results. This often requires expertise to be flown in to run the things and doesn't fit the local culture. Instead he said the development efforts need to be smaller scale and more appropriate for the local environment and population, which would not only be more effective but cost a lot less money.

 

I think that your differentiation about where the waste happens is really important; they tend to lose at the early stage of production whereas we tend to waste at the later stage. The UN's figures are something like European and US populations waste between 95-115kg per capita but sub-Saharan Africe, South and South East Asia it's 6-11kg.

 

1 hour ago, Ferdinand said:

Roll on solar farms in Equatorial Africa. I am wondering if such could be a good new focus for our strategic Overseas Aid effort.

 

I'm sure it'll happen one of these days in the not too distant future. A previous client of mine was involved in a tech startup attempting to raise funding and develop community co-operative solar energy generation within a couple of countries in Africa. But currently there are multiple &  serious problems rolling this kind of thing out due to the complexities shall we say of regimes, wildly different jurisdictions and cultures etc. not to mention investment and investment risk (I also know someone who was quite burned by a solar investment in South Africa). My client was from an African background and explained to me that one of the problems with Western Aid and development is we assume Africa is some kind of homogenous mass of land and people whereas even on a small local basis, it can be pretty much the opposite. This has massive implications when doing work out there. He actually moved away from this work to lead solar development within a large established energy company. One positive side is that it is possible for many of these countries to jump a whole stage of development, with the right kind of approach. Lets hope. ?

[SteamyTea]

9 minutes ago, SimonD said:

My client was from an African background and explained to me that one of the problems with Western Aid and development is we assume Africa is some kind of homogenous mass of land and people whereas even on a small local basis, it can be pretty much the opposite

I was at university with two guys from Uganda. Chalk and cheese they were. Except they both agreed when they were referred to by one pig ignorant lecturer as 'you Africans'. They were more tolerant of the white SA girl who liked to tell them about her 'cheerful' black maid.

 

"Hey Bwana, may I ride in the motor, or shall I run behind".

 

Interesting in mathematics lectures that it was only me, the 2 Ugandans, and the South African, who had heard if calculus. We all did 'O' Levels.

Calculus is not introduced until 'A' Levels now.

 

[Gone West]

6 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Interesting in mathematics lectures that it was only me, the 2 Ugandans, and the South African, who had heard if calculus. We all did 'O' Levels.

Calculus is not introduced until 'A' Levels now.

When I did my 'O' levels in the sixties not only was calculus included in the maths, but statistics had it's own paper and the sciences were all separate papers. Now it seems they're all lumped together.

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, Gone West said:

When I did my 'O' levels in the sixties not only was calculus included in the maths, but statistics had it's own paper and the sciences were all separate papers. Now it seems they're all lumped together.

Yes. While I don't buy into the "GCSE are easier than 'O' Levels" because they assess different things, combining subjects is not always successful.

If we are to do that, we may as well just teach English and Mathematics. Then hand out all the other subject books at age 14 and let the kids decide what they would like to learn.