Hydrogen for the future

[XenaLives]

An interesting Wordpress essay that raises some excellent issues. This is a twitter acquaintance and I believe she is a physicist. Some of the issues that I have been concerned about are expressed here and in the comments. I am just quoting because it is more informed than anything I could come up with...

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2022/10/24/renewable-hoax/

From the comments by Ian Miller:

The solar and wind lobbies have got where they are by offering politicians “a solution” without pointing out what it is a solution to. My feeling is with the possible exception of solar being useful in places where air conditioning is in demand, solar and wind can only be bit players. You are correct that coal-fired stations take hours to heat up from a cold start. However, gas turbines can start up quickly and are useful for peak loads.

The varying loads depending on time of day is a problem. But “renewables” (the equipment has a lot of rare metals in it so it is not exactly renewable) cannot be a main load solution.

Ah, Patrice, it is not what is spent that matters; it is what is done. I watched this farce in the US, and recall a number of “renewable projects”. As one example, one company raised 100 million dollars from the US government to make fuels from biomass. I saw what was proposed and it was painfully obvious this could not work, at least not vaguely with any thought to economics. Basically, it was how to spend $100 million of someone else’s money, have some fun doing engineering, then go off and find some other way to waste money. There was no preliminary analysis of the available data! For what this is worth, I consulted for one company and more or less designed their research. They spend $3 million NZD and got much further that a couple of companies in the US using the same raw material (microalgae) got while burning through $100 M. We got our raw material from sewage treatment, so apart from the cost of harvest, it was free, and we got to the stage of having about half a tonne of bench scale material with some refined up to aircraft fuel standards, as well as petrol and diesel., That failed, however, because it needed refinancing, and their time-scale put them up for financing about a month after Lehmans. Oops.

You can make fuels from biomass, BUT to make money you have to make something else at the same time because nothing is cheaper than Saudi crude. Except when the Saudis don’t pump enough.

Response from Patrice:

Right now huge investment is needed in hydrogen: it’s the low hanging fruit. Huge advances in fuel cells efficiency (60%) and how to make green hydrogen from electricity have apparently been achieved in the labs… Already hydrogen electric fuel cell cars are price competitive with state subsidized BEV (Battery Electric Vehicles)…

At this point the US seems to have understood energy, manufacturing, technological and science independence is crucial. Biden is pursuing Trump policies: Biden just slapped interdiction of advanced electronic chips exports to China, boosting the Trump policy… and the Intel CEO applauded (while his stock collapsed)…

Europe does not have achieved the same understanding, and this is creating Franco-German drift. Germany wants US system against missiles… neglecting the better MAMBA system of MDMA and Thales, Franco(-Italian) Aster. So Macron met Georgia Melloni less than 10 hours after she became Italian PM….

Biofuels? My car in California uses lots of biofuels… still goes to 100km/h in less than 6 seconds, enough to make Tesla drivers furious (so they race with me, and then get out of the freeway within a few minutes, their cars half exploded and out of juice…)… Also it goes 800 kilometers on one tank, no problem, although I often go at 90 mph… Turbo-diesel with biofuels…. where was I…
Too much growing of bad corn in bad places using too much water… But it’s the law in CA, so I fill up with my biodiesel….

Was not that NAZI synthetic gasoline highly inefficient? In any case, thanks to aerial bombing, the NAZIS ran out of fuel to the point they couldn’t fly, drive, let alone train… Let’s bomb whatever needs to be bomb in Putinreich…

The HYDROGEN MARKET is super easy to develop: it already exists. The French showed how to put hydrogen in gas lines… A CENTURY ago…. Any mix works…
Just a paper in Science this week about using LESS Platinum…

Nearly all hydrogen FUEL STATIONS are in the SF Bay Area, where I fester, infuriating hopefully everybody.The TRUMP (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) adminstration found the Alameda COUNTY (Berkeley Oakland) buses to work splendidly (Hydrogen + fuel cells). I see them everyday… Biden is discreetly financing and expending…
Paris too is going hydrogen, they have a deal with a taxi company….

AIRBUS has given up (discreetly) on massive flying batteries projects and instead is reasonably going to develop hydrogen planes