Fuel From Water? Visiting a Texas 'Green Hydrogen' Plant (msn.com) 102
It transforms water into the fuel — one of the first fuel plants in the world to do so.
The Washington Post visits a facility in Corpus Christi, Texas using renewable energy to produce "green" hydrogen. The plant feeds water through machines that pull out its hydrogen atoms... [T]he hydrogen is chemically transformed into diesel for delivery trucks. This process could represent the biggest change in how fuel for planes, ships, trains and trucks is made since the first internal combustion engine fired up in the 19th century... Turning hydrogen into liquid fuel could help slash planet-warming pollution from heavy vehicles, cutting a key source of emissions that contribute to climate change. But to fulfill that promise, companies will have to build massive numbers of wind turbines and solar panels to power the energy-hungry process. Regulators will have to make sure hydrogen production doesn't siphon green energy that could go towards cleaning up other sources of global warming gases, such as homes or factories.
Although cars and light trucks are shifting to electric motors, other forms of transport will likely rely on some kind of liquid fuel for the foreseeable future. Batteries are too heavy for planes and too bulky for ships. Extended charging times could be an obstacle for long-haul trucks, and some rail lines may be too expensive to electrify. Together, these vehicles represent roughly half of emissions from transportation, the fourth-biggest source of greenhouse gases. To wean machines off oil, companies like Infinium, the owner of this plant, are starting to churn out hydrogen-based fuels that — in the best case — produce close to net zero emissions. They could also pave the way for a new technology, hydrogen fuel cells, to power planes, ships and trucks in the second half of this century. For now, these fuels are expensive and almost no one makes them, so the U.S. government, businesses and philanthropists including Bill Gates are investing billions of dollars to build up a hydrogen industry that could cut eventually some of the most stubborn, hard-to-remove carbon pollution.
Most scenarios for how the world could avoid the worst effects of climate change envision hydrogen cleaning up emissions in transportation, as well as in fertilizer production and steel and chemical refining. But if they're not made with dedicated renewable energy, hydrogen-based fuels could generate even more pollution than regular diesel, creating a wasteful boondoggle that sets the world back in the fight against climate change. Their potential comes down to the way plants like this produce them... Only about 40 percent of the power on the [Texas] electric grid is from renewables, with the rest coming from natural gas and coal, according to state data. That grid energy is what flows through the power line into the Infinium plant.
"One day, heavy transportation may shift to fuel cells that run on pure hydrogen and emit only water vapor from their tailpipes," the article points out. But to accommodate today's carbon-burning vehicles, Infinium produces "chemical copies of existing fuels made with crude oil" by combining captured carbon with green hydrogen.
"A truck running on diesel made from hydrogen using only renewable electricity would create 89 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions over the course of its lifetime than a truck burning diesel made from petroleum, according to a 2022 analysis from the European nonprofit Transport & Environment."
The Washington Post visits a facility in Corpus Christi, Texas using renewable energy to produce "green" hydrogen. The plant feeds water through machines that pull out its hydrogen atoms... [T]he hydrogen is chemically transformed into diesel for delivery trucks. This process could represent the biggest change in how fuel for planes, ships, trains and trucks is made since the first internal combustion engine fired up in the 19th century... Turning hydrogen into liquid fuel could help slash planet-warming pollution from heavy vehicles, cutting a key source of emissions that contribute to climate change. But to fulfill that promise, companies will have to build massive numbers of wind turbines and solar panels to power the energy-hungry process. Regulators will have to make sure hydrogen production doesn't siphon green energy that could go towards cleaning up other sources of global warming gases, such as homes or factories.
Although cars and light trucks are shifting to electric motors, other forms of transport will likely rely on some kind of liquid fuel for the foreseeable future. Batteries are too heavy for planes and too bulky for ships. Extended charging times could be an obstacle for long-haul trucks, and some rail lines may be too expensive to electrify. Together, these vehicles represent roughly half of emissions from transportation, the fourth-biggest source of greenhouse gases. To wean machines off oil, companies like Infinium, the owner of this plant, are starting to churn out hydrogen-based fuels that — in the best case — produce close to net zero emissions. They could also pave the way for a new technology, hydrogen fuel cells, to power planes, ships and trucks in the second half of this century. For now, these fuels are expensive and almost no one makes them, so the U.S. government, businesses and philanthropists including Bill Gates are investing billions of dollars to build up a hydrogen industry that could cut eventually some of the most stubborn, hard-to-remove carbon pollution.
Most scenarios for how the world could avoid the worst effects of climate change envision hydrogen cleaning up emissions in transportation, as well as in fertilizer production and steel and chemical refining. But if they're not made with dedicated renewable energy, hydrogen-based fuels could generate even more pollution than regular diesel, creating a wasteful boondoggle that sets the world back in the fight against climate change. Their potential comes down to the way plants like this produce them... Only about 40 percent of the power on the [Texas] electric grid is from renewables, with the rest coming from natural gas and coal, according to state data. That grid energy is what flows through the power line into the Infinium plant.
"One day, heavy transportation may shift to fuel cells that run on pure hydrogen and emit only water vapor from their tailpipes," the article points out. But to accommodate today's carbon-burning vehicles, Infinium produces "chemical copies of existing fuels made with crude oil" by combining captured carbon with green hydrogen.
"A truck running on diesel made from hydrogen using only renewable electricity would create 89 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions over the course of its lifetime than a truck burning diesel made from petroleum, according to a 2022 analysis from the European nonprofit Transport & Environment."
Who knew? (Score:5, Funny)
Texas is becoming the biggest woke state in the nation. "Green" energy. Solar power which only works during the day. Wind power which only works when the wind blows. So. Much. Woke. The Great State of Woke.
Re:Who knew? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hydrogen isn't woke.
It was long used for "greenwashing" to delay the adoption of BEVs.
H2 has some niche applications, but using it for truck fuel is stupid, and nothing in TFA says anything new.
This is a scheme to suck up either subsidies or research grants and nothing more.
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Gee, nothing gets by you, Einstein. Does the word satire mean anything to you? And the only way woke is used is by whatever stupid shit that Fox et. al. push.
The summary (the article seems to be sourced at MSN....no thanks) only mentions H2 as a fuel in itself as an addendum at the end, the rest is for hydrogen used in producing diesel. As for greenwashing, I very much doubt any company is going stand up anything as expensive as an H2 plant for greenwashing.
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"H2 has some niche applications, but using it for truck fuel is stupid, and nothing in TFA says anything new."
One thing TFA didn't say was using hydrogen for truck fuel. More bad faith argument from the corporate executive.
"This is a scheme to suck up either subsidies or research grants and nothing more."
Don't like the competition?
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"[T]he hydrogen is chemically transformed into diesel for delivery trucks" by some magical method that results in your hydrogen tank still being full at the end of the process
Because, apparently, "combining captured carbon with green hydrogen" != "using hydrogen".
According to you, anyway.
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It was long used for "greenwashing" to delay the adoption of BEVs.
It's doing nothing of the sort. Precisely no one (except Toytoa) is promoting hydrogen BEVs. Not even the oil industry.
Nearly all hydrogen investment currently around the globe is focusing on heavy transportation and heavy industry. Don't confuse Toyota's brain damage with an industry trend.
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Not sure what you think you're saying, but being able to sell a traditional vehicle doesn't make the push for hydrogen any less brain-damaged.
You seem to be unable to tell the difference between sales today vs future R&D investment. Do you work for Toyota's leadership team by any chance?
Greenwashing headline (Score:3, Insightful)
"Specifically, hydrogen made from water using renewable electricity, also known as green hydrogen."
"Only about 40 percent of the power on the [Texas] electric grid is from renewables, with the rest coming from natural gas and coal, according to state data. That grid energy is what flows through the power line into the Infinium plant."
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Electricity in the grid is more or less fungible, it doesn't matter where the electricity being used came from. What matters is that when they buy energy from the grid the energy they buy is green [with the deregulated Texas grid anyone can do this] which increases the demand on the grid for green energy, drives up the price, justifies more green production capacity, etc. Sure your light bulb might be burning juice that came from a coal plant but checking the box to buy only the green stuff means somebody s
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I didn't see in the article anything about checking the green box. I agree with your reasoning assuming Texas utilities allow this option.
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"H2 has some niche applications, but using it for truck fuel is stupid"
They aren't using H2 for truck fuel, they are using it, along with captured carbon, to produce diesel which can utilize existing infrastructure for transport, storage, and distribution.
I'm failing to see a problem with that, even the one implied by TFS. The plant is hooked to the grid which is multisource but electricity is fungible and TX is an open market. They buy enough power for their plant and they can buy it from green suppliers a
Big Problem: Cost (Score:2)
I'm failing to see a problem with that
I can see one: how much does it cost to produce vs. fossil-fuel diesel and what are the realistic projections for that price if things were scaled up? The fact that there is no mention of cost in the article at all suggests very strongly to me that this is a major problem otherwise that PR article would be full of how cheap it is.
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Here's the thing, as I see it:
They're developing a way to make renewable diesel. If they make a process that can be industrialized and scaled, that makes a market for carbon sequestration - these guys are going to need feedstock to create their renewable diesel.
Essentially, given enough capacity to capture atmospheric carbon into an input for these guys, and they output sufficient petroleum distillate fuel to supply heavy transportation needs (jet fuel, container ship fuel, train / heavy truck / farm imple
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I think it's likely that aviation will transition to using hydrogen. It will happen with the natural replacement of airframes and engines over time.
Many other industries will go the same way, as stuff is replaced at EOL. Some with be battery electric, maybe with on-board wind generators for shipping, and some will be hydrogen.
There will be some demand for synthetic diesel, but it is hard to say exactly how much at this stage. Same with hydrogen, for a lot of stuff that currently uses fossil fuels the more l
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The only way hydrogen, with its limited energy density, makes sense in the aviation industry is if we return to the days of airships.
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Liquid hydrogen has 3.3x the energy density of typical aviation fuels.
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Depends: are they in a part of the day when costs from solar go negative due to oversupply? A plant cracking water to feed Fischer Tropsch (or some variant) can absorb excess power production at below zero cost.
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Umm
You do know they're only using hydrogen as an intermediary to produce diesel fuel on-site, right?
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Not only that, but currently 100% of commercially available hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels. They will never be able to recoup their investment.
Re:Who knew? (Score:4, Informative)
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yup, i have AGM batteries i charge em up during the day and at night i like to sleep with a couple of fans blowing, and i can have lights at night if needed, plus i keep my phone, laptop and batteries for my portable am/fm/shortwave radio all charged up,
Things are looking up in Rwanda.
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Those batteries are far from green and don't last nearly as long as the panels. Really this plant is just a much greener battery.
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Solar power doesn't only work during the day. When the sun shines you store some of the electricity in batteries to use at night.
Then it's not just "solar", is it. It's solar + storage.
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Solar power doesn't only work during the day.
Sloppy wording leads to statements like these: Solar power can only be generated during the hours that sunlight is available. Storage systems are an argument happening in room 102.
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You are debating semantics. I was addressing the original statement that was solar power was woke, the inference being that solar power is of no use as it is only generated during the day.
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You failed to understand my words and their purpose. That is fine. Continue with sloppy thinking. Communicating with you will not change the world, so I give up. Have a nice day.
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Texas is becoming the biggest woke state in the nation. "Green" energy. Solar power which only works during the day. Wind power which only works when the wind blows. So. Much. Woke. The Great State of Woke.
Tangentially, does it ever trigger some ... introspection? ... that you always have to run away so fast from your own words for yourselves (while pretending that you aren't the ones who coined them in the first place)?
(e.g. "communist", "socialist", "liberal", "woke")
Dunno, been watching that process with word after word over my lifetime, and find it genuinely bemusing, lol
Re: Who knew? (Score:2)
The reason people run from words they use to describe themselves is to them Jewish means... Jewish, and to people like you it might mean "greedy rich banker with large nose and space lasers", for one example. They don't change, but you keep attaching additional derogatory bullshit to the word to attack whoever identifies by it, turning their identity into something perverted and wrong. That's classic antisemitism right there. That's classic anti-anything actually, they don't to it, you do it.
Take a moment t
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Hydrogen may be very big business in future. Ireland has similar plans to become a major producer.
Ireland has hit 100% of its needs supplied by wind energy for a few hours in the past, and continues to expand. But it's all on-shore so far. So the plan is for off-shore wind to be pretty much exclusively used for hydrogen production, providing reliable base-load for that purpose, as well as opportunistic higher loads when more energy is available.
Ryanair is the 3rd largest airline in the world and based in Ir
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There's also "white hydrogen":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And there may be a lot of it. A lot of a lot of it.
Re: Who knew? (Score:2)
Batteries. (Score:3)
Useful things, batteries. Even Texas has them.
There are several nations generating more power than they can consume, so are selling it overseas. If you don't WANT to make money, that's fine, I quite understand.
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Sounds about right actually. Texas spending $10 (using socialist government subsidies) in electricity to make $5 worth of hydrogen. Really pwning the libs.
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Pull out the hydrogen? (Score:4, Informative)
Water is not very unstable. This is just plain old electrolysis. It's energy intensive because water molecules are so stable.
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It works if you read it differently: two hydrogen atoms AS the molecule is indeed violently unstable. The activation energy is low and the reaction is indeed exothernic.
That's why they stipulate that oxygen needs to be present, rather than oxygen already being present.
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"The minimum ignition energy (MIE) of a hydrogen–air mixture is only 0.019 mJ, whereas that of other flammable gases such as methane, ethane, propane, butane, and benzene is usually on the order of 0.1 mJ according to Lewis and von Elbe [1]."
"In order to properly inert or purge, the flammability limits must be taken into account, and hydrogen's are very different from other kinds of gases. At normal atmospheric pressure it is 4% to 75%, based on the volume percent of hydrogen in oxygen it is 4% to 94%
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The "unstable" here refers to the H2 molecule.
Now, it's been quite a while since I've calculated the potentials of the hydrogen atom and molecule by hand, but I'd still bet in normal conditions the molecule is more stable than atomic hydrogen.
Therefore, this:
It takes a lot of energy to bind two hydrogen atoms into a molecule — and once they’re connected, the bond is very unstable.
is obviously wrong, but it ain't wrong that the H2 molecule will burn in the presence of oxygen if given a little push.
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It is. Until you light it up :)
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Water is not very unstable.
No one here is talking about water, they are talking about two hydrogen atoms, i.e. molecular hydrogen. They are very unstable and in the presence of oxygen can very easily break apart if you just add the tiniest amount of energy.
Captured Carbon + Hydrogen = Diesel? (Score:2)
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Our current predicament however is with leadership that could never make it through high-school chemistry class.
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Electrolysis needs a pretty steady energy source. Start/stopping the cycle is murder for whatever anode they use (typically some very expensive metals like palladium, platinum, rubidium etc)
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They plan to use a giant natural fusion reactor as the energy source. This plant is basically an infinite capacity battery, so you can overbuild wind and solar and dump any excess energy into the water --> hydrogen --> diesel chain. There's less energy loss for this than from having solar heat up your roof shingles.
Re: Captured Carbon + Hydrogen = Diesel? (Score:2)
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This article really buried the lede. Captured carbon is being combined with the hydrogen to make diesel fuel.
My exact reaction. They're not creating green hydrogen, they're creating green diesel. That's all well and good. What's weird is they're getting the carbon from CO2 captured at nearby refineries. That's also fine but the refinery is going to ship a lot more carbon in their outputs than they're emitting as waste gas. Maybe at some future point we'll have cheap and large scale carbon capture but that's not today.
TFA talked about having to use green electricity to run the electrolyzers. I didn't see mention of
i have a flex fuel 3/4 ton truck (Score:3)
Gobsmacked! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Gobsmacked! (Score:5, Informative)
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I RTA> It's electrolysis and some other old technologies strung together.
Which means ... what? Old often equals "reliable" and "understood".
They do seem to work (Score:2)
I've always been skeptical of "green" hydrogen, there are some of these solar powered hydrogen electrolysis plants in Melbourne now. Toyota has one that they use for refilling Mirai fuel cell electric vehicles (you can's buy a Mirai here, they only lease them to fleet customers). There's another one used for fueling some fuel cell electric buses that are being evaluated for public transport.
I'm honestly surprised they work as well as they do. I expected them to be a complete failure. That said, it's prob
other falsehoods in the article (Score:2)
China has already built a large battery powered container ship:
https://maritime-executive.com... [maritime-executive.com]
They are also working on river based container ships:
https://maritime-executive.com... [maritime-executive.com]
Battery powered aircraft experiments are proving successful:
https://electrek.co/2024/06/25... [electrek.co]
Airbus sees electric flight as their future
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How do you make "diesel" from hydrogen? Simple answer: You don't. Diesel is a hydrocarbon fuel, and sure, hydrogen is used in some of the steps in refining crude oil to make gasoline and diesel, but it's not the primary ingredient and you can't make diesel using just water.
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Chemist of 50 years here. I'm completely blown away at the level of nonsense in this overview of the article.
I personally liked the pictures with "taped on" captions. Kind of like what my kids would do for an elementary school science fair project.
The tone of the article was a kind of breathless and fact light enthusiasm, that's for sure.
HFCs are a debunked scam. (Score:3)
Nor does the math add up for liquid hydrogen, btw. You're not gonna run a plane with people on it or a ship that enters $10B cargo ports on a fuel that reacts explosively with air. You'd have a Beirut-level explosion every year.
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Well, on a more limited basis, it'd work for providing hydrogen as a chemical feedstock for other processes like making low carbon steel - they have a process for refining iron/steel that uses hydrogen instead of coke.
And shipping ports already deal with tons of explosive materials every day.
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If all else fails, it might ironically prove worthwhile to just let civilian shipping use nuclear reactors and evolve the safety and security tech accordingly. The destructive potential of fissile hazmat would be very small compared to increasing the volume of stored hydrogen in built environments thousands of times over.
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If all else fails, it might ironically prove worthwhile to just let civilian shipping use nuclear reactors and evolve the safety and security tech accordingly.
That has certainly crossed the minds of many people, especially in the UK.
https://www.neimagazine.com/ne... [neimagazine.com]
I can recall many examples of nations making some kind of announcement of considering nuclear powered civilian cargo ships. What is perhaps a bit unique with the article I linked to above is a plan to also produce floating nuclear power plants. It would not be a stretch to consider a ship or barge built with a nuclear power plant for producing hydrocarbon fuels. If there's a need for more diesel fue
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Not that I really care either way, but apparently lots of people do.
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Take a look at exactly who's focusing on H2. It's companies who have lost market share against BEV technology. They're not expressing an opinion, they're posturing in hopes of being bailed out by governments.
Airlines, long haul trucking, heavy equipment, steelmaking/smelting and concrete producers?
Nothing to do with BEVs, H2 is much bigger than cars. Also, I don't expect Toyota will ever need a government bailout. That they can dabble in fuel cells while still selling more cars than anyone else is absolutely to their credit.
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What do they have in common? Lots of existing, geographically localized jobs. It's posturing. They'll just demand public support when it doesn't work.
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A fuel that reacts explosively with air ... like kerosene?
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classism is the underlying problem (Score:2)
for instance, there's a lot of unnecessary international shipping that would disappear if our markets and governments weren't so corrupted by undue upper class influences
renewables would already be in place if not for Big Oil
Big Banks keep funding Big Energy instead of funding rooftop solar, reverse power meters, insulation, passive solar design, solar orientation optimization, heat pumps, battery, mass and solar walls, wind and shallow geothermal for decentralized self-sufficient homeowners and small busin
Where the skeptics at? (Score:3)
Normally the Slashdot Energy Brigade and the resident Slashdot energy experts are all over ICE alternatives claiming they cost more energy than they save etc. Here we have a conversion process that is a huge energy hog......and that herd is silent. Why, because the reaction ends with good old fashion petroleum products?
Beyond that, we need to question the wisdom of adopting energy processes that use large amounts of staples necessary for human life (food, water).
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Normally the Slashdot Energy Brigade and the resident Slashdot energy experts are all over ICE alternatives claiming they cost more energy than they save etc. Here we have a conversion process that is a huge energy hog......and that herd is silent. Why, because the reaction ends with good old fashion petroleum products?
Or maybe it's because despite your assertion that the "Slashdot Energy Brigade" are some monolith that praises all ICE alternative, they actually understand the physics, chemistry and economics of alternatives and don't universally praise all alternatives.
This is not a religion, despite what you may think. Promoting one ICE alternative doesn't mean you support *all* ICE alternatives. The traditional ICE for consumers should go die in a fire, but that doesn't mean anyone supports Fuel from Water as the alter
Terminally stupid fig leaf operation (Score:2)
Using electricity to turn hydrogen from water and carbon from CO2 into hydrocarbons that will then be burned with an efficiency of less than 30% is so obviously never going to be economical that it must be obvious even to the village idiot that this is a PR stunt with just one purpose: to justify continued production of internal combustion vehicles, which will all be powered with fossil fuels. Alas, almost half of voters, possibly more, will vote for a convicted felon who has a plan to install fascism, so I
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This doesn't seem right to me... (Score:3)
Sure the energy production is green [green energy is fed into the grid to match the usage here so someone is getting it instead of fossil even it isn't literally this grid tied plant] and hydrogen is green. Cool. But they are producing diesel with it... so where is the carbon coming from? It seems to me how green this ultimately is from a CO2 emission standpoint depends on the source of the carbon not being one where the carbon is bound.
Stoichiometry fail (Score:3)
Diesel is a mix of hydrocarbons, its primary n-alkane components are C12H26, C13H28, C14H30, C15H32, and C16H34, but it has enough aromatic cancer agents in it to drop the ratio below 1:2.
Water will not be the coal of the future. (Score:2)
The article makes a reference to Jules Verne predicting that water will be the coal of the future. That's a cute poetic reference but the process of fuel production described is not hardly what Verne was predicting. I guess making a reference to Verne makes a better story than referencing that the first industrial use of this technology was in 1940's Germany, and even that is something of a stretch since while the chemistry involved is nearly identical there's a great many details that differs. It is the
Um... (Score:2)
BTW, water vapor is a greenhouse gas.
Green methane is better (Score:2)
I really disapprove of using Hydrogen that way except when it's specifically required. Green methane is better, and green butane or propane is even better. Long chain hydrocarbons, though, are probably too expensive to synthesize. (That last is just a guess.)
There *are* use cases where hydrogen is required, or vastly preferable, but that's not the common case. Usually hydrogen is too energetic and needs to be tamed down. (It's also very likely to leak.)
Ammonia (Score:2)
Green ammonia would be a good use for green hydrogen. I am entirely dubious about green hydrogen, as the electrodes are expensive and erode, but if someone can make it work without subsidies then replacing the Haber process would have a small but measurable effect on global CO2 emissions, if you think that is something worth worrying about. I don't.
Batteries... (Score:2)
I'm Disappointed (Score:2)
I got all the way through the comments and there wasn't even one wiseass remark about thermodynamics.