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Power Earth

Fuel From Water? Visiting a Texas 'Green Hydrogen' Plant (msn.com) 111

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."
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Fuel From Water? Visiting a Texas 'Green Hydrogen' Plant

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  • Who knew? (Score:5, Funny)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @06:43AM (#64589627)

    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.

    /s

    • Re:Who knew? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @07:06AM (#64589645)

      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.

      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        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.

        • by methano ( 519830 )
          If you are going to be snotty, at least, get your grammar right. I can't even read your last sentence.
        • Seems highly inefficient to use electricity to produce another fuel that will still pollutes when burnt at an efficiency of approx 30-40% when the electricity could go straight into a battery to drive a motor which will be at least 70% efficient and have zero on road pollution.
      • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        "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?

        • "[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.

      • 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.

      • by msobel ( 661289 )

        "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."

        • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          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

          • by msobel ( 661289 )

            I didn't see in the article anything about checking the green box. I agree with your reasoning assuming Texas utilities allow this option.

            • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

              Yes, the companies most would think of as the 'utilities' elsewhere just run distribution in TX. People can pick from dozens of retailers who compete on pricing and terms and most of them offer renewable only plans or renewable first plans, some offer them exclusively.

              I admit I didn't read TFA but it would be a little odd to go through all the trouble of capturing carbon, hydrogen production at scale, converting to diesel, etc and not do the easy part of choosing green energy purchasing.

              I don't think this i

      • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        "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

        • 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.

          • 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

            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              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

              • by Holi ( 250190 )

                The only way hydrogen, with its limited energy density, makes sense in the aviation industry is if we return to the days of airships.

              • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

                One of the issues with hydrogen [and it is a big one] is that it requires special handing for transport and storage and the infrastructure doesn't exist to do it. This is the kind of wide and distributed thing that could take decades to phase in properly and the costs would be insane. Diesel is an extra step and adds the need to sequester carbon to close the loop but it dodges that infrastructure problem entirely.

                By swapping diesel in, you could not only use existing infrastructure, you could convert consum

          • 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.

      • They are not proposing using pure hydrogen as fuel. They are proposing using the hydrogen to create diesel.
      • Umm

        You do know they're only using hydrogen as an intermediary to produce diesel fuel on-site, right?

      • by Holi ( 250190 )

        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)

      by ukoda ( 537183 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @07:14AM (#64589659) Homepage
      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. Over a year I'm a net exporter of power and in summer I can go weeks without pulling put from the grid. The main limitation with solar is the further from the equator you are the less useful it is in winter.
      • 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,
        • Producing e-fuel with excess solar and wind would be the biggest "battery" in history. And it can be stored for months and readily shipped from Texas or California or Australia to Europe or Japan.
          • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
            Those countries have plenty of potential renewables, and can make their own and save on transportation. For other US states it makes sense, though.
        • 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.

      • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        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.

      • 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.

        • by ukoda ( 537183 )
          Well duh. Your point? You added the "just" to the equation. My point was about the often overloaded term woke used to imply that somehow solar was not of value. So is solar only woke if used alone or is solar still woke when used with storage?
      • 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.

        • by ukoda ( 537183 )
          Again, another person adding words to my post. Where did I use the word 'generated'? The facts are simple. At night I use power from my batteries. Those batteries were charge from solar power. Therefore my house house runs at night on solar power.

          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.
          • 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.

    • 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.

      /s

      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

      • 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

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      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

    • Texas has always been an industrial technology leader. NASA's mission control is in Texas. Texas Instruments continues to build new chip factories. UT Austin was one of the first internet nodes. The most advanced fighter jets in the world are built in Ft Worth. And finally, Texas invented the chimichanga, a fried burrito that is popular across the United States. Well, that last one might be a bad example.
    • 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.

    • Sounds about right actually. Texas spending $10 (using socialist government subsidies) in electricity to make $5 worth of hydrogen. Really pwning the libs.

      • That's not how that works. Energy prices fluctuate a lot, especially with a lot of renewables in the mix. At times, energy prices even go negative: you'll get paid to consume power. When there's a surplus of renewable electricity, it makes sense to convert that into synfuel, or to convert to hydrogen, for later conversion back into electricity when there's a high demand. Using hydrogen for storage is already starting to make economic sense. Producing synfuel is still rather expensive compared to fossil
  • by chas.williams ( 6256556 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @07:58AM (#64589747)
    Ha ha ha. A quote from the article:

    It takes a lot of energy to bind two hydrogen atoms into a molecule — and once they’re connected, the bond is very unstable. The hydrogen atoms are itching to break apart and release all their energy the moment there’s enough heat and oxygen to kick off a chemical reaction.

    Water is not very unstable. This is just plain old electrolysis. It's energy intensive because water molecules are so stable.

    • by jd ( 1658 )

      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.

      • "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%

    • Two hydrogen atoms (per the quote) don't make water, they are H2 - hydrogen gas. As in, the Hindenburg.
    • 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.

    • 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.

  • This article really buried the lede. Captured carbon is being combined with the hydrogen to make diesel fuel. I don't love diesel fuel because of the air pollution, but this seems like a process that would do a lot to improve our carbon capture tech and help us stop adding fossil fuel exhaust to the atmosphere.
    • So we capture the carbon mix it in and release it back out... Maybe we should use that captured carbon at all or use it fir something that doesn't release it back into the air.
    • 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

  • by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @08:21AM (#64589787)
    i can use E85 if i could find if but i never see it around my locale, if it can use a hyrogen based liquid fuel i would use it since hydrogen burns cleaner than gasoline or a ethanol/gasoline mixture
  • Gobsmacked! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by methano ( 519830 )
    Chemist of 50 years here. I'm completely blown away at the level of nonsense in this overview of the article. It reads like a Trump speech. I'll have to go read the article and see if this level of garbage is real. Reality doesn't seem to be required for news any more.
    • Re:Gobsmacked! (Score:5, Informative)

      by methano ( 519830 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @08:36AM (#64589809)
      I RTA> It's electrolysis and some other old technologies strung together. Very little comment on the overall efficiency. Sounds like a boondoggle.
      • I RTA> It's electrolysis and some other old technologies strung together.

        Which means ... what? Old often equals "reliable" and "understood".

      • 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

    • >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.

      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

    • by Jerrry ( 43027 )
      I agree. I'm a chemist too and the article makes no sense at all.

      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.
    • 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.

  • by Eunomion ( 8640039 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @08:47AM (#64589819)
    The value math does not add up. Full-system cost is vastly higher than any alternative but a nuclear reactor. Relying on HFC development is now generally considered a dog-whistle that a project is meant to never converge on a practical product.

    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.
    • 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.

      • Yes, probably material feedstock. Not fuel though. The amounts transported as commodities by ship are a pittance compared to what they'd be carrying if it were the ship's fuel.

        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.
        • 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

          • The business case for nuclear today is raw power in a compact form, which can overcome its high fixed costs in certain applications. That's not necessary for a fixed power plant, regardless of what it's used for. So ideally electricity on land, synthetic fuel generation, and water deslination would be renewably powered, and vehicles that don't need sustained, overwhelming power would all be BEV. Some fraction of the remainder could use alternative strategies like capacitors, compressed fluids, or what-ha
    • These people are making synthetic diesel. Other companies are making synthetic gasoline. Some are making synthetic jet fuel. While using the energy to do this synthesis is less efficient than charging a battery, there are many people like me who have no interest in a BEV, so if you want my ICE to one day be net zero, as well as trains and ships, this is the only way to go.

      Not that I really care either way, but apparently lots of people do.
      • Synthetic carbon fuels are a different debate. I'm just talking hydrogen.
        • Fuel cells are certainly going to have a place in our future tech arsenal. Time will tell if they are niche or common, but good on people pushing the envelope always. Many countries are ignoring your advice and building H2 infrastructure in any case. If you don't like the competition with whatever your precious (batteries, solar, coal or nuclear), that is just something you will have to deal with.
          • 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.
            • 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.

              • "Airlines, long haul trucking, heavy equipment, steelmaking/smelting and concrete producers? "

                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.

                • What do they have in common?

                  That batteries sub-optimal. Believe it or not batteries are not going to be the solution to every problem.

                  • Batteries were sub-optimal for everything they're used in today, until they weren't. Some applications may involve changing previously stable configurations of things, but woop-dee-doo.
                    • Batteries were sub-optimal for everything they're used in today, until they weren't.

                      Good thing people ignored the detractors and kept trying new ideas then.

    • A fuel that reacts explosively with air ... like kerosene?

  • 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

  • by doubledown00 ( 2767069 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @08:59AM (#64589835)

    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).

    • 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

  • 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

    • No argument this particular discussion is not helpful. But in the big picture nature has the perfect solution: photosynthesis + anaerobic degradation. Happens naturally at atmospheric temp and pressure, just takes a long time (for the reduction part.) We need to figure out how to make it happen faster. & call me crazy but slashdot used to be the place where someone with the right background could think about this constructively, am I wrong?
    • There are going to be a lot of ICE powered vehicles on the road for decades to come. This is how you would make them cleaner should you choose to. Or not, makes no difference to me.
    • Battery technology is still very far away, if ever close enough, to replace hydrocarbon fuels for cargo ships and jet aeroplanes.
  • by Shaitan ( 22585 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @09:32AM (#64589875)

    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.

    • by jeadly ( 602916 )

      They use carbon that would be released straight into the air from nearby petroleum refining. Which is then released when the synth-fuel is burned, so delayed emissions with a little more utility added. While the article portrays it as something like carbon neutral, that's only if you take as granted that those tons of carbon would have been emitted anyway. It's certainly not actually carbon neutral as in spending energy to capture carbon from the air, as that would make their usable energy conversion eff

      • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        Yeah, that isn't neutral or negative by a long shot. As long as the energy is renewable the efficiency doesn't really need to be great since there is no shortage of potential renewable energy. You could harvest enough on empty/unutilized land in TX alone to power the globe.

        Just look at EV's. Sure, some of the individual pieces of the puzzle have high efficiency but by the time you add up the loses from the panels, the charge controller for your home batteries, the charge controller in the EV, etc, etc the e

        • by jeadly ( 602916 )

          Well currently this plant runs off the local grid, which the article states is only 40% renewables.

          • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

            Everyone tries to bring this up and it is a valid point on the national grid where you have to add the energy yourself but not the Texas deregulated grid where you can just use a renewable retail option.

            Sure, their electrons might be getting pumped by some kind of fossil next door but because their retailer is buying renewable to cover it someone else with no preference will get the electrons from the renewable energy they bought. If everyone keeps checking that renewable box then eventually there are no mo

  • by laughingskeptic ( 1004414 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @11:20AM (#64590089)
    Their cartoon reaction for the production of diesel is written like a stoichiometry ... but it is not -- it is an average Carbon:Hydrogen ratio of diesel converted to a nonsense stoichiometry roughly in-scope (diesel n-alkanes start at C12). This is clearly a marketing-driven organization and not a science driven one. They don't care if their marketing cartoon makes chemists squirm.

    Diesel for example is C12H23

    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.

  • 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

  • BTW, water vapor is a greenhouse gas.

  • 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.)

    • 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 are too heavy for planes and too bulky for ships." Tell that to CATL who just put a 400w/h condensed battery into a (small) passenger airplane, and they already have the 500w/h variant lined up, according to some specialists, 400+w/h is the magic number when batteries can be used for planes. And we are just starting to get the grasp on better, safer batteries and much faster charging of those. Yes we're not fully there yet, but within 20 years we'll have big jumbo jets using batteries only to fly
  • I got all the way through the comments and there wasn't even one wiseass remark about thermodynamics.

"I got everybody to pay up front...then I blew up their planet." "Now why didn't I think of that?" -- Post Bros. Comics

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