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This article from a major news source backs up something Jill and I have been suggesting for years...that hydrogen and water may be the real answer to future clean-fuel-needs.
A new generation of fuels could power planes and ships without warming the planet.
By Nicolás Rivero and Emily Wright Photos and videos by Mark Felix for The Washington Post
June 27, 2024 at 5:00 a.m.
CORPUS CHRISTI, Tex. — The tangle of pipes at this industrial plant doesn’t stand out in this city built around the carbon-heavy business of pumping oil and refining it into fuel for planes, ships, trucks and cars.
But this plant produces fuel froma different source, one that doesn’t belch greenhouse pollution: hydrogen. Specifically, hydrogen made from water using renewable electricity, also known as green hydrogen.
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. In his 1874 science fiction novel “The Mysterious Island,” Jules Verne predicted that “water will be the coal of the future.” This plant, one of the first in the world to transform water into fuel, shows what that looks like on the ground today.
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.
Climate Leap
A series examining the next batch of cutting-edge technologies to displace the world’s biggest sources of global warming emissions.
PreviousNextAlthough 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. Extendedcharging times could be an obstacle for long-haul trucks, and some rail lines may be too expensive to electrify. Together, thesevehiclesrepresent 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 generateeven more pollution than regular diesel, creatinga wasteful boondoggle that sets the world back in the fight against climate change. Their potentialcomes down to the way plants like this produce them.
Here’s what you need to make green hydrogen-based fuel:
List of what is needed to make fuel from water that includes water, electricity and carbon. Electricity
Water
Carbon
water.
Here it all starts with
The first step to make green hydrogen is opening the tap. Infinium makes hydrogen by splitting water molecules.
It’s not an entirely new idea: Scientists discovered how to do this in the 18th century. By 1900, there were 400 industrial machines turning water into hydrogen to make fertilizer – but companies abandoned almost all of them when they discovered how to cheaply extract the gas from fossil fuels. It’s now about three times cheaper to make hydrogen from fossil fuels than water.
You take natural gas (CH4) and heat it up to separate it into carbon and hydrogen. Those leftover carbon atoms combine with oxygen to create carbon dioxide (CO2), which vents into the atmosphere. But to make green hydrogen, you take hydrogen (H2) from water (H2O) and all you have left is pure oxygen. This is a simplified representation of the way most hydrogen is
produced now:
You take natural gas …
… and heat it up to separate it into carbon and hydrogen.
Those leftover carbon atoms combine with oxygen to create carbon dioxide, which vents into the atmosphere.
But to make green hydrogen, you take hydrogen from water and all you have left is pure oxygen.
Why use hydrogen as a fuel?
It’s the most abundant element in the universe and its molecules store a lot of energy. 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.
That’s a useful property inside an internal combustion engine, which uses tiny explosions to turn a crank that spins the wheels of a truck or the propeller of a boat.
Green hydrogen could also cut carbon pollution beyond transportation, as an ingredient in fertilizers or to refine steel, chemicals and oil. Today, making hydrogen out of fossil fuels for those industries generates 2 percent of global carbon emissions. Overall, plants that make hydrogen out of water — or make it out of fossil fuels and capture carbon — could cut 4 percent of global carbon emissions by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency, an advisory group that represents 44 countries.
To make transportation fuel, Infinium plant operators first pull the hydrogen out of water.
This transformation happens in a nondescript beige container at the center of the plant. Inside is an electrolyzer.
The two electrolyzers here are rare specimens outside of research labs and small-scale pilot projects. Manufacturers are still perfecting the machines’ designs and they’re just starting to build big factories that can turn out lots of electrolyzers at low cost.
David Eaglesham, who co-founded the billion-dollar electrolyzer startup Electric Hydrogen, imagines a world where companies can buy electrolyzers off the shelf and run them in plants that produce tens of thousands of tons of hydrogen a year. That’s still years away as companies like his start to open factories.
But cheap electrolyzers alone aren’t enough to produce the amount of green hydrogen needed to fuel heavy transportation. “If the [electrolyzer] stack was free, you wouldn’t solve the problem,” Eaglesham said. It takes a lot of energy to split water molecules and force the hydrogen atoms to bond with one another.
Electricity
Water
Electricity
The other all-important ingredient to make green hydrogen is cheap, green energy. Without a massive amount of renewable electricity, clean hydrogen-based fuels are a fantasy.
On the horizon surrounding the Infinium plant, renewable electricity is starting to materialize in the shape of towering wind turbines. They’re part of one of the fastest-growing networks of wind and solar power in the United States.
Image of power lines at the Infinium plant. In the background, nearby wind turbines that feed the Texas grid, which powers the plant, are visible. Nearby wind turbines
feed the Texas grid,
which powers the plant.
But even here, only about 40 percent of the power on the 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.
The danger of using grid power for hydrogen production is that, across the United States, just like in Texas, 60 percent of that energy comes from fossil fuels. Making hydrogen from electricity that dirty is worse than simply making it from fossil fuels, according to an April 2023 analysis from Energy Innovation, a clean energy think tank.
Experts say that for green hydrogen to be truly clean, it has to be made at a plant hooked up to its own dedicated wind turbines and solar panels, or follow strict rules for using newly added renewable electricity from the grid. Federal officials are setting clean power rules that will decide which hydrogen plants qualify for billions of dollars in tax credits.
The stakes are high: If the rules are too lax, the government could subsidize hydrogen production that adds as much as 60 million extra tons of carbon to the atmosphere each year, according to an Energy Innovation analysis published in February.
“Unless those Treasury rules are strict and rigorous … then we’re going to be in a very perverse place of paying hundreds of billions of dollars of public money to increase emissions from hydrogen production,” said Rachel Fakhry, policy director for emerging technologies at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The Infinium plant follows the rules regulators have proposed so far, and CEO Robert Schuetzle says the plant will make any changes necessary to follow the final rules. For now, the company says it pays extra to certify that, over the course of each year, recently built wind turbines and solar panels produce as much electricity as the plant uses.Carbon Water
Electricity
Carbon
Once they separate hydrogen from water, plant operators still need to put it through one last step before the fuel they produce can be pumped into a vehicle’s tank. They mix it with carbon.
Most vehicles today can’t handle pure hydrogen, and neither can the network of fueling stations for planes, ships and trucks.
Hydrogen is the least dense substance in the universe. It’s so light that if you released it into the air it would float into space. To store it and use it, you have to cool it below -253 degrees Celsius and compress it until the air pressure is several hundred times higher than our atmosphere. Even then, it takes up much more space than other fuels, which makes it expensive to transport on ships and trucks. The best way to move it is by pipeline, and hundreds of miles of hydrogen pipelines already exist in Texas, but expanding that network will be time-consuming and costly.
One day, heavy transportation may shift to fuel cells that run on pure hydrogen and emit only water vapor from their tailpipes. But planes, ships and trucks have decades-long lifespans, meaning every vehicle built to use fossil fuels is likely to keep running for a long time.
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So for now, carbon remains a necessary ingredient in hydrogen-based fuels, which still release CO2 from the tailpipes of vehicles that burn them.
Infinium produces chemical copies of existing fuels made with crude oil — which are all some combination of hydrogen and carbon. Diesel, for example, is C12H23. Instead of rearranging the molecules in crude oil (CxHy into C12H23), Infinium makes its fuel by combining captured carbon with green hydrogen.
Instead, Infinium combines that CO2 with hydrogen in a series of steel tanks that heat the gases, cool them, change their pressure, and set off a chain of chemical reactions that turns them into a mixture of diesel and naphtha, which is used in making plastic.
Three images from the Infinium plant. The first image shows two towers, one of which is where CO2 gets mixed with hydrogen and the other is where that mix that mix gets transformed into diesel. In the second image, there is a row of storage tanks where the fuel is kept. The third image is of a blue truck with Infinium's logo that carries the fuel out of the plant. CO2 gets mixed with hydrogen... that mix gets transformed into diesel.
The final fuel gets stored in tanks ...... and transported out of the plant in trucks.
Infinium won’t say how much it charges, but a 2022 study from Ford and researchers in Sweden and Denmark suggests this kind of diesel could cost around $9 per gallon to produce, more than double current U.S. prices. The diesel goes to clients such as Amazon, which will use it to fuel trucks carrying packages on long-haul routes across the country. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Factories elsewhere will turn the naphtha into household goods.
Infinium’s fuel is chemically identical to regular diesel made from oil. When a truck driver steps on the accelerator, this hydrogen-based fuel will release just as much carbon dioxide from the tailpipe.
But proponents say there’s a key difference: Burning fuel made from oil takes carbon that had been stored underground for millions of years and releases it into the atmosphere.
On the other hand, capturing carbon from the air or factory smokestacks, turning it into fuel and then releasing it again recycles carbon that was already floating around. It doesn’t put any new carbon into the atmosphere.
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.
Today, the Infinium plant is a blip of green fuel production among the miles of oil and gas refineries that sprawl along the coast near the Port of Corpus Christi. To avoid climate disaster, those fossil fuel facilities would have to be replaced by wind turbines, solar panels, biofuel refineries and plants such as this one, which turn water — not oil — into fuel.
About this story
We spoke to more than 20 experts — scientists, hydrogen producers, electrolyzer manufacturers, fossil fuel executives, energy analysts and climate watchdogs — about the state of the hydrogen industry and its carbon-cutting potential.
José Miguel Bermúdez Menéndez, a hydrogen analyst at the International Energy Agency; Martin Tengler, head of hydrogen research at BloombergNEF; and Nikita Pavlenko, who heads the fuels program at the International Council on Clean Transportation, walked us through the models that predict hydrogen’s role in avoiding the worst effects of climate change. Dan Esposito, the manager for electricity policy at Energy Innovation, explained how electricity regulations will determine whether hydrogen becomes a climate solution or a climate problem. Mijndert Van der Spek, an associate professor of chemical engineering at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, broke down the emissions differences between making hydrogen from water vs. fossil fuels. Our illustrations of the chemical processes behind hydrogen production were informed by Naomi Boness, co-managing director of the Stanford Hydrogen Initiative. All the illustrations are simplified representations of the chemical processes described.
I had a hydrogen powered car for three years. It was essentially free - the free hydrogen, free rental days, toll-free HOV access were worth more than the payments and that's before we even got to State rebates and more.
Great idea in concept. Genuine five minute fill ups when fast charging EVs at that time was something of oxymoron.
The problem is a lack of H2 capacity, massive supply chain weakness and a trebling of the retail price for H2 when the generally accepted position back then was that the-then price of H2 was artificially high to allow operators to recoup costs.
Toyota has mostly handled the fuel shortages shockingly poorly, their dealers lied about the Hydrogen situation to sell cars to customers (there are lawsuits in progress) and it's generally something that could have and should have scaled, but didn't and now probably won't. Battery storage for home and grid render some of the (genuine) benefits of H2 moot, but the killer is the insanely high price of H2 these days. Literally more than 3x what it used to be, and again the old price was sold to customers as deliberately inflated for now but will fall by the time you have to pay for it. That simply hasn't happened.
Companies claiming H2 is the future need to shut up and make it the future talk is cheap. Toyota didn't bother to build out H2 stations and supporting infrastructure, and they only came out with one hydrogen model.
How water could be the future of fuel
Zero confidence in that statement what happened to WILL be the future? That's because no one actually believes it.
I read an article a while back about Astron Aerospace experimenting with small hydrogen engines. I think their Starfire engine was estimated to be about 400-450 HP, rev to nearly 20K, and weigh under 150 pounds. I want to say a claim was made that the engines could work in tandem to help produce even more HP, but I might be misremembering that.
Nuclear energy is the past, not the future. It's just political reality. You'll never get sign off from everybody that needs to sign off to build out our nuclear infrastructure. California's last nuke plant is shutting down. More will follow.
That said, H2 is not the future either. It will continue to be electricity from non-nuclear sources.
This is indeed an improvement. Meaning that compared to using green Hydrogen directly in fuel cells--where the last figures I saw had the energy equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline costing $87--Hydrogen-sourced diesel fuel that costs 2-3x what petroleum-sourced diesel does is much closer to usable. Still has a LONG way to go though.
Nuclear energy is the past, not the future. It's just political reality. You'll never get sign off from everybody that needs to sign off to build out our nuclear infrastructure. California's last nuke plant is shutting down. More will follow.
That said, H2 is not the future either. It will continue to be electricity from non-nuclear sources.
So how will we ever improve the environment?
There has to be other solutions.
Nuclear energy is the past, not the future. It's just political reality. You'll never get sign off from everybody that needs to sign off to build out our nuclear infrastructure. California's last nuke plant is shutting down. More will follow.
That said, H2 is not the future either. It will continue to be electricity from non-nuclear sources.
According to actual science it's the future. It's safer than anything else and comically more efficient, stupid people are the issue.
So how will we ever improve the environment?
There has to be other solutions.
I don't know, but you'll never get enough popular support for nuclear energy. Everrybody is frightened to death of it and ignorant of how much safer it is than coal or gas.
Originally Posted by Striker223
According to actual science it's the future. It's safer than anything else and comically more efficient, stupid people are the issue.
What makes you think politicians or the general public gives a damn about science? Nuclear is the best solution, scientifically. Politically it's a dead end. If they can't outright ban it, they'll make it cost prohibitive. There will never be another permit granted for a new reactor and most of the existing reactors are nearing the end of their life cycle. US nuclear energy production has decreased every year since 2007.
Nuclear energy is dead and we need to find away to work within that political reality. Unless you can convince millions of suburban wine moms to stop being irrational.
I don't know, but you'll never get enough popular support for nuclear energy. Everrybody is frightened to death of it and ignorant of how much safer it is than coal or gas.
What makes you think politicians or the general public gives a damn about science? Nuclear is the best solution, scientifically. Politically it's a dead end. If they can't outright ban it, they'll make it cost prohibitive. There will never be another permit granted for a new reactor and most of the existing reactors are nearing the end of their life cycle. US nuclear energy production has decreased every year since 2007.
Nuclear energy is dead and we need to find away to work within that political reality. Unless you can convince millions of suburban wine moms to stop being irrational.
You have an interesting view on this. I look at it differently, the demand for energy is gonna double by 2050. New energy is gonna have to be clean energy. Nuclear energy is zero emissions. So I can see the existing power plants getting refurbished. And some old ones reopened. I agree we will likely not see a new power plant in North America, but two closed facilities are reopening near me.
A 2028 BMW Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Production Car Is Coming
It'll be an added powertrain in a known model, possibly a Neue Klasse EV. Whether it is coming to U.S. buyers is not yet known.
By John VoelckerPublished: Sep 5, 2024 BMW
BMW and Toyota announced today that they are cooperating for BMW's production of a hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle that will be out as a 2028 model. Whether it's coming to the U.S. is an open question for now.
The new vehicle will use Toyota's efficient third-generation fuel-cell stack.
While BMW didn't say what vehicle will get the new powertrain, it could be an SUV to be built on the BMW Neue Klasse platform.
In a joint statement with Toyota, BMW announced today that it will put its first vehicle containing a hydrogen fuel-cell powertrain into series production in 2028.
BMW wouldn't reveal what type of vehicle would gain the new propulsion system. Its BMW iX5 Hydrogen variant, of which only 100 or so will be built, is a mid-size sport-utility vehicle. But given its claim that towing ability is a weakness of battery-electric cars that hydrogen powertrains can solve, an SUV seems a safe bet. BMW BMW’s 2024 iX5 Hydrogen prototype.Michael Rath, vice president of hydrogen vehicles at BMW Group, said during a media briefing that BMW sees fuel-cell vehicles as EVs with a different energy-storage system. He stressed the electric motors, power electronics, and other components of the electric drive could be identical in both battery-electric and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. And, he said, BEVs and HFCV powertrains provide vehicles that are complementary—with hydrogen better for long distances, heavier vehicles, and towing—rather than competing with each other.
This content is imported from Third party. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.BMW BMW chairman Oliver Zipse, Toyota president Koji Sato, and some of their companies’ products.
Hydrogen Neue Klasse EV?
Rath said the Neue Klasse EV architecture—to be used in EVs going into production next year in Hungary, Mexico, and later in China—could accept hydrogen tanks and a fuel cell in place of a large battery pack. BMW said the new vehicle will use Toyota's third-generation fuel-cell stack, which it expects to cost 50 percent less to make and offer 20 percent more range per kilogram of hydrogen.
If we had to bet, we'd say one of the future SUVs to be built on the Neue Klasse platform might gain a fuel cell in certain markets.
The question of markets, though, is where things get sticky. Rath said any market in which the fuel-cell variant is launched must have a "really dense" fueling infrastructure. He cited efforts in Japan, South Korea, and China to build hydrogen fueling stations and noted European Union regulations that require the construction of both DC fast-charging stations for EVs and hydrogen stations for fuel-cell vehicles. BMW BMW iNext testing in 2021.While it's widely accepted that hydrogen will play a role in the global decarbonization of energy, it's less clear that it will have a role in personal transportation—especially in North America, where setting up DC fast-charging for EVs every 50 miles or so will be far less expensive than doing the same for hydrogen fueling that would serve an equivalent number of vehicles.
California's Troubling Experience with Hydrogen Cars
U.S. drivers have reason to be skeptical we will see a hydrogen-fueled BMW any time soon. California is the sole state with retail hydrogen fueling over the past 10 years. The state never received the promised 100 stations by 2020, and their reliability has been less than ideal. Indeed, a few of the existing 60 or so hydrogen stations are now being decommissioned. Sales of two generations of Toyota Mirai have totaled only 15,000 units since 2015, and many of those sales required heavy incentives. Sales of Honda and Hyundai hydrogen models are far lower.
BMW believes, as Toyota does, that inevitable development of hydrogen fueling stations for heavy commercial vehicles—Class 8 semi-tractors, for instance—will kick-start the needed U.S. fueling infrastructure. He stressed that all such stations must be amenable to both passenger vehicles and large trucks. It remains to be seen whether drivers of BMW SUVs want to fuel up next to semis, especially in industrial locations like port drayage lots or distribution warehouse centers where those semis spend time at rest.
How will those stations appear? Rath said the partners "are in close talks with infrastructure providers," including hydrogen producers and fuel distributors, and that BMW is working with Toyota to spur development of the needed infrastructure. Asked directly if the future hydrogen BMW production vehicle will be sold in the U.S., Rather replied, "We will have a really close look at how each region develops its hydrogen infrastructure." Individual markets for that vehicle will be announced "later."
Hydrogen as a Way to Export Clean Energy
Rath acknowledged that one of the main arguments for battery-electric vehicles is that they produce less carbon dioxide per mile than fuel-cell vehicles. But, he said, HFCVs can compete when the entirety of the energy ecosystem is taken into account—using so-called "green hydrogen" generated exclusively with renewable energy that would otherwise simply be shed from the grid. Today and for the near future, however, most hydrogen is created by using vast amounts of energy to "crack" natural gas, with carbon dioxide as the byproduct.
Renewable energy, solar in particular, is far more abundant in some regions than others, Rath noted. He suggested a scenario in which Portugal could generate far more solar energy than it needed; hydrogen would be the only way to export that clean energy to other regions, like cold and cloudy northern Germany.
To announce the expansion of their 10-year partnership in hydrogen vehicles, BMW chairman Oliver Zipse and Toyota president Koji Sato appeared together in a video.
Shown in the video were not only the current Toyota Mirai and the BMW iX5 Hydrogen, but also a 1979 BMW 5-series sedan with a hydrogen combustion engine and a fuel-cell-powered Toyota Hilux pickup truck. The first hydrogen-powered vehicle on public roads was the experimental GM Electrovan of 1966.
In the video, Sato drove Zipse to the front of BMW headquarters in Munich in a BMW iX5 Hydrogen and stressed the "sheer driving pleasure" that was possible in a fuel-cell-powered vehicle. Whether large numbers of American buyers will get to feel it for themselves is yet to be determined.
08-25-24, 11:58 AM
Hydrogen.....the TRUE fuel of the future?
Electricity
This is a simplified representation of the way most hydrogen is
Nearby wind turbines
Water
CO2 gets mixed with hydrogen... that mix gets transformed into diesel.
BMW
BMW BMW’s 2024 iX5 Hydrogen prototype.Michael Rath, vice president of hydrogen vehicles at BMW Group, said during a media briefing that BMW sees fuel-cell vehicles as EVs with a different energy-storage system. He stressed the electric motors, power electronics, and other components of the electric drive could be identical in both battery-electric and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. And, he said, BEVs and HFCV powertrains provide vehicles that are complementary—with hydrogen better for long distances, heavier vehicles, and towing—rather than competing with each other.
BMW BMW chairman Oliver Zipse, Toyota president Koji Sato, and some of their companies’ products.
BMW BMW iNext testing in 2021.While it's widely accepted that hydrogen will play a role in the global decarbonization of energy, it's less clear that it will have a role in personal transportation—especially in North America, where setting up DC fast-charging for EVs every 50 miles or so will be far less expensive than doing the same for hydrogen fueling that would serve an equivalent number of vehicles.