I am always surprised that so many intelligent people support prescriptions like building a hydrogen economy, pumping water up hills, trying to replace thermo power with electrical energy, daming up thousands of acres of land, and consuming so much of the Earth’s mineral resources in efforts that run into the physical limitations you point out in this post. And why? Because so many people are singularly focused on CO2 emissions, which do not correlate to surface temperature of the planet because there are many other considerations like the sun and humidity. Maybe the silver lining, after wasting precious treasure and time, will be that we find common ground in the next densest source of fuel that, as a bonus, do not emit CO2, uranium and thorium. We will probably end up building gigawatt size nuclear plants all over the world, and small nuclear plants to service off grid applications like military bases, data centers, and industries that need to convert heat directly into work onsite. This energy “transition” we’re in, which isn’t really happening, will be looked back on like a couple of alchemists / astrology like 21st century decades that ended when nuclear fuel was adopted as society’s primary fuel, after 80 years experience with fission. Meanwhile this is interesting and relevant information on the challenges hydrogen production, storage and use introduce.
if you think of it in simple terms, hydrogen is used as an industrial feedstock and used wherever it is consumed. It can be used as an input to synthetic fuels, so it's worth investing in that process. But that sounds a lot easier to optimize in my view than to try and change the way that the industrial economy operates.
Aside from hydrogen being thermodynamically challenged for most applications, the problem with synthetics from renewables powered electrolysis and carbon capture is that the electrolysis and the synthesis plant are subject to the same capacity factor issues as the renewables themselves. If, as you suggest, synthetic fuels are produced only when there is an excess of renewables, the synthetics and electrolysis facilities are idle when renewables are NOT in excess…
So I don't necessarily regard EROI as a major obstacle. You need a lot of amortised plants and cheap electricity though. But it's more plausible to stick a ton if solar pannels in the desert than to adapt to hydrogen.
As someone else pointed out, there is no reason why nuclear cannot be used for this purpose.
These arguments are all convincing. However you are not clear how you would produce synthetic fuels without increasing? My understanding was that the most feasible use of hydrogen was as a feedstock for synthetic fuels combined with carbon capture. I understand that producing hydrogen from high temperature nuclear reactors is likely to be very efficient. One could rapidly switch from generating electricity to generating hydrogen, allowing nuclear power station to be run at full power.
That is also a possibility, you can use the rejected heat from nuclear, in combination with electrolysis. Carbon capture, such as direct air capture etc will probably have to be used, or just use traditional coal in combination with it, if neccesary.
The more difficult issue is the freshwater demand, i.e. desalination. Nuclear will probably be used for that as well.
We are on the same page here.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/a-different-way-to-look-at-solar
I am always surprised that so many intelligent people support prescriptions like building a hydrogen economy, pumping water up hills, trying to replace thermo power with electrical energy, daming up thousands of acres of land, and consuming so much of the Earth’s mineral resources in efforts that run into the physical limitations you point out in this post. And why? Because so many people are singularly focused on CO2 emissions, which do not correlate to surface temperature of the planet because there are many other considerations like the sun and humidity. Maybe the silver lining, after wasting precious treasure and time, will be that we find common ground in the next densest source of fuel that, as a bonus, do not emit CO2, uranium and thorium. We will probably end up building gigawatt size nuclear plants all over the world, and small nuclear plants to service off grid applications like military bases, data centers, and industries that need to convert heat directly into work onsite. This energy “transition” we’re in, which isn’t really happening, will be looked back on like a couple of alchemists / astrology like 21st century decades that ended when nuclear fuel was adopted as society’s primary fuel, after 80 years experience with fission. Meanwhile this is interesting and relevant information on the challenges hydrogen production, storage and use introduce.
if you think of it in simple terms, hydrogen is used as an industrial feedstock and used wherever it is consumed. It can be used as an input to synthetic fuels, so it's worth investing in that process. But that sounds a lot easier to optimize in my view than to try and change the way that the industrial economy operates.
Fischer Tropsch
thanks, fixed that one
Great primer on hydrogen.
Synthetic fuels face their own physical limitations. Proposals to develop them need to be proven on an EROI (no monetary economics) basis.
Aside from hydrogen being thermodynamically challenged for most applications, the problem with synthetics from renewables powered electrolysis and carbon capture is that the electrolysis and the synthesis plant are subject to the same capacity factor issues as the renewables themselves. If, as you suggest, synthetic fuels are produced only when there is an excess of renewables, the synthetics and electrolysis facilities are idle when renewables are NOT in excess…
Thank you.
So I don't necessarily regard EROI as a major obstacle. You need a lot of amortised plants and cheap electricity though. But it's more plausible to stick a ton if solar pannels in the desert than to adapt to hydrogen.
As someone else pointed out, there is no reason why nuclear cannot be used for this purpose.
These arguments are all convincing. However you are not clear how you would produce synthetic fuels without increasing? My understanding was that the most feasible use of hydrogen was as a feedstock for synthetic fuels combined with carbon capture. I understand that producing hydrogen from high temperature nuclear reactors is likely to be very efficient. One could rapidly switch from generating electricity to generating hydrogen, allowing nuclear power station to be run at full power.
That is also a possibility, you can use the rejected heat from nuclear, in combination with electrolysis. Carbon capture, such as direct air capture etc will probably have to be used, or just use traditional coal in combination with it, if neccesary.
The more difficult issue is the freshwater demand, i.e. desalination. Nuclear will probably be used for that as well.