Pure water still conducts but requires a lot more energy, I think you would use either seawater or add something to increase conductivity.
Did you see the report that boilers sales are to stop 2025
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People generally use caustic soda as the electrolyte as you dont want chlorine in the system. The UK has generally lagged behind Germany and Japan in this technology, but we do have a winning company in this area ITM power. ITM Power | Energy Storage | Clean Fuel
Washing soda is the backyard additive here for rust removal. Not done in confined spaces for obvious reasons. But I'm not aware of anything done commercially other than reforming methane.
I'll believe it's economically feasible as a large source free of nat gas when I see it. The folks here who want to push hydrogen fuel cells tend to be federal program leeches who otherwise hate green energy (as in the corn lobby hoping to somehow tag on with ethanol use).
John Brown
Freeloading Social media influenza
Thanks. It is a pleasure to have someone who knows their stuff contributing to this.thread.
Fascinating, you clearly know your stuff and it's very encouraging to see the progress being made for an alternative energy
As is quite often the case, UK academics have been getting over-excited about hydrogen, this article is some welcome skepticism. Hydrogen as a fuel/vector/chemicals has been around a very long time. It is expensive to process. ICI spend £500m+ in the late 1970s and early 1980s trying to find better ways to use its surplus hydrogen generated in Runcorn and Teesside, it even built a salt cavern under the Cheshire plane to store it. These old salt caverns store most of the UKs natural gas supply (replacing the old manometers) as well as exotic gases such as ethylene.
The UK and US has had on/off enthusiasm for hydrogen technology over the years, with investment following energy prices, so investment has yoyoed in the UK and US, whereas the Japanese they continued with steady development of the technology, and are quite advanced in terms of hydrogen cars.
The big issue in all this new technology is how do you get a market going, if all the infrastructure has to be build at once that is a huge battier to entry and so hold back risk capital. The beauty of EVs and heat pumps is the electricity infrastructure exists so you can just add to existing markets. The problem with hydrogen is there is no grid so most hydrogen is in captive areas such as Teesside and Humberside where there are local producers and consumers of H2.
So you have a classic chicken and egg problem. Hydrogen producers wont build plant until there are consumers. Consumers wont build plant until there is reliable supply. So to break this knot the industry is proposing incremental technology development ie use hydrogen from conventional technology to get the market going.
It is for this reason that the industry is proposing different types of hydrogen greenness. They give them colour names.
Grey hydrogen - is traditional reforming of methane with CO2 emissions.
Blue - is methane reforming but with CO2 capture and storage CCU and CCUS. In CCU the co2 is used in a process such as fizzy drinks or making chemicals in CCUS its pumped into long term storage - plan is to re-fill the old North sea oil caverns with CO2 (and Liverpool/Morecombe bay).
Green - is electrolytic hydrogen
Pink is nuclear
Yellow is direct solar t hydrogen
To get hydrogen schemes going, industry is constructing the first blue hydrogen stations at full scale, the technology of methane reforming is well developed so its investable now. BP and JM have announced a big blue hydrogen scheme in Cheshire. This then allow numerous innovative companies to start building hydrogen infrastructure and usage. For instance the glass industry in St Helens/Latham is building a pilot plant to use hydrogen as fuel for making glass instead of the existing oil and gas fuels.
The green lobby worry that these schemes for blue and grey hydrogen may not lead to downstream green developments so they are getting alarmed. This is a legitimate worry as the technology is still very new. However in my view these pilot schemes should be supported as we need to try them out and lower the risk. If they don't work then we try something else. The green lobby is naturally skeptical that government and industry wont use these schemes to talk out the 'climate debate'. Personally I don't see that as such a big worry, the scientific data on climate is very robust and largely accepted by the chemical, petrochemical and manufacturing industry - in the UK at any rate, BP, Shell all have huge developments in this area. Even Saudi Aramco is looking at what to do with its oil post the petrol age.
To give you an idea of how serous this is, I sit on four committees looking at how to decarbonise UK manufacturing, about half my week is spent attending meetings on this topic. Of our 2000 employees across the UK about 200 are full time employed looking at this issue. We are working with others in industry to provide the government with good data on viable options. Its complicated, there are loads of studies being done across every sector.
A lot is at stake, by getting the technology wrong companies will go out of business.
Do nothing and we will be overtaken by legislation, as is happening to companies who make ICE engines components who did not see EVs coming.
Get in too early like ICI and BASF did introducing bio plastics in the 1980's when the consumer would not spend the extra to use them and those business went bust.
Most chemical companies lost a fortune developing hydrogen in the 1980s ICI reputably spend between £500m and £1bn on it.
Get it right and you will make money - vis Tesla.
Make wrong technology choices and disaster. In 1990s the EU adopted diesel as its policy choice for low co2 transportation and regular emissions detectives required continuous improvement on diesel engines and European auto did fanatically well. However in Japan they looked at alternatives such as hydrogen, hybrids and EVs as a result Asia, Japan, followed by China and Korea dominate the battery and hydrogen car market. Europe is playing catch up and we have diesel gate - a major loss in consumer confidence. JLR had virtually 100% diesel engines in 2015 and has been in desperate straits trying to catch up.
Ensus is a warning.
The EU adopted a biofuels directive in 2005, the UK put this into legislation requiring increased % of biofuel to be added to diesel over the period to 2010, bio ethanol and bio diesel. Ensus built the largest bio ethanol plant in Europe to feed this new market investing £400m on Teesside at Wilton. Pundits got nervous about crop based fuels and the slow rise of 2nd gen biofuels ie those from waste, so the UK did not enforce its legislation despite it being in law. Ensus had to shut down production due to low demand, its now runs in campaign mode when demand is there. They ran out of cash and were bought by Germen company for £50m in 2011. That company went out of business, its one is 3rd or 4th owner. The bio directive is now being implanted but the delay cost Ensus its shirt. As an aside, bio-fermenters give of very pure food grade CO2, because Ensus was such a big producer and was mothballed during 2018, when the fizzy drink/bear shortage emerged, it restarted to provide Europeans with fiz for their bear in the world cup.
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Fortunately/unfortunately a big chunk of my day job is trying to work out strategies for UK manufacturing to become net zero. You wont believe the number of industry committees looking into this topic, covering everything we manufacture from, planes, jet engines, chemicals, pharma, plastics, cars, ships, rails even housing and construction. Its the biggest challenge I've seen in 35 years in the industry. What is nice about it, is industries are talking to each other, no-one has the full picture so we are co-operating to share information on the issue. I've not seen that behavior in the UK before - its more of a continental culture. Industry was generally quite skeptical of getting too involved 20 years ago as they had lost money in this area, but opinion has shifted in the past 15 years. I don't know of a major manufacturing company that has not got a climate change team looking at this issue.
I guess we will adapt and develop hybrid solutions. With home heating it's the same conundrum we have now with off electricity/off gas areas but it's trickier with road transport as you say the supply network has to be there. Having said that the EV network is expanding rapidly so maybe it needs more gutsy legislation because if you leave it to consumer demand it will never happen. Also maybe a total rethink on home heating generation is required e.g. community power systems producing small scale hydrogen?
Suffolk Brian
Established Member
And because the load is different, you don‘t get the same “sweep” of brightness change as you do with filament lamps. A particular type of dimmer switch perhaps?
John Brown
Freeloading Social media influenza
Which is probably why the LED dimmers we have are programmable. You can set the max and min levels.
Pineapple
Established Member
The biggest cost in building a house is consumed by the (inflated) price of the land. - If less of our "precious" land was reserved for grouse-moors and national-trust parkland there would be plenty of space for Every-one to build their own home. - It's always the (obscenely) wealthy trying to (mercilessly) hang on to their wealth that makes life intolerable for the rest of us.
Billy_wizz
Established Member
It was pointed out a while ago that a lot of data regarding temperature is irrelevant as the data test stations historically where built outside of towns and have now been encompassed by the town and the temperature change in these stations is well within the margin of increase expected due to it relative environment! Also there is historic evidence of temperature increases in excess of what where seeing now when man was running round the Forrest with spears so while I'm not so whilst I do believe we are having an affect I believe there is far more in play than we know about!
John Brown
Freeloading Social media influenza
[QUOTE="Pineapple, post: 1478877, - If less of our "precious" land was reserved for grouse-moors and national-trust parkland there would be plenty of space for Every-one to build their own home.
[/QUOTE]
Where there are no jobs, so no one would choose to live there anyway. You are Jacob, and I claim my £5.
[/QUOTE]
Where there are no jobs, so no one would choose to live there anyway. You are Jacob, and I claim my £5.
Modern reactors are capable of load following, although I suppose that comes with some wear and tear, as with any process. So it is always going to be better to run them full tilt and covert the excess to hydrogen.
In the 60s a reactor called the SLOWPOKE was developed in Canada by AECL. I believe its power output was in the 10s of kilowatts for the early ones which they then increased to a few megawatts for use as a district heating. They were passively cooled, used light water, and had several other inherent safety features, such as the reaction slowing if the water gets too hot or forms voids. They were designed to run unmanned.
Despite meeting all their design goals, they didn't sell many, so they are mostly used for research.
Cooper
Established Member
My chemistry is very limited but I'm sure in school we made bleach by the electrolysis of salt water or has the 60 year interval distorted my memory?
On a rather more important point
The doubters about the climate emergency should watch yesterday's unreported world Unreported World: Unreported World - On Demand about the long term drought in Central America, driving the farmers off their land and making them head for supposed relief in the USA. Nearer to home the thousands from Sub Saharan Africa who crossed from Morocco into Spanish Ceuta this week. They are desperate people being driven by climate to extreme solutions. These people did not cause the problem, our use of hydrocarbons did and does. The slight inconvenience the doubters are grumbling about, to our very comfortable lives, is nothing compared to what is forcing the climate refugees to abandon their homes. As the leavers liked to point out in the referendum, these unfortunate people may soon be knocking at our door.
Technology and modest lifestyle changes provide solutions.
The one thing needed is big change and the one thing a lot of people dislike are big changes, and the older you get the less you like change but the more you can see it is urgently needed. I have read that the system is upto a point self regulating, nature will at some point intervene but will this still be true when nature is not looking at natural changes but man made events. The normal corrective measure seems to be to go into an ice age which stabilises everything then slowly emerge.
Terry - Somerset
Established Member
The evidence now accumulated leaves little doubt that the climate is changing. There are some gaps and anomalies in the data but to use these as confirmation of denial is ill founded - eg: the proximity of some weather observations to expanding urban areas is a known issue.
Climate over millenia and longer has constantly changed. There is no good reason to to assume that the climate datum used (currently 1981-2010, sometimes pre-industrial) should be an optimal constant.
It is simply the base upon which the bulk of human development has taken place. Speed of change is the problem, not the change itsself.
The problem is compounded by the exponential growth in populations over the last 200 years. Humans exploit the natural environment and resources both for survival, and often simple indulgence - eg: fossil fuels are being consumed ~1 million times the rate at which they were laid down through natural processes.
Actions to defeat climate change through carbon zero may slow, but not eliminate the inevitable. Homo sapiens are little different to animals which overwhelm their habitat or food supply.
The only differences are that (a) earth is our whole habitat, and (b) we know explicitly what we are doing where animals only experience the consequences!
Climate over millenia and longer has constantly changed. There is no good reason to to assume that the climate datum used (currently 1981-2010, sometimes pre-industrial) should be an optimal constant.
It is simply the base upon which the bulk of human development has taken place. Speed of change is the problem, not the change itsself.
The problem is compounded by the exponential growth in populations over the last 200 years. Humans exploit the natural environment and resources both for survival, and often simple indulgence - eg: fossil fuels are being consumed ~1 million times the rate at which they were laid down through natural processes.
Actions to defeat climate change through carbon zero may slow, but not eliminate the inevitable. Homo sapiens are little different to animals which overwhelm their habitat or food supply.
The only differences are that (a) earth is our whole habitat, and (b) we know explicitly what we are doing where animals only experience the consequences!
But surely the end result is the same, we would just have more time to watch and do even less. It is like development where they say it is only a few houses so no impact but in reality the end result is like filling a fifty gallon tank either with a spoon or a bucket, either way it will end up filled.
A healthy skepticism is necessary, this is a complex topic.
However climate change is such a threat to global economics, with so much at stake, that a huge amount of very reliable data is available, funded by governments that need to know the facts. The data published by NOAA (US government) is based on precise satellite measurements. A whole series of satellites have been specifically launched to measure climate change including sea level radar measurements. Over the past 20 years teams of researchers have pored over past data, collating different data sources, such as direct measurements made by squires in Rutland in the 18th century to tree ring data, ice core samples and geological beds of flora and fauna. Ice cores from the artic have been taken to measure past CO2 concentrations. This corpus of data is now pretty robust. Bear in mind this is tough for governments, they are having to spend tax £/$ on the problem and they would rather not, so there is a lot riding on getting a consensus round the underlying data.
There are solid reasons to trust the data, however the models of climate change are an interpretation of the data and so judgement is needed on how robust the various modeling and predictions are. Scientific models improve with time as more factors get considered. Over the past 10 years the climate models have developed considerable, the big gap until 2010 was properly modeling the energy absorbed by the sea. Understanding how the sea absorbs and emits energy during the seasons and el nino cycles. That is better understood now and the models fit the data pretty well in terms of temperature.
A big uncertainty and my biggest worry is how to related temperature rise with ice melting and sea rise. There is still uncertainty about it. I saw a lecture by a geologist who had rock samples from millions of years ago when CO2 levels were about what they are today, and the sea was 30 metres higher than today. A worry is that we are seeing a lag in sea level rise due to inertia, or hysteresis, its like when you defrost your fridge, nothing happens for a long time as the air warms the ice and all of a sudden it melts in a big flood. This aspect of climate change is still poorly understood, and we may be in for a terrible shock if the sea continues to melt even after we have stabilised the temperature.
I think we as citizens should be questioning of what we read on climate change, in my experience there tend to be too extreme reactions - those who worry about potential future catastrophe and want immediate early action as a precaution - the early adopters, and the extreme laggards who remain skeptical until they see it with their own eyes. Governments and society have to pick their way through this complex issue sifting good data from amongst a blizzard of options and vested interests. Personally I think we are pretty good at it in the UK
