For Many, Hydrogen Is the Fuel of the Future. New Research Raises
Doubts.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/climate/hydrogen-fuel-natural-gas-pollution.html
...
The main stumbling block: Most hydrogen used today is extracted from
natural gas in a process that requires a lot of energy and emits vast
amounts of carbon dioxide. Producing natural gas also releases methane,
a particularly potent greenhouse gas.
...
And while the natural gas industry has proposed capturing that carbon
dioxide — creating what it promotes as emissions-free, “blue” hydrogen —
even that fuel still emits more across its entire supply chain than
simply burning natural gas, according to the paper, published Thursday
in the Energy Science & Engineering journal by researchers from Cornell
and Stanford Universities.
...
The researchers assumed that 3.5 percent of the gas drilled from the
ground leaks into the atmosphere, an assumption that draws on mounting
research that has found that drilling for natural gas emits far more
methane than previously known.
They also took into account the natural gas required to power the carbon
capture technology. In all, they found that the greenhouse gas footprint
of blue hydrogen was more than 20 percent greater than burning natural
gas or coal for heat.
...
Jack Brouwer, director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the
University of California, Irvine, said that hydrogen would ultimately
need to be made using renewable energy to produce what the industry
calls green hydrogen, which uses renewable energy to split water into
its constituent parts, hydrogen and oxygen. That, he said, would
eliminate the fossil and the methane leaks.
...
Today, very little hydrogen is green, because the process involved —
electrolyzing water to separate hydrogen atoms from oxygen — is hugely
energy intensive. In most places, there simply isn’t enough renewable
energy to produce vast amounts of green hydrogen. (Although if the world
does start to produce excess renewable energy, converting it to hydrogen
would be one way to store it.)
...
-----------
I'm glad to see this published mainstream. People don't seem to think
about the source for hydrogen, only about the the aspect of filling a
tank in a few minutes and driving off. Long live EVs !!!
Peri
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