Andrew and list, cc Michael
I have been in the renewable energy (RE) business since 1973, and for
all that time, the word "holy grail" for RE has been hydrogen production.
Probably billions have been spent on that topic just in the US (especially if
you include the amount spent within the fission and fusion communities). I
have just googled for the word "holy grail" with energy - and didn't find as
much RE as I expected. But when I add the qualifier "hydrogen" - there are
huge numbers of cites. The point only being that hydrogen research and
production has been and is popular; I'll bet there are very few on this list
who would prefer CO2 coming out of their car's tail pipe to H2O. I have
retired friends whose entire career has been in trying to economically produce
RE-hydrogen and at least one from biomass (in retirement). Michael is not
alone in this quest.
See additional below.
On Sep 20, 2014, at 5:27 AM, Andrew Lockley <[email protected]> wrote:
> If you scale this to have any impact on the climate, you'll run out of
> markets for by products.
>
[RWL1: The most likely bi-product, at least as I understand Michael's
scheme, is biochar. I have seen statements that biochar could be the world's
first trillion dollar industry. I would not worry at this time of a market for
biochar. This of course if the price is right - and that might have to include
some payment for removing excess atmospheric carbon. I doubt anyone on this
list thinks that CDR will ever be free. The big question for me is whether
anyone can see a cheaper approach than biochar (of course taking account of
out-year soil-related benefits, and including the benefits of reversing ocean
acidification)? Anyone see a reason that ocean biomass should be more costly
than land biomass? (No need for land-rent payments, no irrigation costs, maybe
reduced fertilizer costs, reduced need by the ocean-plant for root-related
"expense", higher per unit area solar conversion efficiency, etc)
> This hydrogen biological process doesn't scale to climatically significant
> levels with anything like present day technology.
>
[RWL2: Michael would probably agree with you; I do. But he is not
proposing "present day technology".
> We'd need to be living in a world with essentially free energy to make it
> viable.
>
[RWL3: RE comes closer than anything else to "free" (especially
comparing to fossil, fission and fusion). But Michael is not claiming free.
There is a plentiful existing market for low priced charcoal. Given the
pitiful state of the world's soils, the need for recalcitrant carbon far
exceeds the hundreds of excess gigatonnes of C needing removal.
> It would be energetically the equivalent of chemically turning all our
> emissions back into coal and burying it. Absolutely unfeasible.
>
[RWL4: Melvin Calvin having worked in this area suggests to me that
your analogy is not the right one. I know (more perhaps than any other on this
list because of recent off-list conversations with Michael) that his ideas are
based on solid past experimental work with (dark) biomass and hydrogen (to
produce sugars/cellulose). Anyone wanting to know of Calvin's (and others)
work should let Michael or I know.
So, I would modify your "Absolutely" in the last sentence to "Likely"
or "Probably" . The concept of dark reactions involving hydrogen having been
around for such a long time suggests to me that Michael must have a
breakthrough idea to be successful. He thinks he has such a breakthrough. I
am way out of my area of expertise and I am not going to work on this topic at
all, except as it relates to CDR.
I suggest we wish Michael luck. And in any case, increased ocean
biomass should seem beneficial to us all, even if hydrogen is not a part of his
final (solo!!) design. And I hope his work is seen as highly ethical (Michael
is working open-source). If not ethical, this would be a good time to say so,
as he is proposing open oceans (but not the usual OIF).
Ron
> A
> On 19 Sep 2014 21:00, "Michael Hayes" <[email protected]> wrote:
> Greg et al,
>
> [GR] "How about just using the H2 as fuel and sequestering the CO2?"
> [
>
<snip - as not being necessary for this response>
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
