Hydrogen Storage: Innovation or Inefficiency?

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This post of LinkedIn caught my attention and my curiosity.

Slick graphics and well presented. I am not disputing that this is clever and innovative. What I’d strongly dispute is this being a sensible thing to do from an energy perspective.

Reference:

#Hydrogen #CleanEnergy #EnergyStorage #HydrogenStorage #NetZero #RenewableEnergy #FuelCells #Innovation #Sustainability #ClimateTech

I would ask those promoting this process and related technology as to what is the point of Hydrogen in this process? We start off generating electricity, only to go through a complex and CAPEX expensive process to produce Hydrogen, only to end up with significantly less usable electricity than we started with once we transport the Hydrogen and then use it as a fuel to generate electricity somewhere else. To what purpose are we generating electrons in the form of electricity; to then make Hydrogen (an electron that is associated with a proton)?

When considering the commonly accepted physical properties of Hydrogen, then clearly this is a low energy density gas, and thus a poor choice as an energy vector. The above proposal seeks to “solve” the “Hydrogen Transport Problem” via “Solid State Storage”.

That is innovative, and could be of great use where we need to transport hydrogen for use as a feedstock… But to use this valuable and expensive to produce substance (Hydrogen) to generate less electricity than we started with in the first place seems wasteful in the extreme.

Currently, the efficiency of Hydrogen fuel cells is maxed at little more than 60%. Take energy losses across the electrolyser and we have less than 50% of the electricity that we started with off the solar cell. At worst, electrical transmission losses of the very electricity over the current grid is no more than circa 0.015% per kilometre.

Given the longest point-to-point in the UK sits at less than 1000km, then electrical transmission losses are no worse than 15%. That’s some way from the 50% losses via the Hydrogen route – and without the expensive, new infrastructure that Hydrogen would need.

Here is where I scratch my head in bemusement.

Would it not simply be better to store only the electron in a battery (as we currently do), rather than go to all this expense, all this energy expenditure, and all this material cost simply to store an associated proton that we have no actual use for (given we convert back to an electron at the end). Is not use of a wire a better way to simply transport the electrons (as generated off the solar cell) rather than to use (via an energy intensive process) that electricity to generate Hydrogen?

Transportation of electricity has been (and still is) something humans have been doing for well over a century, so I believe it is safe to say that this is a solved problem. In solving a problem that isn’t itself needed, we would put further pressure on the Boron, Nickel and Lithium mining, that are currently an essential triad of materials used in modern battery technology.

Extraction and refining of these metals isn’t without its costs to the environment (Reference: https://earth.org/lithium-and-cobalt-mining/) and the communities adjacent to the mining sites. There is also a high associated energy burden associated with the mining, extraction and purification of these metals.

Boron: Extracted from both borax and kernite via (mostly) an aqueous, water and chemical-intensive refinement process where the environmental burden of the refining the raw ores often outweighs those of the mining process.
Nickel: Extracted from (mostly) either Laterite or Sulphide ores, which (once mined) need to be crushed and milled into fine particles before separated from the ore via froth floatation (all of which consumes water and chemicals). The extracted concentrate is then smelted at high temperatures (1450°C+) to form a nickel matte that is then refined via another high-energy input process to remove impurities and to concentrate the nickel from 75-80% to 99%+ purity.
Lithium: Extraction from Lithium-rich seawater, or Lithium bearing minerals such as spodumene. Extraction and production of Lithium requires a substantial amount of water and an associated environmental burden. (Reference: https://greenly.earth/en-gb/blog/industries/the-harmful-effects-of-our-lithium-batteries).

Perhaps research and development of more environmentally sustainable ways to mine, extract and purify these essential metals would be better use of time and resources than to solve a problem that we don’t need to have?

If the “solution” to any problem results in a more difficult to solve problem, or greater problem of greater magnitude than what we started with; then perhaps the “solution” is the problem, rather than the actual problem we are looking to solve? What is the “problem” that Hydrogen as a fuel is trying to solve? Isn’t that the first question? It seems counter intuitive that the “solution” to either the energy crisis, or climate change is to develop a process that throws away half of the useable energy that we started with – as it the case with Hydrogen as a fuel.

In relation to Hydrogen, the first problem that we should be looking to solve is in decarbonising that Hydrogen we already produce to use as a feedstock. The majority (circa 95%) of commercial Hydrogen produced today is via steam-methane reforming (SMR) of (the methane in) natural gas (Reference: Hydrogen Production Processes | Department of Energy).

That is the prize we should be going after before considering burning this most valuable and energy-intensive to produce feedstock (in Hydrogen) as a fuel. Most people wouldn’t consider flushing their toilets with melted glacial ice, so why are people considering being wasteful with Hydrogen?