Slippage, H2, the Transition
Liquefied natural gas for instance, while great at reducing air pollution, has little to no benefit in reducing greenhouse gas emissions once methane slippage is taken into account. [..] Methane slippage is the process of unburnt methane escaping from all parts of the industrial process, from upstream production, to storage, to the internal combustion engine. While oil and shipping companies are making efforts to minimise methane slippage, even very small single-digit percentage leaks can erode the greenhouse gas benefits of switching from oil to gas, because methane is 84 times more potent than CO2 in its warming effects, in the first two decades after its release.
Bad
LNG is the cleanest fossil fuel out there, but that is also hampered with problems at large scale for common use. I don’t think there is space for anything other than H2 in all steps of the energy processs, except maybe in the beginning, where fossil is reformed into H2. Other than that, and considering tooling, infrastructure issues, a form of clean H2 carrier in all steps is necessary.
In Belgium, the 120-year-old container shipping company CMB is trialling fuel cells on one of its container ships, and later this year the port of Antwerp is opening a hydrogen refuelling station for ships.
The speed of this announcement surprised many in the industry who thought hydrogen in the maritime sector was years away from commercialisation. Meanwhile, engine manufacturers view shipping decarbonisation as a “gold rush”. MAN Energy Solutions, one of the world’s largest engine manufacturers, announced in December it had successfully developed the technology to use cryogenically cooled hydrogen as an onboard ship fuel – a major breakthrough.
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UK is such an innovative place. Too bad the country has been hampered with the recent political events lately (100% elite failure).
GERMANY: Following a European tender, the Fahma rolling stock subsidiary of Rhein-Main transport authority RMV has awarded Alstom a contract to supply and support a fleet of 27 fuel cell multiple-units. The contract worth around €500 million
A team of engineers at UD is among the 40 awardees of the ARPA-E OPEN2018, and has been awarded $1,979,998 in funding to build a fuel cell system fabricated with inexpensive catalysts and structural materials. [..] So called hydroxide exchange membrane fuel cells [..need CO2-free air..] and a cost-effective way to generate a CO2-free air stream [..] to address this challenge, the UD team is developing a simple and cost effective cell serving as “electrochemical pump,” capable of removing carbon dioxide from a stream of ambient air.
Nice
So the FC will both use clean energy, built from inexpensive materials and clean the environment while it is being used.
AFC wants to replace off-grid stationary diesel gensets with hydrogen fuel cell generators, and the use of cracked ammonia solves the problem of how to get hydrogen to remote locations
I am a big fan of ammonia
Once that first decision is made right, the rest it easier; we have a fuel based on the first element, simple, with immense energy. Then we consider storage, transportation options, of which there are many.
On the other hand, the first decision is faulty, as in the case of BEVs with their environment polluting lithium-ion-cobalt solution, now there are bunch of other harder problems. I hear BEVevenglists started to grow a liking for nuclear power recently, IMO because their second-rate solution requires huge amounts of readily available online power, all the time. To them even nuclear starts looking attractive.
IMF found that the “fossil fuel industry got a whopping $5.2 trillion in subsidies in 2017. This amounts to 6.4 percent of the global gross domestic product” Crazy!
It is crazy
Victorien Erussard, an experienced ocean racer from the city of Saint-Malo in the north of France, was halfway through a dash across the Atlantic when he lost all power. Sails kept the boat moving, but Erussard relied on an engine and generator to keep the electronics running. He temporarily lost his autopilot and his navigation systems, jeopardizing his chances of winning the 2013 Transat Jaques Vabre race.
Never again, he thought. “I came up with the idea to create a ship that uses different sources of energy,” he says. The plan was bolstered by the pollution-happy cargo ships he saw while crossing the oceans. “These are a threat to humanity because they use heavy fuel oil.”
Five years on, that idea has taken physical form in the Energy Observer, a catamaran that runs on renewables. In a mission reminiscent of the Solar Impulse 2, the solar-powered plane that Bertrand Picard and André Borschberg flew around the world a few years back, Erussard and teammate Jérôme Delafosse are planning to sail around the planet, without using any fossil fuel. Instead, they’ll make the fuel they need from sea water, the wind, and the sun.
Want
The boat looks so scifi. Fantastic design. To reemphasize, this boat, the Energy Observer, does not need external refueling. It generates its own fuel (from sun, stored as H2). This is reality. Right now. Other needs; for water, it could be distilled, food, make from air, or fish. One could live on this thing for a very long time.
Gas grid is much more cost-effective than an electricity grid: for the same investment a gas pipe can transport 10-20 times more energy than an electricity cable.
That’s the other thing..
Since molecules are much more efficient energy carriers (and be converted into electricity easily through FCs), why have a seperate electric grid at all? There could be pipes going to everywhere. All these electric cable lines could be a collosal waste. #killTheGrid