• Smuuthbrane@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    Clean until you use a bunch of equipment to get it captured. The hydrogen might be carbon free, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a carbon footprint.

    Convince me otherwise, but the only green hydrogen is from renewable energy powered electrolysis.

    • Dave.@aussie.zone
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      9 months ago

      but the only green hydrogen is from renewable energy powered electrolysis.

      Clean until you use a bunch of equipment to get it. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

      • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        I just put mine in a jar and leave it in the sun for a few days.

        • ℛ𝒶𝓋ℯ𝓃@pawb.social
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          9 months ago

          Evaporation isn’t the breakdown of 2(H2O) --> 2(H2) + O2 (hydrogen and oxygen) like electrolysis… It’s just water molecules overcoming the intermolecular force and not wanting to be liquid anymore, H2O(l) --> H2O(g), still just water and sadly no good as a fuel.

          • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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            9 months ago

            It was a joke. Besides, the jar obviously has a lid! I wouldn’t want to be wasteful.

              • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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                9 months ago

                Well, a lid only needs to be screwed once. Let me get you over to our personal healthcare department. I can think of a few things I need to have screwed perpetually with no energy waste.

    • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Convince me otherwise

      Hydrogen, released directly into the atmosphere, interacts with methane and increases it’s half life. And since Methane is 50x more powerful as a greenhosue gas than CO2… that’s bad.

      When you “burn” hydrogen, on the other hand, you’re converting it into water. Which is obviously harmless.

      So, capturing this hydrogen wouldn’t just be “carbon free” it would potentially be “carbon negative” at least in terms of it’s actual actual impact on climate change which is generally what people mean when they talk about carbon these days.

      Hydrogen in out atmosphere is generally not a big problem, so it doesn’t get talked about much at all… but if you’re going to talk about the greenhouse gasses to install an mining rig… then you are getting into territory where that type of thing is significant.

      Trust me, it doesn’t take much energy (and therefore not much carbon) to produce a mine to extract more energy. If it did nobody would ever do it.

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      9 months ago

      If you come at it from the angle of the equipment used to capture it having a carbon footprint, then that should also apply to equipment doing electrolysis.

      That said, what is the level of environmental footprint we’re talking about in comparison to electrolysis? We don’t know yet, because it’s not clear this new source can be economically tapped, but we’ll see.

    • nexusband@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      That’s a pretty daft conclusion, because JCB has been making Hydrogen machinery for quite some time now and power made for all the equipment on site can also easily be made with hydrogen.

      • Smuuthbrane@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        Great. Is hydrogen powered construction and mining equipment common? No. So until it is, my statement stands. Concluding that all equipment is clean because it CAN be is daft.

        • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Great. Is hydrogen powered construction and mining equipment common? No. So until it is, my statement stands.

          It’s expected to be the cheapest form of electricity soon. It’s in the ballpark of natural gas pricing now and prices are falling fast… while natural gas prices are rising. The long term future has it cheaper than anything except solar/wind… but those two can’t easily be stored to be consumed later which is a big logistical win for hydrogen.

          So no, it’s not common right now. But that’s changing. Hydrogen is arguably the most promising area of our efforts to mitigate climate change.

          • frezik@midwest.social
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            9 months ago

            It’s expected to be the cheapest form of electricity soon

            You’re going to need a big [citation needed] on that one. The cheapest form of hydrogen right now is produced from natural gas. Where is the gain coming from in using natural gas to make hydrogen to make electricity, as opposed to using natural gas to make electricity?

            If it’s from expected improvements in making green hydrogen via electrolysis, then you’re using electricity to generate hydrogen to generate electricity. That can’t be the cheapest form of electricity. It could be the cheapest storage solution to combine with solar and wind (probably not, but it could be), but it makes no sense as a form of electricity in its own right.

    • sanguine_artichoke@midwest.social
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      9 months ago

      At some point on the chain of the creation of the renewable energy equipment, carbon releasing and polluting energy and mining was used to create it.

        • theneverfox@pawb.social
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          9 months ago

          Dog… Do you think there’s a lower carbon technique to capture hydrogen than bottling a stream of naturally occurring hydrogen?

          Electrolysis requires energy, and it degrades the anodes and cathodes. It generally is used with additives, because pure water isn’t conductive.

          Pure hydrogen, for free, is as good as it gets. No matter how good our tech gets, this is the closest to a freebee we’ll ever get

    • Oaksey@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I’d say if you used carbon neutral power to extract it that it would be green.

    • reddig33@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Hydrogen from electrolysis comes from clean water. You know, the stuff we drink and water our plants with that’s getting more and more difficult to come by? I’d rather not see the oil industry turn water into the new gasoline.

      • nexusband@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        That is incorrect, because salt water electrolysis is a thing - actually so much more efficient even, that they salt fresh water because it takes less energy. Not only that - the plant which I indirectly work for uses grey water. You know, that stuff that you flush down the drain?

      • ikidd@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Do you know what you get when you burn hydrogen?

        Probably not.

      • LostXOR@fedia.io
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        9 months ago

        I wouldn’t be too concerned about that. Annual hydrogen production is around 120 billion kg per year, which corresponds to about 1.08 trillion liters of water. We use about 4 quadrillion liters of fresh water total each year.

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        9 months ago

        You need electrolytes (salt) to electrolyze water. Might as well use sea water.

        There are plenty of other problems with hydrogen energy, though.

        • reattach@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          This is not correct. All commercial electrolyzers need very pure water as a feed to the system. PEM and SOEC electrolyzers use the ultrapure (industry term) water directly, while alkaline electrolyzers combine it with potassium hydroxide. Using sea water will very quickly result in non-functional equipment.