MIRAI in Australia (& Tech Posters)

can't you make hydrogen from wallaby poop or something?

 

I see they are trying to make another government happy

 

The LPG lines are likely too low of a pressure to carry hydrogen at the rates needed to keep stations supplied beyond the cars' test phase. Hydrogen can behave like a halogen, e.g. chlorine, so any lines and tanks need to be overbuilt compared a similar pressured natural gas line.

Well, Japan does want to build large facilities to produce and compress the hydrogen made from, dirtier than US, Australian brown coal for their use.

 

There is technology to produce H2 from coal cleaner than even from natural gas.

This route will be much cleaner than BEVs powered by coal (thru combustion power plant).

Don't automatically assume coal means dirtier. It may be true in the case of plugins but not true for FCVs.

 

How, by sequestering the CO2 in some manner? So reason why that can't be done natural gas reformation, or even any fossile fuel electric generation. It just increases the cost of the hydrogen and electricity.

Or are they going to convert the CO2 into methane for local use, and split the carbon foot print between the two outputs?

 

The plan is to use australian coal, gasify it for the hydrogen, then use Carbon dioxide.capture and sequestation (IG CCS), the Hydrogen would then be shipped to Japan. The timetable is 2020, and you probably need the 5 years to get the plant designed and approved, plus the damand will be very low for hydrogen before then (only 6000 fcv expected, even if 200 kg/year, that is only 1.2 Million kg of hydrogen a year). The way the DOE drew this up is to have a IGCC with CCS, the combined cycle power plant can use some of the waste heat of gasification to make electricity, and the powerplant helps pay for the CCS. I do not know if that is the Japanese plan is to make a powerplant as part of this, but it would make sense. Then you get more bang for the buck on the investment, and the CO2 not sequestered could be assigned to the australian electriicty, which would be a lot cleaner than most electricity in western australia.

I was a little suprised that they are building this in australia and not in Japan, but there are several advantages to help counter the higher shipping cost
1) geological formations in Japan are probably harder to find for CCS
2) Construction costs are higher in japan, and government red tape to build a coal power plant are likely tougher.
3) By gasifying the coal in Australia, there is no big visible plant in japan showing that the hydrogen is coming from coal, making H2 PR easier. Lexus is still talking about plug-ins using dirty coal, even though ghg is lower than competing lexus models.

Versus natural gas, they import this from australia also, and it also has expensive shipping costs. My guess is coal base hydrogen is cheaper for Japan when you add carbon sequestration.. Japan has been shifting from lng imports to coal imports for its electric sector. lng in Japan is much more expensive than natural gas in the US. They are planning to use very low grade cheap coal for this project.

 

So it isn't cleaner than natural gas reformation with CO2 sequestering, just cheaper for Japan.

 

Trollbait- (1) I never heard H2 is like chlorine handling, (2) dirty coal in Japan? In order to make H2 they would be using expensive clean coal technology , (3) from both clean coal technology and H2 manufacture from Nat gas, CO2 recovery is relatively easy if desired. I guess AG covered some of this.

As far as why coal vs. nat gas for Japan, I do not know economics but they use lots of nat gas for power. But their issue is everything has to be imported.

 

Might work for NZ if they still have a lot of nat gas.

 

In the US SMR (natural gas) would be cheaper with ccs than Coal reformation with CCS. When natural gas prices fell, the DOE's pilot plant funding to do IGCC + hydrogen was canceled. Still the problem with hydrogen in the US is that it is too expensive and there aren't cars to take it, not that we can't build CCS. Until you can show that people will actually buy the hydrogen with the cheapest production method possible, what is the benefit of building these more expensive production environments. Most hydrogen today is used in industrial processes such as removing sulfur from liquid fuels, in these processes the carbon dioxide from hydrogen production is only a tiny part of the ghg footprint.

Most R&D for lower ghg hydrogen in the US is focused on renewable generation, not sequestration.

Japan has been greatly increasing non ccs coal since fukashima. Yes, Japan and China are the leaders in adding "dirty" coal generation, while the US has been reducing. This proposed plant though sequesters most of the carbon dioxide.

I know the PR is all about renewables powering Japans new hydrogen economy, but its really fossil, and its not a secret. They are calling processes like CCS "clean and green". 16 states are now calling natural gas burned in a fuel cell "green" and call it "renewable" because in the future the methane might, could, be made renewably.

I see nothing wrong with Japan doing this as a source of lower carbon hydrogen, but it is much too expesnive for the US. It also would not pass the smell test here, but Japan is in much worse shape than the US when it comes to domestic energy. Wind, solar, and natural gas are much cheaper there.

 

Let's face it in USA we are affluent and we are not opposed to expensive solutions. The issue is simply picking your favorite (politically correct and subsidized) expensive solution. I view nuclear, clean coal, off-shore wind, as very expensive but feasible. Just a question of picking your favorite sink hole for $$ based on your personal politics. I'd probably do some clean coal and off-shore wind.

Each country will pick its favorite approach (corn for us) and favor that.

 

I was referring to this chart from NREL report that Jeff N posted.

 

Under certain conditions, hydrogen can act like a halogen, i.g. chlorine. It's why stainless is needed instead of steel for the pipes.
Chemistry of Hydrogen - Chemwiki

The comparison in the chart is between coal with carbon capture and natural gas without. No reason why CCS couldn't be applied to NG reformation besides cost.

 

That reference (which I do not like since the first time I saw it) seems to however agree with me

Every chemical including water will have a design practice of compatible materials of construction. That does not mean there is something strange or unique about it. Chlorides can attack stainless steel in the presence of water, but you won't have that problem with H2, but you certainly want the absence of chlorides.

 

I didn't have the intention of implying handling hydrogen was like handling chlorine. I knew hydrogen can like halogens, and be corrosive under the right conditions. I was using chlorine as the most recognizable example to show that putting hydrogen into a pipeline won't be the same as putting methane, which is more chemically benign, into it.