Some Recap, News and Commentary: I absolutely promise I hadn’t seen or read about the plot
in Glass Onion before I began this series. Also, I will try to get these Warming Thoughts out on a biweekly basis and to mix in some less technical commentary—and to give some hope!
And now back to our story: In Part 1 (Not sure why Substack does this to its hyperlinks)
I tried to lay out some of the reasons why there was so much hope, money, and announcements around hydrogen; namely its potential to create a widely usable fuel out of renewable electricity and water. In Part 2,
I tried to make the case that even if hydrogen were inexpensive, and green, its essential physical properties make it a difficult fuel for widespread use and that green hydrogen’s prime use would be the replacement of existing uses for ammonia production and desulphurization of oil for decades ahead. In the process of researching hydrogen’s applications, I came across Electric Hydrogen which has received $200 MM in funding, and whose business and technology is the creation of really large scale hydrolyzers—ie, ones ideally suited for replacing steam methane reforming in industrial processes.
Since I wrote Part 2, the stream of hydrogen announcements has continued unabated, particularly in Europe, see Project pipeline (europa.eu), where it is also being touted as a solution for long term energy storage. From my perspective, this is more likely to work in the US where there are huge underground salt caverns which could storage hydrogen—although the energy losses in the creation and conversions to electricity are still much worse than for batteries or pumped hydro.
In today’s newsletter, Part 3 of the hydrogen series, I will be discussing the case against transporting hydrogen as pure hydrogen.
As discussed in earlier writings, the biggest (of many) struggles with the energy transition is thetransport of energy. We can see the astounding speed, scale and importance of the ability to flexibly shift massive amounts of energy around the world in the response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has disrupted or complicated supplies of fuel throughout the globe. Liquified natural gas (LNG) flows via tankers which have rerouted to replace much of the massive Russian natural gas supply that was previously sent by pipeline to Europe. Equally massively, and unfortunately, at least from a Ukrainian perspective, Russian oil and refined products have significantly been rerouted to India and China.
The global oil tanker fleet, which currently transports the majority of the world’s fuel, has a capacity of 629 million tons. A ton of oil has the potential chemical energy when burned of 11.6 Megawatts hours/ton (around 10.5 Mwh/cubic meter). At any moment move around the globe, and effectively store during that period 7,400,000,000 Megawatt hours of energy, which is 7,400 Terawatt hours. If I didn’t mess up any decimal points, since US Electrical output in 2022 was around 3,900 Terawatt hours, at any given moment the global oil-tanker fleet has the capacity to float 88% more potential power than the entire US electrical generation last year. And tankers make many trips a year. That doesn’t include the energy contained in LNG carriers—their capacity is around 110 million cubic meters and the energy density is similar to oil. We can and do move a LOT of energy in the form of fossil fuels. Can we replace it with something else—Like hydrogen?
Last year a specially made Japanese ship, the Susio Frontier, moved a cargo of liquid hydrogen from Australia to Japan. The ship was part of a $350 MM project to build a solar field and hydrogen hub in Australia https://ah2.com.au/, create hydrogen from water, store it, liquify it, transport it, and then convert it back to gaseous hydrogen in Japan. Why this whole scheme? Because you must start with primary energy and western Australia has a lot of sun.
Any reordering of the world’s power to omit carbon has the vast empty and sunny interior of western Australia as its #2 resource. (North Africa, since it sits acrossfrom Europe and has the Sahara Desert, is number 1, and would be 1+++ if it weren’t for thecontinual armed struggles across prime solar land).
Back to the ship designed to transport hydrogen: The Susio Frontier’s vacuum-insulated tanks held 1,250 cubic meters of liquid hydrogen at -253C. A cubic meter of liquid hydrogen weighs only 71 kg. The entire cargo capacity (I know the numbers don’t quite work, but they build in space for expansion and gas) is actually only 75 tons of hydrogen. At 36 Mwh/ton x 75 =2.7 GWH. That’s the energy equivalent of the output of a good-sized power plant—for less than 3 hours.
A large crude oil carrier can carry 1 million barrels of oil, around 1,600 GWH of energy, the output of a power plant for more than 2 months—around 600 times more energy. Yes, yes, the Susio Frontier is a demonstration ship, but that’s because you can’t retrofit existing carriers with the special insulation and features required to transport hydrogen.
It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which we are shipping significant amounts of liquid or compressed hydrogen around the globe within the next 30 years–even ignoring the required complete transformation of every port facility that would be required. Incidentally, the Susio had a fire on board during its first voyage. Which is why it made one voyage during all of 2022.
So what’s the best way to move hydrogen – in a way that’s portable and minimizes fire risk?
The Ammonia Story
Ammonia is nitrogen bonded to 3 hydrogens. If you transport ammonia you are carrying 3 hydrogens. As we have discussed, without ammonia, 4 billion people out of earth’s 8 billion humans will die of hunger due to lack of fertilizer. Without hydrogen, you can’t make ammonia. So why ship hydrogen anywhere if the largest current need for hydrogen is ammonia? I know, hydrogen is a great fuel (say its proponents)—but guess what else burns? Ammonia itself--including in piston engines (with some difficulty), and Mitsubishi is developing ammonia gas turbines for power generation.
Ammonia gas liquifies at reasonable temperatures, -33C (far easier to attain than -253 C!), and it liquifies easily under moderate pressure unlike H2. It can be dissolved in water at high concentrations and easily can be released from solution. (Household ammonia – the kind you use in cleaning – is 10-15% ammonia dissolved in water). Ammonia has a volumetric energy density 3x that of hydrogen! In the US alone there are more than 20,000 miles of ammonia pipelines, vs 1,200 for hydrogen. The ammonia tanker fleet ships 1.6 million tons a month, and Japan just ordered two ammonia tankers—of 80,000 ton capacity each, vs the Susio Frontiers 75 tons.
Ammonia is flammable, but needs a higher ignition temperature than diesel, and burns more slowly. But it has been shown to work and MAN is planning to produce two large marine engines in 2024. Ammonia has real potential as an alternative fuel for marine vessels. But again, if you need to produce CO2-free hydrogen somewhere where there is a lot of power, and for the foreseeable future all of that clean hydrogen will still be insufficient to meet fertilizer/ammonia demand—why are we working so hard to find other uses for hydrogen when we can just make and ship ammonia directly? It’s the equivalent of moving a lot of power.
Wow, another fabulous solution– but with a significant caveat …
Some information pulled from MSDS sheets (every chemical is shipped with a Material Safety Data Sheet). Which do you want to be near?
Chemical name: ammonia
Synonym: ammonia; anhydrous
ammonia
GASES UNDER PRESSURE – Liquefied gas
ACUTE TOXICITY (inhalation) – Category 4
SKIN CORROSION - Category 1
SERIOUS EYE DAMAGE - Category 1
AQUATIC HAZARD (ACUTE) – Category 1
Classification of the substance or mixture
Signal word : Danger
Hazard statements : Flammable gas. May form explosive mixtures with air.
Contains gas under pressure; may explode if heated.
May displace oxygen and cause rapid suffocation.
Harmful if inhaled.
Causes severe skin burns and eye
damage. Very toxic to aquatic life.
VS:
Diesel Fuel (All Types) MSDS No. 9909
EMERGENCY OVERVIEW CAUTION!
OSHA/NFPA COMBUSTIBLE LIQUID -SLIGHT TO MODERATE IRRITANT
EFFECTS CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM
HARMFUL OR FATAL IF SWALLOWED
Moderate fire hazard. Avoid breathing vapors or mists. May cause dizziness and drowsiness. May cause moderate eye irritation and skin irritation (rash). Long-term, repeated exposure may cause skin cancer. If ingested, do NOT induce vomiting, as this may cause chemical pneumonia.
It takes .5% ammonia in air to kill you. The good news is that our noses detect it at 100x less than the lethal dose. That should make you feel better.
Of course, if we need ammonia for fertilizer, you can make it and combine it with CO2—yes, the CO2 you just captured-and make urea, a solid, fairly non-toxic fertilizer that we produce 180 million tons of per year already. That equals a LOT of hydrogen. And you can ship it safely and easily. Of course, there are places in Vermont that will collect your pee and convert it to Urea and more importantly capture phosphorus and we do pee out billions of liters in New York City alone….that actually is another important story—for later.
Two points arise from this analysis. One, it really, really, really is hard to replace hydrocarbon fuels—oil and gas are amazing from many standpoints. It’s why we were able to start using them in quantity with technology 150 years ago,and why we haven’t stopped. The second, which I will expound on in another essay, is that we are likely to see the movement of many energy-intensive processes to locations where there are large amounts of renewable energy. If you can’t move the energy, you have to move the users. This has major implications globally that I don’t think are being discussed adequately.