Gas is banned

[openspaceman]

3 hours ago, Richard 1234 said:

I’ve seen stuff about that too. Testing now I think to see how much “dusty” water it makes and how far it spreads.

a lot of sea life needs the clean water on the bottom  so it may be a no go

Why should the water be dusty?  One thing I know about fuel cells is that the hydrogen and oxygen has to be pure as the cells don't last if contaminated and that's one thing that worries me, their life.

 

My LA has had a fuel cell at the leisure centre pool since before 2002, it provides 250kW of heat and 200kW of electricity to run the place with excess electricity exported to the LA owned dubious enterprise's private grid.

 

The hydrogen is all reformed from natural gas and I think this is likely for most hydrogen projects currently.

[Richard 1234]

10 minutes ago, openspaceman said:

Why should the water be dusty?  One thing I know about fuel cells is that the hydrogen and oxygen has to be pure as the cells don't last if contaminated and that's one thing that worries me, their life.

 

My LA has had a fuel cell at the leisure centre pool since before 2002, it provides 250kW of heat and 200kW of electricity to run the place with excess electricity exported to the LA owned dubious enterprise's private grid.

 

The hydrogen is all reformed from natural gas and I think this is likely for most hydrogen projects currently.

Crossed wires. I’m talking about seabed mining

[CallumA]

Why should the water be dusty?  One thing I know about fuel cells is that the hydrogen and oxygen has to be pure as the cells don't last if contaminated and that's one thing that worries me, their life.
 
My LA has had a fuel cell at the leisure centre pool since before 2002, it provides 250kW of heat and 200kW of electricity to run the place with excess electricity exported to the LA owned dubious enterprise's private grid.
 
The hydrogen is all reformed from natural gas and I think this is likely for most hydrogen projects currently.

I think he was replying to underwater mining for battery elements like cobalt etc

[openspaceman]

9 hours ago, Squaredy said:

Yeah coal gas - made by burning coal without oxygen - similar to charcoal making.

Well sort of, it started out as just pyrolysis of coal with coke being exported to steel mills and such but at the end was a sophisticated  two stage swing gasification conversion of nearly all the input coal to gas.

9 hours ago, Squaredy said:

 

  Terrible for the environment and the gas itself was poisonous. 

The contamination of the town gas sites was a different matter and I suspect was mostly down to poor disposal of the chemicals derived from the gas scrubbers.

 

Indeed the gas was poisonous and often used in suicides, stuff your head in the oven. Often with further consequences when someone entered the house and switched on a light.

 

My father refused to have gas laid to his new build house in 1953 and told the story of a family gassed to death in the home town of Plymouth when rats chewed through the lead gas pipe. He relented in 1969 when north sea gas arrived.

9 hours ago, Squaredy said:

 

 

This new development is not to do with coal gas - but it sounds a little pointless to me.  They are saying they could use up to 20% hydrogen. 

Not really pointless as it reduces the CO2 emitted whilst keeping the calorific value up, as @Woodworks says it uses existing infrastructure. I wonder if the reason they only replace 20% is to do with the hydrogen having a higher flame speed, it will certainly find leaks more easily and will diffuse through steel pipes over time.

 

I had thought it was more likely that methane would be synthesised and added to natural gas so this is news to me.

 

 

 

9 hours ago, Squaredy said:

 

 

Maybe it would be better to use the money to subsidise good quality house insulation.  And I don't mean the awful debacle of government sponsored cavity wall insulation, but properly specified and installed insulation.  It is a minefield though, I will admit.  

 

Not disagreeing with either point but my house is a 1862 build cottage with solid walls, a combed roof and solid floor so other than the double glazing not much I can easily do without changing the character.

 

Mind a 4kW modern woodburner and 100W electric fan is managing all the space heating so far this winter, getting through the wood though.

[openspaceman]

6 minutes ago, Richard 1234 said:

Crossed wires. I’m talking about seabed mining

My mistake, sorry.

[monkeybusiness]

On 29/12/2019 at 11:43, kevinjohnsonmbe said:

Next upgrade for solar PV may well be a battery bank with V2G compatible car. 
 

Charge the car up all day for free then suck down the leccy at night for free!

 

Upfront costs might be a bit cheeky but the shits and giggles of free leccy would be worth it ?

I’m pretty sure this will be the short/medium term ‘answer’. Electric vehicles/batteries/storage infrastructure (treat each as the same) will be the norm to allow a buffer for electricity generation. 

The whole grid will work in both directions - when there’s demand parked cars will feed power back into the grid - during low demand/over-production everything will charge up. 

I really do find it incredible that tidal power isn’t being harnessed in a significant way though. It’s creation would unfortunately ruin a few localised ecosystems which is obviously massively unpopular. The longer term planetary benefits surely outweigh these issues - it is free, massive, predictable power that we don’t currently use in any way shape or form!!!

Humans are fucking ridiculous!

[Rob_the_Sparky]

wrt parked cars acting as a buffer battery - it is an idea but relies on the good will of many car users.  From what I understand you need to agree that your electric vehicle battery may not be full when you come to use the car.  In some cases that might be OK but in others could lead to you having a car but not being able to get to your destination.  I suspect that in reality many in the population will not accept this so whether it actually works in practice is to be considered.  Biggest problem with electricity is generation when you need it as you can't just store electricity (like you might a tank of petrol of gas).  Gas power stations can be turned on/off as required really quite quickly (more rapidly than coal) but with renewables power is generated when conditions are right, not when demand is high so the major problem becomes power storage, and on a HUGE scale.

 

Power storage you might think of as batteries but equally might be generating hydrogen or a pumped water system (google it).  Anything that can store the excess energy generated when demand is low to release it later.  Car batteries is one that might be an option assuming that huge numbers of cars are sold with large battery storage (so an EV would provide much more than a hybrid).  Right now we will hit a limit with renewable power (electricity) where we either have to accept power cuts at high demand times or retain the gas power stations to provide power at these times as the storage systems simply aren;t there yet.

[aesmith]

On 02/01/2020 at 14:31, Woodworks said:

I would of thought the idea with Hydrogen is when we have an excess of renewable energy (which has happened a few times lately and will only happen more) the excess can be used to split hydrogen from water. Why not use what is basically free energy

Couple of points I picked up on a recent tour of a local hydrogen plant. 

(1) It's seriously inefficient.  They quoted an expectation of reaching 65% efficiency some time in the future, I can't remember what that was conditional on.  Maybe running 24/7.  You can see all the losses when you see all the plant running, multistage compressors, pumps etc, and a huge cooling plant disposing of the heat generated by compressing to however many hundred bar.

(2) The "using excess renewable energy" story is pure fairy tale at the moment.  The plant takes hours to get started up so they typically run for 8 or 10 hours. The energy uses is therefore whatever mix is on the grid at that time whether that's renewable, nuclear or pure fossil fuelled.

[openspaceman]

3 hours ago, aesmith said:

The energy uses is therefore whatever mix is on the grid at that time whether that's renewable, nuclear or pure fossil fuelled.

Yup, once it's in the grid there's no telling where the elctrons are from.

 

So @aesmiththe plant you saw was an electrolysis plant?

 

We were supposed to have 3 new nuclear fission plants, Hinckley, Sizewell and one other run by EDF but built and funded by China but there are delays and cost overruns.

 

The idea was these would at over 6GW 24/7 capacity and hence be able to supply a lot of spare electricity off peak in addition to the non scheduled renewables.

[Capetown]

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