Re:Why Is Hydroelectricity So Green, and yet Unfashionable?
by cwkoss on Thursday October 27, 2022 @04:08PM
(#33363314)
How does the energy in underground hydrogen get utilized? Is the capacity the combustive energy, or only the energy from the gas pressure?
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Why Is Hydroelectricity So Green, and yet Unfashionable?
by philipkglass on Thursday October 27, 2022 @04:30PM
(#33363590)
It's burned as fuel in a gas turbine to generate electricity. The process is very similar to burning natural gas in turbines, but some equipment adjustments have to be made when running on hydrogen. The Delta project is going to blend the hydrogen with natural gas when it's burned starting with 30% hydrogen and gradually step up toward 100% hydrogen.
Siemens currently has turbines that can burn up to 75% hydrogen and is targeting 100% hydrogen by 2030:
https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/priorities/future-t...
General Electric has a variety of gas turbines, accepting 50% to 100% hydrogen in the fuel blend:
https://www.ge.com/gas-power/future-of-energy/hydrogen-fuele...
Re:Why Is Hydroelectricity So Green, and yet Unfashionable?
by jakewins on Friday October 28, 2022 @04:44AM
(#33369072)
Also used for direct industrial heat and as a feedstock!
Eg. the Hybrit project produces iron sponge with electrolyzed hydrogen. So the process becomes
> (electricity + H2O) + Fe3O4 [iron ore] => Fe + H2O
instead of the usual
> C [coke] + Fe3O4 => Fe + CO2
Re:Why Is Hydroelectricity So Green, and yet Unfashionable?
by WJW on Thursday October 27, 2022 @04:33PM
(#33363639)
No it's mostly the chemical energy in the stored hydrogen, pressure is only a small part of it (though they might insert some expander turbine somewhere in there). Pretty similar to how you'd rate a natural gas storage facility.
Re:Why Is Hydroelectricity So Green, and yet Unfashionable?
by pfdietz on Thursday October 27, 2022 @10:35PM
(#33366902)
It should be noted that the energy stored in the pressure of gas is zero. All the energy of an ideal gas is the kinetic energy (and rotational/vibrational energy) of its molecules, which is thermal energy. Internal energy of an ideal gas is independent of pressure.
What compressed gas storage does is (aside from combustion energy of a fuel gas) to provide not a store of energy, but a store of reduced entropy, enabling otherwise unusable amounts of heat to be converted to work.