Some commenters had a lot of fun with Keith here because of his suggestion of making steel with Hydrogen that's made with electrolysis from excess wind energy that's made during the night when electricity demand is smaller. Let me try to explain in a friendly way what these commenters are seeing but what Keith is not. The short version i…
Some commenters had a lot of fun with Keith here because of his suggestion of making steel with Hydrogen that's made with electrolysis from excess wind energy that's made during the night when electricity demand is smaller. Let me try to explain in a friendly way what these commenters are seeing but what Keith is not. The short version is this: It makes no sense.
Let's start with hydrogen. It needs to be produced from electricity. For the hydrogen to be clean, it has to be produced from a clean source (when it comes to co2) like for example nuclear, hydro, wind or solar. The efficiency of doing that is low. And after that hydrogen has to be pressurized, which wastes even more energy. And like one writer pointed out, hydrogen is also tricky to store, and transport.
Then electricity. The excess clean electricity simply does not exist. Like we can see in Europe, there's a lack of clean energy. If we are supposed to cut down on co2-emissions, we need to start by eliminating co2 from electricity generation. If we do that using wind and solar, we need 1) massive amounts of new generation and 2) massive amounts of storage. If we get there, the excess electricity will simply go to charging batteries instead of using the electricity to generate and pressurize hydrogen.
Like the Doomberg suggested, it is possible to build massive amounts of nuclear so that we can eliminate co2 in electricity production. After that it's possible to use that abundant electricity to create hydrogen or ammonia in large scale to use it as an alternative fuel. Any amounts of clean fuels created this way can replace oil that is now burned for transportation. For example: Shipping.
Oh, let me also point out that wind tends to be weaker during the night. So wind produces less electricity during the night and solar no electricity at all.
The world just isn't there for creating any meaningful amounts of steel with hydrogen. And if we get to the point where it'd start being possible in theory, we'd eliminate more co2 by using that directly as a fuel instead of making steel. That way we don't need to build huge amounts of battery storage or even huge amounts of wind and solar and by no having to build those, we save huge amounts of co2 waste a lot of less resources and have to build way less mines.
Some commenters had a lot of fun with Keith here because of his suggestion of making steel with Hydrogen that's made with electrolysis from excess wind energy that's made during the night when electricity demand is smaller. Let me try to explain in a friendly way what these commenters are seeing but what Keith is not. The short version is this: It makes no sense.
Let's start with hydrogen. It needs to be produced from electricity. For the hydrogen to be clean, it has to be produced from a clean source (when it comes to co2) like for example nuclear, hydro, wind or solar. The efficiency of doing that is low. And after that hydrogen has to be pressurized, which wastes even more energy. And like one writer pointed out, hydrogen is also tricky to store, and transport.
Then electricity. The excess clean electricity simply does not exist. Like we can see in Europe, there's a lack of clean energy. If we are supposed to cut down on co2-emissions, we need to start by eliminating co2 from electricity generation. If we do that using wind and solar, we need 1) massive amounts of new generation and 2) massive amounts of storage. If we get there, the excess electricity will simply go to charging batteries instead of using the electricity to generate and pressurize hydrogen.
Like the Doomberg suggested, it is possible to build massive amounts of nuclear so that we can eliminate co2 in electricity production. After that it's possible to use that abundant electricity to create hydrogen or ammonia in large scale to use it as an alternative fuel. Any amounts of clean fuels created this way can replace oil that is now burned for transportation. For example: Shipping.
Oh, let me also point out that wind tends to be weaker during the night. So wind produces less electricity during the night and solar no electricity at all.
The world just isn't there for creating any meaningful amounts of steel with hydrogen. And if we get to the point where it'd start being possible in theory, we'd eliminate more co2 by using that directly as a fuel instead of making steel. That way we don't need to build huge amounts of battery storage or even huge amounts of wind and solar and by no having to build those, we save huge amounts of co2 waste a lot of less resources and have to build way less mines.