Science

Last edited Sat Jan 18, 2025, 08:15 PM - Edit history (1)

...intermediate for ammonia production, on which the world food supply depends, but it is exceedingly stupid to convert a gas with better physical properties, methane, (critical pressure, critical temperature, inertness to metals, etc.) to one with far worse physical properties, especially when exergy is destroyed in the process.

SMR is not acceptable to me under any circumstances, and I remain convinced, and will not be dissuaded otherwise. I understand the process very well and have been aware of all its permutations for many years. "Less" does not substitute for "none."

I believe - quixotically I understand - that fossil fuels should be banned as quickly as is possible by the use of nuclear heat.

Biogas is a trivial source of methane, and it requires significant energy to separate it from carbon dioxide. It will never be carbon neutral. Hyping it, like hyping hydrogen, itself is a proposal for greenwashing fossil fuels.

Industrial hydrogen is best made - although very little actually is - from thermochemical water splitting, the most well understood process being the SI process. Modern advances in materials science make it accessible. There are many variants of this process, some of which are reported, and others which can certainly be conceived, and there are many other types of known thermochemical hydrogen cycles, each with its own set of aficionados. Unfortunately very few high temperature nuclear reactors have been built, but attention is being paid - too little, too late - to developing modern ones.

Electric vehicles are not sustainable and as I reported with a reference, is actually dirtier than an internal combustion:

A paper addressing the idea that electric cars are "green."

In fact there is no form of the car CULTure that is sustainable over the long term, popular enthusiasm for it notwithstanding.

All in all, hydrogen is a fossil fuel promotion scam, slick perhaps, but just as useful as it was half a century ago when big time bullshit about started, waxing and waning over the decades. Even a dumb guy like Joe Romm understood this in the early 21st century. Things have gotten much, much worse since he wrote "The Hype About Hydrogen" in 2004, not that he shows any signs about waking up to the issue of primary energy.