[FRIAM] Another Stunning Hydrogen Development - Retake Our Democracy

Mon Feb 7 18:46:02 EST 2022

I'm afraid I'm less eloquent than Steve.  The Pigs are an issue with us and
we are discussing with pipeline vendors what the pipeline OPEX should be.
After all air is little bit less regulated than O&G.  Straight pneumatic to
pneumatic alone looks like big business for heavy industries.  We will
see.

On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 11:33 AM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

> Mike -
>
> Thanks for weighing in.   I do like the re-purposing or up/downcycling of
> existing infrastructure as part of a transition strategy.  Any perspective
> you might have from a *systems* point of view of how Breeze and pneumatic
> storage/transmission can help improve the robustness and efficiency of
> multi-scale systems would be great.
>
>
> I was very shocked a few years ago when I learned about the application of
> compressed air in mobile applications as well:  I didn't realize there was
> enough energy-density to be had.
>
>
> https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/air/compressed-air-vehicles-can-be-a-potential-mode-of-urban-transport-in-india-62987
>
> There is something kindof organic/serendipitous about being able to
> harvest ambient energy gradients (fill your air tank in coolth of the night
> or in the shade and expose it to sunlight/heat at the time/point of
> use).
>
> When I hit "send" on this message, I'm crawling back down my well-house to
> repair a burst pipe and (re)evaluate the difficulty of removing the
> pressure tank so that I can replace the air-bladder in it.  The
> Pneumo-Hydro hybrid of a well is there primarily to reduce pump-cycling and
> pressure hammer in the piping system but it is a good everyday example of
> hybrid systems.   A pressure tank is pretty cool serendipitous solution.  I
> would guess that submerged airbladders would complement hydro-storage
> pretty well.
>
> The Breeze literature fed my overly tangential mind with an image of Tony
> HIllerman's novel Sinister Pig wherein pipelines crossing the US/MX border
> might be used to move drugs in the "pigs" designed to act as moving plugs
> to separate different types/ownership of petroleum products.
>
>     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sinister_Pig
>
> I've been fascinated with hybrid mechanical/hydraulic/pneumatic systems
> from an early age with a good friend even in the early 80s running a boot
> repair business from an antique belt-driven set of stations up and down the
> line in his shop from cutters to stichers to sanders to buffers, etc.  Of
> course all were driven from a (single) electric motor, but any rotational
> mechanical energy was fine (wind/water/animal/human-driven
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadwheel_crane>) .  It was all shafts,
> bushings, pulleys and idlers and (leather) belts.  It was very clever and
> relatively efficient (by some measures) compared to a half-dozen or more
> stations, each driven by it's own electric motor.  Setting up a new station
> was pretty easy with little more than sliding a pulley down a shaft and
> fixing it with a set-screw.
>
> I'd love to have my (mostly idle/defunct) blacksmith lean-to running with
> such a shaft, an oversized airtank (that I can differentially shade and
> expose to sun) and a small windmill connected (belt-drive) to the
> human-powered, stationary bicycle-style grinder I already use.   The stone,
> when not grinding becomes a flywheel for the system and the pedals a
> human-input into it.   Then comes the trip-hammer and the bellows!   Not in
> this lifetime.   I'll be lucky to have water pressure back in the house
> this week with my rate of project progress!
>
> - Steve
>
>
> Hi.  I'm a reader more than a contributor, but the Hydrogen discussion is
> close to my day to day.
>
> Many of us in renewables think Hydrogen might mostly be kick the can as
> Steve mentioned.  It is something that might be economically feasible in
> the 2030s and so the length of time oil companies sell oil increases.
> Having said that, there are a number of very pricey Hydrogen projects
> getting funded.  That might be showing how profitable the O&G industry
> is.
>
> I'm working with a company we call Breeze <http://www.breezesqueeze.com>.
> It uses compressed air in pipelines to move turbines at power plants.
> Without fossil fuels or using water this is getting a lot of attention.
> There are many advantages such as cold air where compressed air is released
> that can be used by data centers.  25% of all GHGs come from generating
> electricity.  45% of all water used in the US is used to create
> electricity.
>
> We see this as a better option than Hydrogen.  We do think Hydrogen fuel
> cells are a solution for mobile applications.
>
> Mike Orshan
>
> On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 10:27 AM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 2/6/22 8:31 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>
>>
>> https://thebulletin.org/2022/01/whether-green-blue-or-turquoise-hydrogen-needs-to-be-clean-and-cheap/
>>
>>     *Low-cost fossil fuel resources are finite. Someday it will simply
>> not be possible to burn oil, natural gas, and coal for the affordable heat,
>> electricity, and motive power humans need to power their prosperous
>> societies. *
>>
>> Must we always begin with the assumption that growth in terms of
>> geographical/geometric, material and energy consumption/appropriation are
>> requisite to continuing/growing a "prosperous society"?   Tangentially (or
>> not), if "green" hydrogen implies a 2:1 ratio of CO2 production to H2 but
>> often begins with fossil fuels, it is obviously yet another "kick the can
>> down the road" solution.   Harvesting solar and direct-solar/lunar-derived
>> energy (including wind, tidal) and channeling it through our living
>> (including technological infrastructure and agri-industry) systems to yield
>> high-entropy "waste heat" seems to be orders of magnitude more sustainable
>> (if still questionable on some very long time-scale limited by a
>> Dyson-Sphere-like-limit).    If the H2 is created by cracking H20 (and
>> capturing both to be recombined later to release energy) using solar (and
>> other renewables) energy it is a *closed cycle*.  One would presume the
>> total amount of H2 we would have stored/
>>
>> From ecology there comes the observed phenomena of "island syndrome"
>> which can include island dwarfism and poikilothermy which are both driven
>> by reducing the demand on finite resources without giving up function or
>> complexity.
>>
>> From Alexander Payne comes the absurdist SciFi flick Downsizing
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downsizing_(film)#Plot> which postulates
>> by shrinking humans by ???-fold (5 inches tall ~= 12:1 in 1 dimension,
>> 144:1 in cross section and 1728:1 in volume/mass... )  the movie implies no
>> change in metabolic rates which would nominally speed up with "shrinkage",
>> yielding (also) shorter lifespans.   Oh well.. Fiction.   But the point
>> would seem well taken... Gaia would get a 2000:1 reprieve from our
>> *current* energy/mass burden on her systems.
>>
>> I'm not promoting shrinking people as-such, just noting that our 0th
>> order instinct is growth, and supralinear if at all possible, up to and
>> likely achieving Kurzweillian asymptotic resource consumption.
>>
>> On that note, I believe that the myriad technological singularity
>> concepts all point toward increased complexity  and downscaling to extend
>> the use of material and energy, driving up the effective collective
>> metabolism of "the system" and paradoxically *increasing* the rate at which
>> we approach any of the jillion ecophagic gray-goo
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo>-like scenarios neo-luddites
>> like me might contrive.
>>
>> I assume (but have not yet poked around for) that Alifers have already
>> studied the multi-scale *structure* of negative entropy profiles in complex
>> systems-of-systems.   I think Glen has his ear closer to that rail than
>> some here?  EricS? ??? I'm still fascinated in the topic but gave up my
>> little-toenail-purchase in the community in the early 2000s - Symbiotic
>> Intelligence ALifeVI
>> <https://cseweb.ucsd.edu//~rik/alife6/papers/SY51.html>.   This reads so
>> naive yet (mildly) prophetic now...
>>
>> All is lost! Flee the solar system!
>>
>>
>>
>> On Feb 6, 2022, at 7:20 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> 
>>
>> Grey hydrogen?
>>
>>
>> https://retakeourdemocracy.org/2022/02/06/another-stunning-hydrogen-development/
>>
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