[FRIAM] Another Stunning Hydrogen Development - Retake Our Democracy
Steve Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Tue Feb 8 12:00:31 EST 2022
On 2/7/22 8:51 PM, Michael Orshan wrote:
> Renewable has three issues right now and generation is not one of
> them, yet most people focus on generation. The issues are
> intermittency, transmission lines and financing new assets. We are
> forcing the retirement of revenue producing assets they have been paid
> for. By storing air in pipelines until needed we are solving
> intermittency. By generating closer where the energy is used we are
> greatly reducing the need for transmission. By reusing the
> infrastructure we are saving a paid for asset. Yes the conversion
> efficiency is low, but who cares. The storage is incredibly huge.
> Inertia energy itself pays for itself 50x this way and its instant.
> Look up Long Duration Energy Systems. This is the scramble that is
> going on right now.
Mike -
From your executive lineup, I'm sure you guys are doing both the
engineering work as well as the financial/legal work to try to make this
concept viable. It seems like a "niche" application but not as niche
as the CAES perhaps. It seems like you are cashing in on the
serendipity of the nature of NG power generation infrastructure. I had
a shop teacher in HS who taught ICE basics on a small diesel engine he
had converted to run (low power/speed) on compressed air.
I trust that even if YOU don't work hard on the problems of conversion
efficiency, it seems likely that others *are* working on that problem to
cash in on the marginal gain. The "efficient market" to the rescue.
Since the conversion efficiency (I believe) is primarily about
heat/coolth dissipation on both ends, that low-grade heat on the
re-generation side is appropriate (direct solar collection, geothermal,
heat-pump). I'm not positive, but it seems as if the transmission
losses are less than with electricity.
I see from your preliminary literature you are also planning for the
direct use of "waste" heat on one side and "waste" coolth on the other
as an industrial product. The passthrough of compressed air to
industry is also auspicious... minimizing the conversion inefficiencies
by skipping intermediate steps... I doubt many industrial contexts have
a compressed air source, but rather have to create it on-site with ICE
or Electric to-mechanical-to-compressor.
As an amateur complexicist, I am a fan of multi-scale systems.... so I
look forward to systems like yours not being scaled (only) to
mega-industry. I wonder at how far out the existing distribution chain
you can push compressed air practically? I doubt there are (m)any
mechanics or private homes, for example, who could give up their NG feed
(heat mostly) for compressed air, even if the upstream distribution were
converting. The new(ish) DC-powered residential scale mini-split
heat-pumps would seem to operate well off of any mechanical energy
source (not just PWM modulated variable speed DC motors) and the
decompressed chilled air from the air-motor would go right into boosting
the efficiency rather than being yet another source of waste heat. Not
a perpetual motion machine, just a system where some of the intrinsic
inefficiencies are exploited/recovered elegantly?
The big win seems obviously to be the major NG pipelines and existing
electric generation stations. I can't tell from your literature if
converting existing NG turbines to compressed air is even reasonable...
seems like this is probably why CAES is burning NG to bring the charge
up to the performance scale of existing turbine designs? I believe
that many of these plants were designed/modified to be "peaking" plants
which it seems your tech is ideal for... let the
Again, it is nice to hear someone here with a practical
application/aspiration in the domain of infrastructure/industrial/energy
transformation. Many of us are a bit too close to the academic side of
problem "solving".
- Steve
> On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 6:46 PM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
> wrote:
>
> The conversion losses seem like a big issue?
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Michael
> Orshan
> *Sent:* Monday, February 7, 2022 5:42 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Another Stunning Hydrogen Development -
> Retake Our Democracy
>
> Marcus
>
> That is a famous prototype. Recently Hydrostor made headlines
> building new CAES plants. The main issue is the need of a salt
> cavern. The amount of possible sites is very small. The caverns
> are used to mine salts for bleaches/chemicals or to store natural
> gas. This tech is $111/kwh.
>
> On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 6:14 PM Marcus Daniels
> <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:
>
> For comparison
>
> https://schaperintl.com/is-the-juice-worth-the-squeeze-compressed-air-energy-storage-for-grid-scale-power/
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of
> *Michael Orshan
> *Sent:* Monday, February 7, 2022 3:42 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Another Stunning Hydrogen Development -
> Retake Our Democracy
>
> Hi Frank:
>
> We need any, but hopefully renewable energy, to generate power
> for the compressors. This also creates heat which we can
> recycle for more electricity or use for industrial purposes.
> Our efficiency isn't high, but once we are in the pipelines we
> have a huge battery. 60 miles, 36 inch diameter can hold
> 240MWh. We can be instant inertia energy or generate. Our
> storage costs are about $50/kwh. Batteries are $400/kwh for
> example. Also, we can store compressed air for months upon
> months. Also, if we can build the renewables close enough to
> the plant we can go DC/DC which is a 25% energy savings not
> having to convert to AC.
>
> On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 11:05 AM Frank Wimberly
> <wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> How do you compress the air? Any method I can think of
> uses energy. From what source?
>
> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/140+Calle+Ojo+Feliz,%0D%0A+%0D%0A+Santa+Fe,+NM+87505?entry=gmail&source=g>
>
>
> Frank
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/140+Calle+Ojo+Feliz,++%0D%0ASanta+Fe,+NM+87505?entry=gmail&source=g>
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/140+Calle+Ojo+Feliz,++%0D%0ASanta+Fe,+NM+87505?entry=gmail&source=g>
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Mon, Feb 7, 2022, 10:57 AM Michael Orshan
> <morshan at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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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