Firm to Build First Utility-Scale Hydrogen Power Plant

Gentlemen, The city must have a sewage plant in the area. There is a technology that converts contaminated water to both gases and then uses what is known as a Bubble Gen Linear Generator to create, for conversation purposes say one mega watt of electricity, energy from only 2% of the hydrogen stored in a gallon of water. This process when applied to a 100 GPM system that would destroy this much water a day,(144,000 gallons every 24 hours)would create 50 times more energy than was required to destroy the water in the first place. There are 1,243 gallons of hydrogen gas in every gallon of water at atmospheric pressure.

If the system used this type of water or a much more contaminated water such as the Flow Back or Produced Waters that are coming from the production of natural gas wells all over America,(in what are known as Shale Plays such as the Barnett Shale in Texas) then this would demand a fee of $1.00 to $2.15 from the oil companies and would generate quite a handsom profit just from the cleaning of these types of waters and if these were recycled back to the oil companies for say $0.25 to $ 1.00 a barrell (42 gallons in the oil patch) that would create an income of from $857.00 to $3,428.00 per day which would pay a lot of over head costs, would it not and at the same time the electricity used to destroy the water could come from the hydrogen that was generated by the destruction of the water. This is a real system and it is called the Plasma Incubator Reactor System which has been designed by four other scientists and myself over the past eight years and is available to companies like this one who want to use Hydrogen as a fuel source. You may want to Google my name on the Internet to find out more about me and this process.

Good point, David, but in stationary applications, particularly one like this with plenty of cheap real estate, the storage method is not so expensive nor critical. The current challanges have to do mostly with on-board storage for passenger vehicles; on-site on-demand production and storage (for critical backup); and transportation of large amounts (vs. electricity transmission via a stressed grid). Refineries and fertilizer manufacturers, consumers of most of the world’s hydrogen have been producing and storing on-site large amounts of hydrogen for decades. And they have dealt with the associated costs, so that is not so complicated nor expensive. Using a fuel cell (my choice) or burning the hydrogen to drive a turbine is the more gray area for this project. Augmenting natural gas and diesel with hydrogen (5-10%) is commonly done, but pure hydrogen does not trade off with other fuels seemlessly. I’m sure Ballard would love get a number of their 150 kW heavy duty PEM stacks in here in lieu of a questionable turbine, but additional subsidies would be needed. The answer to the storage I’m guessing is large steel tanks with pressures well under 5000 psi, not very portable, but cheap and easy. Ask Exxon or Chevron what they use.

I’d be interested to learn how much hydrogen will be stored, and how. The method of storing hydrogen has a great impact on the overall system efficiency – e.g. compression vs cryogenics vs metal hydrides. Any info on this?

@greendoughnuts – If it ain’t efficient then it won’t fly! Regardless of what bean counters or greens would like industry is based on science and engineering – not wishes.

With real processes there are pilot plants and various steps on the way to commercialization of a process. No mention of anything like that here or from any other source mentioning Henry Herman.

With pilot plant proved processes something like one in a thousand ever make it commercially. This guy is just going to jump in and spend 219 million? Must either be very wealthy (with Papa’s money) or have stupid backers.

NREL is working with a couple of companies on something similar to this and they are complicated things – a CE friend of mine noted ‘similar to a refinery in complexity’.

@greendoughnuts

A mere 5% interest on the upfront costs would be $1825 per year. The operating costs are still hanging out there as a significant unkown as well. Obviously that comapany has found a way to make the project viable for them. I doubt the taxpayers who are probably fronting a significant portion are not going to find it so profitable.

On a side note, try to stick to discussing the subject. The fact that I am not the accountant is both obvious and irrelevant. In case you didn’t know, calling people nay-sayers is an ad hominem attack and does nothing to further the discussion.

@russ

We are talking about a 10-megawatt power station not a car or house but something that feeds 6000 of them. Are you going to propose that they use batteries? That much ni-cad or lithium would be expensive to buy and worse to maintain. While I agree that it may be inefficient, hydrogen can be safely stored, processed and contained.

There is more to this story than just the efficiency

of one step of the process. It needs to function as a system.

@Dewayne

While your math is correct, you do not have the future plans for expansion and it may be that for another $20 million, they can get 10,000 homes or for another $100 million they can expand capacity to serve 50,000 homes.

Additionally, your numbers assume a ROI in 1 year. However, over the 30 year lifespan of the power plant they need to recoup $1216 / year / household or company. Not a difficult thing at all. Actually, it sounds quite profitable right now…

Let the engineers do the design and the MBA’s get the business plans together. With all they nay-sayers here, nothing would ever get done.

Either way you aren’t the accountant for the project.

Someone will have to excuse my haste for accidentally deleting a comment that should have been approved. I was on a roll deleting several spammy comments and accidentally deleted a valid one. So, if you left a comment and you don’t see it here, please consider leaving it again, and please accept my apology. Thanks!

-Tim

Hi Timothy,

Whether H2 comes from natural gas or from electrolysis it is still energy negative I believe – you put more into it than you get back and substantially more.

You are taking an energy with a value (electricity) and spending energy to turn it into another form of energy – unless electrolysis has become a lot more efficient than anything I have read about.

I understand the desire to store windpower but it does not seem this is the way.

Oops make that 36500.

$36,667 per household and its not clear that it includes the price of the renewables generating the electricity or daily operating costs. Doesn’t seem economically viable to me.