The movie casts a spell far beyond its merits. Warner Brothers would have made it thirty-five years ago as a hundred-minute feature, lively, brilliantly paced, and economical. Now, in the reverent hands of Francis Ford Coppola, it has swelled into an overblown, pretentious, slow, and ultimately tedious three-hour quasi-epic. Gangsters at last have their Greatest Story Ever Told, but minus George Stevens. Inflation does not always assure survival. My guess is that three years from now we will still remember scenes from Raoul Walsh’s The Roaring Twenties (1939) while The Godfather will have become a vague memory.
PSA: If you are logged in to LinkedIn, then clicking on a LinkedIn profile registers your visit with the owner -- it's a great way for someone to harvest new people to target.
On another note, what's unreal about the pseudonym? It's a Ukrainian transliteration of Николай Янчий (Nikolay Yanchiy). Here's a real person with this name: https://life.ru/p/1490942
I don't think this is accurate. I believe if you go into your privacy settings, you can put yourself into a semi-private or a private mode so that your views aren't shown even when you click to view someone who is a LinkedIn Premium member. However, the big disadvantage is that when you put yourself in a private mode, if you are a non-subscribed user, you will not have access to these analytics for your own profile at all.
This is covered in this help article, especially the bullet points at the end[0].
I have premium. I can confirm this. Whatever your private browsing page shows is what I see. If you're fully private, all that registers is that someone has looked at my profile but nothing identifying, just a bump in profile views.
Never trust anything written by lawyers/economics/MBAs on climate change - only analysis by chemical or mechanical engineers is worth reading.
Just so we know if we should keep reading, which one are you?
Methane pyrolysis is an old technology from early days of oil refining for production of hydrogen & Ammonia/fertilizer/Methanol. it yields half as much H2 than SMR/ATR so it can't compete on cost, unless there is carbon tax/CO2 penalty.
It's not appropriate to call it "technology," in the same way it's not appropriate to call "combustion" a "technology." There's a very wide variety of technological solutions to realize this family of chemical processes, and some are going to be better than other, depending on the use case or scenario. The report actually covers those pathways reasonably well.
Also, coke produced by pyrolysis is lower quality than that produced by Delayed Coking of crude oil refining.
Ideally, you would not be producing coke at all, but a higher value material. However, even coke will be of much higher purity than petcoke (before calcining) -- i.e. it would be intrinsically zero-sulfur carbon material, - but I'm not sure what applications it would have that don't involve production of CO2.
But obviously the carbon co-product should have value, which would provide a cost offset to the hydrogen. With a high-quality co-product (> $1/kgC), this offset would be significant enough to provide that hydrogen essentially free of charge.
SMR and ATR generate significant amounts of CO2 (~10 kgCO2/kgH2), which does not provide a cost offset, and in a fair world would instead incur a significant added cost.
Electrolysis requires 4x more energy (also electric, not thermal) and does not have a marketable/valuable co-product. Just on the energy cost alone (50 kWh/kgH2 * 0.12 USD/kWh = 6 USD/kgH2 > 40 USD/MMBTU) electrolyzer hydrogen is not competitive with any of the above.
Commonsense should tell you e- generated by H2 can't compete with CH4, because Ch4 is the feedstock & H2 is the product!
Didn't parse this statement, sorry. Can you rephrase?
> > Commonsense should tell you e- generated by H2 can't compete with CH4, because Ch4 is the feedstock & H2 is the product!
> Didn't parse this statement, sorry. Can you rephrase?
They might have meant something like: if you process A through B to C while you could also process A to C directly, then the latter direct process will usually be more economically viable.
While this heuristic sounds broadly reasonable, it neglects so many details of any real production processes and value chains that it seems hardly applicable to real world situations.
In 2015, the Department of Energy estimated that the CO2 footprint for production, processing, and pipeline transportation of natural gas averaged between 8 and 14 kgCO2-e per MMBTU of natural gas [1].
The average natural gas CO2 emissions (kgCO2/MMBTU) has been going down over time [2], and will be reduced even further in the next few years thanks to increasing fines [3] on one hand and financial incentives to reduce flaring and venting [4] on the other hand. A large percentage of these emissions are not due to accidental leaks, but are essentially intentional -- due to flaring, venting, and high-bleed controllers and actuators [2].
For an idea of how much emissions can be reduced, consider that the so-called certified gas has 90% lower CO2 footprint than the average today [5]. For example, the methane emissions for a natural gas utility in Oregon are 90% lower than EPA nationwide assumptions [6].
Carbon black has the average CO2 intensity of almost 4 kgCO2/kgC [1] and its conventional production is so dirty and low-margin, that companies have been walking away from their plants rather than implement EPA-mandated upgrades. [2]
On the subject of methane pyrolysis, it turns out if you look at the Gibbs free energy calculation, about half of the energy of methane combustion is released from the formation of water, and the other half from the formation of carbon dioxide.
About 70% of the energy is in hydrogen, 30% is in carbon.
1 GJ of methane weighs about 20 kg, 5 kg of which comprise hydrogen.
At 142 MJ/kgH2 (higher heating value, which implies condensation of the produced water), 710 MJ out of that 1 GJ is due to hydrogen.
With a 60%-70% efficient hydrogen fuel cell, about 50% of the electricity generated from hydrogen from pyrolysis of methane would drive the process, and 50% could go into the grid.
You have to account for the energy required to break the bonds of the CH4, though. This means if you burn methane the usual way you get (CH4 + 2O2 --> CO2 + 2H2O + 803 kJ/mol); if you burn it with an ideal zero-emissions reaction, you get (CH4 + O2 --> C + 2H2O + 409 kJ/mol), or just a little more than half the energy from the same gas.
Your accounting works if someone else does the pyrolysis for you and you're left with just the H2 and C at the end, but mine includes the energy consumed by the pyrolysis step that breaks the methane molecule (albeit neglecting any thermodynamic losses, which there will be several -- for example you need to recapture the heat carried away by the hot carbon atoms). On the other hand, you can hardly wish for a better feedstock for CVD diamond production...
Pyrolysis is a less energy intensive way to produce hydrogen, and does deserve more attention. But it still requires methane as a feedstock.
So why is methane as feedstock a problem?
Isn't it better to spend less energy convert a ubiquitous, but environmentally harmful gas into hydrogen along with useful materials, than spend 4x more energy to convert a critical resource -- fresh water -- into hydrogen without any valuable by-products?
Water is critical but not hard to get. The energy and cost required to take a m3 of dirty water and turn it into pure water is a rounding error compared to the energy required to hydrolyze it.
Yes methane is an environmental problem, even small methane leakages have a large GHG impacts. But the best way to deal with that environmental problem is to not pull it out of the ground in the first place
Plus for pyrolysis, you have to deal with the carbon which makes up 75% of the methane by weight. A non-trivial issue.
Except we already pull it out of the ground, and people are heavily invested in that process. Working with what we have is the best option here: far easier to enthusiastically go after methane leaks when the industry is otherwise being told "we will buy a lot of your product forever.
Which is really the stakes here: if you can "burn" fossil fuels without putting GHG in the air...there's no reason to stop using them at all. In fact we should vastly expand their use.
Why would the go after me than leaks if they know people will by their products?
A lot of the methane leaks are not “leaks” but intentional releases to “protect” equipment or to simply get rid of it. Until there are fines on the pollution it won’t stop.
You would want to use solar power for electrolysis. In the US, regions with abundant solar power are also the ones that:
- have true water scarcity - Nevada and Arizona
- have low population and industrial density, so any generated hydrogen would need transported to the point of use.
The bigger problem is the energy disparity. Electrolysis of water requires 50 kWh/kgH2 or more. Even a 70% efficient fuel cell would get ~25 kWh/kgH2 -- horrible roundtrip efficiency. With pyrolysis, that equation is exactly inverted: at 9-12 kWh/kgH2, you can generate excess electricity with no CO2 emissions.
Plus for pyrolysis, you have to deal with the carbon which makes up 75% of the methane by weight. A non-trivial issue.
Exactly. 20 kg of methane costs $3 today, but contains 15 kg of carbon that could be worth $20-$30. It's a non-trivial issue if you hate generating value.
Like you said transportation is a problem which is why you would produce it close to where it’s needed (say Nebraska). You don’t need an “ideal” solar output location.
Yes I am well aware of the energy difference.
> Exactly. 20 kg of methane costs $3 today, but contains 15 kg of carbon that could be worth $20-$30. It's a non-trivial issue if you hate generating value
If carbon free hydrogen is going to be worth doing at scale it will be because there is a price on the carbon. So the input methane will go up in price.
As for the output, global demand for carbon black is currently ~14 million metric tones a year [0].
Current hydrogen demand is ~100 million metric tones a year [1].
100 Mt of hydrogen needs ~400 Mt of methane and produces ~300 Mt of carbon.
300 Mt vs 14 Mt of current demand. What do you supposed will happen to that carbon black price when you produce even a fraction of total hydrogen demand through pyrolysis?
It’s non-trivial cause you’re gonna be having to create reverse coal mines to store all that shit.
A lot of those countries with water scarcity are oil rich. A lot of those countries that don't have water scarcity are oil poor.
Seems one forward step would be for countries that have an abundant source of alternative fuel to go for it and stop importing so much oil. Countries that don't have much water can import alternative energy sources or keep using the oil that they're rich in.
I tend to be a fan of methane for its high hydrogen content per unit carbon as well as how much easier it is to store than hydrogen. However the argument against methane that I do find convincing is that the infrastructure for transporting and distributing methane leaks a lot. The argument is most compelling against residential distribution, where maintenance is harder to justify, but large leaks regularly occur, and that is very bad for greenhouse emissions.
I’ve always been curious about generating methane in industrial composting or from landfills and using it onsite for hydrogen generation. Not sure if the generating capacity is enough though, there is probably a reason it isn’t being done.
Methane is not abundant, as such. There are specific sources of it, mainly through manual agricultural processes, or in natural systems. Natural gas is mostly methane, I guess.
Methane in the form of natural gas is piped all over almost every city in North America, at least those areas where people need to heat their homes in the winter.
Any leakage from a pyrolysis plant is going to be negligible compared to what's undoubtedly already leaking from gas infrastructure installed in the 1950s (or earlier), as well as the continual accidental leaks caused by excavating.
As bonus trivia, depiction of Bilbo was based on the "short, round stature, expressive eyes, broad and open face" of the famous Soviet actor Yevgeniy Leonov (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Leonov).
Basically, he says that he was approached by some random person and was gifted a copy of The Hobbit. This person turned out to be an illustrator of translated edition (same as at the OP's link) and he made Bilbo look like Leonov (the guy in the video).
As a footnote, Leonov famously voiced Soviet version of Winnie The Pooh in all its glorious 3 episodes:
I'm assuming you're not saying Tolkien based his description of Bilbo on that Leonov. Are you saying the illustrator based the illustrations on Leonov?
Does Leonov actually say that? Or just that the description and illustrations are similar to him?
In the video, Leonov says Belomlinskij (artist who made illustrations for this edition) himself gifted him this book and explained that he based Bilbo looks on Leonov.
The movie casts a spell far beyond its merits. Warner Brothers would have made it thirty-five years ago as a hundred-minute feature, lively, brilliantly paced, and economical. Now, in the reverent hands of Francis Ford Coppola, it has swelled into an overblown, pretentious, slow, and ultimately tedious three-hour quasi-epic. Gangsters at last have their Greatest Story Ever Told, but minus George Stevens. Inflation does not always assure survival. My guess is that three years from now we will still remember scenes from Raoul Walsh’s The Roaring Twenties (1939) while The Godfather will have become a vague memory.
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