Hydrogen is a funny fuel when it comes to cars. It was supposed to be the clean and convenient alternative to gasoline, but practical concerns have stopped it from properly catching on. Thus far, only a handful of public hydrogen stations have been installed in California and Hawaii, but finally, a third state has got on board. As a bonus, it’s offering hydrogen way cheaper than anyone else.
Enter Douglas County, Washington. It’s not as popular as Seattle, nor Spokane, but it boasts a population of some 42,000 people and is home to the state’s first public hydrogen station. It’s a pet project of the Douglas County PUD, a public utility responsible for delivering energy and connectivity services to the district.
The hydrogen filling station has been installed alongside a bank of EV fast chargers already established in the city of East Wenatchee. The station is equipped with H70 and H35 ports to accommodate different vehicles and storage pressures, but perhaps the most interesting thing is the pricing: the hydrogen fuel costs one-ninth what you’d pay in California.
Douglas County PUD notes that this is “the first consumer hydrogen refueling station in Washington State.”
If you happened to own a Toyota Mirai or other hydrogen vehicle in Washington state, you’re cheering right now. Not just because you can finally refuel your car, but because you can do it at the low, low price of just four dollars per kilogram. That’s wildly cheap compared to prevailing prices in California, where drivers can expect to pay up to $36/kg at the pump.
As a guide, at California prices, running a Toyota Mirai costs more per mile than a classic Dodge Viper. Prices are so high that it’s created an upstart black market in hydrogen fuel cards, which The Autopian reported in an exclusive investigation earlier this year.
At Washington prices, however, the Mirai is a pretty cheap vehicle to run. At peak efficiency, the Mirai can travel about 70 miles on one kilogram of hydrogen, which works out to about a dollar’s worth of fuel for every 17.5 miles. For comparison, a 2025 Toyota Prius achieves 57 mpg combined. At the current average gas price of around $3.22 a gallon, the Prius will take you 17.7 miles for each dollar of fuel expense. That’s right in line with a Mirai running on hydrogen at Washington prices.
It’s somewhat surprising that the fuel is so much cheaper in Washington, given all the effort that has been put into establishing hydrogen infrastructure in California. There’s a very good reason it’s cheaper up North, however: It’s because Douglas County PUD hasn’t just built a filling station, but has also built its own hydrogen production facility that uses Washington State’s abundant hydroelectric power. According to the utility, electricity makes up 80% of the input costs of hydrogen production. Thus, a cheap source of power means cheap hydrogen. As a bonus, the utility can use the hydrogen electrolyzer to burn off excess power to help stabilize the grid at times when renewable energy supplies are high and grid demand is low.
It’s worth noting, though, that hydrogen isn’t produced on site at the filling station. Instead, it’s produced at a purpose-built facility at Baker Flats, and trucked to the fueling station and other locations as needed.
The project has been a long time coming. OneH2 signed a deal with Douglas County PUD all the way back in 2022 for the development of the hydrogen terminal and fueling station. The timeline is not that unusual, given that the project involved building an electrolyzer facility that could produce hydrogen locally.
By building a fueling station in Washington state, Douglas County PUD has opened up whole new areas to hydrogen vehicle owners. Previously, we’ve explored how hydrogen car owners have been largely limited to driving around California and small slices of neighboring states, in order to remain in range of the few pumps on offer in the mainland US. Now, it’s possible for drivers to enjoy driving around Washington, and possibly even small neighboring sections of Canada. This is all thanks to the new facility and the roughly 200-mile radius one can drive a Toyota Mirai before having to turn back for more gas—hydrogen gas, that is.
Douglas County hasn’t just gone with the “build it and they will come” strategy. It has also secured a handful of used Toyota Mirai lease vehicles for its own use, and the local police department has one too. It’s possible that Toyota, Hyundai, and perhaps even other automakers may look to offering their hydrogen vehicles in the state, now that there is at least a minimal amount of supporting infrastructure.
Ultimately, this is a noble project from a dedicated public utility, though one shouldn’t expect a single filling station to make a wild difference in the prospects of the hydrogen car. It will still take a great deal more investment and development to convince the average motorist to consider a fuel cell vehicle for their next car.
Image credits: Douglas County PUD, DouglasCountyPUD via YouTube screenshot, EPA via screenshot
The good news is we finally have affordable hydrogen. The bad news is you would use up half your tank just driving there from the nearest population center.
What exactly does “nine times cheaper” mean? Do you mean “one/ninth”?
Multiplication by nine is NOT the same as dividing by nine.
Good news for California Mirai owners, the resale value is probably up by 500% or more.
I love the idea of hydrogen cars, but I doubt they’ll ever be practical. Wenatchee seems like an odd place for this, also. That would involve going over the mountains for people in Western WA, which is where I’d expect people to actually buy hydrogen cars. Can a Mirai handle Snoqualmie Pass in the winter, I wonder?
As Mao would say, “let a thousand flowers bloom”. Or throw everything at the wall and see what sticks, as someone else said.
It’s a nice test project. There are a bunch of otherwise worthless cars to test with, and unanticipated consequences are of course unanticipated. Obviously it won’t scale unless one of those unanticipated things shows otherwise.
“… built its own hydrogen production facility that uses Washington State’s abundant hydroelectric power”
This seems like an egregious waste of money. Given the lack of infrastructure (and the high cost of building said infrastructure), hydrogen powered cars have less utility than EVs (i.e. they are only useful for local transportation in very specific areas). They are also more expensive to run than an EV.
Wouldn’t it be easier to skip the Rube Goldberg machinations and just use the hydroelectric power to charge EVs? Or sell the excess hydroelectric power to other electricity providers? Or use the money to subsidize purchases of home batteries to more effectively use alternative energy sources? There are so many better uses for this money than this.
This is, quite frankly, one of the stupidest ideas I have seen in a very long time. Whoever approved this should probably be fired.
It’s great the hydrogen doesn’t cost as much but still … if the costs are the same per kilometer/mile then what is the use of going through all the trouble getting a hydrogen powered car, if you can buy a Prius, or heaven forbid, an EV, which can do equal or better mileage but which can add gas around every corner or electricity outlet?
Hydrogen powered cars are a solution in search of a problem.
Hmm no. The Prius still produces CO2, while the Mirai spits water at the exhaust pipe. that is the goal here not necessarily the efficiency which also seems to match the Prius gold standard.
And the Mirai is a far nicer car to be in compared to the Prius, so this is a massive win.
That hydrogen is far from efficient. You use electricity to create hydrogen. Why not put that in a battery and then use an electric motor to use that electricity. That’s a well known and efficient process, up to 80-90% efficient. Hydrogen isn’t that efficient. The electrolysis is inefficient and then compressing it also creates a ton of wasted heat. Fuel cells aren’t efficient (60%) nor powerful. And you still need a battery in that car as well. So the tech is double complicated. You lose hydrogen if you don’t drive. The maintenance is a nightmare.
Just use a larger battery. We know by now how to make them efficient, large and without sacrificing too much space. Weight is going down. Power/volume is going up. Safety is going up. A battery and an electric motor. It is almost impossible to make an easier drivetrain for cars and trucks.
And we thought range anxiety was only applicable to EVs.
“This weird middle man of hydrogen doesn’t really make a lot of sense to run an electric car.”
It doesn’t, even though the interested parties (fossil fuel companies and car manufacturers) are trying to sell hydrogen as some clean alternative to BEVs. They’re not. Just like you mentioned, having a middle man of hydrogen doesn’t make any sort of economic sense for any source of renewable energy, as using it to charge BEVs would be much more efficient.
What hydrogen really is, is a way for fossil fuel companies to switch transportation fuel from gasoline to coal after Peak Oil has been reached, and petroleum fuel becomes more scarce and expensive. There’s centuries of coal reserves laying around buried, and the cheapest way to mass produce hydrogen fuel is not through clean energy, but by coal gasification.
I would argue that strip-mining countries like the DRC, Chile, Indonesia etc for battery chemicals is a worse proposition than refining H2 from fossil fuels. And once the hydrogen economy is up and running, there will be ways to produce it at scale in greener ways. I am continually baffled how this is not being seen as a better alternative to battery only propulsion.
The hydrogen economy, especially the pipelines and supply trucks will NEVER be up and running. It is a too costly investment. It’s billions and billions of USD and the benefits are MARGINAL or plain worse compared to EVs. Hydrogen based cars ALSO need batteries and if they want to generate a bit more power than the insignificant 180 hp of the Mirai’s fuel cell, then those batteries need to be larger, much larger.
The fuel cell ALSO uses a lot of special minerals. It is a question if there is even enough platinum for a large volume of fuel cell based hydrogen powered cars.
Strip mining isn’t great, but fossil fuel extraction isn’t neither. Think Exxon Valdez and the tons of other spills like BP’s in the Mexican Gulf.
And again ; wasting electricity from hydro to MAKE hydrogen using electrolysis is extremely inefficient compared to electricity direct into batteries. And we just need to upgrade our electricity grid instead of inventing a whole new supply network of pipes and trucks and storage tanks for hydrogen. Adding some extra electric wires is a lot of work, but very very easy to do compared to pouring billions upon billions into a hydrogen ecosystem which is already inefficient from the start.
Also don’t count those hydrogen prices will stay that low once there is proper demand.
I just wish they could do this in California where most of the hydrogen cars have been sold instead of a place where this basically benefits nobody! We desperately need regulation on hydrogen prices for those of us who were stupid enough to get trapped in this failed experiment of hydrogen . It costs me $36 a × 5 .5 to fill up which needles to say I don’t do too often as my car sits parked most of the time.
That little note about electricity being cheap in Washington… Yes. That’s why I drive an electric car. I pay 7 cents/kwh. This weird middle man of hydrogen doesn’t really make a lot of sense to run an electric car. I don’t fear range anxiety, because I’ve got a Volt baby! EREV/PHEV is a phenomenal solution for so many people, I hope to see it expand in the future.
I do actually like the idea of Hydrogen, but really only when used in an internal combustion engine, because that’s cool as fuck.
And our gas is consistently has one of the highest average prices in the country making an EV or PHEV, charged at home, an even better value.
Yep. I did the math when considering getting a Volt, it would pay for itself in approximately 5 years over continuing to drive my 22 mpg Tracker. With current fuel prices, it’ll be even less.
Hydrogen has been and will forever will be the worst energy bearer for vehicles because you lose 80% of the energy somewhere between energy generation and where the rubber meets the road. Compare this number with 20% losses for battery EVs. Practically and economically H2 continue to bind you to corporate distributors as you are today with fluctuating yet perpetually rising prices at the pump.
Hydrogen is ALL about continuing their business model, nothing else. Battery EVs are a paradigm shift, H2 is simply a different product they can sell alongside gasoline and diesel.
Hydrogen has one sterling attribute that will continue to make it a contender- energy density. Hydrogen has roughly 3 times the energy density of gasoline, and something between 2 and 3 orders of magnitude more than the best batteries.
An EV may have a better powertrain efficiency, but at the cost of far, far worse storage efficiency. All of that extra mass you have to haul around in the battery burns energy you don’t need to burn for a H2 powered vehicle.
The overall system efficiency of a vehicle is what actually matters, and for larger vehicles (trucks, boats, passenger planes) the improved energy density of H2 leaves battery storage in the dust.
H2 is awful, I have no idea where you’re getting your numbers or whether you did any calculations at all
You DO lose 80-90% from production to final point of use. Batteries will loose 15-20%. This is already taking into account EVs are heavier. EVs benefit from regen and hydrogen vehicles do not.
Electrolysis alone loses 40% (before accounting for energy lost in filtering/desalination the feed water) and then you need to compress the hydrogen for storage/transport which is another 15-20% of what’s remaining gets lost and then another further 40-70% lost in the final stage at the point of use.
A hydrogen vehicle (either combustion or fuel cell) isn’t lighter than an EV by nearly enough to account for all of these losses. In low speed use (city) regen in EV overcomes any deficit from the higher weight and in high speed use (highway) efficiency is dictated by aerodynamics and that’s a wash, meaning the hydrogen car can’t ever come close to making up the fact it is 4x less efficient in the states prior to putting energy into the car.
The article just described an example where everything lines up for end users so the numbers DO work with current existing tech (still flawed, and still a tiny niche) so this is a huge win for H2.
That’s absolutely not what it says
It is competitive against a normal hybrid but still still pale in comparison to any random EV.
4 dollars a kg is 4 dollars for 120Mj which is ~33kwh which is 12c/kwh equivalent.
This means the input cost must have been incredibly low, like 2-3cents. That’s waaaayyyy below almost everywhere.
This also means the same electricity that went to create this hydrogen if put in a regular EV would have done way more miles.
As for the grid stability thing, it’s the same argument against hydrogen, round trip efficiency of batteries are 4x better. Batteries are also much much cheaper than building a full on hydrogen electrolyzer plant and you don’t need many batteries to smoothen out grid variance.
Hydrogen is a dumb tech for energy storage. It’s an amazing rocket fuel but beyond that it’s not appropriate for transportation of any sort
I think the extremely fine details here miss the bigger picture which is achieving transportation without -or with less- CO2. That’s the point of the article; it can be done if anyone cares enough and cheap renewable power is available.
You’re conflating different things together.
You’re right that hydrogen only makes sense with a primary power source that’s green and cheap. You’re wrong that this makes hydrogen a viable choice even if the above precondition is meet.
Hydrogen is a battery in the most literal sense. You make power somewhere and then store it in a battery and use it somewhere else at a later point. Hydrogen is a BAD battery because there’s a lot of inefficiency that can’t be eliminated throughout this process. This is unlike a chemical battery where there’s very little losses during this process. The only argument against chemical batteries are the resources, difficulty, pollution, etc in creating them in the first place which IS a legitimate concern.
The fact that hydrogen is a “battery” makes analysis of hydrogen vs chemical batteries relatively easier at it would be agnostic to the type of original power source. You can effectively just compare the round trip efficiencies against whatever externalities exist in setup costs between the two alternatives. This calculus skews heavily towards chemical batteries coming on top.
You start with green electricity, hydro, nuclear, wind whatever. To put that into a chemical battery you send it down some transmission lines, which already exist, into a charger plugged into a battery. Almost no set up costs when it comes to the infrastructure. Yes you need to”make”the battery but it’s not actually THAT expensive. Compare this with what you need for hydrogen. You start with the same green power that you then use to electrolyze water.. So you need an industrial scale electrolyze plant which will also need to be a reverse osmosis plant to purify whatever water source you have, then you have hydrogen which you will need to pressurise and store (more equipment) and then transport it to points of distribution (pipes or trucks, both of which have massive downsides), then you have the issue of storing the hydrogen in the vehicle itself and turning that hydrogen back into usable power for a vehicle (fuel cell EV or ICE, either of which alone is already less efficient than the full round trip efficiency of BEV). All the while at every stage you have to deal with hydrogen leakage (H2 is the smallest molecule other than helium) and how hydrogen embrittlement affects metals AND the significant safety issues hydrogen has, something that over 70 years of experience in aerospace hasn’t “solved”.
So yes, hydrogen is a scam. It’s not about whether it can work. Of course it can work, we took men to the moon with it. The point is whether it is the best solution for the job, which it absolutely isn’t and never will be for the reasons mentioned above.
Well, I do this professionally for a living, so I suspect I do far more calculations than you.
Wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
At what scale? Because it is absolutely true for things like airliners and container ships. The performance efficiency envelope for EVs becomes more competitive at lower masses and smaller vehicle sizes, but there are many confounding factors.
You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles do not use an electric drivetrain, and do not also employ regenerative braking. AFAIK every commercially released H2 vehicle in North America does in fact have regenerative braking as a component of their electric drivetrain.
You are beating up on a straw man, with H2 vehicles being some evil conspiracy of the fossil fuel industry to keep us hooked on drilling. This is not the case- hydrogen is just an alternate method of energy storage for an electric drivetrain, and the tradeoffs for the efficiency of the H2 supply chain must be balanced against the tradeoffs of the greatly increased mass of a pure BEV.
At this exact moment is the equation in favor of H2 vs batteries for passenger vehicles? Almost certainly not. But it is for a number of larger vehicles, and technology from those implementations is trickling down.
Dude you can’t just say wrong without providing sources
https://h2sciencecoalition.com/blog/can-electrolysers-of-the-future-solve-hydrogens-efficiency-problem/#:~:text=Electrolysis%20operating%20at%2070%25%20Lower,and%20efficiency%20losses%20over%20time.
Electrolysis @70%
Compression @ 90%
Final point of use @ 60%
That’s 37% before taking things like transport, energy needed for filtering the feed water, etc into account. The simply no way you’re getting close to batteries which at worst are like 80% from source to tires.
Sure technically you can have a small battery to regen in a fcv but it’s completely not possible on hydrogen ICE.
I agree EVs make more sense for smaller cars vs bigger trucks (hence why that semi so doesn’t exist)
As for planes and ships, neither hydrogen nor EVs make sense for entirely different yet kinda similar reasons. Mass energy density vs volumetric energy density is a bitch.
Electric airliners are never going to work because they’ll weigh too much to get anywhere and hydrogen airliners will not make sense because hydrogen takes up too much space. You’ll need to completely change how planes are designed to even begin to explore this and there’s massive downside to this with regards to safety and operations. Airliners take off with something like 1/3 to 1/2 of their weight as fuel. If that fuel was hydrogen it might weigh 1/3 as much but it would take up 50x as much space AT Best. In reality it would take up so much more because you’ll have to store the hydrogen pressurized and thus you’ll run into packing efficiency losses since every pressure vessel will be a cylinder. Not to mention that one you factor in the weight of the storage pressure vessel the weight benefit of hydrogen disappears like instantly.
As for ships, weight is far less of a concern than it would be on planes but volume certainly Is a concern. Hydrogen is extremely low density even in pressurized or liquid form. Look at LNG carriers. LNG is roughly equivalent in energy density both volumetric and mass density as kerosene. By roughly I mean it might be 20% either side compared to kerosene. Look at an LNG carrier and you’ll see just a giant pressure vessel with a ship built around it. Those pressure vessels are built to withstand like 10bar of pressure, hydrogen needs to be stored at much higher pressure to have anything remotely resembling a useful amount of energy density…..and it still wouldn’t be enough. Hydrogen at 250 bar you have 17kg/cubic meter vs LNG of 500kg/cubic meter. Hydrogen is 3x as energy dense by mass but 30x less mass by volume. So it’s 10x less energy dense by volume. This makes shipping hydrogen anywhere instantly non economical.
Well what about just using it as fuel. A 20,000TEU ship uses about 250 tons of fuel a day and a cross ocean voyage takes like 2 weeks. That’s 3750 tonnes of bunker oil or 1250 tonnes of hydrogen equivalent (hydrogen being 3x as much entry by mass). 1250 tonnes of hydrogen is 73000 cubic meters which is the equaled of 2000 TEU of volume. So 10% of the cargo space would be needed for fuel assuming you can store hydrogen in rectangular prisms (you can’t) so factoring in pressure vessels and packing inefficiencies it’s more like 15 or 20% of the cargo space for fuel. That’s not an immediate killer but it’s not”good”.
At least you agree it doesn’t make sense for passenger vehicles. I have no idea what applications where hydrogen would make sense. I’m not asking where it’s used, I’m asking where it would be the best solution. For any application to reasonably claim this you would need a lot of stars to align for it to make sense.
You need an application where”space”basically isn’t important but hauling load/capacity wrt weight/mass is.
You need the original energy source to be green
The application almost certainly cannot be for general public because safety issues.
Loads of others but it’s 5am and I’m sleepy so I’m gonna leave it here
Hydrogen for transport is a fools errand when manufacturing steel, fertilizer etc uses a LOT of hydrogen. Those manufacturers also have no other option, it’s hydrogen or nothing.
So IMHO it makes a lot more sense to move these hydrogen generating station to the closest practical points nearest the biggest industrial consumers of hydrogen where they can still be powered by cheap surplus electricity from wherever and minimize the trucking (preferably with trucks that run on that hydrogen) needed to get that hydrogen to customers who now use hydrogen made from natural gas. Using this hydrogen to fill up cars is a complete waste of that valuable resource which I suspect is the actual goal.
The problem is those customers already have the equipment to turn the natural gas into hydrogen. Hydrogen deliveries by truck would have to be cheaper than the natural gas deliveries by pipeline that they are already buying. Never going to happen.
Regulation or taxes could make that happen.
Deregulation so a hydrogen pipeline could get built would also help
A hydrogen pipeline! Now there’s an engineering challenge. Nothing leaks like H2 does.
Good thing chemical engineers are smart. There are quite a few companies selling certified pipe, mostly in Europe. Google SoluForce Hydrogen Tight to see a picture. Hydrogen pipes need layers like an onion.
Sounds expensive.
Two layers of plastic pipe, a foil layer, and a woven fiber layer is still mostly plastic. Cheaper than a steel pipe.
Cheaper=/=no cost. You’re still talking about a whole new infrastructure including all the non material costs involved.
It’s not just the pipe, it’s the joints. Ask NASA about fueling a hydrolox rocket. Also, if there is a leak, it’s flammable across a huge range of concentrations and the flames are invisible. It’s a long way from natural gas. Sure, you can get a demo pipeline working when it’s all fresh and new. But stretch one across a couple of states and then have it age for a few decades? That’ll be spicy.
One of the biggest complaints about EV adoption is the lack of charging infrastructure. And that infrastructure is actually already in place, it’s just missing end points. There is NO H2 infrastructure. Deregulation will not magic it into existence.
Current pipes can be retrofitted with a sleeve insert that gets pulled through. Always remember to wear a rubber.
What current pipes? Unless the places that produce and use hydrogen are the same that produce and use natural gas you still need new pipes.
Sleeve inserts would only be for the big transmission pipes. The only customer that needs that level of service is the power plant, and they would need to be connected to a salt dome storing hydrogen that currently stores natural gas. So you are correct.
Maybe an argument could be made for regional transmission because a really long pipe is also a really big storage container. But natural gas pipelines are currently fully booked because there are not enough, so there are definitely not going to be less of them to make room for hydrogen.
Those manufacturers do have other options. Electric reduction of steel is becoming a thing, and there are lab scale demonstrations of Haber alternatives that operate at room temperature and pressure.
“Electric reduction of steel is becoming a thing”
Perhaps. But that would mean the need shifts from hydrogen to the electricity used to make that hydrogen. So either you have less hydrogen for transport or less electricity to make hydrogen for transport.
“there are lab scale demonstrations of Haber alternatives that operate at room temperature and pressure.”
Low temperature and pressure do not negate the chemical need for hydrogen to make ammonia from nitrogen:
https://rmi.org/low-carbon-ammonia-technology-blue-green-and-beyond/
Also lab scale demonstrations =/= practical, industrial scale solutions. If they were we’d all have been living cancer free lives while flying around in cars powered by nuclear fusion decades ago.
BostonMetal has a pilot plant is building an industrial size molten oxide electrolysis machine. This does not need hydrogen at all. I am hopeful for this technology because it can use lower grade ores, like tailings from copper production that still contain iron.
Making exotic alloys or steel from waste ore is economically viable currently. Making steel from good ore is decades away. The energy costs are massive and the machine can not turn off so it is a constant load. Unless you are building this right next to a hydroelectric generator like they are doing in Brazil it is not going to be profitable. Hydrogen steel production is more flexible because the hydrogen can be stored in a buffer tank.
Sounds like a job for atomic power.
Yes! Probably could use some waste heat to increase the efficiency, but lets ignore that and do some math to find out how big of a reactor to build. Let us assume that a new steel plant is 3 million tons of year, and it takes 4 MWh per ton according to the company, so 12 TWh per year. Nuclear reactors make about 8 TWh per year including refueling downtime per GW capacity. So we are going to need 2 GW of them, but 500 MW can be sold to the grid.
It could work, but a DRI furnace with carbon capture would be cheaper and easier to build.
Unfortunately NIMBYs and the FF industry will make sure that won’t happen here. Maybe it will in China, maybe Korea, maybe India, maybe even Russia or Japan but not here.
(My money’s on China:)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_production
South Korea has a 5 blast furnace complex with total production of 23 million tons per year. It would take 23 of their 26 current reactors just to replace this. Better start building.
China already has carbon capture demonstration plants from the US company LanzaTech at some steel production. This is biological based carbon capture where the engineered microbe consumes CO, CO2 and H2 and produces a product. The product can be ethanol, plastic precursor, or protein.
DRI steel uses both CO and H2 as reactants. To make from natural gas requires pure O2, with huge capital costs for air distillation equipment. Syngas can also be created with low grade coal and a Siemens gasifier. The LanzaTech system basically goes on the end and eats any of the gas that goes through and does not react. Extra H2 can be fed to the microbes which makes them utilize more CO2, so electricity based H2 production could be added in the future when financial conditions allow without actually changing anything to the main process.
“This is biological based carbon capture where the engineered microbe consumes CO, CO2 and H2 and produces a product. The product can be ethanol, plastic precursor, or protein.”
Or you could grow plants to capture CO2 to make ethanol, building materials, medicines, food, plastics (one of my favorite carpet fibers polytrimethylene terephthalate aka Triexta is made from corn), and use the brewers/distillers grains left over from ethanol production as protein rich animal feed.
The nice thing about plants is they make their own hydrogen and produce O2 as a waste product from water using solar power via self assembling solar panels.
Syngas fermentation also produces a protein rich byproduct. It is the dead microbe cells, so it is very similar to distillers grain which has a bunch of dead yeast cells. Pile of mush is basically the same if it came from yeast or bacteria fermentation.
I definitely like greenhouse CO2 additions. There are limits to how much you can add and how big a greenhouse can be next to a source. At some point it would need a pipeline connecting to dozens of greenhouses.
I do not think it has to be an either/or choice. The syngas fermentation is not going to consume all of the CO2, just the CO that it uses as an energy source. Pump the gas into the greenhouse after it bubbles through the syngas fermenter, and now the utilization rate is even higher.
“It is the dead microbe cells, so it is very similar to distillers grain which has a bunch of dead yeast cells.”
I don’t come from the land down under but I’ll still take mine as a Vegimite sandwich, thanks.
“I do not think it has to be an either/or choice.”
It does if hydrogen is a feedstock. Then its either spend the energy and money to generate and transport that hydrogen or just go about business as usual planting seeds.
I think if you choose protein as the product, extraction is a lot easier because there mass percentage is so much higher and there are fewer bad flavors that need to be removed. If properly processed it could make a protein drink that tasted better than whey. If it was bacteria that made ethanol first it would cost a lot more to reach human consumption quality.
Hydrogen is an optional feedstock for capturing CO2 using syngas fermentation. CO2 electrolyzers can use electricity to first convert to CO before the microbes eat it.
“If it was bacteria that made ethanol first it would cost a lot more to reach human consumption quality.”
Would it though? It’s not rocket science, nor brain surgery.
Purifying toxic swill into human grade moonshine has been done for thousands of years using repurposed trash and wild microbes by people with no formal education whatsoever. I imagine industrial scientists and engineers using modern equipment could clean up such swill much more effectively without costing more.
“Hydrogen is an optional feedstock for capturing CO2 using syngas fermentation. CO2 electrolyzers can use electricity to first convert to CO before the microbes eat it.”
So about that:
“The main products of syngas fermentation include ethanol, butanol, acetic acid, butyric acid, and methane. Certain industrial processes, such as petroleum refining, steel milling, and methods for producing carbon black, coke, ammonia, and methanol, discharge enormous amounts of waste gases containing mainly CO and H2 into the atmosphere either directly or through combustion. Biocatalysts can be exploited to convert these waste gases to chemicals and fuels as, for example, ethanol.
In addition, incorporating nanoparticles has been demonstrated to improve gas-liquid fluid transfer during syngas fermentation.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngas_fermentation
It seems to me that using hydrogen makes sense ONLY if it’s already there as a waste product from a different process and only if its not economically feasible to capture it and sell it as a product for a different hydrogen dependent industrial process.
“Would it though? It’s not rocket science, nor brain surgery.”
I was talking about eating the leftovers. Making food from distillers waste is hard. Making human consumption grade vodka is easier than fuel, which needs a membrane to get the last 2% of water out of.
“It seems to me that using hydrogen makes sense ONLY if it’s already there as a waste product from a different process”
Yes exactly. Once that exists, it makes sense to add off-grid solar PV to an existing waste stream. Possibly use the O2 stream as well to make even more syngas.
“Making food from distillers waste is hard”
Is it? I thought all you needed to do was scrape the gunk out of the barrel, add salt and call it Marmite. Or add it to the feed food producing animals. I don’t think either of those are particularly hard things to do.
“Making human consumption grade vodka is easier than fuel, which needs a membrane to get the last 2% of water out of.”
You could do that. Or use a drying agent. Either way it’s really no big deal.
“Once that exists, it makes sense to add off-grid solar PV to an existing waste stream. Possibly use the O2 stream as well to make even more syngas.”
That would depend on demand. It might make more sense to forego the syngas altogether and just use that high value electricity to keep refrigerators running.
Adding a few MW of off-grid solar on a corner of the property at an existing industrial facility barely requires pulling permits. To connect to the grid is going to require a significant payment to the power company and a long wait while they get around to it. Panel prices are so low now that these other costs are significant drivers of total project cost. This also gets around any potential limits for how much solar the utility allows to be connected to the grid.
And yes. Internal electricity consumption would be met first before the electrolyzer turns on.
If making hydrogen makes the most economic, ecological and technical sense then sure, go for it.
If it makes more sense to sell surplus power to the community and buy extra power as needed from the grid. do that instead.
If it makes more sense to buffer power surpluses and deficits with an onsite battery do that.
Oh this is in Wenatchee? That makes the argument for hydrogen even dumber.
Wenatchee’s electricity rates are so low that people have been using all electric heat for their homes there for a long time. Not a lot of places in the U.S. that can say that who also see winters. Therefore, EVs in the area would make loads more sense.
That’s why the transit agency in Wenatchee started looking at EV buses a while ago and has been running BYDs with high powered wireless chargers (I think up to 300kW …WIRELESSLY).
Fucking H2 fans need to stick with the industries that make sense for the fuel, and it ain’t passcar.
I was coming here to say the same thing. Cheap hydro, wind, and solar power, relatively remote location, and seemingly not attempting to coordinate with other areas to ensure people have enough range to take their cars across the mountains without worry.
But they get to be the first ones to implement a failing tech in the state!
I work as an engineer in fleet operations for a government entity and this vibe is so familiar I can practically feel the municipal pride from here.
I just have a hard time understanding how someone can be so proud of such massive gov’t waste.
Have you met many politicians?
You seem to be responding to me, but I don’t understand your statement.
One big thing to note is that while the US national average may be $3.22 gal in Washington it is about a $1 gal more. In Wenatchee in particular the best current price is $4.09 at Costco and many stations are $4.29. That means you are getting about 13.5 mi/$ in the Prius
Per the article that low price is due to the low electric rates in the area. The avg residential electric rates in the area are $.0322 per KWh. So the Busy Forx would be significantly cheaper than either, with about 110 mi/$, at least if charged at home.
Why.
Honorable mention for title graphic: “It’s a Miraicle”
I naturally read this as DC, which would have made perfect sense to me considering the pork and corruption there. Apologies to our Seattliens, Tacomacdaddies and Spokaniacs*, but the designator “…State” is still required in most contexts.
*Those are perfectly cromulent monikers
“According to the utility, electricity makes up 80% of the input costs of hydrogen production. Thus, a cheap source of power means cheap hydrogen. “
It would make more sense to use that cheap power for BEVs.
And for handling surplus power, it would make more sense and be more efficient to store the surplus power in a utility-grade battery bank
Yebut, but, Chairman Toyoda’s ego.
Or just keep more water behind the damn dam until demand goes up.
Utility-grade battery banks are pretty dang new, and usually don’t have a ton of capacity – we’re talking like half a day or so.
I always thought the Stranded Wind Initiative had a good idea: use cheap renewable energy to electrolytically produce ammonia, which you can feed into the existing fertilizer pipeline network or use as carbon-free fuel.
I’d be very curious to see a comparison between battery and hydrogen storage. Obviously the batteries will be more efficient, but will also require a ton of raw materials to build enough batteries, and the batteries have a finite lifespan and will need to be replaced. However, my understanding is that hydrogen tanks also have a finite lifespan, so that may not be much of an advantage.
Honestly, excess power storage is one of the few places I’ve ever thought hydrogen might make sense, but even then I’m not sure if the economics work out.
Yes, this. Would you rather shunt surplus solar PV electricity to ground, or use it to generate H2?
There are other options. I’d rather pump water uphill or just let less out of the dam.
A pretty accurate first estimate of the relative efficiency of the two approaches for energy storage is their cost. Cheapest cost for energy storage is probably a pump at the foot of the dam that pushes water back in the reservoir.
Generally speaking the round trip efficiency of hydrogen energy storage is about 40% vs 85-90% for battery storage. It’s worth remembering that hydro is also a great way to store massive amounts of energy so Wenatchee is already a short term battery/grid buffer solution.
So, now California birders in need of a new hobby can add Mirai diaspora spotting to their activities.
Haven’t they given up on this yet? Honda, Toyota and Hyundai have been trying to sell this technology for years and apparently no one (or virtually no one) is interested. Shell just closed all their stations in CA last year because of ‘market influences’, read: no one was using them.
I think the market has spoken on this one.
It ain’t over until Toyota’s C-suite stop stomping their widdle feetsies and insisting it’s still the cat’s pajamas and EVs are for LOO-sers.
(which they might’ve, I don’t necessarily see everything in the ol’ news feed.)
“If you happened to own a Toyota Mirai or other hydrogen vehicle in Washington state, you’re cheering right now. Not just because you can finally refuel your car, but because you can do it at the low, low price of just four dollars per kilogram.”
Or maybe just if you live in Wenatchee.
It’s somewhat telling that the actual address of the filling station isn’t being publicized. Not even the Douglas County PUD’s “Electric Vehicle Charging and Hydrogen Fueling” page lists the address of the hydrogen station.
Yeah, really, its one single station in a fairly rural county in the middle of the state, it’s hardly anything that would benefit the vast majority of the people in Washington
Hell, even within Douglas County – the county itself is 1850 square miles, its got to be like 2 hours to drive end to end, this is only relevant to people in the immediate proximity of that station
Reading between the lines it appears to be located with their charging stations near on the PUD grounds.
But hey no need to advertise the location since there is only one vehicle in the area that can use it, the Toyota dealer’s courtesy car. Chances are if you are buying a H2 vehicle in the area it would be at that Toyota dealer who should of course inform you of the only location you can fill the vehicle w/o actually have to have the vehicle towed somewhere. Of course I’m betting the PUD will get a few Miraris for themselves.
How far away is the nearest California station? Does it make a west coast road trip possible even if you don’t have the spare range to leave I-5 through the entire state of Oregon?
About 800 miles to Truckee, CA which is the northernmost station in CA.
So, way too far.
Probably need to just make this announcement on Bring A Trailer.
I wonder if you can fill up at a welding supply or Airgas plant?
Nope, impossible
Some industrious soul could make 10s of dollars picking up cheap Mirais and Nexos that end up in weird parts of the county and importing them into central Washington.
We also have second most expensive gas prices in the US, but at least we got this going for us. Which is nice.