Switching to hydrogen could cause “not negligible” global warming – does Watt have anything to say about this?

Article by Eric Worrell

Leaks in hydrogen storage and pipelines will apparently slow the destruction of methane in the atmosphere.

New climate chemistry model finds 'non-negligible' impact of potential hydrogen fuel leak

Author: Nancy W. Stauffer, MIT

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However, while burning hydrogen does not emit greenhouse gases, any leakage of hydrogen from pipelines, storage or refueling facilities may indirectly contribute to climate change by affecting other greenhouse gas compounds, including tropospheric ozone and methane, with methane being the main impact Influence. A widely cited 2022 modeling study analyzed the effects of hydrogen on chemical compounds in the atmosphere, concluding that these climate impacts could be considerable.

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Regardless of the process used to create hydrogen, the fuel itself threatens the climate. For widespread use, hydrogen needs to be transported, distributed and stored – in short, there will be lots of opportunities for leaks.

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This feedback works like this: As the hydrogen reduces the OH concentration, the purification rate of methane slows down, so the methane concentration increases. However, methane undergoes chemical reactions to produce new OH radicals.

“So the methane produced can make more OH detergent,” Chen said. “There's a small counter-effect. The methane indirectly helps create substances that eliminate the methane.

This is the key difference between the 66-formula model and the 4-formula model. “The simple model uses a constant value for OH production, so it misses critical OH production feedback,” she said

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Learn more: https://phys.org/news/2024-12-climate-chemistry-negligible-impacts-pottial.html

reference research;

The Chemistry of Hydrogen’s Global Warming Potential

Candice Chan*Susan Solomonkeystone

• Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

Hydrogen (H₂) is considered a promising fuel to help achieve net-zero carbon emissions targets. Although hydrogen itself is not a greenhouse gas, leakage of hydrogen fuel can cause indirect warming due to its effects on methane, tropospheric ozone, and stratospheric water vapor, with the methane term dominating the effects. Some studies consider using simple four-equation box models to explore the climate impacts of hydrogen fuel use relative to methane leakage, while others employ more detailed global photochemical models. Here, we use a comprehensive photochemical box model containing 66 reactions to show and quantify how a similar four-equation system is missing critical OH feedback, causing it to overestimate the time-integrated response of methane to hydrogen pulses by more than 100%. Based on the 66 reaction model and the following information, we estimate that the global warming potential (GWP) of hydrogen relative to carbon dioxide is 28−11+18 over a 20-year time horizon and 10 over a 100-year time horizon. −4+7. GWP provides a measure of the relative global warming impact of a gas emission, compared to a selected reference gas per unit emission mass. And carbon monoxide₂ General selection for reference, any gas can be used. We introduce the GWP of H₂ Use CH₄ For reference, since this choice removes some of the uncertainty common to H and H₂ and CH₄. GWP of H₂ Relative to CH₄ Over the 15+ year time horizon, the fraction of fossil fuel sources is 0.35−0.06+0.13; in other words, we find equivalent emissions relative to fossil CH₄hydrogen emissions have about three times less impact on the climate. These global warming potentials emphasize that hydrogen leaks do contribute to climate change and underscore the importance of limiting hydrogen and methane leaks if global net-zero greenhouse gas emissions are to be achieved by 2050.

Learn more: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/energy-research/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2024.1463450/full

Good luck stopping the hydrogen leak. Hydrogen is actually the most leaky substance on Earth. Hydrogen molecules are so small that they can slip through cracks and no other substance can escape. You can't even reliably add an odorant to hydrogen to make a leak more obvious – the smelly chemicals added to most gases to provide early warning of a leak get trapped in the pipes, and larger odorant molecules can't get through the pipes The pores allow hydrogen gas to pass freely.

Of course, hydrogen leaks are a major safety hazard. When a large amount of hydrogen leaks out, it bursts into flames almost immediately. While completely deadly, this fire is nearly invisible because the hydrogen in the free air burns so hot that most of the energy is radiated in the form of light blue, purple, and ultraviolet light.

In the industrial world, there's a reason you need a special license to handle industrial hydrogen – handling bulk hydrogen is very dangerous.

What can I say? Are there any “green” solutions that would not cause a humanitarian or environmental disaster at scale? This latest discovery is further evidence that hydrogen is another green non-solution.

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