Hydrogen as Fuel? An Italian Pasta Factory Shows How It Could Work
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/business/hydrogen-fuel-climate-change.html
Source: By Stanley Reed, The New York Times.
Excerpt: A producer of orecchiette and paccheri is using the potentially clean energy source in a trial. [Image caption: Tubes containing a mixture of hydrogen and natural gas at Contursi Terme, Italy. The fuel produces fewer carbon emissions than natural gas alone.] CONTURSI TERME, Italy — In the hills near Naples, something unusual was taking place at a pasta factory one day in February. In a nearby olive grove, engineers in safety gear had hooked up tanks of a hydrogen and natural gas mixture to an existing gas line. It fed the boiler that provided the heat to dry and sterilize the noodles being produced. ...because hydrogen fuel is free of emissions, the operation was sending less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than one using just natural gas, an emitter. Mixing hydrogen and pasta-making is a gambit in a multifaceted campaign by Marco Alverà, the chief executive of Snam, an operator of natural gas networks in Italy and across Europe. Mr. Alverà, who took the job in 2016, is trying to keep his company on the right side of growing pressures, especially in Europe, for energy companies to change their business strategies to tackle climate change. ...Mr. Alverà has embraced hydrogen as a clean substitute for natural gas. ...It is emissions-free and, he hopes, can be carried in Snam’s existing 25,000-mile web of transmission lines. When used as a fuel, hydrogen’s only byproduct is water. ...There are clean ways to make hydrogen, with renewable energy — but then why not just use those clean energy sources as fuel on their own? The answer is storage. Excess renewable energy from wind and sun is often wasted. Using it to create hydrogen, which can be saved for later, is like having a large, relatively cheap battery, advocates say. ...“Pure battery trucks are good for up to about 250 miles,” said Dale Prows, head of hydrogen supply at Nikola. To go farther, he said, batteries must be so large and expensive that it makes more sense to run the truck off hydrogen, which is lighter and requires less space. Essentially, hydrogen vehicles are electric models that obtain power through a chemical reaction in their fuel cells....
Source: By Stanley Reed, The New York Times.
Excerpt: A producer of orecchiette and paccheri is using the potentially clean energy source in a trial. [Image caption: Tubes containing a mixture of hydrogen and natural gas at Contursi Terme, Italy. The fuel produces fewer carbon emissions than natural gas alone.] CONTURSI TERME, Italy — In the hills near Naples, something unusual was taking place at a pasta factory one day in February. In a nearby olive grove, engineers in safety gear had hooked up tanks of a hydrogen and natural gas mixture to an existing gas line. It fed the boiler that provided the heat to dry and sterilize the noodles being produced. ...because hydrogen fuel is free of emissions, the operation was sending less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than one using just natural gas, an emitter. Mixing hydrogen and pasta-making is a gambit in a multifaceted campaign by Marco Alverà, the chief executive of Snam, an operator of natural gas networks in Italy and across Europe. Mr. Alverà, who took the job in 2016, is trying to keep his company on the right side of growing pressures, especially in Europe, for energy companies to change their business strategies to tackle climate change. ...Mr. Alverà has embraced hydrogen as a clean substitute for natural gas. ...It is emissions-free and, he hopes, can be carried in Snam’s existing 25,000-mile web of transmission lines. When used as a fuel, hydrogen’s only byproduct is water. ...There are clean ways to make hydrogen, with renewable energy — but then why not just use those clean energy sources as fuel on their own? The answer is storage. Excess renewable energy from wind and sun is often wasted. Using it to create hydrogen, which can be saved for later, is like having a large, relatively cheap battery, advocates say. ...“Pure battery trucks are good for up to about 250 miles,” said Dale Prows, head of hydrogen supply at Nikola. To go farther, he said, batteries must be so large and expensive that it makes more sense to run the truck off hydrogen, which is lighter and requires less space. Essentially, hydrogen vehicles are electric models that obtain power through a chemical reaction in their fuel cells....