New California Hydrogen Fuel Plant Will Use Wood Waste
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Hydrogen Fuel News.
- It is being developed by a company called Mote.
- They are spending $100 million on the development.
- The plant will be built at Bakersfield in California.
The Mote web site is worth a look.
It explains their process with a good graphic.
- Wood waste is gasified and processed, so that the carbon dioxide and hydrogen are separated.
- The hydrogen is used as normal.
- The carbon dioxide is stored.
The company claims the process is carbon negative.
They also give figures for their first facility.
- It will remove 150,000 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere every year.
- It will produce twenty tonnes of hydrogen per day.
Fluor, who are one of the United States largest construction companies are involved.
Conclusion
In Can The UK Have A Capacity To Create Five GW Of Green Hydrogen?, I said the following.
Ryze Hydrogen are building the Herne Bay electrolyser.
- It will consume 23 MW of solar and wind power.
- It will produce ten tonnes of hydrogen per day.
The electrolyser will consume 552 MWh to produce ten tonnes of hydrogen, so creating one tonne of hydrogen needs 55.2 MWh of electricity.
This would mean that Mote’s Bakersfield plant is twice the size in terms of hydrogen production, than the electrolyser at Herne Bay.
Looking up Bakersfield on Wikipedia, it appears that there is a lot of agriculture in the area and it ranks in the top five in the States.
I’d like to learn more about this company and their method of hydrogen production.
Does it count as green hydrogen, as it appears the carbon dioxide is stored.
Given the agriculture in the area, could the carbon dioxide be fed to plants growing in greenhouses.
The Anonymous Widower 
Am I right in assuming Syngas, that is synthesis gas, the gas mixture that is the product of gasification of biomass can be split into the intermediates of hydrogen along with, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide?
If so there’s a ready made supply of material from the railroads of North America, the old ties or sleepers as we call them.
I know that they are nasty creosote soaked lumps of wood but apparently Canadian Pacific has at least a million that it needs to replace and when you look at the state most of the Class 2 and 3 railroads along with the abandoned sections in North America there must be a good 15-20 million wooden ties – and I’m not even thinking of the stretches of Class 1 that are still to be upgraded. Seeing as many haven’t been replaced for at least a century it would be a good opportunity to renew infrastructure while saving the forests. Who knows you might even be able to use the carbon resource as a means of producing an innovative material for new sleepers or some other rail requirement.
Comment by fammorris | December 23, 2021 |
Reminded me of a tongue twister
How much wood could a wood-chuck chuck if a wood-chuck could chuck wood
A wood chuck is a burrowing North American rodent of the family Sciuridae, also known as a groundhog (also relevant for North American weather folklore foretelling the end of winter)
Comment by MilesT | December 24, 2021 |