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Hill- that picture is a photo of poor coal combustion waste practices, but Japan is not planning to do combustion, and they are probably not going to mismanage the waste

 

i don't know 1 way or the other - but articles state japan's plans are to do the coal reforming/hydrogen while still in Australia - so whether or not good (expensive) environmental practices are incorporated - most likely it'll be up to the aussies ... not sure how well (or not) aussies deal
w/ their coal ash.
.

 

Japan and Toyota's management of it means leaving it in Australia, and they are willing to pay more to ship just the hydrogen for this.

Gasification to hydrogen and burning that will reduce pollutants from combustion, but the sulfur, mercury, and other elements in the coal that make up fly ash don't just disappear. It also still produces CO2 that needs to be addressed.

 

I live in a county (Lee in NC) that is accepting coal ash from power plants hundreds of miles away. Why here? Politics. Litigation? Yes. Thousands of trucks driving the streets and highways. Heavily laden. Slow. Dangerous on the road. Poorly covered. Don't get in their slipstream.

Can the county government do anything about it? No. The gerrymandered state legislature has seen to that.

They will dump into an unused mine using a mining permit. Will they sell anything from that mine or move it offsite? No. So the litigation is over whether it is a mine or a dump.

Will the state monitor effectively? No. The departments involved are either led by pro-mining people or have had their budgets drastically cut.

Why does it need to be moved? Years of neglect where it is. Spills during big rains. Groundwater contamination.

 

Sounds odd - we can't buy Hydrogen here (TOYOTA brought a couple of MIRAI here to show-off, but only had a limited towed source of Hydrogen - only one outlet in Canberra they said.

But - I can't imagine that Hydrogen isn't the easiest commodity to transport over the high seas - I have visions of Hindenburg (no, I'm not that old!!).

 

No its not, but it let's Japan keep the carbon emissions for making the hydrogen out of their totals.

 

Gasification is fundamentally cleaner technology than burning of coal, at significant expense. So the contaminants are handled more effectively (eg; elemental sulfur recovered as a useful product and not as a scrubber sludge).

I agree that gasification and H2 transport from Australia seems to be an unlikely short term scenario, except maybe on a limited trial basis.

 

Plan being addressed here is using lignite, which is just a step above peat in the scale of coal quality. Though maybe its high water content makes it better for reformation.

"Called the Kawasaki Hydrogen Road, the plan is to produce hydrogen from mined brown coal and send it to Japan in custom-made ships."
- Japanese to use Latrobe brown coal to produce green hydrogen | Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute

The bolded part makes this more than a limited trial basis. Now, they will be sequestering the CO2, which may be more difficult to do in Japan if there isn't access to the right geological formations. The efforts taken will make this green hydrogen expensive in Japan, and likely would not be viable for other markets.

The hydrogen will also be used for power generation in Japan. Though I wonder how the costs would compare to capturing the CO2 from the existing NG plant, and shipping it to Australia if need be.
Kawasaki Industries Wants to Make Dirty Lignite Coal Useful and Clean | AIChE

 

There is another proposal floating around "Hydrogen can serve as an “energy vector” to transport solar photovoltaic energy from the Pilbara to the fuel tank of a hydrogen-powered car on the streets of Tokyo" - that was mid-last year.

 

That's electrolysis powered by PV. Factoring in the energy to compress to hydrogen for the car, you get far more distance simply charging a plug in with that PV energy.

I am not against FCEV's, just hydrogen. Get them powered by a liquid fuel, and they could be a replacement for the ICE in a range extended plug in.

 

I think the intent is to have SOLAR / WIND farms here in Australia, produce Hydrogen by, I assume electrolysis, and ship it to Japan.

I've got PV on my roof which, if I had a PHEV or EV, I'd just charge direct from the PV.

 

That is inefficient in terms of energy, but Japan may not have the required space for the necessary solar and wind.

Producing hydrogen with electrolysis is an option for storing renewing electric produced during peak production. It can then be burned, with or without NG, in a turbine later, or even in a fuel cell. We could also make methane or oil with the excess renewables.

Hydrogen for cars just has many hurdles to make it feasible in much of the world. It might work for Japan, but Toyota and Honda are pushing it hard elsewhere as a means to make it cheaper for Japan.

 

Oh. Barnaby JOYCE. Never mind.