Originally Posted By: kschachn
It's also going to take a fair amount of energy just to compress the gas to that pressure.
But once again, what's the favorable thermodynamic cycle being used to produce the hydrogen? If it's from natural gas, why not use the methane directly?
Where I work, we get the majority of our hydrogen feedstock as a byproduct from neighboring bleach and chlorine producing plants. We clean it up, compress the heck out of it and cool it to the point it's a liquid at near absolute zero.
The rest we produce onsite from (as you say), extracting it from natural gas.
The H2 processes alone consume about 30+ megawatts of electricity, plus the cost of feestock and natural gas are staggering.
We also had some small onsite pilot projects years back, for gas H2 refilling stations for fuel cell vehicles. They basically used water and electrolysis to 'produce' H2. Obviously the volume is extremely low, so the system would run and charge a receiver bank. Again, not all the cost effective.
Pretty much all the liquid H2 produced is used in industrial processes. We cant make it fast enough and it's been this way since 1980. Product is basically sold out years in advance.