New Nevada hydrogen fuel plant to begin operations in early 2022
May 24, 2021The facility will provide H2 for FCVs and will support the zero-emission transportation mix.
International industrial gas company Air Liquide (EPA stock symbol AI) now expects that its new Nevada hydrogen fuel plant in North Las Vegas construction will be completed by November 2021.
This new plant will be constructed specifically for serving the H2 transportation fuel market.
“[Hydrogen production] is very much built around the industrial use of hydrogen: things like refineries, electronics, agricultural products and not really as an energy vector or transportation fuel,” explained Air Liquide director and advocate for hydrogen energy Dave Edwards. “The project in Nevada is our first large-scale investment specifically for these new markets in the US. This hydrogen is not for the traditional industrial markets, but rather for the mobility and transportation fuel market that is mostly on the west coast.”
If the Nevada hydrogen fuel plant’s construction is completed as expected in November, it will be slated to begin operations in early 2022. At that time, it will start H2 production to be used as fuel for both light-duty and heavy-duty transportation sector vehicles.
The Nevada hydrogen fuel plant will be powered by renewable natural gas to produce blue H2.
“Even though hydrogen as a fuel is considerably better than gasoline or diesel, [its production process] still has an environmental footprint that needs to be addressed,” explained Edwards. “Our first investment in North Las Vegas is to use similar technology, but we have the ability to displace the natural gas in the process with renewable natural gas and reduce the carbon footprint of our feedstock.”
Among the renewable natural gas sources that Air Liquide intends to use as its plant’s fuel sources include landfill gas, biogas, and waste-water treatment gas. In this way, while the H2 production won’t be emissions-free, it will still help to considerably reduce the carbon footprint, with the goal of being able to achieve a net negative carbon footprint over the lifetime of the facility.
The goal of the Nevada hydrogen fuel plant is to help to fill the expected H2 supply shortage that is occurring as California pushes for the use of hydrogen-powered transportation vehicle fleets.
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These articles about the production of hydrogen initially give an inner sense of mild excitement-in -anticipation up until I get to the juncture describing how the stuff will be sourced then, the anticlimax of learning that it’ll be stripped from natural gas.
Get back to us all when electrolysers are hitting 90% efficiency and then there’ll be more enthusiasm.
‘Bout-TIME!
Looks like the Petro folks have really good lobbyists. Since the fuel cost for PV is zero and wind is just turbine O&M, electrolyzer efficiency is rather a false flag. Storage is the goal. Anytime the delta between “Peak” & “Off Peak” rates is over 3/1, renewable folks can come out ahead even with today’s electrolyzer tech. P2G round trip efficiencies are right now using existing HRSG’s are about 40%. Peak vs. Off Peak normally runs 5x to 30x. The big “air gap” here is that H2 storage & blending is deliberately ignored, sidelined & blocked. The Pathfinder project has been on hold over 8 years.Originally a multi-thousand Megawatthour CAES energy storage design, they twigged to the fact that compressed H2 does everything compressed air does and is combustible out the other end. Or a great feedstock for a Utility-grade fuel cell power station. “It’s hard to get a man to understand something if his paycheck depends on him not understanding.” Upton Sinclair, maybe 1930.
Lame lame lame. Air Liquide just doesn’t get it. The planet needs zero carbon NOW.
Using biogas and biome thane from sources such as dairy digesters, food/organic digesters, and gasification of organic wastes is not only zero carbon, but on a life cycle analysis is negative carbon. We will not get to negative carbon emissions, again on a life cycle basis, without using biomass.
It’s wonderful Air Liquide is helping to move the planet forward despite the single-brain-celled goofs that can’t understand technology may need a little time to ramp up to achieve perfection. H2 is awesome! If it were electrolyzed w/just solar/wind (not too difficult to do; is already being done in CA, and hopefully will be a supplement for this Las Vegas project), there would be ZERO carbon footprint in the whole cycle of production to driving an FCEV. This is significantly better than any full-electric vehicle can achieve if EV cars are charged from the grid.