Thread by @MLiebreich

Hilarious. Any engineer can tell you hydrogen is not like LNG. 30% energy lost in liquefaction; 38% of the volumetric energy density; 6x the boil-off; embrittles; -253C; etc. Transport cost 2-3x production cost? No more than homeopathic quantities of H2 will ever move by ship.

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1562303688860844032

And if it's ammonia, then they should just call it fertiliser, not hydrogen. There will only ever be homeopathic volumes of ammonia shipped for power generation because power->H2->ammonia->liquid->shipping->power currently has a round trip efficiency of ~15% vs ~85% for HVDC.

Nope, not just ammonia: "The Participants aim to closely collaborate on all aspects necessary to kickstart the hydrogen economy and to create a transatlantic supply chain for hydrogen well before 2030, with first deliveries aiming for 2025." Homeopathy! nrcan.gc.ca/climate-change…

Let's make this visual. Here is a proposed design for a hydrogen carrier, the GAIA, by naval design studio C-Job. It would carry 37,000 m3 of liquid hydrogen.
c-job.com/projects/liqui…

Here is a Q-Max LNG carrier, capacity 263,000 m3, 7x as much as the Gaia. Because LNG has 2.6 times the volumetric energy density of hydrogen, it carries 18 times as much energy, with 10% used in liquefaction, not 30%. It has enough freeboard to cross the Atlantic. And it exists!

Just to be clear, the point is not that LNG is the answer and we should forget hydrogen. As the #HydrogenLadder shows, there are lots of reasons we need clean hydrogen. The point is, transporting hydrogen by ship is not going to be a thing. We need to focus on serious solutions.