'Hydrogen leakage makes H2 potentially more dangerous to climate than burning natural gas': Rio Tinto
Mining giant’s chief scientist tells investors that daily 1% boil-off from stored liquid hydrogen makes the indirect greenhouse gas a global warming threat
Hydrogen: hype, hope and the hard truths around its role in the energy transition
“Hydrogen use will be impacted by leakage from storage and transport facilities; an estimated 1% per day is lost when stored in liquid form, and hydrogen has a global warming potential 5-16 times that of carbon dioxide over 100 years, making it potentially more damaging to use than burning natural gas,” chief scientist Nigel Steward told the company’s investor summit in London.
“Therefore, our intention is to consume hydrogen close to its point of generation.”
Steward also told investors on Wednesday that “there is a lot of hype about green hydrogen”.
“At the moment, [green] hydrogen is very expensive and will require a technological breakthrough to be economically viable.
“It is a very energetic material to produce; approximately four times more per tonne than aluminium, but it can provide a great deal of energy back to decarbonise some hard-to-abate industry sectors. There will be very high power requirements to generate sufficient hydrogen to meet future demand; however, the electrolyser supply chain to deliver green hydrogen is not yet well established and it will take time before it will be a material contributor to decarbonisation.”
Nevertheless, he explained: “We expect to use [green hydrogen] as a reductant for zero-carbon steel making, for ilmenite [titanium ore] reduction... and for calcining our alumina refineries [ie, part of the process of extracting aluminium from bauxite ore].”
“In these cases, we exploit hydrogen’s unique chemical properties, rather than using it as an energy carrier.”
London-based Rio Tinto, the world’s biggest iron-ore producer, last year announced a $7.5bn plan to slash its greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.
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