[zamler]

Originally Posted by New Era

Essentially the same process. The important part is the sequestration of carbon in the ground and the safe transportation and use of hydrogen to generate electricity. I think it depends on which process is most efficient and gets the most energy out of the hydrogen molecule with the least amount of pollutants. I think the fuel cell is supposed to be more efficient than burning hydrogen to generate heat to drive a steam turbine.

I tried to find data on hydrogen burning turbine efficiency came up empty. A fuel cell needs a fair bit of nickel and also platinum I can see the cost and availability being an issue for large scale fuel cell production.

crude bitumen>oil>generator>electricity

Not as efficient and very dirty. Does not help with the main problem of carbon release into the atmosphere.

Making batteries, solar cells, fuel cells, generators, motors, high voltage cable, electronics*, transformers etc. etc. all take energy to produce, very likely carbon based energy. Burning the oil directly does skip a whole bunch of energy hungry steps. That's one thing that grinds my gears hardly anyone is doing well to wheel calculations it's superficial nonsense hey look hydrogen has zero emissions.

If you are trying to sequester carbon where it already is, while extracting the fuel we need, this is not a good idea. The intent of the proposed process is to extract hydrogen from the bitumen while leaving the nasty byproducts in the ground where they are. It's carbon capture without having to do the carbon capture after the fact.

And we're back to how much energy does it take to extract hydrogen via oxygen injection, or whatever the exact process is which we don't know at all because all the articles gloss over it.

* this is a big one, these high tech systems rely heavily on micro controllers and support circuity producing such is energy intensive, uses larges amounts of water and is very polluting both in production and disposal. I rarely see anyone talk about this.