氢将成为新的“石油”吗？

原标题：氢将成为新的“石油”吗？

　　中国石化新闻网讯 据7月20日The Third Pole报道，如果东京奥运会在本月末如期举行，届时将使用一种远大前景的燃料，即氢气，要知道，奥运圣火已经在燃烧了。奥运村将由位于10年前福岛核事故后禁区内的一家太阳能发电厂生产的氢气提供能源。大部分的奥运会官方交通工具将是使用氢燃料电池的丰田Mirai汽车。

　　时任东京都知事的Yoichi Masuzoe在2016年宣布：“1964年东京奥运会留下了新干线高速铁路系统。即将到来的奥运会将留下一个氢能社会。”

　　日本曾经是核能的热情倡导者，现在却有了对氢的雄心壮志。中国拥有世界上最大的加氢站网络。2019年，川崎重工(Kawasaki Heavy Industries) 川崎重工推出了世界上第一艘设计用于运载液化氢的船舶“Suiso Frontier”，旨在利用澳大利亚承诺的氢气产能。

　　邻国韩国也有类似的计划。今年3月，汽车制造商现代(Hyundai)、SK集团(SK Group)和其他企业宣布了一个380亿美元的项目，旨在未来10年发展以氢为基础的经济。

　　氢的广泛使用，如果真的发生，将是一个漫长的过程。早在1807年，第一台氢动力发动机就开始工作了。早在19世纪60年代，人们就提议通过电解水制造氢来取代煤。但煤炭和石油总是比较便宜。1937年，一艘充满氢气的船舶发生爆炸，因为这次灾难，人们认为这种燃料是不安全的。

　　有人说，全球“氢经济”可以从碳排放中拯救气候。氢可以为卡车、轮船和飞机提供动力，还可以用来生产水泥、钢铁和化肥等各种产品。现代燃料电池部门负责人金世勋(Saehoon Kim)去年在英国贸易协会的一次网络研讨会上表示:“过去，我们的技术和行业都是关于收集石油、输送石油和使用石油。现在，在未来，它将收集阳光，传送阳光，利用阳光，而氢将使之成为可能。”

　　也有人则持怀疑的态度。阿伯丁大学(University of Aberdeen)的化学工程师汤姆·巴克斯特(Tom Baxter)标识：“氢只会成为一种基本的能源，以目前的技术，氢在需要400℃以上温度的工业过程中具有优势。但在其他方面，绿氢通常会输给电力，绿氢永远不会比制造它所需的绿色电力便宜。”

　　灰色、绿色还是蓝色?

　　氢气很少直接作为燃料来燃烧。相反，它被用作能源的载体，在有廉价能源可供制造的地方制造，并运到世界各地需要的地方。通常情况下，这意味着在汽车发动机内的燃料电池中，气体与氧气混合，释放能量，只释放水蒸气。

　　在过去两年中，电动汽车已经悄悄领先于氢燃料汽车，大多数主要汽车制造商都推出了车型，而通用汽车(General Motors)等一些公司则承诺在15年内只生产电动汽车。他们也有政府的支持，在充电网络上投入巨资。但对于长途运输和航空等其他需要大量化石燃料的运输系统来说，氢可能是降低碳排放的关键。

　　每吨天然气所含的能量比任何化石燃料都多，而且不需要电池。但是制造它需要大量的电力，所以它的气候友好性只与生产它所使用的能源一样。因此，工程师们区分了灰色、蓝色和绿色的氢。灰氢是由天然气或煤炭制成的，碳足迹很大。蓝氢也由化石燃料制成，但排放的二氧化碳会被捕获或重新利用。绿氢是由可再生电力制造的，完全不需要碳足迹。

　　目前，灰氢是最便宜的，是工业用途的主要类型。中国生产的氢占世界的三分之一，主要来自褐煤。俄罗斯正在制定计划，利用其丰富的天然气储备生产灰氢和蓝氢。为了成为一种可行的气候友好型化石燃料替代品，制造商必须捕获生产过程中产生的二氧化碳，并将其掩埋起来。然而，碳捕获与封存（CCS）仍然是一项正在探索中的工作。

　　巴克斯特表示，化石燃料公司在推动氢作为电力的替代品，从汽车燃料到家庭供暖。石油巨头英国石油公司正在考虑在英格兰的蒂赛德建立一个蓝氢工厂，据说这个工厂将捕获的二氧化碳存储到地下。

　　在长期计划中，一旦汽油和柴油的需求开始减少，主要石油公司将氢视为一个潜在的收入来源。它们转向替代燃料的步伐缓慢得令人痛苦。英国石油公司将在三年内对蒂赛德做出最终投资决定，预计在2027年之前不会开始实际建设。而三年后，英国所有的新车都将成为电动汽车。

　　美国空气化工产品公司(Air Products)首席执行官塞菲•加西米(Seifi Ghasemi)今年在纽约彭博新能源财经(BNEF)会议上表示：“目前，化石燃料比氢更便宜，也更容易获得。这在一定程度上是由于全球范围内高达4000亿美元的巨额政府补贴。如果取消这些补贴，氢等替代燃料将更有可能被广泛采用。”

　　如果世界真的要发展低碳氢经济，真正的奖励将是大规模生产绿氢。一些国家已经将自己视为潜在的氢能“沙特阿拉伯”，利用廉价的可再生能源大规模生产氢燃料。其中就包括加拿大和冰岛，这两个国家都拥有丰富的水力发电能力，可以帮助生产氢。冰岛也有地热能，此外，摩洛哥正在撒哈拉沙漠迅速发展太阳能，并设计了氢气生产计划。

　　沙特阿拉伯有自己的计划。该国最近宣布，将与Air Products一起，在红海沿岸建设一个50亿美元的绿氢工厂。一大片太阳能电池板和风力涡轮机最终将覆盖一片比利时大小的沙漠，为世界上最大的氢工厂提供动力，生产计划于2025年开始。

　　该项目将是Neom生态城计划的一部分，该计划是该国实际领导人穆罕默德·本·萨勒曼的计划。除了供应生态城市，氢还将出口，有朝一日将在世界市场上用沙特的氢取代沙特的石油。

　　邻国阿曼也有更大的计划，将投资300亿美元在阿拉伯海沿岸建造氢工厂，将同时出口绿氢和“绿色氨”，以取代化石燃料生产的化肥。

　　澳大利亚也有类似的雄心勃勃的计划，要建设五个巨大的“氢中心”。去年，该公司表示，将把一块面积超过西澳大利亚州卢森堡两倍的沙漠变成一个绿氢生产设施，拥有1000万块太阳能电池板和1500台风力涡轮机。

　　由于对生物多样性的威胁，该项目在6月份的蓝图被部长们否决后，目前处于搁置状态，但可能最终会继续进行。与此同时，在新南威尔士州的一个煤田地区——猎人谷(Hunter Valley)还有另一个绿氢中心的计划，以及在维多利亚州的拉特伯谷(Latrobe Valley)使用褐煤的灰氢计划，所有这些都旨在向日本和亚洲其他地区出口。

　　谁将创造天空中的特斯拉?

　　航空可能是最大的奖励。世界第二大飞机制造商空客，去年公布了三种不同的零排放“概念”氢飞机的计划，称这些飞机将在2035年投入使用。与此同时，加州初创企业ZeroAvia已经有了一架使用氢燃料的六座研究飞机。去年秋天，它在英国克兰菲尔德机场首次起飞。今年4月，这架飞机在一片田野里坠毁，但没有人受伤，它仍有可能成为天空中的特斯拉。瑞士工程研究中心保罗·谢勒研究所的克里斯蒂安·鲍尔表示:“如果没有氢，要大幅减少二氧化碳的排放几乎是不可能的。我想说的是，在未来10年里，我们将看到实质性的进展。”

　　潜在供应商和主要市场之间的其他交易也在激增。丹麦风力发电公司Orsted已经与马士基(世界上最大的航运公司)和斯堪的纳维亚航空公司签署了一项协议，从2023年开始，利用北海产生的海上风力为哥本哈根地区的公共汽车和卡车生产绿氢，随后将为船舶和飞机生产绿氢。

　　这一切会发生吗?持怀疑态度的人表示，建立制造、运输和运送氢的全球供应链过于笨重和低效，尤其是在基础设施必须从零开始建设的情况下。根据一些统计，大约三分之二的能量会在这一过程中流失。

　　保罗·谢勒研究所克里斯蒂安·鲍尔的同事罗曼·萨基表示:“效率损失发生在供应端、氢基燃料生产过程和需求端——内燃机比电力发动机浪费更多的能源。但即便如此，氢也可以用于长途货运，今天的大型卡车需要配备几吨重的电池才能行驶100多公里。”

　　波茨坦气候影响研究所(Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research)的法尔科·乌克特(Falko Ueckerdt)表示，氢气的可用性不确定，无法广泛取代化石燃料，比如用于汽车或房屋取暖。相反，世界应该优先考虑氢作为低碳能源不可缺少的应用，氢可以用来消除最困难的10%左右的碳排放，因为世界的目标是净零排放。

　　他表示，钢和氨生产是生产绿氢的合理切入点。在这两种情况下，氢都可以取代化石燃料作为生产过程的重要组成部分，并提供能量。但他警告称，建筑供暖等领域对氢的需求不断上升，可能会给廉价的蓝氢带来优势，并造成“化石燃料锁定，危及气候目标”。

　　以氢为基础的燃料作为一种普遍的气候解决方案可能是一种错误的承诺。乌克尔特表示:“尽管它们用途广泛，但不能指望氢能广泛取代化石燃料。”

　　燃料电池顾问Ulf Bossel和ABB瑞士公司研究员Baldur Eliasson在一份关于氢经济的白皮书中指出：“氢经济只有在积极可行的情况下才能建立起来。否则，更好的解决方案将征服市场。几乎所有合成液态烃都有基础设施，而氢则需要一个全新的分销网络。”

　　王佳晶 摘译自 The Third Pole

　　原文如下：

　　Is hydrogen the new oil?

　　The Tokyo Olympics, assuming they go ahead later this month, will be powered by a fuel with ambition – hydrogen. The Olympic flame is already burning it. The Olympic village will be powered by hydrogen made at a solar power plant in the exclusion zone created after the Fukushima nuclear accident a decade ago. Toyota’s Mirai cars, which run on hydrogen-fuel cells, will provide most of the Games’ official transport.

　　“The 1964 Tokyo Olympics left the Shinkansen high-speed train system as its legacy. The upcoming Olympics will leave a hydrogen society as its legacy,” Yoichi Masuzoe, then governor of Tokyo, declared in 2016.

　　Japan, once a passionate advocate of nuclear energy, now has serious hydrogen ambitions. The country has the world’s largest network of hydrogen filling stations.In 2019, Kawasaki Heavy Industries launched the Suiso Frontier, the world’s first ship designed to carry liquefied hydrogen. It aims to tap promised Australian hydrogen production.

　　Neighbouring South Korea has similar plans. In March this year, car-maker Hyundai, the SK Group conglomerate and others announced a US$38-billion project to develop a hydrogen-based economy in the coming decade.

　　Widespread use of hydrogen, it if really happens, will have been a long time coming. The first hydrogen-powered engine was working as long ago as 1807, and people were proposing making hydrogen by electrolysing water, to replace coal, as early as the 1860s. But coal and oil were always cheaper. And the Hindenburg disaster, when a hydrogen-filled airship exploded in 1937, gave the fuel a reputation as unsafe.

　　There is talk that a global “hydrogen economy” can emerge to save the climate from carbon emissions. Hydrogen could power trucks, ships and planes and be used to produce everything from cement to steel and fertiliser. Saehoon Kim, the head of Hyundai’s fuel cell division told a British trade association webinar last year: “In the past, our technology and industry was all about collecting oil, delivering oil and using oil. And now, in the future, it will be collecting sunshine, delivering sunshine and using sunshine – and what will make that possible is hydrogen.”

　　Others are much more sceptical. “It is only ever going to be a niche energy source,” said Tom Baxter, a chemical engineer at the University of Aberdeen.

　　With current technology, hydrogen has an advantage for fuelling industrial processes where temperatures above 400C are required, Baxter added. But otherwise, green hydrogen will usually lose out to electricity where the latter can do the job. “Green hydrogen can never be cheaper than the green electricity needed to make it,” he said.

　　Grey, green or blue?

　　Hydrogen is rarely burned directly as a fuel source. Instead it is used as a carrier of energy, made where cheap energy is available for manufacture and shipping round the world to where it is needed. Usually that means in a fuel cell inside a vehicle engine, where the gas is mixed with oxygen, releasing its energy and emitting only water vapour.

　　In the past two years, electric cars have stolen a march on hydrogen, with most major car makers bringing out models and some, like General Motors, promising to manufacture only electric vehicles within 15 years. They have government backing too, with heavy spending on recharging networks. But for other fossil-fuel guzzling transport systems which cannot easily plug into the mains, such as long-distance shipping and aviation, hydrogen may turn out to be the key to lowering carbon emissions.

　　The gas contains more energy for every tonne than any fossil fuel, and avoids the need for batteries. But manufacturing it takes a lot of electricity, so it is only as climate-friendly as the energy used to produce it. Engineers thus distinguish between grey, blue and green hydrogen. Grey hydrogen is made from natural gas or coal, and has a large carbon footprint. Blue hydrogen is also made from fossil fuels, but the carbon dioxide emissions are captured or re-used. Green hydrogen is made from renewable electricity and need have no carbon footprint at all.

　　Right now, grey hydrogen is the cheapest, and is the predominant type for industrial uses. China produces around a third of the world’s hydrogen, largely from lignite coal. Russia is working on plans to use its abundant gas reserves to produce grey and blue hydrogen. To be a viable climate-friendly alternative to fossil fuels, manufacturers would have to capture the CO2 generated during production and bury it out of harm’s way. However, carbon capture and storage (CCS) is still very much a work in progress.

　　Baxter, of the University of Aberdeen, said that fossil fuel companies are behind the push to promote hydrogen as an alternative to electricity for everything from vehicle fuel to home heating. Oil giant BP is considering plans for a blue hydrogen plant on Teesside in England that it says would capture and store the resulting CO2 emissions underground.

　　In their long-term plans, major oil companies are looking at hydrogen as a potential source of income, once demand for petrol and diesel starts petering out. Their move towards alternative fuels has been painfully slow. BP will make a final investment decision on Teeside only in three years’ time and it doesn’t expect to start actual construction before 2027 – three years before all new cars in the UK are expected to be electric.

　　“For the moment, fossil fuels are cheaper and much more widely available than hydrogen. This comes in part because of large government subsidies across the globe which amount to US$400 billion. If those subsidies were removed, alternative fuels like hydrogen would stand a better chance of becoming widely adopted,” said Seifi Ghasemi, chief executive of US industrial gas company Air Products at a BNEF conference in New York this year.

　　The real prize, if the world is serious about developing a low-carbon hydrogen economy, would have to be the mass production of green hydrogen. Some countries already see themselves as potentially the “Saudi Arabia of hydrogen”, mass producing the fuel using cheap renewable energy. Among them are Canada and Iceland, which both have abundant hydroelectricity that could help manufacture it. Iceland also has geothermal energy. Morocco is rapidly developing solar power in the Sahara desert and has designs on hydrogen production.

　　Saudi Arabia has its own plans. The country recently announced that, with Air Products, it is building a US$5-billion green hydrogen plant along the shore of the Red Sea. A vast estate of solar panels and wind turbines will eventually cover a patch of desert the size of Belgium, powering what would be the world’s biggest hydrogen factory. Production is set to begin in 2025.

　　The project would be part of the proposed eco-city of Neom, a scheme of the country’s de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman. Besides supplying the eco-city, the hydrogen would be exported, one day replacing Saudi oil with Saudi hydrogen on world markets.

　　Neighbouring Oman has plans to go even bigger. Its proposed US$30-billion hydrogen plant on the shores of the Arabian Sea would export both green hydrogen and “green ammonia”, to replace fossil-fuel produced chemical fertilisers.

　　Australia has similarly ambitious plans for five giant ‘hydrogen hubs’. Last year it said it would turn an area of desert more than twice the size of Luxembourg in Western Australia into a green hydrogen production facility, with 10 million solar panels and 1,500 wind turbines.

　　The project is currently on hold after blueprints were rejected by ministers in June because of threats to biodiversity, but it may ultimately go ahead. Meanwhile, there are plans for another green-hydrogen hub in Hunter Valley, a region of coal fields in New South Wales, as well as a grey hydrogen scheme using lignite in the Latrobe Valley in Victoria. All aim at exporting to Japan and elsewhere in Asia.

　　Who will create the Tesla of the skies?

　　Aviation may be the biggest prize. Airbus, the world’s second largest plane maker, last year unveiled plans for three different zero-emission “concept” hydrogen planes that it says could be in service by 2035. Meanwhile, California start-up ZeroAvia has a six-seater research plane already running on hydrogen. It took off for the first time from the UK’s Cranfield airport last autumn. The plane crashed in a field in April, but nobody was hurt, and it could yet become the Tesla of the skies. “A substantial reduction in carbon dioxide emissions is almost impossible without hydrogen,” says Christian Bauer of the Paul Scherrer Institute, a Swiss engineering research centre. “I’d say that within the next ten years, we will see substantial developments here.”

　　Other deals between potential suppliers and major markets are proliferating. Danish wind power company Orsted has signed a deal with Maersk (the world’s biggest shipping carrier) and Scandinavian Airlines to use offshore wind generated in the North Sea to produce green hydrogen for buses and trucks in the Copenhagen area from 2023, with ships and aircraft to follow.

　　Will all this happen? Sceptics say creating global supply chains to manufacture, ship and deliver hydrogen is too cumbersome and inefficient, especially when the infrastructure would have to be built from scratch. By some counts, around two-thirds of the energy would be lost along the way.

　　“Efficiency losses happen both on the supply side, in the production process of the hydrogen-based fuels, and on the demand side – a combustion engine wastes a lot more energy than an electrical one,” said Romain Sacchi, a colleague of Christian Bauer at the Paul Scherrer Institute. Even so, hydrogen could work for freight transport over long distances, Bauer said: “A large truck today would need to be equipped with a battery weighing a few tonnes to travel more than a hundred kilometres.”

　　Hydrogen’s availability is “too uncertain to broadly replace fossil fuels, for instance in cars or heating houses,” according to Falko Ueckerdt of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. The world should instead prioritise applications for which hydrogen is indispensable as a source of low-carbon energy, he says. Hydrogen could be used to remove the hardest 10% or so of carbon emissions, as the world targets zero emissions.

　　“Primary steel and ammonia production are sensible entry points for green hydrogen,” he says. In both cases, the hydrogen can replace fossil fuels as an essential part of the process, as well as providing energy.

　　But he warns that rising demand for hydrogen in areas such as heating buildings could give an advantage to cheap blue hydrogen and create a “fossil-fuel lock-in that endangers climate targets.”

　　Fuels based on hydrogen as a universal climate solution might be a bit of false promise. “While they’re wonderfully versatile, it should not be expected that they broadly replace fossil fuels,” argued Ueckerdt.

　　“The hydrogen economy can establish itself only if it makes sense energetically. Otherwise, better solutions will conquer the market. Infrastructures exist for almost any synthetic liquid hydrocarbon, while hydrogen requires a totally new distribution network,” argued Ulf Bossel, a fuel cell consultant and Baldur Eliasson, researcher for ABB Switzerland, in a white paper on the hydrogen economy.

　　Hydrogen-based fuels will likely be scarce and not competitive for at least another decade.

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