Qhydrogen Hydrogen Power Plant

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peakbagger

Minister of Fire
Jul 11, 2008
8,840
Northern NH
Here is a "clean power" technology that is going up in "my backyard". There is zero information on the "proprietary" technology that makes the process commercial where others have failed. Here is article from a few months ago https://granitegeek.concordmonitor....rn-in-an-abandoned-mill-north-of-the-notches/ There have been more recent articles but this is the easiest link. Looking at the associated websites with the firm https://www.quasarwave.com/ https://www.qhydrogen.com/ sure cranks up my "hype" detector.

The project is located in Groveton NH, its a former pulp and papermill town that really only existed due to the two papermills. When they went it left a gaping hole in town. Many savoirs/con men have shown up in the subsequent years since the closing each one promising some radical new technology would be built and developed there but they have all disappeared with little to show for it except for several of the buildings torn down for scrap and locals being owed money. The current owner is a local scrap merchant that got burned in a prior deal. He has actually made a positive difference and got a steel fabricator to move onto the property.

It appears to be odd business model. My guess is by doing an off grid system so they do not have to do disclosures on the technology as any generation hooked to the grid gets subject to technical scrutiny. Even if they did want to hook up to the regional grid they have a problem that Northern NH already the home of several renewable power plants (biomass, hydro and wind) have a transmission constraint that limits transmission to outside the region to less than the already available generation so at times the plans needs to curtail their output as there is no way to export the power.

In the past and I expect in the future with energy there is no such thing as free lunch AKA the 2nd law of thermodynamics. With the exception of nuclear power, solar and wind take advantage of energy streamed by the sun, Biomass takes advantage of solar stored by photosynthesis and fossil is just digging up eons of stored photosynthesis. Up until the claimed breakthrough two hydrogen atomes are tightly bonded to one oxygen molecule to make water and that takes a lot of energy to disassociate the two, far more than the fuel value of the resultant hydrogen. Hydrogen is a PITA to store and transport as its small molecule that just loves to leak out of any small gap and its also hard on some materials thus it sort of makes sense to use it on site. When I draw a box around the site and look at energy going in and energy going out things just do not add up unless there is an external energy input. Not mentioned in the various articles is that there is a large unused tap on a regional natural gas line at the site. Natural gas combined heat and power is pretty well proven so why would they add the complication of using natural gas to separate hydrogen from water and then turn around and burn it?.

As usual I am waiting for the request for public funds to build the project. If that does happen it will remind me of Range Fuels http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2011/12/05/the-range-fuels-failure/ In the meantime I think I will hold off investing.