Re: Current prices for bulk quantities of LOX, CO2 and H2

Damon Hill <damon1SIX1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

root@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Ian Stirling) wrote in
news:Fsqdnfj5CuJ7f_3VRVnygwA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

Richard D. Latham <lathamr@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<snip>
"A Realistic Look at Hydrogen Price Projections" by F.David Doty has
some data claiming that the floor (best case) price (2004 dollars and
electricity, fully burdened for things like depreciation, etc.) for
electrolsis from H2O would be $5.40 a Kg, compressed gaseous H2.

But you don't do that - hydrogen is much cheaper made from natural
gas, as I understand it.
Does the paper address this?


Oxygen for aerospace use is made by crygenic distillation of air; air
is the raw material being about 21% pure oxygen and electricity is
the energy needed to operate the refrigeration equipment. In other
words, exclusive of transportation and storage, it's pretty cheap if
your electricity is cheap but diesel-powered portable LOX plants aren't
that expensive--SpaceX uses one on Kwajelein.

Liquid hydrogen is made using natural gas, by the same companies that
provide _large_ quantities of hydrogen to the petrochemical industries.
Refrigeration is a significant part of the cost--LH2 is >really> cold!

http://www.astronautix.com/props/loxlh2.htm

This rather dated source claims a price of $.08/kg in the 80s for LOX
and $3.60 for LH2 in the 1980s. Figure on inflation, but some other
sources I'm finding in a Google search suggest very large delivered
quantities of LOX may be even lower.

At any rate gasoline probably costs more than LH2 now, though per unit
volume gasoline actually contains more hydrogen than LH2 (but of course
the results in a rocket engine are not the same).

(Where's Henry Spencer when we _need_ him for reliable information?)

Your local supplier of welding gasses may be able to provide you with
costs (but may have to call their supplier). How much were you planning
to use?


In another newsgroup, rec.art.sf.written, I got sucked into a
discussion of "estimate the floor production costs for producing
iso-octane on a carbon neutral basis, assuming electricity
'too-cheap-to-meter' is available".

I took this to mean, get H2 from water, and CO2 out of the
atmosphere.

I was trying to get more precision than "really expensive" :-)

I (IIRC) ended up with feedstock cost estimates of circa $1.50 per kg
of gaseous H2 and $12.50 per kg of gaseous CO2. Including a WAG for
plant construction costs, I estimated a _floor_ cost of $20 gallon for
iso-octane.

This was kicked off by a "whatta we gonna do when (most of) the
available fossil fuels are all used up ?".

--
#include <disclaimer.std> /* I don't speak for IBM ... */
/* Heck, I don't even speak for myself */
/* Don't believe me ? Ask my wife :-) */
Richard D. Latham lathamr@xxxxxxxxxx
.

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