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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- One day, the world may partially run on clean hydrogen fuel. But a big barrier to that future is just how darn difficult it is to store hydrogen for later use. So one team of scientists have proposed making hydrogen "batteries" out of something we want to stop using as fuel: coal.
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Sources:
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Nb: another recent study considered storing hydrogen in a bicarbonate-formate substance, which the PR simplified as just “baking soda” (it’s not baking soda) www.eurekalert...
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This definitely sounds like it was the result of coal companies paying scientists to find ways for them to make money using their existing infrastructure, but without contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. Which is not a terrible thing for them to do (for once), but the result doesn't feel like it's a particularly good idea. It sounds like lot would have to go right for this to be a more attractive energy storage solution than, for example, pumped hydro, which has been in use in some places for more than 100 years already. Especially the part where they don't even know how they're going to get the hydrogen out again feels like a bit of a red flag.
I can certainly see that, now you mention it!
Coal has a higher surface area than basically any common compound we can use, the industrial viability of this is extremely high as opposed to storing liquid hydrogen as is. An alternative is pumping the gas into salt caverns, already being done, but significantly more compressor stages are required for it, at the trade off that post processing is normal due to minimal impurities
I think so too
😂 where is their industry going? Green energy of any kind represents single digits contributions to our grid. It’s not going anywhere any time soon. The fossil fuel tycoons already influence global decision securing their positions. Same as those scientists you talk of, why wouldn’t I just pay off someone to favor my interests.
This could be useful for a Hydrogen Power Plant. Most storage need seems more an issue with more widespread distribution though.
I can envision so many exotic accidents caused by corner-cutting firms trying this method...
“Exotic accidents”. Sounds kinda sexy.
@@utooboobnoob Yea environmental disasters are my kink : )
@@AndreasHolmgrenthat's a whole new level of degradation play
Like not catching the displaced methane... like. yeah. we didn't release CO2, we released something 30 times worse. Great success!
@@gopipo123 Also, dissolving the ground around the hydrogen 'stores'... what could contain it in reality?
Even with stringent rules in place, disasters, for instance, old radiation devices still get out and harm hundreds of people
This walks like greenwashing, swims like greenwashing, and quacks like greenwashing...
If it ducks like a quack. I agree. Especially the common diversion tactic of addressing a small issue that makes people *think* we are making progress towards something. Storing hydrogen is a problem a million times smaller than making it in the first place.
I think a criticism of the underlying chemistry, physics, economic or engineering limitations would be a lot harder to muster than talking about the motion and sound of ducks and what that says about a bird if you observe those sounds and motions.
Harder to muster, probably should be taken more seriously, and not guaranteed to be in favor of this method or any other
Even putting aside the inefficiency of using hydrogen as a way to store renewable energy for future power generation, putting it somewhere where one might get previously bound methane back with it seems like a really bad idea. Also, as pointed out elsewhere in the comments, the use for which hydrogen seems most attractive, i.e. long distance transport, particularly air travel, is hardly one that can be hitched up to a coal bed.
I was imagining stuffing the coal mine into the cargo hold of a 747. Another option would be leaving the coal mine in place and attaching it to planes with straws thousands of km long.
Being serious three-ply glass fibre makes very useful hydrogen fuel tanks for cars.@@DemPilafian
Why would the transport systems need to be continuously hooked up in that way though? Unless I missed something, it would basically function as a charging station or general reservoir for longer-term storage of the hydrogen. Short-term storage or existing in the fuel tank of a moving vehicle don't strike me as being comparable in terms of the diffusion risk, which is why the coal storage method is being explored.
This is just fracking with extra (and extra explosive) steps. Only worse.
The "battery" is nothing else but pumping in H2 under pressure into all that C in coal to get CH4 of methane, then pump it out later - both "stored" H and ye ole fossil-fuel C.
This is literally a recipe how to get the every last molecule of carbon into atmosphere - possibly in hope of turning the planet habitable for giant lizards once more.
Honestly, hydrogen for air transport isn't actually desirable. It's better than batteries, but it's still a miserable under-performer.
I hate to say this but it’s never gonna happen. It seems awful simple when they start the video with “man creating it is hard. Oh well here’s something that is a thousand times less important that the actual challenge of making enough of it for storage to become an issue in the first place. “ but in reality that is the biggest hurdle. And it’s not something we can just technology away. Hydrogen is energy dense, but so is aluminum. So why don’t we run cars on aluminum? Sugar is energy dense and easy to make. Why no sugar powered cars? The options for making transportation greener have less to do with what forms of energy we use and more with how we use it. Converting all cars in the world won’t help nearly as much as making functional walkable cities with mass transit that don’t need those cars in the first place. A desil powered train is for more energy and environmentally friendly than even the most efficient electric vehicle.
Al isn't energy dense, because you can't get energy from it. Al-ion batteries, on present info, is much better than Li-ion.
But H2 is still better when used in a fuel cell. Esp in aircraft.
@@thekaxmax Tell that to the thermite-lovers. Silicon powder would be even better as a fuel, if you could design a steam turbine to run off the heat.
@@pattheplanter Oh, you can get energy from it when you mix it with appropriate things. But Al in itself isn't an energy source--Al+FeO is energy dense, if useless for this task, but Al isn't.
@@thekaxmaxMy point is we use the specific fuels we use for a reason. And not the "big oil wont let us find alternatives" reason. In fact, large fossil fuel companies (let me be clear here when i say i don't support them and that they are dubious companies at best) are often on the cutting edge of alternative fuel development. Lithium is economical and efficent. Gasoline is economical and efficent. Therefore, we use them. If H2 were economical or efficent, then large fuel companies would try and monopilize it. Even if you solved all the problems with h2 storage, its generation in large quantities is insainely difficult. Were you to do it by hydrolizing water, you would need to burn a absolute ton of fuel, more so than you would get out of the h2.
3:41 methane is not a green fuel at all. Maybe this was just a grammar issue in the script
From his tone, I think air quotes were implied.
"Decent, if not green, fuel source", that's exactly what they are saying, it is not green, but still a decent fuel source
@@MrTurbo_ Well you can't be sure because people definitely use the "if not," conjunction in the reverse way
I'm having a little trouble figuring out what the motivation is for storing hydrogen in coal beds. Yes, storage is a problem, but most of the attention I have seen is for storage problems associated with mobile use. I can't exactly strap a coal bed onto my car to hold the hydrogen I'm going to use while driving. For that matter, a refueling station can't always be located near a coal bed, nor can most people's houses. Perhaps this storage solution is aimed at load leveling for renewable power sources? Maybe that would work, but I have to think that batteries would be more effective, and again--most wind farms and solar plants are not going to be located near a coal bed.
It's just the last-gasp BS from the fossil fuel industry
Just move the coal and make it as a make shift battery, I mean, hydrogen storage.
wait, you don't have a coal bed strapped to your car?
Cleaning the methane and other contaminants out of the recovered hydrogen will take energy and infrastructure. Sounds like a crazy "please give me a grant" type of idea.
You can probably find wind, solar, or hydro near most coal beds though. Is there no sun near coal beds?
My thesis is going to be on this topic. Not THIS, but active work as part of the DOD/DOE resource security strategies. The first thing is to find uses for the waste, then we can consider re opening mines if we can have a net zero impact. For this kind of hydrogen storage, we’d need to ensure a good cap rock is available. That’s not always feasible in the sedimentary basins the lower ranks are found in.
just watched 2 volcano in the pacific ocean by Papua New Guinea and indonesia release more SO2 in 1 day on november 25th 2023 than all of mankind in the last 100 years. also 12 solar flares at solar maximum triggered winter and high winds, with fastest solar wind speeds ever recorded....thanks to space shuttle discoverys low earth orbit climate satellite launched in the 1990's so less than 40 years of recorded data represents 4.5 billion years of earth climate according to climate monkey scientists using sticks and poking dirt for food these days as their greatest ever scientific tools while james webb space telescope destroys all their earth climate evidence of known physics by 500 black holes pre big bang some with entire universes trapped on their event horizons.
meanwhile geologists are attributing mankinds use of coal and carbon production leading to deserts greening up being revitalized by the climate deprived carbon necessary for all plant life as exhibited by the last 400 years and most especially the last 200 years of mass extinctions taking place due to ever growing deserts as carbon depletion wipes out plant life across the globe which attributes to the factual geological mass extinctions according to all geological factual past evidence of what has happened to the earth for the last 1.5 billion years.
I believe it might be important to consider not just the cap rock, but surrounding minerals on all sides of any deposit in consideration for viability. H2 might have some interesting interactions with a great variety of geological chemistries, some of which could be problematic. Very appropo that you would bring light to this ;)
Well what about this. If we are going to capture carbon, one of the most efficient ways would be to GROW fuel (algae oil being an easy example, because it doesn't need to impinge on current arable land). Process the product into useable fuels. Carbonise the residues and bury it. Conveniently humans have been digging holes in the round for centuries to get at all that coal so there is space ready to go.
How bad does it become if there is a fire in the coalbed after a bed has been pumped full is my question? And one that politicians and the general public would want to know. Are we looking at the same smoldering underground hell as before? A cool topic for a thesis. It isn't going to bring back a ton of jobs to those areas, but making use of a natural resource in a more responsible way would be nice.
Net zero impact?? That's impossible, and you should know. that if you watch this channel. There is always SOMETHING
Sounds like storing dynamite in a campfire.
Having trouble thinking of use cases where this could make sense.
"Two hydrogens in a trench-coat"
That made me smile
I laughed 🤣
I have such a strong negative reaction whenever Hydrogen, as a fuel, comes back into the spotlight. For many decades a lot of politicians, a lot of industry, and a lot of individuals, ignored the already viable replacement for fossil fuels, because the promise of Hydrogen, clean, and oh so convenient, was dangled in front of them as an "almost ready". It's not almost ready, it never was, and we are so much further into the climate crisis than we needed to be, had the realities been fairly represented. And now - some 30 years since I started badgering politicians and industries to invest in, and convert to, renewables - I still hear Hydrogen fuel cells will make X obsolete (not X the embarrassing Twitter corpse), and it makes me so, so mad.
Amen
The reason it keeps coming back up is because it IS an ideal option if we could figure out how to make it work. It and nuclear fusion are like modern day alchemy - tantalizing technologies that entice researchers time and time again regardless of their actual feasibility.
"Crisis" lol
We have been told that solar would be a cure all, nuclear before that, fusion, batteries, ect.
Often it's not scientists and engineers making those claim however.
They are simply pieces of the puzzle. It maybe the most difficult challenge since industrialisation so a single fix is probably some time away. In the meantime I believe it will be a mix of these solutions that see us through.
@@eklectiktonihow is it ideal? It’s only ideal if you ignore where it comes from and how you store it and how you move it. So basically in every way it is not ideal.
Making hydrogen for storage or fuel, have a efficiency of less than 30%. As in, you throw away nearly all of the energy you made by using it like that.
In comparison, electrical batteries have 90% and gravity batteries 80%.
I have not heard anyone in the industry talk about this. And when a industry that is booming because of government subsidies are not talking about a flaw like that... It hints at it being a bubble.
Name some of the orgs in that industry that is booming and getting subsidies? Last I checked (never) it was all in research phase, it wasn't an industry.
I think the key is to use floating thermal gradient power plants in the polar regions to create synthetic ice sheets (Since you can pump up very deep, cold water...) And in the process, create artificial circulation, so you can - Also - Geoengineer your way around the effect of collapsing ocean currents because of climate change.
And with that energy, you can split water just fine, so you have Hydrogen as a 'reward' from your geoengineering. Oh, and if your thermal gradient setup is close enough to human settlements, you can just use electricity cables, this could be a way to get cheap electricity to places like Svalbard.
Using renewable power to make hydrogen means the efficiency isn't that much of a problem. Also, direct splitting H2 from water is pretty good on efficiency, esp since the oxygen has its own uses. Just don't start from fossil fuels or burn them as a power source and you're good.
It's the only way right now that we'll get aircraft working--H2 fuel cells.
@@thekaxmaxguess what, a car engine only has a 20-40% efficiency too and an industrial engine only 50% max and we’re still using those, moreover, we don’t have enough resources to transition to electrical batteries for everything either and are creating the future asbestos with these lithium cells….
@@diedevanmarle Fuel cells and batteries are more efficient than Carnot Cycle engines (20-30%, they can't get to 40%), and the energy sources are renewable--fossil fuels are not, and we are running out of those.
And yes we do.
And how is lithium 'asbestos'? It's recyclable.
This is insane. I expect better from this channel.
It's a pop science channel, &-uh... Science itself can be pretty stupid, sometimes.
This is an example of stupid science, as it's strapped to a self defeating notion that just so happens to be aligned with existing commercial interests.
"Climate crisis"
The only reason hydrogen is even remotely economically viable to produce right now is because it can be extracted from natural gas. Guess who are the only ones pushing hydrogen tech these days? The gas industry.
And yet, despite this cheap and dirty way of producing hydrogen, batteries are still winning the economics battle. So hydrogen isn’t going anywhere until they can come up with a MUCH better means of production, which may or may not even exist.
It's the only way right now that we'll get aircraft working--H2 fuel cells.
storage is not the only problem, its so expensive to make, its hard to imagine everyone using it in their cars
I feel like many things are expensive when they're less commonly used or less developed. Alternatives like alternative milks (soy, almond, oat) and meat alternatives (beyond, quality vegetable patties, etc) have become significantly cheaper as they have become more accessible
Anyone watch/know who Ian Crossland is? He is on Tim Pools show... anyway talks about this subject but with creating graphene from extracting Carbon from the atmosphere. Hydrogen I think was the other particle created from this process. All fine and dandy until you're starving the rain forests of c02
Considering the enormous processing plants and mining operations that are needed to create petrol and diesel, electrolysis simple by comparison. Just input de-ionised water and electricity and get out H2. Fossil fuels simply appear cheaper to produce due to economy of scale and government subsidies
40 years ago, when I was designing electronic surveillance hardware for the "three letter agencies" (NSA, NRO, CIA, ...), it was hard to imagine tricking everybody into carrying a device that both pointpointed their location and was connected to a gigantic communication system. Today, we think people are disadvantaged if they don't have one.
(Edit) And wouldn't it be a hoot if they were okay with the device having a camera and microphone? That'll never happen!
clown
@@davidohare2933
Switching to hydrogen isn’t as realistic as this video suggests
Not sure you watched it; I gather from the video that switching to it is not very realistic with current tech.
So long as we don’t test this out on the mines in Centralia, PA, this sounds like a great idea!
NIBY, me too.
Oh, this isn’t a NIMBY problem. The coal mines in Centralia have been burning continuously since 1962. Which makes it totally inappropriate for the storage of hydrogen :)
I thought of Centralia when I watched this. My concern is whether or not pumping coal beds full of hydrogen could cause another Centralia type situation. Flammable gas plus an unintended spark, in a coal bed...
Was thinking the exact same thing all throughout this video!
@@GooberFace32 I also wonder how much this really solves. It's not like there are coal beds near every place where hydrogen would be used. You'd still have to transport it and store it locally with all the problems of storage that this video mentions. This sounds to me like coal companies looking for some other use for resources they own that may become obsolete.
So we'd be making depleted coal beds more flamable? That's a pretty metal thing to do.
I think it's great that geologists and chemists are working on this. At best this may have limited (but important) application in the future. This is almost certainly a green-washing campaign, given who already owns the land the coal is found in. It's disconcerting to see this type of content on sci-show with so few qualifiers.
💯
This is dumb. Collecting energy via solar panels or wind, etc, then using that energy to create hydrogen is a whole other, unnecessary step. It's more efficient to simply store the energy in a battery instead of creating hydrogen and also figuring out how to efficiently store that hydrogen. Hydrogen is an inefficient pipe dream. Companies like Amprius have already figured out how to double existing lithium battery density and improve anode longevity. They're building a factory in Colorado as we speak. In 1-2years the cost of these batteries will be the same or less than current manufacturing.
we need to decouple human progress from the value of a dollar.
We need to decouple the value of dollars from the value of human lives. We need authority over ourselves and a purely administrative governing body. In short, we need cooperation and accountability.
Human progress linked to the petro-dollar is more to do with the petro- and less to do with the dollar.
Modern standards of living, and the high quality of life that comes with it, needs electricity. And by extension the fuel sources to generate that electricity.
We may be able to decouple from the petroleum based electrical generation. But not from power generation itself, or having said generation link to a currency (eg: dollar)
The person who wrote this title has never visited an active coal mine. Nothing is green there. The surrounding land and water is poisoned. My people have seen the damage done.
Doesn't the video talk about pumping hydrogen into the coal in the ground, not mining it up?
@@mattomanx77 It would be naive to imagine those are two completely separate, unrelated tasks. Who do you think owns the mines? Who owns all the mining equipment? Who has the capability to do this job? The mining companies of course.
@@sfranz5413 But the point seems to be that nothing is being mined, that just seems to be more of an argument that it shouldn't be done because the company shouldn't receive money for doing something that isn't mining. While I am all for unethical corporations not getting money...
@@mattomanx77 No. You're not getting the picture. These companies have established a track record for leaking poison and heavy metals into the local aquafers. Don't trust them. They'll poison entire communities to turn a profit.
Nope hydrogen stored in coal is going backward. Logically and scientifically
Please don't tell me Manchin will make more money off the backs of miners.
More science is below me.
Hydrogen competes with methane for breaking down in the atmosphere-more research about the consequences of increasing atmospheric hydrogen is needed!
Anthracite coal is used for water purification. Coal tar is one of the earliest pharmaceuticals and is still used today. Coal / coke is also used as a reducing agent.
Refucing isn't green as it takes the oxygen ffrom say iron oxide and combines it with carbon or sulfur to make carbon dioxide or sulfur dioxide both being bad for the enviroment. Also hydrogen can reduce things like iron and aluiminum oxides it's just less effecient
yup, my late father had to use coal tar to treat his psoriasis. it smells awful.
@@Echo81Rumple83I had to rub it into my hair/ scalp! I like the smell, it reminds me of my very young days when we used to travel in a steam train.
@@benjaminlamothe2093 Water has a dissociation temperature of around 2,000C at at which point it is no longer water. From memory all the simple gases that contain sulphur are really bad to very toxic. Carbon dioxide only so at high concentrations. I think if we burned all the coal on the planet we'd still be safe from being poisoned by CO2. We need to keep in mind that all the doal and crude is made from carbon that was once in the atmosphere until trees evolved in a world with no organisms that could break them down when they died. I'm not saying that gives us a licence to put all that carbon back into the atmosphere, that would be a really bad idea, a crisis but not a catastrophe for human existence on this planet.
@@benjaminlamothe2093Isn’t aluminum like 100 times more energy dependent to mine than coal?
I think trying to use hydrogen to replace fossil fuels has too many problems to bother focusing on it
Well I think all options should be explored and tested, since it would be a convenient green storage.
Even if it isn’t used as a fossil fuel replacement, we still rely on hydrogen gas to make ammonia and fertilizer. Making that process greener and storage easier would actually help. Especially since right now we need a lot of energy to produce hydrogen in the first place.
@@TheTexas1994 Well, people here in WV aren't going to stop digging it up, even if they have to burn it themselves, so you might as well find a use for it.
@@TheTexas1994 ok, true, hydrogen has other uses. But it's not going to be more effective than other energy storage options that already exists, and by the time hydrogen works better for energy storage than now, there's going to be even better alternatives
It's the only way right now that we'll get aircraft working--H2 fuel cells.
@@thekaxmax there's shorter battery powered passenger planes coming out (just going through safety testing). I don't know how they could possibly get the storage on the planes dense and reliable enough for hydrogen
Isn't this potentially going to create HSO4 hydrogen sulfate or H2SO4 Sulfuric Acid due to sulfur impurities in coal and water ingress in the latter case?
sulfuric acid is really useful so it'd be more of a side product than an issue.
Hydrogen has terrible "well to wheel" efficiency. Rather than spend energy and fuel and resources to make, transport, store hydrogen, distribute to consumers and then deal with temporary storage inside a vehicle and losses in a fuel cell or combustion....just use the energy in step 1 to directly charge a car or move a train...
A thorough study of extracting hydrogen from methane (and capturing the remaining carbon) reveals that it is no more efficient (green) than just burning the methane. But it has all the storage problems that go with hydrogen...problems solved long ago with liquid methane...
Yeah, right, the essential bit is: reusing the existing fossil fuel infrastructure.
Just stop oil and this nonsense.
Methane gas is NOT a decent or anywhere near green fuel, in the way it gets extracted and burned now it is worse in terms of global warming potential than just burning coal. The methane leaks are extremally bad, for methane to be anywhere near "decent" alot of improvement in to the legislation of extraction and engine design has to be done.
Not that we needed another reason to leave coal in the ground. But hey, we'll -take- leave it!
I wrote my dissertation on this subject
This is a very sparce comment from one of the only people here who might actually have a worthwhile opinion to express.
Still curious how this storage method works with hydrogen's explodey problem.
Good luck mixing enough oxygen into the coal to cause an explosion.
@@darkhelmet12e47 coaldust explosions kills 1000th of mineworker around the world,my ggPa was 1 of them.
Its not really more explodey than any other gas fuel we use, like natural gas, butane or propane. They all need to mix with oxygen at the right ratios to explode. Pure hydrogen can't explode.
@@marnig9185 Coal DUST. Coal doesn't randomly explode when it isn't being mined. Explosions require fuel and oxidizer.
@@darkhelmet12e47 Happy exitinction buddy❤️
So we expend a massive amount of energy to create a lot of hydrogen... to pump down into mines where the gas becomes a part of the coal that we don't even want. Or the gas F's off into space because it is so much lighter than regular air and we released it into a big cave that is probably not air tight and certainly not hydrogen tight as the gas finds its way through materials. maybe coal as a lining to a hydrogen tank if that would help. Pumping it down is a waste of energy, money and not at all helpful just raises more problems
I don’t think different sources of fuel is needed as much as a cultural shift.
Both would help. Fewer cars and more green transport to ease things. Societies can't change overnight and neither can the the industry it's built on, but each can shift over time. But beyond either, government needs to shift because industry wont do it on its own without a paddling.
the culstural shift is to get us to multiple sources not just one or two, and away from fossil fuels.
Why not both?
I'd say an infrastructure shift also for more pedestrian transportation. At least in the US, most places are extremely dangerous to walk along roads.
@@wayIess people just need to travel less and live closer to the places they are likely to want to go.
"Only product iswater..." Well, almost. If you burn it in air, you always end up with a -littlt- bit of nitrogen oxides. Now I suppose it is reasonable to install gigantic catalytivc converters on Power plants, but...
Yeah its probably a good idea for the fuel cells to be airtight and have pure oxygen injected in, like they do for rockets.
Nitrogen dioxide isn't a greenhouse gas though iirc,neither is nitric oxide
@@jasonrichardson1999
Nitrogen oxides are actually good for plants, but they are terrible for people and can cause all kinds of internal damage if you breath them in.
I bet hillbillies will try to steal that catalytic converter off of the plant, it'd be worth a fortune lol
Giant membrane oxygen concentrators ...
But really, use HFCs.
Its.... driving me crazy that wind isn't considered our number one solution...
Because….it doesn’t blow all the time?
@@chriskroeker1889even in high altitude?
Hairy ball problem; the wind is always going to be blowing somewhere, and at grid-scale that problem approaches non-issue.
@@mattomanx77 I can assure you it’s an issue at grid-scale. We likely won’t solve it in our lifetimes.
@@chriskroeker1889there are enough areas where it's a total non-issue that it should be a priority. The attitude of "we're all going to use the same power source everywhere" is one of the things that needs to change: that was never a very realistic idea in the first place, and it's definitely not realistic if we are talking green energy.
Nuclear power also needs to start being taken seriously. By which I mean, reusing depleted fuel: which is something done in other parts of the world. Before anyone says "but Fukushima", actually that is an illustration of how much better we are at handling this stuff than we were fifty years ago. Given how much of the plant was destroyed, it is notable how very *not* a disaster that was (compared to historical plant meltdowns caused by much less extensive damage or even operator error). If something like that happened once every century, and it really is the kind of thing that would only happen once in a century, we would all be fine.
I wish I could be researching this!!!! I researched renewable energy with my inorganic chemistry professor before I graduated and I miss it so much!!!!
CSIRO, (Australia's national science institute) has a patent on a catalyst that makes it cheap and easy to turn hydrogen into green ammonia for storage and transport. They are commericalising the process with Fortescue metals. It takes nitrogen from the air and commbines with hydrogen to make ammonia (NH3) and then reverses the process and releases the nitrogen back into the air when needed. They are also experimenting with green ammonia as a replacement for industrial diessel in minning trucks, trains, and ships.
Industry is already familiar with handling ammonia and a global infrastructre for its distribution already exists. The big problem iis generating the hydrogen, currently green H2 is about 6X the price of the diry stuff made from FFs. They expect to reach price parity in 2030 via new electroliser tech now coming online now, and the economies of large scale production.
While the coal thing may be technically possible, it's sounds impractical and expensive by comparison.
Nice
3:42 I'm sorry, but methane/fossil gas is not a green source of fuel (sources below). I would have expected a more thorough review of the content before publishing this video. Please do better next time.
From the UN environment programme: "Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, about 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide measured over a 20-year period, so any emissions undermine its credentials as a better fossil fuel. So, “cleaner” is probably not the best word to describe fossil gas (natural gas)."
According to the Government of Canada, "Methane is also a greenhouse gas (GHG) with a global warming potential that is more than 80 times greater than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 20-year period, and more than 25 times greater over a 100-year period, as confirmed by the recent report from the Sixth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)."
According to the European Environment Agency, "Methane (CH4) is more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide (CO2), its concentrations are increasing rapidly, and it also has a shorter lifespan than CO2. Methane is the primary component of natural gas. It is a short-lived greenhouse gas (GHG) that makes a significant contribution to global warming and climate change. In addition to being a potent GHG, CH4 is also an ozone precursor and thus has impacts on air quality and human health, as well as damages vegetation such as crops and forests. Thus, reducing CH4 emissions contributes to mitigating climate change and improving air quality and ecosystem services. According to the IPCC, 2021, of the observed increase of 1.1°C in global temperatures, about 0.5°C can be attributed to CH4 emissions. The observed global increase in temperature is net and thus includes the cooling effect from aerosols. Natural (solar and volcanic) drivers change global surface temperatures by -0.1°C to +0.1°C."
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, "Methane is also a greenhouse gas (GHG), so its presence in the atmosphere affects the earth's temperature and climate system."
Now I'm wondering if charcoal could also be used for the same purpose. Not every place has coal underground, but if silos of charcoal can be used in much the same way then that might also have some promise.
Arguably even more promise than this method. Charcoal is fully renewable and producing it creates way less pollutants than coal extraction.
@@VisonsofFalseTruths I think you missed a big part here; they're keeping the coal undergroud, planning to pump the ground full of hydrogen. No coal extraction+no need to produce something, it already exists means that it'll be greener to use coal wherever there's coal in the ground.
I do this now with charcoal as an experiment for something else.
i was thinking the same, you can easily make a battery out of those in silos, charcoal is renewable, and since we are talking about nanometers here, you can probably crush it up finely, surround it with clay and work from there. i understand the part of having underground storage of existing infrastructure. I'm just asking, what if ...
Important note: Hydrogen is not a fuel. It is a storage medium. It's more like a battery than it is like gasoline, any way we make Hydrogen requires an input of energy on our part, and we at best get that amount of energy back. Fuels are dug up and expended with less energy than they store, that's what makes them attractive, and what makes Hydrogen a non-solution to climate change. We still need a means of generating the energy with which to produce Hydrogen, it only solves transport, and battery technology is catching up in terms of volumetric energy density.
The only way Hydrogen becomes a fuel is with fusion, our focus should be on power generation right now, not storage and transport. If we figure out efficient fusion, even atmospheric CO2 capture becomes viable as a means of controlling greenhouse gas emissions.
It's a shame that this episode paints hydrogen in such a rosy light without addressing the many problems with it. It's inefficient, dangerous, expensive, requires infrastructure that doesn't exist, and is almost never actually zero emissions (most is made from methane, and if burned, you still get nitrogen oxides, which are the worst part of air pollution from a health perspective). If you're using a fuel cell, it needs a lot of platinum.
It's important to note that the main proponents of hydrogen are the fossil industry. They want us tied to yet another infrastructure-heavy energy system.
Hydrogen is probably going to be useful for aircraft and maybe long-hail shipping, but for just about everything else, it's worse than battery-electric in too many ways to be useful. This idea is only useful for storing it in large quantities in specific locations, so helps with almost none of the real problems with it.
Extraction of coal is environmentally damaging, industrial coal waste is toxic to water, releasing the methane is a danger, burning the coal is still a terrible idea, SO tell me how this helps keeping coal in the GROUND please!
Why use hydrogen at all? Use biogas (renewable methane) instead. ICE cars can be converted into running on methane for a relatively low cost (or you could buy a car that runs on methane) and biogas can be made from biological waste like leftover food. All biological waste that decompose into metgane can be used to make biogas and the bacteria does all the heavy lifting, making the energy requirements for making biogas very small. The biogas can even use existing natural gas pipes since it's the same gas only renewable.
I was pretty impressed with this old guy who made this old school truck with a modern engine running on hydrogen with his own custom designed tank. He said he has hardly any leakage at all which was even more impressive.
mileage and power produced. if it can't be used for transportation of heavy loads and doing fast paced work, it's useful as golf carts, which by rights every one in every city in the world should be restricted to and taxed a million dollars to own because they live near everything and can just walk
@@aprilgeneric8027 aren't most golf clubs owned by it's members? The privately owned ones would be a small minority, at least in my country. Sidenote: this is why most haven't been sold for redevelopment as the area they are in expanded.
IF there is any - its already a problem. Because you would have MILLIONS of these issues across a number of different locations and devices.
I agree.
So much effort is being put into defending a bad idea by myopic people who seem to be fixated on the clean exhaust part of the process.
I smell an oily rat. @Embassy_of_Jupiter
@@aprilgeneric8027 yes when you have a heart attack the paramedics can just walk to your house and walk you to the hospital.
I'm still highly skeptical of hydrogen energy storage.
This doesn't resolve the core issue of how energy intensive and unproductive green hydrogen is. Not to mention all the infrastructure we'll need to change to implement it. I don't think Hydrogen is the answer.
Now, I'm no geologist, but I am pretty darn sure there is no such thing as crushed coal deposits. So why did they use crushed coal in the experiments? Crushing it would certainly increase its surface area. And as you said, it's all about surface area.
Pumping hydrogen into coal beds is a bad idea.
Leaking hydrogen destroys the chemicals in the atmosphere that break down methane.
You can't risk it leaking. It has to be done industrially in an internally sealed process.
No smoke comes out of our coal power stations here in Australia. There are filters & systems that re-burn the waste gases.
The more I hear about hydrogen the less I think it’s green and efficient. You need energy to produce it, at loss, you need energy to cool it down for storage. There is no convenient solution for storage, and no solution for transport because it just evaporate or move through containers.
But doesn't that lock up oxygen in water that WAS in the atmosphere??
Or no..?
Don’t touch the methane underground. Don’t displace it. Whatever you do with it, a large amount dissipates away into the atmosphere. Methane makes climate change much worse. Whatever solution we talk about today, think what happens when it’s deployed at large scale. We can’t pump hydrogen underground to displace methane. We shouldn’t.
If energy storage is such a headache, biology can do the conversion. My company will address the efficiency issue in a big way. And even if the efficiency doesn’t reach sky high, if it’s the only viable solution, we may have to take it. Otherwise we have no other means to tap the power of the Sahara.
The company is called Enzidia, to be launched next Spring.
Just put it back in the ground?
Couldn't you store the hydrogen in a magnetic field? That way it can't escape into the storage materials.
No
@@electraelpindrai1964 then how do they do it in fusion reactors in development?
@@fraliexb plasma is an ironized gas, it has ions which interact with magnetic fields. H2 on the other hand doesn't. So if you are talking about storing hydrogen as a plasma which as low density and highly energy intensive since you are using magnets in the tesla range. It would require more energy to store and maintain the plasma then it would take to electrolyse water on site
There are places using salt caves to hold hydrogen as well. I'm not sure how scalable these strategies will be, but every little bit counts! Now if we could get fossil fuel bribes out of politics, then we could have a real chance to prevent a devastating future.
Salt caves are ready used to store processed natural gas as a storage tanks. So this video is very do-able, if the science checks out.
@zethrilzethril571 salt caves are already used to store hydrogen. Roughly at 300 m depth you're looking at 40 bar compression to keep it there with minimal impurities. Storing hydrogen in coal deposits increase the need for post processing impurity steps but decrease the need for such high pressures still. They're both viable
If this doesn't work with Activated Charcoal on a scale that could substitute the gas tank of a car, then I'm not sure I understand the point of this. There are better, more efficient ways of storing energy for later consumption that are easily connected to the grid. Also, how much energy does it take to force the hydrogen into where we want it to be? It's a neat idea and that's about it.
Sponsored by Peabody Energy. God bless America.
Not a good idea, I will bet you right now this is a pipe dream.
We already have Solid State Hydrogen, we just need to scale that up, but this seems promising.
To think we’ve just been burning sponges for so long 😂
Im so glad this isn't about "carbon capture"
Just leave the fkn coal in the ground. smh
What about carbon fiber? Can that be made out of coal?
This just sounds like a way for coal companies to get to keep running business as usual
That is why it keeps being funded. As polluting companies already long ago knew about what they are doing. And if all your customers die or a good chunk of them, then you can't make money of them anymore.
Scishow, I wonder, how do you guys think the world would change if we finally achieved fusion power? Would it just solve everything by having infinite clean power worldwide? Or would the tech be monopolized by either a company that invented it, or a nation unwilling to share?
I doubt that fusion can ever be cheaper per unit than solar or wind. First it will have to make power, then it will have to catch up to the cheapest source of energy on the planet, and then it needs to get deployed. If it's even possible, it's going to take more than a few decades.
Fusion power has some major hurdles it needs to clear that the industry and science journalists rarely talk about. It's almost certainly not going to give us infinite clean power in our lifetimes.
The vast majority of fusion projects use deuterium-tritium, because it has the lowest temperature/energy requirement. Deuterium is relatively abundant, but tritium is not. There's not enough tritium in the world to scale up energy production, so tritium has to be bred from lithium-6 in specialized fission plants (all of which are on their way out, and we're not building new ones) or on site at the fusion plant (we have not proven we can make enough tritium this way). There is a lot of lithium in seawater, but there's no technology to extract it at scale. We have to mine it, and there's already not enough of it for batteries. Lithium-6, a rare isotope of lithium, is also radioactive and has been used in nuclear weapons, and the same is true of tritium, so they're tightly controlled. Furthermore, D-T reactions release energy mostly in the form of neutrons, which will bombard the interior of the reactor, creating nuclear waste.
The next easiest reaction is deuterium-deuterium, which requires more energy to initiate and also outputs less energy. It produces tritium as a byproduct, which if fused will lead to neutron bombardment and generation of nuclear waste. If tritium is completely removed, then there's low nuclear waste, but plasma temperature will need to be kept twice as high.
After that, there's deuterium-helium-3. Most helium-3 on earth is locked in the mantle and inaccessible, which is why there's the science-fiction idea of mining the moon and gas giants for helium-3. Space mining is technology that doesn't exist yet. Although D-H3 is theoretically aneutronic, in practice some of the deuterium will fuse with other deuterium, thus generating nuclear waste as well.
Finally, there's proton-boron-11. This reaction is aneutronic so creates no nuclear waste. However, the temperature requirement is many times higher than D-T/D-D and the energy output thousands of times lower. There's also much less research on this.
tl;dr: fusion power remains in the realm of science fiction and is not going to be ready any time soon.
There is no green usage of coal as long as it needs to be mined. It's not simply "burning" coal that makes it "non-green". It's the entire process of obtaining from start to finish. Instead of trying to find a "green" label for coal its better to just accept it for what it is and clean up the process of obtaining it and burning as best we can. But dont kid yourself into thinking there will ever be "green" coal.
Thanks for. Pointing this out!
By this logic literally nothing humans do can be considered “green” how will we make paint and grease to lubricate wind turbines without petrochemicals from oil? How about the uranium for nuclear reactors? Extraction of resources is part of the reality of human existence, without mining we would still be in the Stone Age.
"Coal is always bad so we should burn it anyway" is an interesting take. Fortunately this proposal doesn't involve mining more coal, I think you just got spooked by the green label.
You clearly didn’t watch even a minute of any part of this video… 😑
You wouldnt need to mine coal in this proposal, you would directional drill to a coal bed, pump in hydrogen and extracted same way. The coal stays in the ground....
Can you please do a video about the USA co2 output vs the amount the trees in our country convert each year?
well you have to include all crops as well and any other green plants not just trees.
@@ronblack7870 of course
Cool, but how do we get the hydrogen out again?
1:45 converts to -423.4 degrees Fahrenheit for those who work in non SI Units or 20.15 Kelvin for those who do
or 36.27 Rankine or -202.4 Reaumur or Gas Mark -26
Didnt know scishow was paid off like that
Yay my coal stock investment is saved!
HydrogenTechnology working on storage of hydrogen in solid and paste form really cool but transferring back to gas in a controlled way
Maybe like “CLEAN CORAL”?
Respectfully, @SciShow, this video's statement that "burning" hydrogen (H2) produces only steam (H20) is an error. If H2 combusts in earth's atmosphere, it is also burning air's constituents from dust to other gases. NOX is a potential byproduct of H2 combustion but this can be addressed with catalytic converter technology. What I suspect you meant was consuming H2 in a fuel cell only yields power, heat and water (vapor). Hydrogen may make a lot of sense in some applications but it is important to get the facts straight.
Thanks for reading and as ever I still enjoyed the video!
"hydrogen embrittlement"*
Orrrrr just stick with Electricity, much more available and cheaper. Never runs out (sun). And build on the infrastructure instead of wasting time on Hydrogen
Santa is going to give naughty kids pot plants from now on.
Did a coal mine write this?
Just as long as it’s not doesn’t explode or burn while using, that’s fine. A challenge, for sure. And don’t forget frack earthquakes.
This seems like a pie in the sky idea. Like harvesting the ocean's tide for energy. Could it work? sure. Will it work? No.
Why aren't there more deep dives on energy generation and storage? Why isn't this a regular focus with it's own dedicated teams aggregating all the DIY and commercial engineering breakthroughs and curating the cream for us. Thinking and Tinkering... Tom Stanton... Colin Furze... Integza (sp?)... Jerry Rig Everything... Why aren't yall making space for a DIY summit of TH-camrs like a digital Maker Faire for maker-celebs?
coal makes great stocking stuffers!
This is ridiculous that I have to say this- molecular hydrogen IS NOT CARBON-BASED! WTF! It's self-descriptive
Methane is NOT a green fuel. It feels like you are trying to sneak things into the conversation for the carbon lobby while pretending to green.
I have always wondered why the gas burnt off by oil rig flares might not be stored ( somehow ? ) and used to heat MANY folks homes ( ? ) . seems SUCH a waste of potential heating energy .. please comment ! ...... DAVE™🛑
Methanol? CH3OH. Only has *one* Carbon…. 2 CH3OH + 3 O2 = 2 CO2 + 4 H2O - adds up.
Still gives off CO2, though - just not as much as other easy to handle, *readily storable* liquids.
Hydrogen will not get the basic of synthetic fuel for mobility, or jet Turbines. This would need an insane amounts of electrical energy to gain enough hydrogen.
You can drive four electric turbines or cars buy one combustion system that burns hydrogen.
And rockets are not a good example in getting through a traffic overflowing street 😅
So estimated from today's perspective: you would trash three or four planes and cars,... to one system burning hydrogen.😅
And then there is the question why to build a complex electric car and add to this (full running electric car) a expensive fuel cell and a complex hydrogen storage.
This will not make the already driving(!) electric car cheaper, force it to use more inefficient hydrogen.😅
Hydrogen will might get used for industry, plastic, chemical process for fertilizer and metallurgy.
But using hydrogen in drive mobility or airplanes (like we know it today) is absolut greenfluencing. An promots a typ of society that will not sustain in futur. The framing use green produced hydrogen for a majority is totally wrong.
That more people using hydrogen as "fuel", that more people need to walk in Futur. That less we use hydrogen in mobile application that more people can use a private electrical car an charge it with cheap electric ⚡ power. 🙃
Best regards from Germany 🇩🇪
A engineer working in science 🧪
Hydrogen is a tantalizing energy source. When oxidized (recombined with oxygen) it produces large amounts of clean energy. I've been following this for over 50 years and we are no closer now than back in the 1970s for two important reasons: 1- It requires a tremendous amount of energy to separate it from water. There are other ways to produce H2, but most aren't "green". And, 2 - Storage as noted here. There was a lot of talk 40-50 years ago of storing it in metal hydrides. That sounded promising, but the reality is that it has too many problems that made it impractical, so we're back to square one again.
However, to achieve a breakthrough, some study on this needs to continue.
Is not COAL primary for WATER FILTERING and even Diluting some swalled poison etc? It is NOT just used as fuel to run cars or to get warm, cook, clean etc.
Genuine question @SciShow, wouldn’t burning hydrogen be just as bad for rising sea levels than burning coal? Putting more H20 in the earth’s system sounds really problematic!
Cool ... now separate the ownership of mineral extraction rights from the NEW gas storage rights... and retain them under public ownership.
only problem with this, is that METHANE is 23x worse as a greenhosue gas than co2. cubic meter of methane is the same as 23 cubic meters of co2. should these hydrogen/coal "batteries" leak, we exasperate the problem 23x fasterthan using traditional co2,and by consuming more power to create the problem in the first place. this does NOT seem like a reasonable viable solution.
Ammonia would be a far superior storage solution, with easier extraction and reversal back into hydrogen
Take electricity from solar/wind and spend 2/3 of the energy converting it to hydrogen, and spend more energy converting back to electricity. Or pump some water up a hill at 80% efficiency.. Sounds like a winner
Ffs we need to be using WAY LESS ENERGY, not just figuring out new ways to enable our massive-and still growing-overconsumption.
And when it catches fire you have Centralia x1000. This is a terrible idea. The world is moving on from Hydrogen, it is too much of a PITA to deal with. It will only be used in very specific use cases, such as aeroplanes or transporting energy long distances (by pipeline or ship)
Pie in the sky. How many times in my life I've heard these next big thing stories, I couldn't begin to guess. I've got no problem with whatever crazy hypothesis or experiment you want to make, what I would like is to know is, what happened? Was it a complete failure? Did they learn anything new? How long did it run and what were the costs? Like what happened to the room temperature superconductor? I know it didn't work, but why? Was there any merit to it? I can see never hearing anything about this hydrogen coal thing, just like I've never heard anything about the graphite renewable energy battery and that was a long while ago. All I'm saying is follow up stories would be nice