@logmeindangit I don't trust this woman based on the so called climate scientist guy she recommends . He's just an propaganda activist therefore she is not trusted for me .
The US DoE has set a target for 2026: 76% system efficiency for high temperature electrolysis. Ultimately, we would like to use advanced nuclear to output at 700-1000 C, using a closed Brayton power conversion cycle at around 50% efficiency, dry cooling to minimize water consumption (increases flexibility of plant location), and for the nuclear island to cost less than $1/watt. While fuel cells today operate at around 50% efficiency, it appears that 70% is possible. Ultra-low PGM and PGM-free membranes are still under heavy development, but could be a game changer along with solid state H2 storage, greatly expanding the H2 use case in the transportation sector. Solid state storage can also greatly reduce the pressure required. Liquefaction energy costs may also be cut in roughly half with an advanced process. Power delivery with H2 will soon get a major boost with the H70HF protocol, which has been tested with an average fill rate of around 13 kg-H2/min (about 16MW @ 52% efficiency & H2 HHV). Truck stops in the US can dispense energy at around 300 MW, so fast fills lower the footprint and ensure a high utilization of infrastructure. The potential of the H2 economy has been widely underestimated somewhat due the assumption that all energy production in the future will be from a material-intensive continent-spanning renewable-centric grid. This vision is likely fatally flawed due to the limits of mining, economics, environmental footprint, and diminishing returns. Climate mitigation is a race against time, and to rapidly scale up sustainable power, we are going to have to innovate like crazy to optimize our use of materials (due to power density, a nuclear-based system should use around 10x less). If we decouple sustainable energy production from the grid, we should be able to accelerate growth and meet our cost reduction targets. Very low cost power will be crucial to maximizing the rate of decarbonization, including the enabling of carbon capture on a massive scale.
I spent two years working as an engineer in the hydrogen fuel cell industry. Going in I was so excited to be part of what I thought was going to be the future, but the reality of it set in pretty quickly. Been back in nuclear ever since.
Indeed, hydrogen is only 60% less "nuclear" than putting nuclear powered steam engines in cars >.< While there is no fallout the explosion in case of a disaster is absolutely devastating. Trying to hint that you would need a containment around the fuel tank equal to 60% of what a conventional nuclear reactor has to scale. In similarity, a hydrogen tank exploding in the street is as devastating as that ammonia tank "exploding" devastating miles around it decades ago. (to scale).
NP is the gold standard of clean energy. It’s as clean and safe as any alternative, & it does it with a fraction of the resources. NP really is the premier example of the phenomenon of ‘dematerialization’ in which we actually use less to produce more.
Amen! I was right there form the beginning. Hydrogen as a carrier is a distracting niche at best. Let's not waste any more time to ponder what the ideal mix would be for the future; Use Hydro, Solar and wind where possible but ALWAYS and everywhere have a grid backbone of Nuclear energy to balance windfall moments. As for nuclear; we should now step over to the extremely safe Thorium LFTR reactor models. Unlike fusion, it is proven technology (we had a molten salt reactor up and running in Oakland Tennessee in the 60s!), has close to no waste and the little waste it still produces had a half-time of about 300 years. It is literally a no brainer, even though I realize that may still be a high bar for most politicians and NGO's....
Nice presentation. I worked for Air Products & Chemicals as a hydrogen plant operator back when we were producing all of the liquid hydrogen for the space shuttle program. We also filled hydrogen tube trailers for shipping gaseous hydrogen to food processing and semiconductor manufacturers that were filled to 5000psi. What you didn’t get into is the safety hazards of hydrogen fueled cars. Leaks are a real problem if you aren’t very careful and dealing with that makes things expensive. If you do get a leak, and you likely will because those tiny little buggers are very good at escaping, having your car in your garage can easily turn your garage into a bomb that is attached to your house. A little bit of static electricity is all it takes to ignite hydrogen. I’ve helped put out several hydrogen fires and let me tell you, they are not easy to extinguish unless you have large quantities of steam, nitrogen, and dry chemical fire extinguishers at your house.
You can't really put out hydrogen fire with any of those chemicals. Hydrogen will burn until there is no more. The thing is since hydrogen is such a small bugger it's density is very low and it's buoyancy is very high thus if you have a small ventilation at the top of your garage it would be sufficient for it to not get concentrated enough to make an explosive concentration. This makes hydrogen relatively safe when compared to LPG types of gasses which are denser than air.
@@asdassdgfdf7509 we put them out all the time in the plant. Most of the time it was small leaks on valve packings and we used steam hoses to cut off the oxygen with steam. Whenever a vent stack would light off we had nitrogen piped into the stack that we opened up to put those out. And the toughest one was a 14’ diameter flange that was in a really tight place to reach and we used a team of 6-8 guys with steam hoses to push the flame back into a corner where we couldn’t reach any further from below then a guy from the next floor up could finish it off with a big 500# wheeled unit dry chemical fire extinguisher shooting it down through the steel grating.
I am a mechanical engineer. I knew about most of the problems you mentioned years ago and I couldn't understand all the hype. I am glad someone is finally getting the information out.
You've made a lot of good points, Sabine. Unfortunately, I haven't really learned anything new since I work for a glass company and we've done trials which attempt to burn hydrogen in our furnaces instead of LNG. Indeed, the UK government has put together funding for such projects, which enabled us to do the hydrogen trial, so that hydrogen is not just for cars but also used in the so-called 'foundation industries' like concrete, steel and in our case, glass. Glass furnaces run 24/7 for around 10-15years, constantly burning gas. There are usually around 6-8 gas ports in a furnace and the hydrogen trial only used one of ports while the others continued with gas. Even then, the trial could only be run for a few hours at a time since there was not enough hydrogen (we used largely grey hydrogen; blue is rare and green almost non-existent) i.e. we speak of hydrogen in the context of cars, but in the context of the most carbon-intensive industries, where we arguably need to decarbonise the most, there is simply not enough hydrogen, let alone green hydrogen. This is partly because of the energy difference with gas you mentioned, hence more hydrogen is needed, and also the fact that such 'foundation industries' are some of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters and hence require the most fuel. Nuclear power is looking more and more like the only way forward, in combination with renewable energy.
Thanks for the insight. Given production of green hydrogen is a very young business, one can't really expect such hydrogen being abundantly available. Still your experiments are well done, because it confirms one can replace fossil gas without your industry collapsing. What I always miss in reports like this one of Sabine, is a projection into the future. Solar and wind are currently one of the most steeply growing industries, with growth rates like 30%/year. Given this, it isn't hard to imagine that there will be a whole lot of surplus electricity on windy and sunny days in a couple of years, and that's where green hydrogen will come from.
@@traumflug It's not just a matter of quantity of green electricity, it's also the infrastructure for hydrogen. How do you store it? Where is it being made? How do you transport it? The UK government has invested in something called HyNet which will attempt to do exactly what I've pointed out. However, this will only be based in north west England and it is for blue hydrogen, not green. Even then it looks like the hydrogen could only be a supplement to current fuel sources, rather than a replacement. We should aim for green hydrogen, but if we don't have a realistic view of hydrogen we will likely keep giving benefits to fossil fuel companies, as pointed out in Sabine's video.
@@mitsterful So you do see a network for blue hydrogen being established, but can't imagine this blue hydrogen eventually being replaced by green hydrogen as renewables ramp up? Come on, such an imagination isn't that hard. Before the 1970s, a stuff called _Coal Gas_ or _Town Gas_ was widely established. This was some 50% hydrogen. Which pretty much answers how to handle hydrogen: just remember how we did it back then.
Interesting that people talk about the scarcity of platinum and paladium when it comes to fuel cells but everybody has been using the same material in millions of catalytic converters in cars for about 50 years.
a good vid on Hydrogen. As an engineer working in Power and compression in the Oil & Gas industry in Houston, I can add one more insight. Methane is easily transportable in pipleine. Easy still means you easily need a hundred Megawatts in a modern, large pipeline. The molewight of Mathane is 16+, most pipeliens have a methane mix slightly higher thn this. Hydrogen's moleweight is about 2. A factor of at least eight which increases the head and the power requirement by the same factor, everything else being the same this is linear. So now if we complete the back of the envelope calculation we need nearly a Gigawatt of energy instead of a 100 MW, increasing CO2(e) emissions significantly, so Hydrogen is effectively not transportable with any environmental effectiveness.
Reducing dependence on hydrocarbons requires an equally effective substitute, and that's not easy. We hear a lot about the negative impacts of oil and gas without recognizing the benefits. At this point, the only effective scalable substitute available is nuclear power.
@Dodie Wallace Thats a lie. There are a lot of sources of energy around besides nuclear. Fossil fuels are a source of energy, but if you add energy to a system, especially if that causes the sun to also add more energy, then that system is going to get hot. Talking about benefits when your species is headed for extinction is dumb. A few azolla species climate changed themselves off the face of the planet, its naive to think it cant happen to us.
Yes point well made 8-) methane has thr advantage of being useable with existing infrastructure, thus saving a huge amount of capital and offsetting conversion efficiency
I work as an engineer in a synchrotron, and various experimental gases are delivered. Hydrogen is one of them. A major issue with handling hydrogen is how broad a concentration it is explosive in. Interestingly it has a negative Joule-Thompson effect at room temperature ie actually heats when expanding into lower pressure. EDIT: Some comments correctly pointing out that negative JT won't push hydrogen to autoignition point. Edited to address this oversight (I deal with a lot of gases and got mixed up). The point is still broadly correct of H2 being a uniquely difficult gas from engineering compliance point of view.
Yep. The first time I believed that hydrogen has big problems was when Kelly Johnson attempted to design a hydrogen-fueled aircraft and wound up pulling the plug on the project because the idea "just has no go". His propulsion chief that wound up taking over Skunk Works when Kelly retired concurred that it was just had too many inherent problems.
@@Skank_and_Gutterboy does anyone know how those American military killer drones are powered? I've a suspicion they might use a type of solid bound hydrogen, which was presented at the hannover fair around 10 years ago by a UK research institute, who have gone rather quiet soon after except an interview about their technology use for drones.. th-cam.com/video/uyRwXtskT_E/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/p6wqwAGWx0E/w-d-xo.html
@@stianyttervik9070 Depends what the pressure in the tank was. Considering he's saying it's a large scale business, these are likely industrial tanks of 10,000psi.
Sabine, this video is such a marvelous example of when I didn’t realize a topic truly interested me until I listened to you talk about it. That’s a sign of a brilliant teacher. This has occurred a number of times with your extraordinary videos, and each time this happens you help to broaden my world beyond what I had ever conceived or considered. Thank you for sharing this rare and precious gift with us. 🙏
@Frank Roidlight I’m really not sure what that means, but I do have a lot of respect and admiration for Professor Hossenfellder. I have learned a great deal from her. And I’m gay, so that is where my interest ends. Have a great day! 🙂
Thank you Sabine. You and anyone that is helping you put these videos together are ... , I have to say it, a treasure for the modern world. (Sorry for the element of schmaltz in that.) These videos cut through all the hype and salesmanship we get every day. I see so many people in lectures and videos stating "facts" that are not testable. It has to be detrimental to young people who are trying to learn and contribute to science and industry. I think most of us actually want to stay grounded and not get too distracted by entertainment and conjecture. Thanks again.
Not doubting the basics of this video, still 2 remarks. First you never touch the simple solution of using hydrogen as power source by simply burning it. Instead you only talk about fuel cells converting hydrogen directly into electricity. In my opinion a car with a gastank full of hydrogen wouldn’t be that different from the present ones driving on LPG or LNG. Secondly there is being worked on solar panels that produce hydrogen directly, instead of electricity. Which could change the green production figures.
@@alexhaerens6116 Lubrication of internal combustion hydrogen engines is difficult, because normal engine oil is chemically altered by hydrogen. Maybe you have heard of "hardened"/hydrogenated fat. You don't want to submit your engine oil to this process.
My own research shows Sabine’s video to be accurate. Almost whatever energy source you think of costs money to produce and distribute for use, and introduces complexity into the mix. I think two types of energy generators should be pursued, Nuclear, and Fusion. We can do nuclear now, but fusion will take more time, even with the breakthroughs seen recently - Yet well beyond my time on earth, I think Fusion is the one to pursue for future generations. IMHO.
I just saw a video that introduced the company called Plasma Kinetics that stores hydrogen not in pressurized tanks, but as a solid on film or CD-like disks. Maybe your next visit to this topic could look into this ... maybe. I video I saw was a quick introduction to the company and not a technical review. So details about capacities and cost were a little sparse. Thanks for your hard work Sabine.
Also why whenever the establishment tells you there's an easy band-aid fixture to a massive, multi-dimensional problem like climate change, you know they're pulling a fast one
@@RPSchonherr I’m confident that the embrittlement problem alone means this technology is a niche one at best. Having to replace the tank and valves for containment systems will make this quite expensive, and the potential for a 700 bar bomb going off due to hydrogen embrittlement is one thing that insurers will charge handsomely for. Add to that the weight of the system and it’s essentially a non-starter for at least passenger vehicle applications. I can see potential for trains, ocean transport vessels and perhaps energy storage systems in place of lithium ion battery mega-pack type of solutions. Or for space applications, where the weight of a lithium ion battery is a prohibitive launch expense vis-a-vis the weight. The other thing that Sabine didn’t mention, and I’m not sure why, is that hydrogen will escape from any container that you store it in over time. It’ll leak around the valves and right through the metal skin of the container due to the size of the hydrogen molecules. So storing it for any length of time is not practical. The best hope for hydrogen is the possibility of a new intermediate form of storage (look up hydrogen grey goo) where it’s essentially combined into a gel / paste format that can be utilized. This still doesn’t solve the problems with PEM exchanger material rarity (for direct electricity generation), but maybe it could be directly combusted, that is something I’m not certain of. The one thing I am convinced is true is that BIG OIL is powering most of the discussion, research etc. on hydrogen in a failing attempt to keep themselves relevant and profitable. Trust me, I have a bunch of shares in Ballard Power (for probably going on 20 years now), which is a Canadian hydrogen fuel cell company so I wish this weren’t true, but I’m fairly certain that the hydrogen economy is something we’ll never see in our lifetime.
Thank you for this very informative video! I learned many new things even though I am professionally working in the field of electric cars for a long time. Some more fun facts about hydrogen cars: As batteries have been improved dramatically over the last 10 years and hydrogen technology has not, a modern hydrogen car (Hyundai Nexo) is actually heavier than a comparable battery electric car (Tesla Model 3). Both cars have the same driving range but the Tesla has two electric motors while the Hyundai has just one. Of course, the battery car is also much cheaper. And the cost of hydrogen fueling stations is more than 10-times more than the cost of battery fast chargers while being much less reliable at the same time. These numbers are for electric chargers and hydrogen stations that can provide the same driving range per hour of operation. We have electric chargers and battery electric vehicles today, that actually charge faster in average than hydrogen cars (Hyundai Ioniq 6 for example).
I developed a fuel cell program with a company for the US Navy. The idea was to convert methane or diesel fuel to Hydrogen via cracking. The company was purchased by GM, and the next thing, the fuel cell leaked and needed to produce the power we expected. The Navy wanted to demonstrate the fuel cell in a tow tractor for towing aircraft, but we needed help to proceed with the project. There are actually 4 fuel cell technologies. Who knows what the future will be after we have evolved technically. Instead of eliminating greenhouse gases, we could shoot for reducing these emissions so much so our human footprint is minimal.
What about grid applications? Could you use a wind turbine farm or solar array to use electrolysis on seawater? Could the waste be used for agriculture?
The overwhelming number of chemists who have been hearing hydrogen-research colleagues talking about the "hydrogen economy" have been rolling our eyes for decades. Very few chemists ever bought into the hype - you do a good job explaining why.
The same hefty skepticism is the same for fusion energy. The problem with “miracle” energy sources are all down on fundamental levels. So to the uninitiated, these miraculous energy sources seem like magical solutions, because that’s all they are is “magic”, nothing more than expensive smoke and mirrors to drive a narrative.
@@lexus4tw of course. Cost is always the limiter. They (sort of) solved it with batteries but only with sig enginerring. Who's to say same won't happen w/H2?
@@michaelangove9841 No, those are two different groups of chemists. Materials chemists weren’t negative on the potential for Li ion batteries at all. I know this well since I went to the conferences where John Goodenough and Stan Whittingham presented their work on batteries (Elon Musk uses their work - he was smart enough to understand the potential it had, but did nothing fundamental in battery development). Materials chemists have been rolling their eyes over ‘hydrogen salesmen’ for a long time.
Professor Hossenfelder: I am an old retired physicist (plasma and QED), yet despite continuing to study constantly, my wife and I learn so much from your cogent videos. No one else can do what you do each and every episode. With greatest respect, Dr. Gerlach
I have got to hand it to Sabine. She has the most comprehensive assessments of technologies on the internet. Most cost/ benefit analyses don’t address the inherent issues of different technologies over the current ubiquitous technologies. Sabine does excellent breakdowns.
A brilliant analysis of this topic. It is amazing how Sabine manages to explain a complicated scientific topic for a broader non-scientific audience and I appreciate your efforts very much. Ty very much, Sabine.
Thank you, Sabine. I began studying hydrogen solutions in 1991. I agree with your conclusions. The oil and gas companies are spending a lot of money trying to turn hydrogen into a solution except it isn't. As you mentioned NASA started using hydrogen solutions in the 60's and here we are 60 years later trying to figure out how to make it work for transport....maybe not.
I'm in my 50's and I grew up thinking that Hydrogen was the way to go as an eco-friendly, yet energy rich solution to gasoline. This has been the best explanation I have heard to refute that and illustrate the problems that accompany any thoughts on hydrogen conversion. Thanks for the great videos and the simple truths put in layman terms.
I'm in my early 50s and I remember all the happy talk in the late 90s about the "hydrogen economy" that was everywhere. I thought to myself, self, hydrogen would make a great fuel if we actually had some. Shame we ain't got no hydrogen.
Hydrogen could be efficient if we could achieve >1 Q. And microfusion cells. Those stories we hear are speculated around this utopia. But Dr. Sabine talks about current capabilities, not possibilities. I've been following her for a while and noticed she is more realist than idealist. Nevertheless, we need realists to overcome other difficulties.
@@XavierBetoN Some realism for you. Water vapor is the #1 Greenhouse gas. It does 3/4s of the heating according to GHG theory. If you can believe the theory. If the theory is correct water vapor alone will destroy the planet. There is on average 50 times as much water vapor in the atmosphere as CO2.
Well done. A sobering reminder of the realities of hydrogen. I was waiting on the discussion of storage leakage due to the small molecule, but it sounds like that's the least of the problems.
The stuff is ridiculously dangerous too. If you have a leak, it's almost guaranteed to go kaboom when it reaches the right mixture with air, and the only way you can get it into a liquid state is getting it really close to zero degrees Kelvin, otherwise it's very bulky and has low energy density. Just another example of an old niche technology suddenly being mainstreamed by people who aren't scientists. The old becomes new. The other problem is how it's marketed to normies in news media. I've had huge arguments with people who think that hydrogen cars "run on water" not understanding that the energy has to come from somewhere, and hydrogen is just a technically challenging, impractical and highly inefficient storage medium.
@jaz "You vill own nutzing und be happy. You vill eat ze bugs, you vill live in ze pod, you vill verk in ze wagie cagie und you vill like it or else" Klaus Schwab (probably) Notice they are putting DRM, remote killswitches and "AI drink driver detection" in cars now. Also the new traffic cameras being installed in my country have all kinds of currently untapped capabilities, like hypothetically charging drivers for being over their travel allotment, or the congestion charge they are already talking about. Not to mention average speed fines, and an insane level of surveillance. The fact that all speed cameras just got transferred from the police to our ministry of transportation speaks volumes about where this is going.
Possibly the 2 glaring issues are the rare metals and embrittlement. I was somewhat unaware and they seem almost insurmountable for large scale. I'm surprised no government has followed form by suggesting more people as a form of medium-term carbon capture.
Hydrogen overall doesn't work for short-transit or small scale solutions. So anything from a Mobile Scooter to a Large Ute, it's not going to be competitive. Where it makes sense is large ships and cargo trains. For smaller ships and passenger trains it can work as well. Basically it would be as-competitive as Lithium Battery solution. But I don't think Large Trucks will be too successful with Hydrogen, for that you would opt for Diesel, or Unleaded, or potentially BEV. Another place where Hydrogen could potentially work well, is as a renewable energy in Passenger Aircraft. BEV solutions really don't work for flight. You can have the pressurised fuel containers have a quick test before each departure, and give them a 10-Year lifespan due to Embrittlement. But I think the better solution would be to make aircraft ICE, since we would have excess fuel supply, if we decided to convert our domestic cars into BEV. A more potent solution would probably be to Heavily Tax gasoline and Car Registrations, whilst simultaneously making Public Transport free to use. But also expanding Public Transport and making it more adopted by the populous. Even when using ICE, public transport is more efficient than passenger transport, even when that's using BEV. The correct answer is that, there is no One-Size Fits All. Certain demography will require certain solutions. With potentially using Bio-Fuels, Carbon Capture, and Restoring Rainforests also in our arsenal.
If it was easy it would have been done long ago when it's the only real long term solution they will find better solutions we can't have nuclear planes and buses
@@French20cent Germany lol stuck in the dark ages no innovation the UK is the place for that sadly it's Germanys fault the biggest market in the world the eu isn't in the global trade war between China and the USA. The eu is a customer losing relevance each year as real growth it's outside the eu
As a chemical engineer I've been telling people this for decades, and lacking understanding they just argued maintaining that I was wrong, or protecting the oil industry, etc.However, they see a youtube video and suddenly they are experts. I fear for the future of humanity.
Thanks for the comprehensive look at the hydrogen issues. I work in the RE branch, and have seen a few big companies trying really hard to incorporate H2 storage to replace Li-ion ones. As such, the cost and the H2 storage problem were already clear to me. But my ex-company was still convincing us saying it was worth it because of the blue hydrogen...now with the info in the section "the colours of Hydrogen" really shows that it was basically an attempt at green-washing! Thank you for the great video!
Blue washing? 😜 I was thinking the best grid scale application for hydrogen would be seasonal storage at relatively lower pressures. That or combine it with atmospheric carbon and just make methane from air and water. It'd be horribly energy inefficient but you can store the methane produced for years fairly easily and it's not too arduous to store enough for a worst case event. So given your Green Power network will inherently have significant periods of excess capacity even energy inefficient long term storage could well be useful. (Regular batteries aren't looking too viable as yet for storing a few weeks of excess in summer for cold still dark winters)
I don't know your line of work. But those of us working in science (not hydrogen) know that nothing is easy and there're always multiple reasons why things don't get done as easily as they first seem.
Thanks for pulling all of this information together, Sabine. I've been trying to tell people for several years that Hydrogen is problematic because of its sources, production methods, transportation and storage, let alone because of the inefficiency of using it in fuel cells or in combustion engines. This video will be shared at every opportunity. A few more considerations are: 1) The Hydrogen storage vessels in cars have a life expectancy of only 5 years before they will need replacing for safety reasons. 2) When transferring H₂ to the vehicle, the speed of transfer is also constrained by thermal issues. 3) A storage tank at a filling station has to be larger and much more expensive than the tanks for storing gasoline or Diesel fuel. 4) The Oxygen used in fuel cells really needs to be very pure, but air is not pure Oxygen. This leads to accelerated degradation of the fuel cell membranes. 5) If the Hydrogen is burned in a combustion engine, the exhaust is not pure water; it also contains Nitrates, because of the Nitrogen in the air in the combustion chamber. 6) It's also worth remembering that water vapour is an efficient greenhouse gas. 7) Overall efficiency of the Hydrogen-powered car alone, ignoring all other stages of the Hydrogen processing, is only about 21%, comparable to the efficiency of a petrol car. But the efficiency of the systems in a fully electric car is roughly 71%. That inefficiency, coupled with the high costs of production and storage, along with the dubious sources of Hydrogen and of the catalysts, mean that Hydrogen can never replace fossil fuels or displace battery electric vehicles, unless drivers are willing to pay a much higher price for their fuel, and are prepared to continue to breathe polluted air which will shorten their lives.
1) 5 years life expectancy is not that bad 2) that is the same problem natural gas powered cars have, you get less mileage when its hot, and millions of people us it. 3, 4, 5 are right, but improvable 6) it is, but its also not that simple. water vapor doesn't stay in the atmosphere like CO2 or methane, it condenses back into rain, the amount of water vapor that can stay in the atmosphere before it gets saturated is actually directly related to temperature. 7)I would love to know where you got that number. from the estimations I've seem it can be anything from 30 to 50% depending on how you make the hydrogen, how you store it, and how efficient the fuel cells are. aren't you confusing with the loses from creating the hydrogen ? they are around 20%.
The nitrogen already exists, just in a different state. You aren't creating anything new. Source and means is where focus should be. The water vapor would not be nearly the problem if there was enough mature vegetation to absorb it. Take a good look at the virgin forest map from Columbus to today anywhere in the Americas and imagine what the rest of the world once looked like, and replantings do not have nearly the same effect. Life is going to continue to shorten until the numbers of people running around drops dramatically or mutation occurs where only that which adapts survives.
@@n0validusername no, there is more than enough earth for many times today's population to live sustainably. the problem is not overpopulation, its overconsumption and inefficient use of resources and space.
@@n0validusername "the nitrogen already exists, just in a different state". yes and the state - the molecule which is a part of - is exactly what matters. Nitrogen gas (N2) does nothing, Nitrogen oxides and Nitrogen-Hydrogen molecules do cause proplems.
Another engineer here. Nice straightforward video with a well-constructed argument and good presentation of evidence. You don't need these music video clips. For me, they distract from a well-formulated presentation.
I recently found your channel, and I'm loving it! I learn something new from every video I watch, and your snarky, no-nonsense style makes it even more enjoyable. This video on solar energy challenges is no exception. It's crucial to consider solar energy efficiency, cost, and the use of rare earth elements in solar panels. Developing more efficient solar cell technologies like perovskite or multi-junction cells could help improve energy conversion efficiency. Additionally, researching alternative materials for solar panels that don't rely on rare earth elements can make solar energy more sustainable and environmentally friendly. On a separate note, I've been exploring Fe-N-C catalysts as potential alternatives to noble metal catalysts like platinum and iridium for applications such as fuel cells. Although not mentioned in the video, their catalytic activity and stability might be lower, but the cost-effectiveness and sustainability advantages due to the scarcity and high cost of noble metals are significant. Further research into optimizing their structure, understanding aging mechanisms, and exploring new active site configurations can lead to advancements in sustainable energy solutions. Keep up the fantastic content! Your channel is a treasure trove of knowledge, and I can't wait for more insightful and engaging discussions on these important topics.
Thanks Sabine! I knew most of this, but found expressing it in a logical way problematic. Now I don't have to embarrass myself so much! You are my favorite science communicator of all time! I especially enjoy your subtle dead pan humor!
@@budbud2509 this is true I like this but the more convenient method to even bother messing with hydrogen as a practical way to store it in the problem is it's so light of a material it tends to seep out if I recall properly or correctly I imagine I don't know.. furthermore anyway what about a plasma containment device that could hold a vast amount of it
Sabine, this was an excellent summary. I'd add: 1) Embrittlement concerns also prohibit/limit transportation by pipeline. It would be easier to convert it to ammonia for transport, but you won't easily get H2 back from NH3. 2) 700 bar is a nutty amount of pressure to put in a tank in your car, it is 10,000 psi or about 3x that of a welding cylinder. 3) LH2 is not mentioned here but is very impractical, needing to be within 20 C of absolute zero so liquid isn't the best plan either. 4) Burning (not fuel cell use) of H2 also releases NOx as any time you burn at high temperatures in a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere (ie Earth) you get NOx as some of it combines, so the output is not JUST water. 5) You mentioned nuclear is by far the cheapest but the best way would be HIGH TEMPERATURE nuclear. The added heat improves the efficiency of making H2 from water, and if you do want ammonia, then it is also easily made from that extra heat. This is where molten salt reactors would shine, as well as several other designs such as HGTRs (including one in the UK). 6) If we think the lithium shortage is bad when it comes to electric cars just picture the shortage of Pt and Ir if we make a lot of fuel cells (these metals would become even rarer (ie EXPENSIVE) than they are now.
The US already has 1000 miles of hydrogen pipelines. The world uses 700 cubic kilometers (at STP) of hydrogen each year. Clearly, it's possible to make pipes, tanks, valves, and other equipment to deal with hydrogen. I find the pearl clutching about hydrogen handling to be vastly overblown. Industry has been using hydrogen since the 19th century. It's not great for vehicles, but there are applications where it's very useful, even essential. Getting to a 100% renewable grid will likely greatly benefit from e-fuels like green hydrogen for rare event and possibly seasonal backup.
1) embrittlement, the reason existing pipelines can't be used, new pipelines would be only less subject to H penetration, not impervious. Rules out central production .
I worked with fuel cells for 10 years back in the 1990s. We were trying to developers alternative catalysts that could replace Pf. We failed. Work has proceeded with Pt and now high surface area catalysts require less Pt than ever. The downside is the high surface area is very energetic, so the Pt migrated to lower the energy, which reduces the activity of the catalyst. It’s a no win situation. For a long time savy FC engineers used to say, “Like Mexico, fuel cells will always have a bright future”
@@abdell75roussos I worked for a small R&D company that was founded by a scientist who has worked for years for the fuel cell division of United Technologies. What’s your pedigree?
My dad was a chemist at Arco Research in the 70's and they were working on ceramic based hydrogen fuel cells but the materials for the cells was just too expensive and it did not scale well. That said, I guess I just accepted it at face value when looking at hydrogen lately and if you had asked me before this video what I thought about alternative fuels I would have listed hydrogen at the top for transportation in the future, after seeing this video I realize that I need to do a little more digging to get a more accurate picture, your video was a great start to that and an eye opener. Thanks!
It's the one topic I'll agree with Elon Musk. Hydrogen is one of the worst ideas for green transport. It's honestly not much better than just using compressed natural gas, which we already have lines for.
@@jeffpinnock6862 Sure why not? As long as the government will give him lots of money to keep a bunch development and production engineers hanging around to be available for other purposes when they are not too busy, I'm sure it works for him.
Worked on this 20 years ago and as we have a massive wind resource. Around three speculative organisation approached us about creating and exporting hydrogen. However studies done by a major UK university citing storage problems, (they were using WW2 barrage balloon hydrogen tanks) poor electrolyser efficiency and the cost of Pt coupled with catalyst contamination scuppered these plans. Your video has reinforced our findings.
@@breckfreeride what about carbon? (conductivity lacks in comparison to platinum) and how easy would it be to organize hydrogens electrons and neutrons?
@@jasonrichard7560 someone smarter than me could probably answer that one. All I know is the current fuel cells would deplete the world's supply of platnium quickly.
Add a safe additional step: Where you produce that , 'hydrogen with the color of your choice' combine it , the hydrogen with co2 from a convenient sorce, say from an intended sequestration plant, or better directly , apply the Sabatier reaction to, slightly exothermally produce fresh water and methane, also called natural gas, pipe it to existing consumers, or liquefy it at -162 into storage tanks slighly pressurized to ¼ atmosphere and export it on LNG ships . If you need to generate power with this RECYCLED co2 run combined cycle gasturbines with the really efficient aeroderivative high tecnlogy units built by General Electric, just like they do in España for decades. Here hydrogen plays the role of making co2 not cumulative but RECYCLABLE A win win situation. This is, by the way the in situ rocket fuel production for the Mars bound explorers The great Elon Musk is planning for that, in response of Dr Robert Zubrin, the originator as proved by NASA funded tests.
Sabine, thank you for making this excellent, reasoning, factual and emotionally neutral video. Since I was in 8th grade, and during science class the teacher showed water electrolysis and separated it into hydrogen and oxygen gases, I understood the basic physics that heat losses required more energy input than the energy one would get from the pure hydrogen and pure oxygen that energy was used to make. So, even if hydrogen is just used for energy storage, it is not only an increased cost, but as you explained, is difficult - and expensive - to contain, and awkward - and further, has an additional expense added, the cost to store and transport. Those factors *add* to the initial disqualifier, which is "getting less energy out than was put in." But then, you touched on another fine reason to stay away from using hydrogen gas as a climate-saving hero: the precious metals needed to store it in fuel cells. Those metals would be very expensive to procure, and the risk of supply interruptions would make fuel cell production highly vulnerable to material shortages. Variations in demand would make it prone to wildly volatile pricing. That alone would make it a technology to avoid. And yet another enormous burden to adopting hydrogen as a fuel or energy storage medium would be: 1. The additional cost of a manufacturing facility -7 the land, buildings, machines, employees and all the overhead taxes, fees, maintenance and more. 2. The cost of storage and transporting to reach the consumer or retail sales site, which would mean creating equipment and infrastructure for storage and transport of the gas, including the costs of land, buildings, machines, people, taxes, fees, and more. And, as you pointed out, hydrogen is a nasty element, causing hydrogen embrittlement in metals (I worked for many years in engineering with titanium in surgical instrument design and production, and hydrogen embrittlement was a factor to consider when using wire EDM in water to cut it. Back to my 8th grade science class... when the teacher burned the hydrogen collected in a test tube, he talked about heat losses that occured when making hydrogen by electrifying water. He said that due to those heat losses, you had to put more energy in than you got out. That one thing told me making hydrogen for fuel was a losing proposition, and for energy storage, fossil fuel was by far a better choice, even from an ecological perspective. And where does that energy come from? If one says green sources like windmills and solar cells, then the question becomes two-fold: 1. What cost per KWH is that form of energy, comoared to coal, oil, nuclear or hydro power? ... and 2. What type of energy goes into making those devices? (That would be fossil fuel, nuclear ot hydro) I would like to know what entrepreneurs, if any, are investing their own money to develop hydrogen gas production. Of *course* governments will step up and spend taxpayer dollars on these types of losing propositions. They don't have their OWN money at risk, and can always get more when *this* money runs out. Just reach into the taxpayer's pocket, their checkbook, or have the FED print money and spend that. The state I live in is spending tens of millions of dollars annually on on hydrogen energy. I would call it production, but haven't seen anything material developed from the groups and committees they're funding with taxpayer money. At this point it is just supporting many employees, with the only energy product being humid exhaled air, warmed to the upper 90° F area. And that hot air is powering nothing beyond trying to justify their seats on those committees.
So kewl that the glaciers are all made of fresh water ice, so all th that water can be captured and turned into hydrogen. Maybe Britian will sell more than a dozen H cars nxt yr.
Thank you Sabine. finally a solid walk over of this hydrogen trend. Being a thermodynamic engineer it has been and is a pain to see how the decision makers are running with a half wind.
It is always painful to see decision makers debate over a topic you are closely familiar with. But it is not necessary their fault, they can't know everything and rely on experts opinions, who seldom come to the same conclusions.
@@ChianTheContrarian wouldn't the world be a different place if that were the case. Maybe they should also have experience in small business or growing.
It's very similar to the lithium and cobalt concerns around Bev's. All these new technologies have expensive components. There's a reason we ended up using combustion engines, they were cheap to make with the resources we knew how to make cheaply. We've done some patchup jobs where it's been easier (catalytic converters use platinum too! But those were only bolted on after the fact, and only when they were forced to)
@@meateaw Plenty of lithium is available to be mined, so it isn't going to be a concern once production facilities are ramped up. Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) batteries don't require cobalt and they're going to be the most commonly used battery, so cobalt won't be much of an issue either. Platinum and iridium are much more expensive and rarer than either of these, and there's no good workaround for them, so they present a much bigger issue for hydrogen fuel cells.
One thought I have is that the auto industry already uses lots of platinum for catalytic converters. A push towards electric vehicles, and away from conventional ICE, would mean that platinum would be freeing up over the next decade.
@@sswpp8908 I believe the auto industry is using less than 10% of the platinum it was when catalytic converters were first being used. If it's accessible, it will just as easily be stolen, in fact even more likely if the price goes up
I appreciate you eloquence in explaining the huge issue with hydrogen. Thank you! 20+ years ago in a debate between 2 coworkers & myself, I argued that hydrogen isn't a fuel source, it's a volatile storage medium. My coworkers & I worked at a servo-control manufacturer and a small number of unites were going to the experimental EV efforts. I remember being so frustrated trying to get the point across that most hydrogen exists in a bound state, the "energy" exists in its electrical attraction to other elements. Like tiny magnets already in contact with other magnets, you have to pull them apart to realize the energy/work that can be done by their being drawn together again.... More energy is needed to pull them apart...
I was super stoked about hydrogen 20 years ago when fuel cells matured and expected at least the same number of hydrogen powered cars as EVs on the road by now. This goes to show the difference between _theoretically_ possible, _practically_ possible and a sustainable solution. The Concorde was practically possible, but not sustainable and economically viable. Fusion is theoretically possible, but we don't know if it is practically possible (lack of tritium, ...) and certainly not if it is in a sane price range. Nuclear is too expensive and slow to roll out and requires a lot of knowledge and infrastructure, excluding vast parts of the world. Maybe we should concentrate our resources on stuff we know works like energy savings, less consumption, solar and wind with energy storages? It will be different, but a general slowdown will also help solve the biodiversity crisis and the pollution crisis. And give us all more free time and less stress. We may not be able to afford billionaires, but maybe we'll survive that blow? Edit: Fixed sentence. EVs was missing.
@@madshorn5826 I just want to emphasize one thing from your comment: energy savings. It's mind boggling how humans waste energy, mostly on inefficient buildings. Yes, they are cheap to build and not too expensive to heat in the winter and cool in the summer, but if we could build them better? Still, a lot of legacy buildings which seems very hard to insulate... I can't fathom the way out of this.
@@madshorn5826 Would solar & wind with batteries really come under practically possible and sustainable? Afaik, batteries are used in very few places and account for only 5% of all energy storage (the rest being pumped hydro)...to speak nothing of the ecological impact of mining so much battery materials So we're only stuck with energy savings and less consumption. Even those are truly possible only in rich countries, not in developing ones. I mean, sure you can build public transport, dense housing, and walkable cities here in India, but you can't ask us to reduce consumption when most people are poor and per person consumption is so low.
I was aware of some of those problems with hydrogen power but you did a great job explaining the range of issues and how difficult they are to mitigate.
@@tristanbeal261 Electric trains, trams, and buses can be built with wired connections to power, but they can’t reach every location where people live, work, and enjoy recreation. Some type of portable energy storage will be required for travel to more remote locations.
Very comprehensive. Excellent summary. Two comments. First, there are plans for cars to consume hydrogen by burning (not in fuel cells). How likely is this to gain traction? Second, to note that that any hot flame, hydrogen or not, will produce nitrogen oxides in air.
Thank you very much for this. Back in my nuclear days a hundred years ago (give or take) we had bulk hydrogen on site for our main generator. One night I saw the telltale glow of St. Elmo's Fire on the exhaust of the relief valve due to a small about of release. This is extinguished by a line of regulated helium to blow out the line. I followed the procedure and witnessed the biggest fireball of my multidecade power generation career. Lesson learnt: Hydrogen in the hands of Joe-sixpack is a BAD idea.
I quit riding motorcycles years ago because daily avoidance of death and dismemberment at the hands of the Average Motorist ceased to be fun or logical. The thought of those same drivers riding around with tanks of extremely high pressure hydrogen would be enough to convince me to never leave my house again.
@@joelcarson4602 The H2 fireball I unintentionally initiated was about the volume of a large, in ground swimming pool. It was big, bright and brief. I was later told the liquid H2 volume for such a reaction was between one teaspoon and one tablespoon. As a plant operator we were required to also qualify as structural firefighters. As such we interacted with offsite firefighters and coordinated pre-fire plans. We’re I an incident commander at a house fire and knew there was some quantity of compressed hydrogen in the building I would set up a perimeter and maybe a monitor stream whilst evacuating the neighborhood. I’m not sending a knockdown team nor search and rescue. A firefighter’s life is worth more than that house and it’s occupants. Think about that before parking this in your garage.
The suburban housewife that ran the alloy furnace in the wafer fab needed to light the 800c hydrogen where it mixed with atmospheric gasses to prevent the end cap from launching like a rocket into the puller instrument bank. Gary, my friend, saw this on several occasions, until they replaced the bic lighter with an imported spark plug. How they didn't explode the whole building i'll never know.
@@jamesdriscoll_tmp1515 I don't know what a water fab is but I can tell you that the definition of a house-wife is someone who does not work on a water fab, unless you are saying it was in her house.
Theres a really important part to this you have overlooked. With renewables you need massive oversupply for the days sun and wind isn't great, on the days it is you are generating 150% or more of the power you need. You cannot store this in batteries right now for a number of reasons. So as you touched on Hydrogen is really energy storage and in this case is probably the best option and almost free as the turbines would be off otherwise
I work for a industrial gas turbine company and there’s lots of focus and push for hydrogen usage. The more I learn about it, the more I see that it’s just a way for the industry to keep doing what they are currently doing and not actually solving the overall issue
The industry gets incentives from the EU, the state, interest groups from the oil industry etc. Of course they are interested to continue their work. The daughters of their CFO's wait for their new stallion. That does not finance itself.
Thanks a lot for the explanations Sabine. I would like to add that molecular hydrogen (H2) does not produce embrittlement on steels and other metals per se. Only monatomic hydrogen (H) does. Hydrogen embrittlement is a complex topic since there are many different cases and mechanisms... In this case, the dissociation of molecular hydrogen on the steel surface is an essential step in the embrittlement process. Not sure how engineers deal with this issue in pre-existing infrastructure design for storage and transport of natural gas
That's a great point! So which form of H is used to produce power: the monatomic or the molecular? If it's monatomic, it means we need to break the molecular connection inside the power cell, right? So more energy. I'm a bit confused already. How stable is monatomic H? I guess the molecular state is more stable, so it would naturally tend to bond into molecules? You wrote: «the dissociation of molecular hydrogen on the steel surface is an essential step in the embrittlement process». Could you please explain more about this?
@@LyopsiK Most of the times, whenever we refer to any non water liquids/gases. Such as hydrogen, oxygen etc. We are indeed talking about molecular or diatomic forms of them. I recently looked up the same thing few days ago. As I got too excited by hydrogen's potential. It is hard to gauge it's potential honestly. Sorry for the rambling. H2/molecular hydrogen is indeed the form of hydrogen, used to generate. I suspect that even that must have an affect on metals. Thus embrittlement. Or maybe h2 is unstable and keeps switching between h and h2... Or maybe a few unbonded h caused embrittlement. Who knows.
My two young sisters are working on solutions to the two major problems you raised in the video. One is developing a more efficient process of extracting hydrogen from water (I'm not sure I'm allowed to share the numbers because it's a private company but they are pretty good). The other just started researching (in the Technion in Haifa) looking for ways to decrease the amount of platinum needed in fuel cells. They're tweens and I love this kind of cooperation between them (though we all have our doubts about the practicality of Hydrogen as a fuel, especially for private cars)
Even if you could extract hydrogen from anything without cost and repercussions it would still not be a viable alternative to using solar power directly. We need hydrogen for producing fertilizer and some industrial processes like steel reduction. Billions of tons every year for sure. But nowhere else.
As Thomas Sowell said, when it comes to reality there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. We must always be decisive yet wise to what we price we are willing to pay for comfort.
Hello and thanks Sabine, just a few corrections from me as may become usual. Hydrogen is stored in type 4 polymer tanks in vehicles, which are made from polymers without any metal. There is a big market for using it in buses as the tanks have a better weight to power ratio as they get bigger and are smaller and lighter than lithium batteries. (I guess a lower up front cost too). This looks like a good niche for them where they come out on top of competing tech. The idea is to uses excess wind and solar to create hydrogen to store and burn when we want instead of batteries. I think we have to start thinking of this as a two tier storage system for power grids. Much of grid power storage being done with lithium etc but emergency power being stored as hydrogen as infrequent (a few times a year) back up energy. For this it can be excellent. There is a massive 300 GIGAWATT hydrogen storage facility being built by Mitsubishi. It's another niche where it can win. Producing hydrogen makes nuclear / wind / solar much cheaper as the excess production is put to good use. There is some fake info around on hydrogen filling stations costing a lot. Believe it or not hydrogen transport can be done with normal gas lines, so it is an expense yes, but a few lines running up and down beside motorways is probably doable. Lastly it is worth looking at the German green power document which sees hydrogen as the future. Whether it will take off in any country is going to be largely due to investment or non-investment by the particular governments of those countries. Thanks for the article and thanks for your help last year Piers Newberry.
I'm glad someone else pointed out about heavy vehicles. Hydrogen for cars is probably not going to be practical but busses, trucks, trains, construction equipment etc. could use the large amount of energy that would make the tank and fuel cell worthwhile.
Thanks for pointing this caveats! There are also some news about using ammonia (?) as a storage system for Hydrogen. Would this work better? Do you have any info on that?
@@hyourinmaru69 this reduces efficience and causes a lot of waste, but it would allow to transport Hydrogene much safer, then the pure gas, which gets important for distances that cannot be covered via pipes. Some countries that could in theory produce HUGE amounts of solar energy could this way produce and ship Hydrogene to nations that have fewer abilities to produce renewable energy. There are certain social and environmental problems involved with that, but above anything else its not a viable solution for local energy production and storage.
It is important to understand though, that this "green power document" was written under a conservative government and was heavily influenced by lobbying of the gas industry. The idea is, that hydrogene allows for the usage of allready available infra structure, that just gets repurposed. Under this assumption it is a lot more viable then under the assumption that the structures all need to be build from scratch, as huge amounts of environmental impact and costs allways lie in the building of structures like storage facilities, pipes etc. Another approach were Hydrogen starts to get usage in Germany is as longterm storage for solar energy in private homes. If you place solar panels on a regular one or tow family home you produce a lot more energy, then you could use in spring and summer, combining a battery for short term storage (over night, and for a couple of rainy days) with a small hydrogene production and storage for longterm storage would allow private households of that size to heat their homes in winter with the energy they produced in summer in Germany. This is of course not necessarly an option for every region as average sun exposure and the number of days requiring heating are a hige factor. And it may not be an option for any housing that is more energy expensive then modern family homes. But for those it seems to work well, and pays itself of in a couple of years.
Your corrections are all accurate. I'd just like to add some: 1. Fuel cells don't use Iridium! PEM electrolyzers do, which can be paired with renewable most easily. But there are many alternatives (like alkaline electrolyzers). 2. There are innumerable alternatives to 700 bar tanks for storage. I'd argue for Ammonia as one of the best (carbon free, tech for large scale handeling & transport exists). 3. Transport should also be seen as a two-tiered system like the grid. Cars with (mostly) short run durations - batteries; Ships, planes and maybe heavy duty vehicles - hydrogen (or ammonia maybe). 4. The embrittlement problem is exaggerated. It can be dealt with by using polymers (as you already mentioned) or special steel alloys, developed for ammoinia plants, where polymers can't be used. Also: sodium batteries are becoming available at industrial scale. You don't have to argue the slightly problematic case (in terms of the environment) of lithium batteries.
I learned a few new things, and I had already long before reached a poor, almost dire, outlook for hydrogen powered vehicles - Extremely well presented and thought out discussion / "summary." Loved the video... Impressively easy to understand presentation on this issue...
@@savagesarethebest7251 I thought about the asteroid. I think that is likely to far off into the future to relieve us of the climate mess we have left for ourselves. The KT-boundary is thinned out all over the globe as you point it. This makes it far to expensive to mine.
@@patricklincoln5942 Yes, direct burning in a combined heat and power plant or in a jet engine. Airbus together with CFM is developing such a jet engine for the A380. But Airbus is also considering the fuel cell, no final decision yet.
Dr. H, I really appreciate your realist approach to topics like this. We see so many marketing-friendly videos about how this company or that has “solved” whatever problem and it’s really nice to have a source of information that looks at things from the real world perspective
You are absolutely right, "Ghost of recon", such a realist approach is far too rare on the Internet -- which is dominated by disinformation so bad, it must be making Russian propagandists turn green with envy!
@@glennnewman1078 I’d love to see that! If so, that’s an awesome breakthrough. Can you share the manufacture or builder of the car? A web address would be fine.
@@glennnewman1078 sorry that my appreciation for scientific realism in some way made you so butt hurt. Are you one of those folks who thinks that everyone who disagrees with you is some sort of bot or paid shill or alien or something? Cause if so that’s hilarious. I never thought I’d have an actual run in with one of you folks. Bud, if you can find me a sponsor to say shit on the internet that pays more than my software engineering job, I’d be more than happy to listen. Besides: don’t you like knowing that there are folks like Dr. H out there who are not just going along with the marketing speak and are actually evaluating stuff to see if it’s feasible? She could be completely wrong and still have contributed to the conversation.
I like the pace of delivery... Standard lectures are delivered much less quickly, I fall asleep or drift off into a waking reverie... The TH-cam delivery allows us to get a recap without asking, and disrupting fellow "students" trains of thought... (or seeming stupid) I used, in my teens (the 1960s...) to think Hydrogen was the answer, after all, it was so easy to produce, we'd all done it by electrolysis, hadn't we? Of course, at "O" level, we didn't consider the overall efficiency and cost, from investment in plant to compression / liquification facilities, to distribution and retail infrastructure, to vehicle modifications, to safety, (hydrogen's lower to upper explosive limit range is wide) to the production of nitrogen compounds in combustion. everything seemed so simple in the 60s... Of course, we've had 60 years since then to solve our energy issues, but oil producers, and the governments of the countries that had oil reserves to exploit, had a vested interest in our continued dependence... I've had an LPG powered car, thinking it might be good for the environment (after all, the government gave me a generous grant to convert the car... I considered having a Diesel fueled car converted to use waste vegetable oil, (WVO) but a very knowledgeable fork lift driver drew my attention to the multiple downsides of that... Good lecture, anyway, confirming what I'd learned elsewhere. Brava!
I've recently seen a discussion on a completely different forum, with one particular proponent of hydrogen as the miracle storage material for cars getting shot down but always coming back with more. I didn't have the time or inclination then to go and research it for myself, so I'm immensely grateful to you for producing this analysis. Even if you're wildly wrong (and your track record says that you're not going to be), it's extremely well presented and summarised. Thank you. On a separate note, having seen several of your previous videos and found them somewhat dry in their presentation, I love this more approachable format!
I would have liked if you had also talked about the industrial uses of hydrogen, like steel and ammonia production. I knew that hydrogen was overhyped for transport and energy storage applications. But my understanding is that there might be some genuine potential for industrial processes, mostly since there aren't many alternatives.
Hydrogen can be used as a fuel or as a chemical agent. As a fuel, it has the problems as described in this video. As a chemical agent many of these problems are mitigated due to the hydrogen being produced much closer (typically onsite) to where it is consumed - that is, very little storage and transport.
@@Obscurai As a fuel, the video primarily focuses on fuel cells that generate electricity, but there are many industrial uses where hydrogen fuel can simply be burned to produce heat, and you don't need any fancy metals for that.
Hydrogen is used in high amounts in oil refining and processing. But if you have been paying attention to the video you noticed that most hydrogen comes from natural gas, which I would say is plenty abundant in a oil refinery, there is no point on useing different coloured hydrogen there.
Yes hydrogen can be burned as fuel, but burning hydrogen for heat at large scale inherits the issues of transport and storage, since burning it is less efficient than burning the original energy source that was used to create the hydrogen and because of that inefficiency larger quantities are needed. At industrial scale, efficiency means money and unless there is a very specific need that burning hydrogen provides, it does not make financial sense to burn hydrogen.
@@Sekir80 When people know their project is going nowhere, they lose enthusiasm. BTW, did you even watch the video? If you did, you might understand why lack of enthusiasm is warranted.
That warning at 12:46 about the logarithmic scale was very helpful. It inspired me to put the same numbers into a spreadsheet, and graph them with a linear scale and a logarithmic scale, just to see the differences, and it was eye-opening.
That is the basic problem with presenting data to laymen. People are only used to the term average from school days and maybe, just maybe, median. But scale and spread are two VERY important things to take into account when dealing with statistics. So when someone presents you bar graphs without a scale, you know they want to lie to you. If they leave out median, and spread, they might just be incompetent (cough journalists cough) OR they are still trying to hide something from you... I think there's a lot of higher math we should remove from basic schooling's curriculum and add statistics instead. Another example: "Doing X raises your cancer risk by 19%!!!" means nothing without knowing what the cancer risk was before. Because You never add that number they present you to the initial risk. If it was 20% to begin with it doesn't become 39%. It becomes about 24% (20% plus 19% of 20). If it was only 1% to begin with, the new cancer risk arrives at 1.2%. To determine the amount of fear you need to apply to the problem, this is QUITE significant info.
You've answered the wrong question. We are looking for the best alternative way to carry energy in a car. You've compared hydrogen to gasoline. You should be comparing it to other methods of portable energy storage, like lithium batteries. Lithium batteries also use special materials available in certain regions. Lithium batteries are also very heavy. Lithium batteries create CO2 in their manufacture. Lithium batteries also have worse energy density compared to gasoline. Lithium batteries also have issues with cold temperatures. How does hydrogen energy storage compare to lithium energy storage? You should also consider how rapidly a car can be refueled, and how the storage system might be used with regenerative braking.
Something major you missed/omitted/didn't mention (I say this because it affects the conclusion arguements a little) are solid hydrogen storage solution (metal hydride tanks). They are pumped at low pressure into tanks with a metal lattice which breaks hydrogen into atoms and stores it. These are leak resistant even over months, operate at low pressure, volumetrically are ~3x as energy dense as gas-pressure tanks and significantly less heavy, though not super lightweight still. Of course, they do not affect the rest of the conclusion, but as far as storage solutions go, this one was a pretty nice development. I was recently looking into using hydrogen for power backup in homes and seems the cost of such a backup system with a best case scenraio is 50,000 to 80,000 euros for a meagre 7kWh/day setup, ignoring recurring costs of using distilled water.
@@SabineHossenfelder Magnesium hydride paste is the most commonly deployed solution. It's primary competitor is NH3/ammonia. Hydrogen combustion, fuel cell and gas storage tanks are simply not part of any serious general purpose solution I know of. What you covered is simply obsolete.
@@crhu319 hydrogen combustion has been pushed as a path to decarbonisation in Australia over the last few years. Most of the pushing has come from the gas industry lobby, who surprise surprise favour blue hydrogen, and using existing and new natural gas combustion plants. It's almost like they have a financial interest in maintaining demand and infrastructure dependant on natural gas. Unfortunately many politicians have a financial interest in keeping the gas lobby happy.
I am not surprised that hydrogen is not the solution. Hydrogen has clearly some problems like its size that enables a diffusion through other materials like normal steel. Naturally you also need efforts and material for infrastructure and maintenance. I also heared from a spezialist that the used membranes for electrolysis are not very durable. The big problem is that all new technologies have to enforce themself. They need resources, efforts and time before they eventually amortize but we have only a limited contingent for carbondioxide and not much time perhaps 4 years until the 1,5° warming is reached (I personally think this period is allready optimistical because the warming is inhomogeneous). So nuclear power can also not be a solution for the climate change because it needs far too much time for planning and building nuclear power plants. 30 to 40 years wouldn't be a too exzessiv estimate. Nuclear power also creates a warming problem by directly warming water. The climate gets hotter so cooling water gets hotter too. Nuclear power is not climate-resistant like you can see in France. Here in Germany this would be also a political problem so the way to this technology is blocked... We should also never forget that climate change is extremely inert and has an own momentum. Neverthless we forced the climate heating to a tenfold acceleration that won't stop even if we would stop releasing greenhouse gases tomorrow like a train at full speed tries to brake. This won't work. I fear that there is not enough time for a technical solution anymore. We discuss so long without sufficient results. I don't see how this can work. We should have prepared 20/30 years ago. Climate heating is known since club of rome 50 years ago. It is so targical. I am sorry.
Thank you for the breath of sanity... Years ago I was a believer in the Hydrogen Economy too, but over the years I have come to know the reality, and you have summarized that reality magnificently. Also, I did not know about the cold-start problem until now... thanks again.
@@johngalt3566 You just described how we made things so much worse during the Pandemic: politicians and ordinary citizens chose to listen to flim flam and poppycock, the result is we will never get rid of COVID-19. The best we can hope for is yearly vaccine boosters, since it is already endemic in much of the world. And that is still not very good: countries that cannot afford to vaccinate their people will become breeding grounds for new variants: some milder, some worse -- especially when DNA swapping occurs in a patient already ill with another dangerous virus.
I was in the same boat. Mind you, I don't think the problems are absolutely insurmountable, but they are definitely far greater than I'd thought and will take quite a bit more effort (and especially research) to overcome than I'd been aware of. It is definitely some good information to have though.
One important factor that has been overlooked in this video is the appalling efficiency of the "green hydrogen" production, transport and use cycle. According to the sources I've seen, total efficiency is more like 20% to 30% in the real world: - Electricity to hydrogen: yield 50% to 75% (= around 50% to 25% losses) - Compression, storage, transport, etc: yield around 80% (= around 20% losses - can be much more in some on sources or depending on the routes taken) - Hydrogen to electricity (fuel cell): yield 50% (= around 50% losses) ==> total efficiency: around 20% to 30% (= (50% to 75%) * 80% * 50%) This means that one needs 3 to 5 wind turbines to produce the "green hydrogen" needed for the equivalent of 1 wind turbine of final electricity... and this at an outrageous production cost! This also means that Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) are a much better solution than Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs). Indeed, the equivalent electricity yield for BEVs is around 85% to 90%: - Electricity transport and distribution: yield around 90% (10% losses) - Lithium battery storage and release: yield around 90% to 95% (10% to 5% losses) So BEVs are about 3 to 4 times more efficient than FCEVs. Also, they are inherently far less expensive. And the whole electricity to electricity cycle is several tens of times less expensive for BEVs than for FCEVs! So why on earth hasn't this "green hydrogen" idea been dropped a long time ago? To me, the reason is simple: greens love it, and their ideology has taken over the western world...
Much of what you write is true. I was nodding my head often while reading your comment. However, the last paragraph quickly made me stop. That's populist bullshit.
@@Marcus_pePunktYeah, that last paragraph should have pointed out that it’s the hydrocarbon industry that’s keeping the hydrogen dream alive. Example: In the UK the hydrogen booster clubs have been taken over by oil and gas industry insiders. The interesting question is Why?
Thank you, and yes I learned some new stuff in this video. That is, I knew that hydrogen production is a steady state process, but I had not seen the papers you reference on the subject. Hydrogen is indeed a difficult species to handle, and the proponents tend to oversimplify everything. I work in the maritime R&D area on energy systems, and the idea here is to use fuel cell stacks to enable any power you would need. The idea is that if you have a fuel cell module of 200 kW you could just stack 5 of them together to bring 1 MW, just like Lego(tm). Nobody wants to admit that it also brings the same number of support systems (so-called balance of plant) and power electronic integration. Then there is the thing that fuel cells have maximum efficiency and lifetime at around 50-60% load, thus you would like to have 7 or 8 modules of 200 kW to enable 1 MW. In addition, fuel cells do not like to operate at low load (less than 20%), so you need a strategy to also the need to have a strategy for which modules should run when you need less than full power. This is important because the lifetime of fuel cells are affected by starting and stopping. In short, it is complicated. A comment on storage, yes it makes sense to store hydrogen as compressed gas in cars and heavy duty vehicles and machines. However, it does not make sense to store hydrogen compressed for longer term storage. Then you need a hydrogen carrier, such as a metal matrix or a organic liquid. The processes for hydrogenation and release of hydrogen requires energy. Hydrogen can be stored as a liquid at 20 K. This can be done for some days or maybe a couple of weeks before the need for refrigeration arises, again requiring energy. Hydrogen is about energy. If you have abundant cheap energy you can make as much hydrogen as you want. We do not and will not have abundant cheap energy for the foreseeable future.
@@Alondro77 - then there are the times when real, groundbreaking science is inhibited, and dismissed as snake oil, by those whose profit streams would be disrupted, by disruptive technologies. Liquid fuel solution thorium cycle MSR’s are one of those disruptive technologies that was suppressed and ignored for being able to provide what we were promised with nuclear... Safe, clean, and too cheap to meter.
@@orcoastgreenman Yeahhhhh, that's the stupidest excuse people ever come up with. The sheer staggering profit one would gain by patenting a perfect energy source would GUARANTEE that someone would bring it to the public. They would stand to gain TRILLIONS in cold hard cash, all for themselves, within just a few years. No one could bribe them enough. Or, the communist Chinese would steal it for themselves, and we'd see it being used over there, since China has to purchase all its fuel currently, they'd have nothing to gain by trying to suppress the new tech, and EVERYTHING to gain by grabbing it and powering their growing empire. Is thinking really that hard?
@@orcoastgreenman I have investigated all these 'miracle energy sources' myself. I have found that NONE of them work even remotely as efficiently as promised. Same with the 'green energy' nonsense. They paint a rosy picture to get funding, then it falls flat on its ass, BECAUSE REALITY DOESN'T GIVE A DAMN WHAT YOUR FANTASIES ARE! Physics will not tolerate liars or frauds.
An additional issue regarding green hydrogen is that of efficiency. According to all sources I've seen, the electricity to H2 conversion, to transportation of H2, to fuel cell/electricity output yields about one third of the electricity used for electrolysis in the first place. This suggests that it would be more efficient to use battery-electric vehicles (BEV) in place of fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs), which is why BEVs are much more widely used these days. One exception applies in situations where it is impractical or cost ineffective to implement an electrical connection between a wind turbine and an electric grid. This is done is Scotland where some turbines are located on islands where the economies of scale don't justify installing a cable connecting the turbine to the grid. All in all, it seems to me that hydrogen has been massively overhyped, especially when many of our media platforms and much of the public is under the misimpression that hydrogen is an energy source.
@@niklar55 Maybe so, but we would also need a lot more of them. The gas cylinder will wear out relatively quickly because of hydrogen embrittlement while lithium ion batteries that haven't been routinely overcharged or undercharged are almost like new at ten years old.
@@calamityjean1525 I would imagine that the best way to utilise H cylinders would be to change the whole cylinder, as is the practice with gas forktrucks, and similar. Then it will be the gas vendors responsibility to use non-destructive testing to be sure they are safe to reuse. .
Since lithium batteries underperform in cold conditions, I was interested in hydrogen as an energy storage medium that might be appealing for industrial transportation in northern climates like Canada's. There are plenty of issues to solve before that could become a reality. This video was the first time I'd heard about the cold-start problem for hydrogen fuel cells. Combined with hydrogen tanks' tendency to leak over time it seems like the role for hydrogen electric transportation in cold climates will be very small indeed. Thanks for another excellent video Sabine. Informative and funny to boot!
This seems to be a similar problem to eV batteries where you use a large part of your charge either heating or cooling the battery depending on where it is operated.
Lithium can perform excellently in cold weather if the pack is made of the right chemistry for that job. Heating and cooling for lithium batteries is only necessary if you're taking them over their tolerances to maximize energy density in the pack. Tesla does this to maximize their range on a pack with relatively weak power output compared to what it could be. The energy needed to heat or cool such a battery is actually very little compared to what you consume when you've got the throttle down.
the problem is atomised energy storage. As soon as you want to store your energy in a moving vehicle, all benefits of scale break apart and you introduce vastly more new obstacles. the solution is to not transport your energy storage, ie : use trains instead of cars :P no batteries to degrade, no pressurised containers to leak, no problems x)
@@aluisious yes it's crazy that you can waste 2/3 of the gasoline energy and still have it perform as well as or better than an EV, and carry much less weight of fuel to do so. If you used the same weight or volume of an EV battery for gasoline, your range would be off the charts. And you don't have to heat or cool gasoline, the tank is just formed steel not some massively complex and expensive construction, and the weight of the fuel tank reduces as you use the fuel, which extends range further. I was comparing hydrogen and EV batteries in that post. I didn't even mention gas vehicles in that particular post, but thanks for reminding us of the remarkable benefits of fossil fuels.
I knew hydrogen had challenges to overcome but this video detailed what many of those problems are in a way I haven't previously been aware of. We use fossil fuels because they're very economical and practical. Coal and oil are tough acts to follow.
One major issue that wasn't mentioned was the huge energy loss from converting electricity to H2. In practice, it takes about 50kWh (and 9kg water) to make 1kg H2. In energy terms, this is equivalent to 4L of petrol (gas(oline)), if burnt directly (note: not used as a fuel cell). In a normal small car, typically 8-10L petrol per 100km, 1kg H2 would get you 50-60km. However, if you used the 50kWh directly to charge a battery, you could get around 250-300km range for a small car. This means you are sacrificing a factor of 4-6 in efficiency of use, simply for the convenience of delaying that use. Again, in practical terms, this means expanding the output of wind or solar (if you are stupid enough to use them, vs nuclear, hydro or gas, and our governments are, it seems) by a factor of 4-6 to account for the reduced capacity factor of H2 generation (never mind transport and storage) over direct charging. Of course , there are losses in direct charging as well, but the consensus seems to be that electrolytic H2 is only 25% as efficient as direct charging. The beautiful efficiency of energy-dense, easily transportable, liquid form fossil fuels, responsible for raising billions out of abject poverty and ending short lives, sure is hard to beat.
Fabulous summary, thank you Iain. And, indeed, oil has played a mammoth role in bringing the technological world this far. But it will, I believe, be dwarfed by what wind and solar will ultimately contribute.
@@kwhitefo I think you're referring to diesel engines, and I don't have the comparative equivalence for that fuel. Euro 4 cylinder diesel hatchbacks can certainly get 4-5L/100km, very similar to hybrids, but petrol (gasoline, or gas in the US) is typically double that. My small Kia gets 9-10L/100km in short-haul city driving, and I got down to 7L/100km with 600km of non-stop highway driving recently with a medium sized petrol Subaru. Ironically, this latter case is the worst (apart from sub-zero temperatures) driving condition for EVs (most efficient for stop-start), but I haven't seen any data for direct H2 burn or fuel cell driving. Could 110km/h for 300km overwhelm the fuel cell with overheating or reagent diffusion starvation? Who knows in practice?
I'm glad you mention that. When we convert energy from one state to another (which has to happen a fair bit with hydrogen production) you lose efficiency. You cannot convert energy from one form to another at 100% efficiency so energy is lost at every stage of the process till it gets to your car wheels.
Wonderful video as usual, @SabineHossenfelder! Curious why the first mentioned approach of "add fire" never was brought up after as an available technology, ICE with hydrogen does work after all! While the early attempts at high pressure, high temperature hydrogen ICE was seen as a dead end, that new JCB engine proves that low pressure, low temperatue hydrogen ICE is very effective, especially for those heavy machines like excavators or trains where batteries have yet to catch up. Also, a recent paper on "direct air electrolysis" for green hydrogen went out of its way to test with non-platinum catalysts like nickel and even under wind power (Hydrogen production from the Air, Guo et al, Nature Comm. '22). So, I don't feel like the viability of platinum and iridium as high-efficiency catalysts is a knock against hydrogen, as alternatives have a long history and new ones continue to develop, such as iron or hafnium based PEMFC anodes & cathodes, which experimentally seems to show the same durability as platinum (Nitrogen-plasma treated hafnium oxyhydroxide as an efficient acid-stable electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution and oxidation reactions, Yang et al. Nature Comm. '19). Not sure whether you've had a chance to see developments like this yet, or just had to cut them from the video for pacing reasons! On a separate note, knowing the above research and development, saying "the entire hydrogen economy hinges on the availability of [platinum and iridium]" and that "this situation isn't going to change" feels like a gross exaggeration. Clearly, alternative catalysts are available, even today, and the question simply is whether people within the hydrogen economy will select those for their abundancy and lower costs (monetary and ecological) in spite of potentially lower efficiency and less-established supply chains. So that fact that businesses (already well known for kicking the can down the road, hence the climate crisis) have yet to switch to ecological alternatives hardly seems a reason to spell doom and gloom for the hydrogen economy before it's "barely begun". To the overall theme, there has been no obvious panacea for energy production and storage, so it feels like the framing of the video over-emphasised hydrogen as a "silver bullet", rather than the grounded framing that it can be one tool among many in the toolbox to a sustainable future, and like all tools has applications where it performs well, and others where it does not. Similarly, the framing on hydrogen cars is something that struck me as odd, because it assumes cars should be central part of a sustainable future, without questioning their utility and impact. The same problem exists with discussion of electric cars, where there exists this same assumption, rather than embracing the opportunity to reconsider the fundamentals, the same as how we need to reconsider the obsession with everything relying on a singular fuel source (petrol/gasoline) instead of an ensemble of power and storage approaches; batteries have shown viability with smaller vehicles, while hydrogen (ICE and PEMFC) has shown it for larger vehicles. So, it really does seem to come back to the unrealistic desire for a panacea, because whenever has nature suggested there should ever be such a thing in any domain?
Thanks for this detailed addition! Very interesting read, and also good point about different solutions for different situations. :) I guess the "single best solution" expectation is driven by marketing that want to over-hype their own solution, but also because people often prefer to see a single silver-bullet done by big corporations so they don't have to change their own behavior with respect to their climate impact.
Yamaha even made a new hydrogen powered engine. Specially for Toyota! They want to make a new race series with it. Its funny what ideas people have before admitting its all nonsense and only for their personal satisfaction. Why not take up a hobby like knitting? Costs less energy.
Any sort of internal combustion wngine will be inefficient. Since an ICE is a heat engine, lower temperature operation is likely to result in lower efficiency.
The thermal efficiency of an internal combustion engine operating on hydrogen will be no better than one operating on petrol, and with the hydrogen taking up 6 times as much volume plus the restrictions on shape and size of a pressure vessel containing 700 bar of pressure mean the fuel tanks would take up most of the space inside the vehicle to get the range that people expect from vehicles today. And, NOx remains an issue, because with air containing both oxygen and nitrogen and the combustion process raising the temperature high enough to produce NOx, it will still be produced. Battery-electric for private vehicles is the way to go. There are applications that we don't know how to solve ... long-haul aviation, for one. Rome wasn't built in a day.
Sabine: As I listened to this and you took apart the argument for hydrogen piece by piece, I started to laugh to myself and by the end I was laughing out loud. Great argument and video. Thank you so much.
The technology is simply not there yet… however it’s a start. The production and storage has its challenges but it’s not like engineers don’t work on new approaches to old problems. Indeed, hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and we should use it effectively.
I knew hydrogen wasn't a one-size-fits cure-all, but I didn't quite realize it was *this* much of an issue. The platinum and iridium thing... Unless we take up mining in space isn't going to be a problem easily solved. Thanks for your hard work in researching this. /thumbsup
@@jaswik2023 why not just burn it? a few issues around nitrogen emissions and doesnt solve the packaging issues but less needs for those metals i think.
The story is interesting about how Toyota and Honda executives convinced the Japanese government to go the H2 route to avoid being affected by a possible Chinese embargo on rare battery components (Sea of Japan dispute bargaining chip and all) if their auto industry was dependent on them. So they decided to go with H2 for a national economic security standpoint not knowing just how much of a success Tesla would be with their charging network. If Japan wanted an H2 revolution they needed to put R&D into affordable green H2 production at refueling stations, then develop the cars to run off of it, essentially they bought a bunch of horses, but forgot to plant any hay.
@@BCFalls1 this video is propaganda. The rare metals aren’t a problem anyway. The problem will be convincing the public that the 4th generation nuclear reactors needed for pink hydrogen production are safe.
A very interesting video, thank you! However being a mechanical engineer I am also curious about the efficiency when compressing the hydrogen to 700 bars. That won't be just any compressor. I've heard that piston compressors with multiple steps are used in this process and I imagine that there are some challenges involved. Cryogenic cooling is also one way of "concentrating" the hydrogen but this also comes with big difficulties. A video about these issues would be very interesting I think.
You have the problem that hydrogen can escape through the gaps between the atoms of other materials such as metal. That makes it really difficult to store under pressure.
Right! And piston compressors who can do the task normally are diesel operated. So: how about fueling the cars with diesel directly? Just a proposal. 😊
This is a big challenge with the hydrogen projects I've seen. Compression and cooling are incredibly expensive and energy intensive. Special compressors required due to the small molecules also. Some heat can be recovered in the cycle depending on the electrolyzer technology used I've heard, but not sure. Storage tanks are super expensive from what I've seen also, and transport at scale a huge challenge due to the hazard.
"This is why you shouldn't leave the beer in the car in the winter" Small reminders that Sabine is *definitely* German lol This was a great video, I've only ever encountered pro-Hydrogen power articles in my life and it always struck me as odd that green tech and climate researchers weren't all rushing to promote it more, but hearing how deeply that common extraction methods are tied to fossil fuels explains why
The thing is, you can produce Hydrogen without the fossil fuel but, it is an energy agnostic form of energy transportation, so if you produce it with solar/wind during high production it's CO2 free.
@@quantuman100 Yes good point. A lot of criticism about renewables is that sometimes excess generated energy can't be stored easily, this is a good fit for that issue and preferable to lithium battery technology that is not that environmentally friendly.
It's even stranger that climate activists flock to anti nuclear. Green Hydrogen is for the climate better than fossil fuels. It has a place, next to battery storage and pumped water-storage. Probably mostly in some air, offroad and shipping.
Thanks Sabine, for pointing out the basics. Regarding green hydrogen I want to add on: Green hydrogen is produced by renewable energies such as solar, wind or water, is it? No, I state that this definition is very incomplete. It should rather say that green hydrogen is (a) produced by renewable energies AND (b) produced by renewable energies, which can’t be used at the same time to replace electricity produced from carbon emitting sources. The meaning of (b) is that only surplus power can be used to have a real green effect with the consequence that renewables capacity must exceed the demand. To fulfill this at scale, we are many years, if not decades away from that point. A long time, during which developments will go on and the question is whether other technologies, e.g. batteries will have an edge. I started my career in fuel cell development, which is more than 3 decades ago and all your views here were my starting point. Working in the energy sector, I was subsequently amazed, how industry and marketing were able to skip these basics and proceed promoting a hydrogen industry as big business and the savior of our climate. They don’t talk about basic facts, there is denial, it seems to be a sort of taboo. Going forward with hydrogen is a given. Of course there are scientific studies, some of which you are quoting but that’s somewhere on an academic level, competing with other strong lobby interests in politics and business. The hydrogen hype serves as a justification for the conventional industries to continue with their old-fashioned technology and to prevent disruptions from their point of view.
Sabine, I'd love to see a video about how do you go about researching topics that are not of your field. Like what google searches do you do, how do you decide to read a paper, who do you talk to. It'd be really interesting to me.
I have learnt something and have changed my mind. I thought it was as simple as using water and separating the H from the O. Boy was I wrong. Thanks Sabine.
@@abdell75roussos thats the problem with car transport. pray tell... (i newer was good with chemistry) can hydrogen from ruptured tank get into reaction with atmospheres o2? because if it can, then any car incident could turn into explosion like on hollywood movies xD
@@seushimarejikaze1337 Yes. The hydrogen atom will combine with atmospheric oxygen, which will result in an exothermic reaction ie fire/explosion. Explosion will occur if the mix is just right, but just a fire will result if hydrogen is in the presence of oxygen. The fire reation results in pure water, and also the hydrogen atom is very small, and so has to have the best seals possible. The atom can make some metals brittle over time.
The explosions are cleaner, not smoke, and not as hot as other hydrocarbon explosions. Hydrogen rises, so a leak may disperse harmlessly give a chance, and after all the battery fires, hydrogen looks safer too if handled correctly.
Nothing new there for me but, you have summed up the problems as I understand them really well. Someone I know said to me the other day that they thought hydrogen would be the future of transport. They were thinking of the ability to fill a car's tank like a petrol car. No. I didn't even get to the scarcity of PGMs before we arrived at our destination and I think the fella wished he hadn't brought it up.
It's amazing how people think you can scale up the high school electrolysis experiment by factors of several million and think there are no problems. Try telling them just because you can set off a small firework in the backyard it does not mean you can launch a full size Saturn V rocket from your back yard.
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This video comes with a quiz to help make the knowledge stick. Try it out here: quizwithit.com/start_thequiz/1694265286826x891751541890124500
I'm OK for brainwashing but thanks.
To what brainwashing are you referring?
@logmeindangit I don't trust this woman based on the so called climate scientist guy she recommends . He's just an propaganda activist therefore she is not trusted for me .
The US DoE has set a target for 2026: 76% system efficiency for high temperature electrolysis. Ultimately, we would like to use advanced nuclear to output at 700-1000 C, using a closed Brayton power conversion cycle at around 50% efficiency, dry cooling to minimize water consumption (increases flexibility of plant location), and for the nuclear island to cost less than $1/watt.
While fuel cells today operate at around 50% efficiency, it appears that 70% is possible. Ultra-low PGM and PGM-free membranes are still under heavy development, but could be a game changer along with solid state H2 storage, greatly expanding the H2 use case in the transportation sector. Solid state storage can also greatly reduce the pressure required. Liquefaction energy costs may also be cut in roughly half with an advanced process.
Power delivery with H2 will soon get a major boost with the H70HF protocol, which has been tested with an average fill rate of around 13 kg-H2/min (about 16MW @ 52% efficiency & H2 HHV). Truck stops in the US can dispense energy at around 300 MW, so fast fills lower the footprint and ensure a high utilization of infrastructure.
The potential of the H2 economy has been widely underestimated somewhat due the assumption that all energy production in the future will be from a material-intensive continent-spanning renewable-centric grid. This vision is likely fatally flawed due to the limits of mining, economics, environmental footprint, and diminishing returns.
Climate mitigation is a race against time, and to rapidly scale up sustainable power, we are going to have to innovate like crazy to optimize our use of materials (due to power density, a nuclear-based system should use around 10x less). If we decouple sustainable energy production from the grid, we should be able to accelerate growth and meet our cost reduction targets. Very low cost power will be crucial to maximizing the rate of decarbonization, including the enabling of carbon capture on a massive scale.
Hold on a moment, hydrogen power cars would be a little bit heavier? A hatchback sized EV now weighs more than a 1969 Dodge Charger....
I spent two years working as an engineer in the hydrogen fuel cell industry. Going in I was so excited to be part of what I thought was going to be the future, but the reality of it set in pretty quickly. Been back in nuclear ever since.
Indeed, hydrogen is only 60% less "nuclear" than putting nuclear powered steam engines in cars >.<
While there is no fallout the explosion in case of a disaster is absolutely devastating.
Trying to hint that you would need a containment around the fuel tank equal to 60% of what a conventional nuclear reactor has to scale.
In similarity, a hydrogen tank exploding in the street is as devastating as that ammonia tank "exploding" devastating miles around it decades ago. (to scale).
NP is the gold standard of clean energy. It’s as clean and safe as any alternative, & it does it with a fraction of the resources. NP really is the premier example of the phenomenon of ‘dematerialization’ in which we actually use less to produce more.
@@dodiewallace41 pity it's so extremely expensive
@@torgrimhanssen5100 in good old times they would just put engine on a cart with no protection at all. Modern men are weak!
Amen! I was right there form the beginning. Hydrogen as a carrier is a distracting niche at best. Let's not waste any more time to ponder what the ideal mix would be for the future; Use Hydro, Solar and wind where possible but ALWAYS and everywhere have a grid backbone of Nuclear energy to balance windfall moments. As for nuclear; we should now step over to the extremely safe Thorium LFTR reactor models. Unlike fusion, it is proven technology (we had a molten salt reactor up and running in Oakland Tennessee in the 60s!), has close to no waste and the little waste it still produces had a half-time of about 300 years. It is literally a no brainer, even though I realize that may still be a high bar for most politicians and NGO's....
Shout out to your co-host Mercury for explaining the pressure requirements
yeah, it was cool the first time, ok the second time... but using him so many times is cringe...
It was comedically successful
@@wisequigon Like Freddie, this joke never got old.
That makes it even funnier
Brian the Astrophysicist was unable to make comment.
Nice presentation. I worked for Air Products & Chemicals as a hydrogen plant operator back when we were producing all of the liquid hydrogen for the space shuttle program. We also filled hydrogen tube trailers for shipping gaseous hydrogen to food processing and semiconductor manufacturers that were filled to 5000psi. What you didn’t get into is the safety hazards of hydrogen fueled cars. Leaks are a real problem if you aren’t very careful and dealing with that makes things expensive. If you do get a leak, and you likely will because those tiny little buggers are very good at escaping, having your car in your garage can easily turn your garage into a bomb that is attached to your house. A little bit of static electricity is all it takes to ignite hydrogen. I’ve helped put out several hydrogen fires and let me tell you, they are not easy to extinguish unless you have large quantities of steam, nitrogen, and dry chemical fire extinguishers at your house.
MY BB GUN TAKES 325 BAR 4235 PSI, BRAND NEW HUNTING RIFLE.
Yes, odd she didn't even mention the Hindenburg
What could go wrong with a colorless, odorless explosive gas leak?
You can't really put out hydrogen fire with any of those chemicals. Hydrogen will burn until there is no more. The thing is since hydrogen is such a small bugger it's density is very low and it's buoyancy is very high thus if you have a small ventilation at the top of your garage it would be sufficient for it to not get concentrated enough to make an explosive concentration. This makes hydrogen relatively safe when compared to LPG types of gasses which are denser than air.
@@asdassdgfdf7509 we put them out all the time in the plant. Most of the time it was small leaks on valve packings and we used steam hoses to cut off the oxygen with steam. Whenever a vent stack would light off we had nitrogen piped into the stack that we opened up to put those out. And the toughest one was a 14’ diameter flange that was in a really tight place to reach and we used a team of 6-8 guys with steam hoses to push the flame back into a corner where we couldn’t reach any further from below then a guy from the next floor up could finish it off with a big 500# wheeled unit dry chemical fire extinguisher shooting it down through the steel grating.
I am a mechanical engineer. I knew about most of the problems you mentioned years ago and I couldn't understand all the hype. I am glad someone is finally getting the information out.
Love that you included the full lifecycle of environmental impact. Powering our world is not a fad.
You've made a lot of good points, Sabine. Unfortunately, I haven't really learned anything new since I work for a glass company and we've done trials which attempt to burn hydrogen in our furnaces instead of LNG. Indeed, the UK government has put together funding for such projects, which enabled us to do the hydrogen trial, so that hydrogen is not just for cars but also used in the so-called 'foundation industries' like concrete, steel and in our case, glass.
Glass furnaces run 24/7 for around 10-15years, constantly burning gas. There are usually around 6-8 gas ports in a furnace and the hydrogen trial only used one of ports while the others continued with gas. Even then, the trial could only be run for a few hours at a time since there was not enough hydrogen (we used largely grey hydrogen; blue is rare and green almost non-existent) i.e. we speak of hydrogen in the context of cars, but in the context of the most carbon-intensive industries, where we arguably need to decarbonise the most, there is simply not enough hydrogen, let alone green hydrogen. This is partly because of the energy difference with gas you mentioned, hence more hydrogen is needed, and also the fact that such 'foundation industries' are some of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters and hence require the most fuel.
Nuclear power is looking more and more like the only way forward, in combination with renewable energy.
Thanks for the insight. Given production of green hydrogen is a very young business, one can't really expect such hydrogen being abundantly available. Still your experiments are well done, because it confirms one can replace fossil gas without your industry collapsing.
What I always miss in reports like this one of Sabine, is a projection into the future. Solar and wind are currently one of the most steeply growing industries, with growth rates like 30%/year. Given this, it isn't hard to imagine that there will be a whole lot of surplus electricity on windy and sunny days in a couple of years, and that's where green hydrogen will come from.
Yup, nuclear. Clean, safe, always on, renewable.
@@traumflug It's not just a matter of quantity of green electricity, it's also the infrastructure for hydrogen. How do you store it? Where is it being made? How do you transport it? The UK government has invested in something called HyNet which will attempt to do exactly what I've pointed out. However, this will only be based in north west England and it is for blue hydrogen, not green. Even then it looks like the hydrogen could only be a supplement to current fuel sources, rather than a replacement.
We should aim for green hydrogen, but if we don't have a realistic view of hydrogen we will likely keep giving benefits to fossil fuel companies, as pointed out in Sabine's video.
Thing is ...
Since to make Green Hydrogen you lose 50% of energy (electricity) just by the conversion.
Could just use electricity to start with.
@@mitsterful So you do see a network for blue hydrogen being established, but can't imagine this blue hydrogen eventually being replaced by green hydrogen as renewables ramp up? Come on, such an imagination isn't that hard.
Before the 1970s, a stuff called _Coal Gas_ or _Town Gas_ was widely established. This was some 50% hydrogen. Which pretty much answers how to handle hydrogen: just remember how we did it back then.
Interesting that people talk about the scarcity of platinum and paladium when it comes to fuel cells but everybody has been using the same material in millions of catalytic converters in cars for about 50 years.
Cats are frequently removed from vehicles by rare metal collectors
@@rogermeyts5033i know a guy or to that do that job but they are currently in jail
Catalytic converters are stollen from cars all the time so the metals can be sold, palladium is especially common as a target
Palladium gets stolen.
a good vid on Hydrogen. As an engineer working in Power and compression in the Oil & Gas industry in Houston, I can add one more insight. Methane is easily transportable in pipleine. Easy still means you easily need a hundred Megawatts in a modern, large pipeline. The molewight of Mathane is 16+, most pipeliens have a methane mix slightly higher thn this. Hydrogen's moleweight is about 2. A factor of at least eight which increases the head and the power requirement by the same factor, everything else being the same this is linear. So now if we complete the back of the envelope calculation we need nearly a Gigawatt of energy instead of a 100 MW, increasing CO2(e) emissions significantly, so Hydrogen is effectively not transportable with any environmental effectiveness.
Reducing dependence on hydrocarbons requires an equally effective substitute, and that's not easy. We hear a lot about the negative impacts of oil and gas without recognizing the benefits. At this point, the only effective scalable substitute available is nuclear power.
@Dodie Wallace Thats a lie. There are a lot of sources of energy around besides nuclear.
Fossil fuels are a source of energy, but if you add energy to a system, especially if that causes the sun to also add more energy, then that system is going to get hot. Talking about benefits when your species is headed for extinction is dumb.
A few azolla species climate changed themselves off the face of the planet, its naive to think it cant happen to us.
@@dodiewallace41 true
Yes point well made 8-) methane has thr advantage of being useable with existing infrastructure, thus saving a huge amount of capital and offsetting conversion efficiency
@@wktodd but Methan leakage is even today a big contributing factor to GHG emissions already. Which is why we want to get away from it.
I work as an engineer in a synchrotron, and various experimental gases are delivered. Hydrogen is one of them. A major issue with handling hydrogen is how broad a concentration it is explosive in. Interestingly it has a negative Joule-Thompson effect at room temperature ie actually heats when expanding into lower pressure.
EDIT: Some comments correctly pointing out that negative JT won't push hydrogen to autoignition point. Edited to address this oversight (I deal with a lot of gases and got mixed up). The point is still broadly correct of H2 being a uniquely difficult gas from engineering compliance point of view.
Yep, not like LN2 at all. One spark (static electrical) and BOOM!
Yep. The first time I believed that hydrogen has big problems was when Kelly Johnson attempted to design a hydrogen-fueled aircraft and wound up pulling the plug on the project because the idea "just has no go". His propulsion chief that wound up taking over Skunk Works when Kelly retired concurred that it was just had too many inherent problems.
@@Skank_and_Gutterboy does anyone know how those American military killer drones are powered?
I've a suspicion they might use a type of solid bound hydrogen, which was presented at the hannover fair around 10 years ago by a UK research institute, who have gone rather quiet soon after except an interview about their technology use for drones..
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The autoignition point is far above the little trough in the JT koeff. This smells like BS.
@@stianyttervik9070 Depends what the pressure in the tank was. Considering he's saying it's a large scale business, these are likely industrial tanks of 10,000psi.
Sabine, this video is such a marvelous example of when I didn’t realize a topic truly interested me until I listened to you talk about it. That’s a sign of a brilliant teacher. This has occurred a number of times with your extraordinary videos, and each time this happens you help to broaden my world beyond what I had ever conceived or considered. Thank you for sharing this rare and precious gift with us. 🙏
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Why do you bother with this obsequious lathering on of worthless compliments? Try using that pea brain to generate a criticism.
@@johnsmith1474 Why are you so consumed with ugliness and vitriol towards someone you have never met? You are clearly a very damaged man. I pity you.
@Frank Roidlight I’m really not sure what that means, but I do have a lot of respect and admiration for Professor Hossenfellder. I have learned a great deal from her. And I’m gay, so that is where my interest ends. Have a great day! 🙂
@Frank Roidlight Goodnight Frankie. 💋
It's always nice to see a lengthy explanation why things won't work. It would be even nicer to hear about an option that DOES work.
Thank you Sabine. You and anyone that is helping you put these videos together are ... , I have to say it, a treasure for the modern world. (Sorry for the element of schmaltz in that.) These videos cut through all the hype and salesmanship we get every day. I see so many people in lectures and videos stating "facts" that are not testable. It has to be detrimental to young people who are trying to learn and contribute to science and industry. I think most of us actually want to stay grounded and not get too distracted by entertainment and conjecture. Thanks again.
Not doubting the basics of this video, still 2 remarks. First you never touch the simple solution of using hydrogen as power source by simply burning it. Instead you only talk about fuel cells converting hydrogen directly into electricity. In my opinion a car with a gastank full of hydrogen wouldn’t be that different from the present ones driving on LPG or LNG. Secondly there is being worked on solar panels that produce hydrogen directly, instead of electricity. Which could change the green production figures.
@@alexhaerens6116 Lubrication of internal combustion hydrogen engines is difficult, because normal engine oil is chemically altered by hydrogen.
Maybe you have heard of "hardened"/hydrogenated fat.
You don't want to submit your engine oil to this process.
My own research shows Sabine’s video to be accurate. Almost whatever energy source you think of costs money to produce and distribute for use, and introduces complexity into the mix. I think two types of energy generators should be pursued, Nuclear, and Fusion. We can do nuclear now, but fusion will take more time, even with the breakthroughs seen recently - Yet well beyond my time on earth, I think Fusion is the one to pursue for future generations. IMHO.
I just saw a video that introduced the company called Plasma Kinetics that stores hydrogen not in pressurized tanks, but as a solid on film or CD-like disks. Maybe your next visit to this topic could look into this ... maybe. I video I saw was a quick introduction to the company and not a technical review. So details about capacities and cost were a little sparse. Thanks for your hard work Sabine.
This is a great example of why we should expect any problem to be more complex than it appears a first glance. Thanks.
Also why whenever the establishment tells you there's an easy band-aid fixture to a massive, multi-dimensional problem like climate change, you know they're pulling a fast one
I think these issues are more easily solvable than the same issues that lithium batteries have.
@@RPSchonherr if you think that then you don't know much about either hydrogen or batteries.
@@gasdive I probably know more than you, but why don't you regale me with your immense knowledge.
@@RPSchonherr I’m confident that the embrittlement problem alone means this technology is a niche one at best. Having to replace the tank and valves for containment systems will make this quite expensive, and the potential for a 700 bar bomb going off due to hydrogen embrittlement is one thing that insurers will charge handsomely for. Add to that the weight of the system and it’s essentially a non-starter for at least passenger vehicle applications. I can see potential for trains, ocean transport vessels and perhaps energy storage systems in place of lithium ion battery mega-pack type of solutions. Or for space applications, where the weight of a lithium ion battery is a prohibitive launch expense vis-a-vis the weight.
The other thing that Sabine didn’t mention, and I’m not sure why, is that hydrogen will escape from any container that you store it in over time. It’ll leak around the valves and right through the metal skin of the container due to the size of the hydrogen molecules. So storing it for any length of time is not practical.
The best hope for hydrogen is the possibility of a new intermediate form of storage (look up hydrogen grey goo) where it’s essentially combined into a gel / paste format that can be utilized. This still doesn’t solve the problems with PEM exchanger material rarity (for direct electricity generation), but maybe it could be directly combusted, that is something I’m not certain of.
The one thing I am convinced is true is that BIG OIL is powering most of the discussion, research etc. on hydrogen in a failing attempt to keep themselves relevant and profitable.
Trust me, I have a bunch of shares in Ballard Power (for probably going on 20 years now), which is a Canadian hydrogen fuel cell company so I wish this weren’t true, but I’m fairly certain that the hydrogen economy is something we’ll never see in our lifetime.
Thank you for this very informative video! I learned many new things even though I am professionally working in the field of electric cars for a long time.
Some more fun facts about hydrogen cars: As batteries have been improved dramatically over the last 10 years and hydrogen technology has not, a modern hydrogen car (Hyundai Nexo) is actually heavier than a comparable battery electric car (Tesla Model 3). Both cars have the same driving range but the Tesla has two electric motors while the Hyundai has just one. Of course, the battery car is also much cheaper. And the cost of hydrogen fueling stations is more than 10-times more than the cost of battery fast chargers while being much less reliable at the same time. These numbers are for electric chargers and hydrogen stations that can provide the same driving range per hour of operation. We have electric chargers and battery electric vehicles today, that actually charge faster in average than hydrogen cars (Hyundai Ioniq 6 for example).
I developed a fuel cell program with a company for the US Navy. The idea was to convert methane or diesel fuel to Hydrogen via cracking. The company was purchased by GM, and the next thing, the fuel cell leaked and needed to produce the power we expected. The Navy wanted to demonstrate the fuel cell in a tow tractor for towing aircraft, but we needed help to proceed with the project. There are actually 4 fuel cell technologies. Who knows what the future will be after we have evolved technically. Instead of eliminating greenhouse gases, we could shoot for reducing these emissions so much so our human footprint is minimal.
What about grid applications? Could you use a wind turbine farm or solar array to use electrolysis on seawater? Could the waste be used for agriculture?
The overwhelming number of chemists who have been hearing hydrogen-research colleagues talking about the "hydrogen economy" have been rolling our eyes for decades. Very few chemists ever bought into the hype - you do a good job explaining why.
The same hefty skepticism is the same for fusion energy. The problem with “miracle” energy sources are all down on fundamental levels.
So to the uninitiated, these miraculous energy sources seem like magical solutions, because that’s all they are is “magic”, nothing more than expensive smoke and mirrors to drive a narrative.
Yes...and many of those same chemists said you could never pack 100kWh charge into personal lithium-ion battery packs either. Then Elon Musk happened.
@@michaelangove9841 no one ever said this, it was just too expensive
@@lexus4tw of course. Cost is always the limiter. They (sort of) solved it with batteries but only with sig enginerring. Who's to say same won't happen w/H2?
@@michaelangove9841 No, those are two different groups of chemists. Materials chemists weren’t negative on the potential for Li ion batteries at all. I know this well since I went to the conferences where John Goodenough and Stan Whittingham presented their work on batteries (Elon Musk uses their work - he was smart enough to understand the potential it had, but did nothing fundamental in battery development). Materials chemists have been rolling their eyes over ‘hydrogen salesmen’ for a long time.
Professor Hossenfelder:
I am an old retired physicist (plasma and QED), yet despite continuing to study constantly, my wife and I learn so much from your cogent videos. No one else can do what you do each and every episode.
With greatest respect,
Dr. Gerlach
If only hydrogen were the byproduct of sequestering carbon from atmospheric methane.😢
@@tomeubank3625
Using what form of energy?
How to become like you?
@@thefreemonk6938stay in school😅
I have got to hand it to Sabine. She has the most comprehensive assessments of technologies on the internet. Most cost/ benefit analyses don’t address the inherent issues of different technologies over the current ubiquitous technologies. Sabine does excellent breakdowns.
A brilliant analysis of this topic. It is amazing how Sabine manages to explain a complicated scientific topic for a broader non-scientific audience and I appreciate your efforts very much. Ty very much, Sabine.
Yeah, plus, she's hot!😛
Thank you, Sabine. I began studying hydrogen solutions in 1991. I agree with your conclusions. The oil and gas companies are spending a lot of money trying to turn hydrogen into a solution except it isn't. As you mentioned NASA started using hydrogen solutions in the 60's and here we are 60 years later trying to figure out how to make it work for transport....maybe not.
I'm in my 50's and I grew up thinking that Hydrogen was the way to go as an eco-friendly, yet energy rich solution to gasoline. This has been the best explanation I have heard to refute that and illustrate the problems that accompany any thoughts on hydrogen conversion. Thanks for the great videos and the simple truths put in layman terms.
I'm in my early 50s and I remember all the happy talk in the late 90s about the "hydrogen economy" that was everywhere. I thought to myself, self, hydrogen would make a great fuel if we actually had some. Shame we ain't got no hydrogen.
Hydrogen could be efficient if we could achieve >1 Q. And microfusion cells. Those stories we hear are speculated around this utopia. But Dr. Sabine talks about current capabilities, not possibilities. I've been following her for a while and noticed she is more realist than idealist.
Nevertheless, we need realists to overcome other difficulties.
its still the way to go. but people just wont stop fearing nuclear powerstations to pruduce electricity and therefore also the menas to make hydrogen
@@XavierBetoN Some realism for you.
Water vapor is the #1 Greenhouse gas. It does 3/4s of the heating according to GHG theory.
If you can believe the theory.
If the theory is correct water vapor alone will destroy the planet. There is on average 50 times as much water vapor in the atmosphere as CO2.
@@msimon6808 Water molecule is reflective, not absorbant.
Well done. A sobering reminder of the realities of hydrogen. I was waiting on the discussion of storage leakage due to the small molecule, but it sounds like that's the least of the problems.
The stuff is ridiculously dangerous too. If you have a leak, it's almost guaranteed to go kaboom when it reaches the right mixture with air, and the only way you can get it into a liquid state is getting it really close to zero degrees Kelvin, otherwise it's very bulky and has low energy density. Just another example of an old niche technology suddenly being mainstreamed by people who aren't scientists. The old becomes new. The other problem is how it's marketed to normies in news media. I've had huge arguments with people who think that hydrogen cars "run on water" not understanding that the energy has to come from somewhere, and hydrogen is just a technically challenging, impractical and highly inefficient storage medium.
@jaz "You vill own nutzing und be happy. You vill eat ze bugs, you vill live in ze pod, you vill verk in ze wagie cagie und you vill like it or else"
Klaus Schwab (probably)
Notice they are putting DRM, remote killswitches and "AI drink driver detection" in cars now.
Also the new traffic cameras being installed in my country have all kinds of currently untapped capabilities, like hypothetically charging drivers for being over their travel allotment, or the congestion charge they are already talking about. Not to mention average speed fines, and an insane level of surveillance. The fact that all speed cameras just got transferred from the police to our ministry of transportation speaks volumes about where this is going.
@jaz Also your comment is hidden, TH-cam thinks you committed wrongthink.
Possibly the 2 glaring issues are the rare metals and embrittlement. I was somewhat unaware and they seem almost insurmountable for large scale.
I'm surprised no government has followed form by suggesting more people as a form of medium-term carbon capture.
Hydrogen overall doesn't work for short-transit or small scale solutions. So anything from a Mobile Scooter to a Large Ute, it's not going to be competitive.
Where it makes sense is large ships and cargo trains.
For smaller ships and passenger trains it can work as well. Basically it would be as-competitive as Lithium Battery solution. But I don't think Large Trucks will be too successful with Hydrogen, for that you would opt for Diesel, or Unleaded, or potentially BEV.
Another place where Hydrogen could potentially work well, is as a renewable energy in Passenger Aircraft. BEV solutions really don't work for flight. You can have the pressurised fuel containers have a quick test before each departure, and give them a 10-Year lifespan due to Embrittlement. But I think the better solution would be to make aircraft ICE, since we would have excess fuel supply, if we decided to convert our domestic cars into BEV.
A more potent solution would probably be to Heavily Tax gasoline and Car Registrations, whilst simultaneously making Public Transport free to use. But also expanding Public Transport and making it more adopted by the populous. Even when using ICE, public transport is more efficient than passenger transport, even when that's using BEV.
The correct answer is that, there is no One-Size Fits All. Certain demography will require certain solutions. With potentially using Bio-Fuels, Carbon Capture, and Restoring Rainforests also in our arsenal.
I love people who get into the details like this. I am weary of those who address the issue without bothering with the facts.
...the facts, ALL the facts and NOTHING BUT the facts. Selective facts are as near to outright lies as one can get.
"I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that" would, I imagine, be her response to any of the hype merchants
If it was easy it would have been done long ago when it's the only real long term solution they will find better solutions we can't have nuclear planes and buses
That's very german of her and I like it
@@French20cent Germany lol stuck in the dark ages no innovation the UK is the place for that sadly it's Germanys fault the biggest market in the world the eu isn't in the global trade war between China and the USA.
The eu is a customer losing relevance each year as real growth it's outside the eu
As a chemical engineer I've been telling people this for decades, and lacking understanding they just argued maintaining that I was wrong, or protecting the oil industry, etc.However, they see a youtube video and suddenly they are experts. I fear for the future of humanity.
Thanks for the comprehensive look at the hydrogen issues. I work in the RE branch, and have seen a few big companies trying really hard to incorporate H2 storage to replace Li-ion ones. As such, the cost and the H2 storage problem were already clear to me. But my ex-company was still convincing us saying it was worth it because of the blue hydrogen...now with the info in the section "the colours of Hydrogen" really shows that it was basically an attempt at green-washing! Thank you for the great video!
Blue washing? 😜
I was thinking the best grid scale application for hydrogen would be seasonal storage at relatively lower pressures. That or combine it with atmospheric carbon and just make methane from air and water. It'd be horribly energy inefficient but you can store the methane produced for years fairly easily and it's not too arduous to store enough for a worst case event.
So given your Green Power network will inherently have significant periods of excess capacity even energy inefficient long term storage could well be useful. (Regular batteries aren't looking too viable as yet for storing a few weeks of excess in summer for cold still dark winters)
Hydrogen is easily stored as ammonia, where the storage costs are several orders of magnitude lower than battery equivalent.
@@tobyb4513 advantage of methane (especially in the short term) is there's already lots of equipment in place that can use it to make power
@@tobyb4513 But how to dissociate the nitrogen? I'm asking you, because ammonia novice at it. :)
@@gyrgrls there are a number of methods, such as solid state ammonia generation (SSAS), but the usual method is Haber-Bosch reformation.
Outstanding presentation. I had no idea how complicated producing Hydrogen is. It changed my "easy" view on the subject.
I don't know your line of work. But those of us working in science (not hydrogen) know that nothing is easy and there're always multiple reasons why things don't get done as easily as they first seem.
Thanks for pulling all of this information together, Sabine.
I've been trying to tell people for several years that Hydrogen is problematic because of its sources, production methods, transportation and storage, let alone because of the inefficiency of using it in fuel cells or in combustion engines. This video will be shared at every opportunity.
A few more considerations are:
1) The Hydrogen storage vessels in cars have a life expectancy of only 5 years before they will need replacing for safety reasons.
2) When transferring H₂ to the vehicle, the speed of transfer is also constrained
by thermal issues.
3) A storage tank at a filling station has to be larger and much more expensive than the tanks for storing gasoline or Diesel fuel.
4) The Oxygen used in fuel cells really needs to be very pure, but air is not pure Oxygen. This leads to accelerated degradation of the fuel cell membranes.
5) If the Hydrogen is burned in a combustion engine, the exhaust is not pure water; it also contains Nitrates, because of the Nitrogen in the air in the combustion chamber.
6) It's also worth remembering that water vapour is an efficient greenhouse gas.
7) Overall efficiency of the Hydrogen-powered car alone, ignoring all other stages of the Hydrogen processing, is only about 21%, comparable to the efficiency of a petrol car. But the efficiency of the systems in a fully electric car is roughly 71%.
That inefficiency, coupled with the high costs of production and storage, along with the dubious sources of Hydrogen and of the catalysts, mean that Hydrogen can never replace fossil fuels or displace battery electric vehicles, unless drivers are willing to pay a much higher price for their fuel, and are prepared to continue to breathe polluted air which will shorten their lives.
1) 5 years life expectancy is not that bad
2) that is the same problem natural gas powered cars have, you get less mileage when its hot, and millions of people us it.
3, 4, 5 are right, but improvable
6) it is, but its also not that simple. water vapor doesn't stay in the atmosphere like CO2 or methane, it condenses back into rain, the amount of water vapor that can stay in the atmosphere before it gets saturated is actually directly related to temperature.
7)I would love to know where you got that number. from the estimations I've seem it can be anything from 30 to 50% depending on how you make the hydrogen, how you store it, and how efficient the fuel cells are. aren't you confusing with the loses from creating the hydrogen ? they are around 20%.
The nitrogen already exists, just in a different state. You aren't creating anything new. Source and means is where focus should be. The water vapor would not be nearly the problem if there was enough mature vegetation to absorb it. Take a good look at the virgin forest map from Columbus to today anywhere in the Americas and imagine what the rest of the world once looked like, and replantings do not have nearly the same effect. Life is going to continue to shorten until the numbers of people running around drops dramatically or mutation occurs where only that which adapts survives.
@@n0validusername no, there is more than enough earth for many times today's population to live sustainably. the problem is not overpopulation, its overconsumption and inefficient use of resources and space.
@@n0validusername "the nitrogen already exists, just in a different state". yes and the state - the molecule which is a part of - is exactly what matters. Nitrogen gas (N2) does nothing, Nitrogen oxides and Nitrogen-Hydrogen molecules do cause proplems.
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Another engineer here. Nice straightforward video with a well-constructed argument and good presentation of evidence. You don't need these music video clips. For me, they distract from a well-formulated presentation.
I recently found your channel, and I'm loving it! I learn something new from every video I watch, and your snarky, no-nonsense style makes it even more enjoyable. This video on solar energy challenges is no exception. It's crucial to consider solar energy efficiency, cost, and the use of rare earth elements in solar panels. Developing more efficient solar cell technologies like perovskite or multi-junction cells could help improve energy conversion efficiency. Additionally, researching alternative materials for solar panels that don't rely on rare earth elements can make solar energy more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
On a separate note, I've been exploring Fe-N-C catalysts as potential alternatives to noble metal catalysts like platinum and iridium for applications such as fuel cells. Although not mentioned in the video, their catalytic activity and stability might be lower, but the cost-effectiveness and sustainability advantages due to the scarcity and high cost of noble metals are significant. Further research into optimizing their structure, understanding aging mechanisms, and exploring new active site configurations can lead to advancements in sustainable energy solutions.
Keep up the fantastic content! Your channel is a treasure trove of knowledge, and I can't wait for more insightful and engaging discussions on these important topics.
Thanks Sabine! I knew most of this, but found expressing it in a logical way problematic. Now I don't have to embarrass myself so much!
You are my favorite science communicator of all time! I especially enjoy your subtle dead pan humor!
What about the usefulness of hydrogen for remote places like Hawaii ?
@@jimcamp3464 The alternatives are still better ESPECIALLY in remote areas.
@@jimcamp3464
Build your self a small modular nuclear like RR produce , then make
your own H2 on site . Energy independence will be yours
@@budbud2509 this is true I like this but the more convenient method to even bother messing with hydrogen as a practical way to store it in the problem is it's so light of a material it tends to seep out if I recall properly or correctly I imagine I don't know.. furthermore anyway what about a plasma containment device that could hold a vast amount of it
@@budbud2509 I agree with this
Sabine, this was an excellent summary. I'd add:
1) Embrittlement concerns also prohibit/limit transportation by pipeline. It would be easier to convert it to ammonia for transport, but you won't easily get H2 back from NH3.
2) 700 bar is a nutty amount of pressure to put in a tank in your car, it is 10,000 psi or about 3x that of a welding cylinder.
3) LH2 is not mentioned here but is very impractical, needing to be within 20 C of absolute zero so liquid isn't the best plan either.
4) Burning (not fuel cell use) of H2 also releases NOx as any time you burn at high temperatures in a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere (ie Earth) you get NOx as some of it combines, so the output is not JUST water.
5) You mentioned nuclear is by far the cheapest but the best way would be HIGH TEMPERATURE nuclear. The added heat improves the efficiency of making H2 from water, and if you do want ammonia, then it is also easily made from that extra heat. This is where molten salt reactors would shine, as well as several other designs such as HGTRs (including one in the UK).
6) If we think the lithium shortage is bad when it comes to electric cars just picture the shortage of Pt and Ir if we make a lot of fuel cells (these metals would become even rarer (ie EXPENSIVE) than they are now.
The whole idea is cartoonish!
Great follow up! I was going to mention the production of NOx when burning, but you already have.
(*HTGR?) (Excellent comment!)
The US already has 1000 miles of hydrogen pipelines. The world uses 700 cubic kilometers (at STP) of hydrogen each year. Clearly, it's possible to make pipes, tanks, valves, and other equipment to deal with hydrogen. I find the pearl clutching about hydrogen handling to be vastly overblown. Industry has been using hydrogen since the 19th century. It's not great for vehicles, but there are applications where it's very useful, even essential. Getting to a 100% renewable grid will likely greatly benefit from e-fuels like green hydrogen for rare event and possibly seasonal backup.
1) embrittlement, the reason existing pipelines can't be used, new pipelines would be only less subject to H penetration, not impervious. Rules out central production .
I am a chemist and I totally agree with you. I mentioned my concerns years ago but nobody listened.
I worked with fuel cells for 10 years back in the 1990s. We were trying to developers alternative catalysts that could replace Pf. We failed. Work has proceeded with Pt and now high surface area catalysts require less Pt than ever. The downside is the high surface area is very energetic, so the Pt migrated to lower the energy, which reduces the activity of the catalyst. It’s a no win situation. For a long time savy FC engineers used to say, “Like Mexico, fuel cells will always have a bright future”
Where was it you worked?
@@abdell75roussos I worked for a small R&D company that was founded by a scientist who has worked for years for the fuel cell division of United Technologies. What’s your pedigree?
Small chemically made compartments limiting mixing of chemicals is key to limiting "migration" work on fencing in your livestock, so to speak.
@@karlstruhs3530 Dream on my friend, dream on
Just don't use fuel cells.
My dad was a chemist at Arco Research in the 70's and they were working on ceramic based hydrogen fuel cells but the materials for the cells was just too expensive and it did not scale well. That said, I guess I just accepted it at face value when looking at hydrogen lately and if you had asked me before this video what I thought about alternative fuels I would have listed hydrogen at the top for transportation in the future, after seeing this video I realize that I need to do a little more digging to get a more accurate picture, your video was a great start to that and an eye opener. Thanks!
Best? M85.
It's the one topic I'll agree with Elon Musk. Hydrogen is one of the worst ideas for green transport. It's honestly not much better than just using compressed natural gas, which we already have lines for.
It is also insanely explosive. A tiny leak will blow up everything.
@@Skylancer727 I think he has now gone back on this and is now building a hydrogen car for 2024
@@jeffpinnock6862 Sure why not? As long as the government will give him lots of money to keep a bunch development and production engineers hanging around to be available for other purposes when they are not too busy, I'm sure it works for him.
Worked on this 20 years ago and as we have a massive wind resource. Around three speculative organisation approached us about creating and exporting hydrogen. However studies done by a major UK university citing storage problems, (they were using WW2 barrage balloon hydrogen tanks) poor electrolyser efficiency and the cost of Pt coupled with catalyst contamination scuppered these plans. Your video has reinforced our findings.
Not only that but you'd use up all the platinum on the planet in a year...
Is deuterium made or extracted?
@@breckfreeride what about carbon? (conductivity lacks in comparison to platinum) and how easy would it be to organize hydrogens electrons and neutrons?
@@jasonrichard7560 someone smarter than me could probably answer that one. All I know is the current fuel cells would deplete the world's supply of platnium quickly.
Add a safe additional step: Where you produce that , 'hydrogen with the color of your choice' combine it , the hydrogen with co2 from a convenient sorce, say from an intended sequestration plant, or better directly , apply the Sabatier reaction to, slightly exothermally produce fresh water and methane, also called natural gas, pipe it to existing consumers, or liquefy it at -162 into storage tanks slighly pressurized to ¼ atmosphere and export it on LNG ships .
If you need to generate power with this RECYCLED co2 run combined cycle gasturbines with the really efficient aeroderivative high tecnlogy units built by General Electric, just like they do in España for decades.
Here hydrogen plays the role of making co2 not cumulative but RECYCLABLE
A win win situation.
This is, by the way the in situ rocket fuel production for the Mars bound explorers
The great Elon Musk is planning for that, in response of Dr Robert Zubrin, the originator as proved
by NASA funded tests.
Sabine, thank you for making this excellent, reasoning, factual and emotionally neutral video. Since I was in 8th grade, and during science class the teacher showed water electrolysis and separated it into hydrogen and oxygen gases, I understood the basic physics that heat losses required more energy input than the energy one would get from the pure hydrogen and pure oxygen that energy was used to make.
So, even if hydrogen is just used for energy storage, it is not only an increased cost, but as you explained, is difficult - and expensive - to contain, and awkward - and further, has an additional expense added, the cost to store and transport.
Those factors *add* to the initial disqualifier, which is "getting less energy out than was put in."
But then, you touched on another fine reason to stay away from using hydrogen gas as a climate-saving hero: the precious metals needed to store it in fuel cells. Those metals would be very expensive to procure, and the risk of supply interruptions would make fuel cell production highly vulnerable to material shortages. Variations in demand would make it prone to wildly volatile pricing. That alone would make it a technology to avoid.
And yet another enormous burden to adopting hydrogen as a fuel or energy storage medium would be:
1. The additional cost of a manufacturing facility -7 the land, buildings, machines, employees and all the overhead taxes, fees, maintenance and more.
2. The cost of storage and transporting to reach the consumer or retail sales site, which would mean creating equipment and infrastructure for storage and transport of the gas, including the costs of land, buildings, machines, people, taxes, fees, and more.
And, as you pointed out, hydrogen is a nasty element, causing hydrogen embrittlement in metals (I worked for many years in engineering with titanium in surgical instrument design and production, and hydrogen embrittlement was a factor to consider when using wire EDM in water to cut it.
Back to my 8th grade science class... when the teacher burned the hydrogen collected in a test tube, he talked about heat losses that occured when making hydrogen by electrifying water. He said that due to those heat losses, you had to put more energy in than you got out. That one thing told me making hydrogen for fuel was a losing proposition, and for energy storage, fossil fuel was by far a better choice, even from an ecological perspective.
And where does that energy come from? If one says green sources like windmills and solar cells, then the question becomes two-fold: 1. What cost per KWH is that form of energy, comoared to coal, oil, nuclear or hydro power? ... and 2. What type of energy goes into making those devices? (That would be fossil fuel, nuclear ot hydro)
I would like to know what entrepreneurs, if any, are investing their own money to develop hydrogen gas production. Of *course* governments will step up and spend taxpayer dollars on these types of losing propositions. They don't have their OWN money at risk, and can always get more when *this* money runs out. Just reach into the taxpayer's pocket, their checkbook, or have the FED print money and spend that.
The state I live in is spending tens of millions of dollars annually on on hydrogen energy. I would call it production, but haven't seen anything material developed from the groups and committees they're funding with taxpayer money. At this point it is just supporting many employees, with the only energy product being humid exhaled air, warmed to the upper 90° F area. And that hot air is powering nothing beyond trying to justify their seats on those committees.
Thanks
Nice to see that you’re on a learning journey too, and not afraid to change your mind when the data points the other way. Great video!
well stated.
So kewl that the glaciers are all made of fresh water ice, so all th that water can be captured and turned into hydrogen.
Maybe Britian will sell more than a dozen H cars nxt yr.
Makes you wonder why climate catastrophism is still a thing doesn’t it .
Thank you Sabine. finally a solid walk over of this hydrogen trend. Being a thermodynamic engineer it has been and is a pain to see how the decision makers are running with a half wind.
It is always painful to see decision makers debate over a topic you are closely familiar with. But it is not necessary their fault, they can't know everything and rely on experts opinions, who seldom come to the same conclusions.
Decision makers need to study STEM subjects before making decisions. Hahaha. Too many decision makers do not have STEM understanding.
@@gknucklez There are experts and there are professional experts. The ones in the 2nd group deliver any desired out come for a cost.
Kind of like most environmentalists...
@@ChianTheContrarian wouldn't the world be a different place if that were the case. Maybe they should also have experience in small business or growing.
Clear fact-based explanation. Nowadays rare to see this. Thank you for your time and effort in making these videos.
I prefer videos driven by feeling, emotion, and hot air.
Another great video from Sabine. I love her so, so , dry sense of humour. It's just wonderful.
Excellent analysis. The need for platinum and iridium wasn't something I heard discussed before, but it's very relevant.
It's very similar to the lithium and cobalt concerns around Bev's. All these new technologies have expensive components.
There's a reason we ended up using combustion engines, they were cheap to make with the resources we knew how to make cheaply.
We've done some patchup jobs where it's been easier (catalytic converters use platinum too! But those were only bolted on after the fact, and only when they were forced to)
@@meateaw Plenty of lithium is available to be mined, so it isn't going to be a concern once production facilities are ramped up. Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) batteries don't require cobalt and they're going to be the most commonly used battery, so cobalt won't be much of an issue either. Platinum and iridium are much more expensive and rarer than either of these, and there's no good workaround for them, so they present a much bigger issue for hydrogen fuel cells.
One thought I have is that the auto industry already uses lots of platinum for catalytic converters. A push towards electric vehicles, and away from conventional ICE, would mean that platinum would be freeing up over the next decade.
@@sswpp8908 I believe the auto industry is using less than 10% of the platinum it was when catalytic converters were first being used.
If it's accessible, it will just as easily be stolen, in fact even more likely if the price goes up
@@ralphwagenet852 Lithium is also supposedly the best material to make anodes for electrolysis.
Nothing messes up my morning commute more than some jerk dragging a zeppelin behind him.
Dilithium crystals are more likely to power cars than hydrogen 😀.
Nope , you need fossil fuels to produce dilithiun crystals 😅
@@miguelrivera-diaz6186
🤣😂🤣😂😂
I appreciate you eloquence in explaining the huge issue with hydrogen. Thank you!
20+ years ago in a debate between 2 coworkers & myself, I argued that hydrogen isn't a fuel source, it's a volatile storage medium. My coworkers & I worked at a servo-control manufacturer and a small number of unites were going to the experimental EV efforts.
I remember being so frustrated trying to get the point across that most hydrogen exists in a bound state, the "energy" exists in its electrical attraction to other elements. Like tiny magnets already in contact with other magnets, you have to pull them apart to realize the energy/work that can be done by their being drawn together again.... More energy is needed to pull them apart...
I knew very little about hydrogen as a fuel before watching this video. Thanks for explaining even though it’s bad news.
I was super stoked about hydrogen 20 years ago when fuel cells matured and expected at least the same number of hydrogen powered cars as EVs on the road by now.
This goes to show the difference between _theoretically_ possible, _practically_ possible and a sustainable solution.
The Concorde was practically possible, but not sustainable and economically viable.
Fusion is theoretically possible, but we don't know if it is practically possible (lack of tritium, ...) and certainly not if it is in a sane price range.
Nuclear is too expensive and slow to roll out and requires a lot of knowledge and infrastructure, excluding vast parts of the world.
Maybe we should concentrate our resources on stuff we know works like energy savings, less consumption, solar and wind with energy storages?
It will be different, but a general slowdown will also help solve the biodiversity crisis and the pollution crisis. And give us all more free time and less stress.
We may not be able to afford billionaires, but maybe we'll survive that blow?
Edit: Fixed sentence. EVs was missing.
@@madshorn5826 I just want to emphasize one thing from your comment: energy savings. It's mind boggling how humans waste energy, mostly on inefficient buildings. Yes, they are cheap to build and not too expensive to heat in the winter and cool in the summer, but if we could build them better? Still, a lot of legacy buildings which seems very hard to insulate... I can't fathom the way out of this.
@@madshorn5826 Would solar & wind with batteries really come under practically possible and sustainable? Afaik, batteries are used in very few places and account for only 5% of all energy storage (the rest being pumped hydro)...to speak nothing of the ecological impact of mining so much battery materials
So we're only stuck with energy savings and less consumption. Even those are truly possible only in rich countries, not in developing ones. I mean, sure you can build public transport, dense housing, and walkable cities here in India, but you can't ask us to reduce consumption when most people are poor and per person consumption is so low.
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@@jjoshua69 Your comment is not visible for others, but I thank you for this ammonia video. The video ID is KhtWiK9A4ww.
I was aware of some of those problems with hydrogen power but you did a great job explaining the range of issues and how difficult they are to mitigate.
literally just do trains holy moly
@@introprospector how do trains adress the energy storage question?
Trains address the transport issue through having electric trains
Trains are energy efficient in moving cargo. We're cargo too .other than that,
@@tristanbeal261 Electric trains, trams, and buses can be built with wired connections to power, but they can’t reach every location where people live, work, and enjoy recreation. Some type of portable energy storage will be required for travel to more remote locations.
14:10 The platinum and iridium doesn't go into making the proton exchange membranes, but into the electrodes, where they catalyse the reactions.
Very comprehensive. Excellent summary. Two comments. First, there are plans for cars to consume hydrogen by burning (not in fuel cells). How likely is this to gain traction? Second, to note that that any hot flame, hydrogen or not, will produce nitrogen oxides in air.
Always educational. Thanks for all the hard work you do researching your topics.
Thank you very much for this. Back in my nuclear days a hundred years ago (give or take) we had bulk hydrogen on site for our main generator. One night I saw the telltale glow of St. Elmo's Fire on the exhaust of the relief valve due to a small about of release. This is extinguished by a line of regulated helium to blow out the line. I followed the procedure and witnessed the biggest fireball of my multidecade power generation career. Lesson learnt: Hydrogen in the hands of Joe-sixpack is a BAD idea.
I quit riding motorcycles years ago because daily avoidance of death and dismemberment at the hands of the Average Motorist ceased to be fun or logical. The thought of those same drivers riding around with tanks of extremely high pressure hydrogen would be enough to convince me to never leave my house again.
@@joelcarson4602 The H2 fireball I unintentionally initiated was about the volume of a large, in ground swimming pool. It was big, bright and brief. I was later told the liquid H2 volume for such a reaction was between one teaspoon and one tablespoon. As a plant operator we were required to also qualify as structural firefighters. As such we interacted with offsite firefighters and coordinated pre-fire plans. We’re I an incident commander at a house fire and knew there was some quantity of compressed hydrogen in the building I would set up a perimeter and maybe a monitor stream whilst evacuating the neighborhood. I’m not sending a knockdown team nor search and rescue. A firefighter’s life is worth more than that house and it’s occupants. Think about that before parking this in your garage.
The suburban housewife that ran the alloy furnace in the wafer fab needed to light the 800c hydrogen where it mixed with atmospheric gasses to prevent the end cap from launching like a rocket into the puller instrument bank.
Gary, my friend, saw this on several occasions, until they replaced the bic lighter with an imported spark plug. How they didn't explode the whole building i'll never know.
Drugs. Drinking. Remove that from society and watch joe-sixpack turn into Albert Einstein
@@jamesdriscoll_tmp1515 I don't know what a water fab is but I can tell you that the definition of a house-wife is someone who does not work on a water fab, unless you are saying it was in her house.
I love this content so much. The little jokes here and there make this 10 times more entertaining. One of the best science channel on the YT.
Theres a really important part to this you have overlooked. With renewables you need massive oversupply for the days sun and wind isn't great, on the days it is you are generating 150% or more of the power you need. You cannot store this in batteries right now for a number of reasons. So as you touched on Hydrogen is really energy storage and in this case is probably the best option and almost free as the turbines would be off otherwise
I work for a industrial gas turbine company and there’s lots of focus and push for hydrogen usage. The more I learn about it, the more I see that it’s just a way for the industry to keep doing what they are currently doing and not actually solving the overall issue
In psychology that behavior is called "fleeing forward". 😏
The industry gets incentives from the EU, the state, interest groups from the oil industry etc. Of course they are interested to continue their work. The daughters of their CFO's wait for their new stallion. That does not finance itself.
The overall issue? Allow me: 8,000,000,000 humans
Thanks a lot for the explanations Sabine. I would like to add that molecular hydrogen (H2) does not produce embrittlement on steels and other metals per se. Only monatomic hydrogen (H) does. Hydrogen embrittlement is a complex topic since there are many different cases and mechanisms... In this case, the dissociation of molecular hydrogen on the steel surface is an essential step in the embrittlement process. Not sure how engineers deal with this issue in pre-existing infrastructure design for storage and transport of natural gas
That's a great point! So which form of H is used to produce power: the monatomic or the molecular? If it's monatomic, it means we need to break the molecular connection inside the power cell, right? So more energy. I'm a bit confused already.
How stable is monatomic H? I guess the molecular state is more stable, so it would naturally tend to bond into molecules?
You wrote: «the dissociation of molecular hydrogen on the steel surface is an essential step in the embrittlement process». Could you please explain more about this?
@@LyopsiK Most of the times, whenever we refer to any non water liquids/gases.
Such as hydrogen, oxygen etc.
We are indeed talking about molecular or diatomic forms of them.
I recently looked up the same thing few days ago. As I got too excited by hydrogen's potential.
It is hard to gauge it's potential honestly.
Sorry for the rambling.
H2/molecular hydrogen is indeed the form of hydrogen, used to generate.
I suspect that even that must have an affect on metals. Thus embrittlement.
Or maybe h2 is unstable and keeps switching between h and h2... Or maybe a few unbonded h caused embrittlement. Who knows.
They might use aluminum.
@@yasirrakhurrafat1142it's extremely good in your car, mixed with the gasoline 😊
Carbon fiber tanks have been developed which solve the weight and embrittlement issue.
My two young sisters are working on solutions to the two major problems you raised in the video. One is developing a more efficient process of extracting hydrogen from water (I'm not sure I'm allowed to share the numbers because it's a private company but they are pretty good). The other just started researching (in the Technion in Haifa) looking for ways to decrease the amount of platinum needed in fuel cells.
They're tweens and I love this kind of cooperation between them (though we all have our doubts about the practicality of Hydrogen as a fuel, especially for private cars)
for car I think methanol is a good candidate for fuel: methanol- fuel cell- electric motor
Even if you could extract hydrogen from anything without cost and repercussions it would still not be a viable alternative to using solar power directly. We need hydrogen for producing fertilizer and some industrial processes like steel reduction. Billions of tons every year for sure. But nowhere else.
th-cam.com/video/KhtWiK9A4ww/w-d-xo.html
@@janami-dharmam tht produce more potant green house gas than fossile fues methane.
@@wolfgangpreier9160 not really solar power doesn't for Cars. Nuclear ios the only viab;e power sources currently
As Thomas Sowell said, when it comes to reality there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. We must always be decisive yet wise to what we price we are willing to pay for comfort.
Hello and thanks Sabine, just a few corrections from me as may become usual. Hydrogen is stored in type 4 polymer tanks in vehicles, which are made from polymers without any metal. There is a big market for using it in buses as the tanks have a better weight to power ratio as they get bigger and are smaller and lighter than lithium batteries. (I guess a lower up front cost too). This looks like a good niche for them where they come out on top of competing tech.
The idea is to uses excess wind and solar to create hydrogen to store and burn when we want instead of batteries. I think we have to start thinking of this as a two tier storage system for power grids. Much of grid power storage being done with lithium etc but emergency power being stored as hydrogen as infrequent (a few times a year) back up energy. For this it can be excellent. There is a massive 300 GIGAWATT hydrogen storage facility being built by Mitsubishi. It's another niche where it can win.
Producing hydrogen makes nuclear / wind / solar much cheaper as the excess production is put to good use.
There is some fake info around on hydrogen filling stations costing a lot.
Believe it or not hydrogen transport can be done with normal gas lines, so it is an expense yes, but a few lines running up and down beside motorways is probably doable.
Lastly it is worth looking at the German green power document which sees hydrogen as the future. Whether it will take off in any country is going to be largely due to investment or non-investment by the particular governments of those countries.
Thanks for the article and thanks for your help last year Piers Newberry.
I'm glad someone else pointed out about heavy vehicles. Hydrogen for cars is probably not going to be practical but busses, trucks, trains, construction equipment etc. could use the large amount of energy that would make the tank and fuel cell worthwhile.
Thanks for pointing this caveats!
There are also some news about using ammonia (?) as a storage system for Hydrogen. Would this work better? Do you have any info on that?
@@hyourinmaru69 this reduces efficience and causes a lot of waste, but it would allow to transport Hydrogene much safer, then the pure gas, which gets important for distances that cannot be covered via pipes.
Some countries that could in theory produce HUGE amounts of solar energy could this way produce and ship Hydrogene to nations that have fewer abilities to produce renewable energy.
There are certain social and environmental problems involved with that, but above anything else its not a viable solution for local energy production and storage.
It is important to understand though, that this "green power document" was written under a conservative government and was heavily influenced by lobbying of the gas industry. The idea is, that hydrogene allows for the usage of allready available infra structure, that just gets repurposed. Under this assumption it is a lot more viable then under the assumption that the structures all need to be build from scratch, as huge amounts of environmental impact and costs allways lie in the building of structures like storage facilities, pipes etc.
Another approach were Hydrogen starts to get usage in Germany is as longterm storage for solar energy in private homes. If you place solar panels on a regular one or tow family home you produce a lot more energy, then you could use in spring and summer, combining a battery for short term storage (over night, and for a couple of rainy days) with a small hydrogene production and storage for longterm storage would allow private households of that size to heat their homes in winter with the energy they produced in summer in Germany.
This is of course not necessarly an option for every region as average sun exposure and the number of days requiring heating are a hige factor. And it may not be an option for any housing that is more energy expensive then modern family homes. But for those it seems to work well, and pays itself of in a couple of years.
Your corrections are all accurate. I'd just like to add some:
1. Fuel cells don't use Iridium! PEM electrolyzers do, which can be paired with renewable most easily. But there are many alternatives (like alkaline electrolyzers).
2. There are innumerable alternatives to 700 bar tanks for storage. I'd argue for Ammonia as one of the best (carbon free, tech for large scale handeling & transport exists).
3. Transport should also be seen as a two-tiered system like the grid. Cars with (mostly) short run durations - batteries; Ships, planes and maybe heavy duty vehicles - hydrogen (or ammonia maybe).
4. The embrittlement problem is exaggerated. It can be dealt with by using polymers (as you already mentioned) or special steel alloys, developed for ammoinia plants, where polymers can't be used.
Also: sodium batteries are becoming available at industrial scale. You don't have to argue the slightly problematic case (in terms of the environment) of lithium batteries.
I was so enthousiastic about H² before i watched your video... You killed my joy! Great video as usual, thank you, keep up the good works!
Yes Sabine, I learned a lot and it changed my view of the usefulness of hydrogen for mass transportation. Thank you.
The final solution will be no transportation. Have fun!
@@stapleman007 Yes, eliminate needs for transportation - problem solved.
@@bahn5ee Certainly, reducing the needs for transportation is a big part of the solution.
Thank you for your busy research work and a scientific view on the topic. Also your quiz is pure fun 😊
I learned a few new things, and I had already long before reached a poor, almost dire, outlook for hydrogen powered vehicles - Extremely well presented and thought out discussion / "summary." Loved the video... Impressively easy to understand presentation on this issue...
Yes. You changed my mind about hydrogen. The Iridium Platinum problem is a huge issue.
Go and get an asteroid. Also the whole world has iridium in the form of the geological boundary from when the dinosaurs went extinct
@@savagesarethebest7251 I thought about the asteroid. I think that is likely to far off into the future to relieve us of the climate mess we have left for ourselves. The KT-boundary is thinned out all over the globe as you point it. This makes it far to expensive to mine.
Hydrogen is needed for the energy transition. No fuel cells and Platinum required.
@@gerbre1: Do you mean for direct burning, like as a substitute for using coal to melt iron to produce steel?
@@patricklincoln5942 Yes, direct burning in a combined heat and power plant or in a jet engine. Airbus together with CFM is developing such a jet engine for the A380. But Airbus is also considering the fuel cell, no final decision yet.
Dr. H, I really appreciate your realist approach to topics like this. We see so many marketing-friendly videos about how this company or that has “solved” whatever problem and it’s really nice to have a source of information that looks at things from the real world perspective
You are absolutely right, "Ghost of recon", such a realist approach is far too rare on the Internet -- which is dominated by disinformation so bad, it must be making Russian propagandists turn green with envy!
I road in a car in Melbourne Australia powered by a self contained hydrogen generator no need for pleasure vessels.
Please come clean and declare your sponsors
@@glennnewman1078 I’d love to see that! If so, that’s an awesome breakthrough. Can you share the manufacture or builder of the car? A web address would be fine.
@@glennnewman1078 sorry that my appreciation for scientific realism in some way made you so butt hurt.
Are you one of those folks who thinks that everyone who disagrees with you is some sort of bot or paid shill or alien or something? Cause if so that’s hilarious. I never thought I’d have an actual run in with one of you folks.
Bud, if you can find me a sponsor to say shit on the internet that pays more than my software engineering job, I’d be more than happy to listen.
Besides: don’t you like knowing that there are folks like Dr. H out there who are not just going along with the marketing speak and are actually evaluating stuff to see if it’s feasible? She could be completely wrong and still have contributed to the conversation.
I like the pace of delivery... Standard lectures are delivered much less quickly, I fall asleep or drift off into a waking reverie... The TH-cam delivery allows us to get a recap without asking, and disrupting fellow "students" trains of thought... (or seeming stupid)
I used, in my teens (the 1960s...) to think Hydrogen was the answer, after all, it was so easy to produce, we'd all done it by electrolysis, hadn't we? Of course, at "O" level, we didn't consider the overall efficiency and cost, from investment in plant to compression / liquification facilities, to distribution and retail infrastructure, to vehicle modifications, to safety, (hydrogen's lower to upper explosive limit range is wide) to the production of nitrogen compounds in combustion.
everything seemed so simple in the 60s... Of course, we've had 60 years since then to solve our energy issues, but oil producers, and the governments of the countries that had oil reserves to exploit, had a vested interest in our continued dependence...
I've had an LPG powered car, thinking it might be good for the environment (after all, the government gave me a generous grant to convert the car... I considered having a Diesel fueled car converted to use waste vegetable oil, (WVO) but a very knowledgeable fork lift driver drew my attention to the multiple downsides of that...
Good lecture, anyway, confirming what I'd learned elsewhere. Brava!
I've recently seen a discussion on a completely different forum, with one particular proponent of hydrogen as the miracle storage material for cars getting shot down but always coming back with more. I didn't have the time or inclination then to go and research it for myself, so I'm immensely grateful to you for producing this analysis. Even if you're wildly wrong (and your track record says that you're not going to be), it's extremely well presented and summarised. Thank you.
On a separate note, having seen several of your previous videos and found them somewhat dry in their presentation, I love this more approachable format!
Sabine, you're always informative, thorough - and a great sense of humor. Thank you so much!!! 🙂
I would have liked if you had also talked about the industrial uses of hydrogen, like steel and ammonia production. I knew that hydrogen was overhyped for transport and energy storage applications. But my understanding is that there might be some genuine potential for industrial processes, mostly since there aren't many alternatives.
Hydrogen can be used as a fuel or as a chemical agent. As a fuel, it has the problems as described in this video. As a chemical agent many of these problems are mitigated due to the hydrogen being produced much closer (typically onsite) to where it is consumed - that is, very little storage and transport.
@@Obscurai As a fuel, the video primarily focuses on fuel cells that generate electricity, but there are many industrial uses where hydrogen fuel can simply be burned to produce heat, and you don't need any fancy metals for that.
One example is the possibility of using hydrogen instead of coal for steel production, the so called green steel.
Hydrogen is used in high amounts in oil refining and processing. But if you have been paying attention to the video you noticed that most hydrogen comes from natural gas, which I would say is plenty abundant in a oil refinery, there is no point on useing different coloured hydrogen there.
Yes hydrogen can be burned as fuel, but burning hydrogen for heat at large scale inherits the issues of transport and storage, since burning it is less efficient than burning the original energy source that was used to create the hydrogen and because of that inefficiency larger quantities are needed. At industrial scale, efficiency means money and unless there is a very specific need that burning hydrogen provides, it does not make financial sense to burn hydrogen.
Wow. I didn't see any innacuracies or biases in this video. Thank you for a great presentation.
About 15 years ago I talked to an engineer who was working on a fuel cell program. He was tired of it and hoping his company would give it up.
Wow, what an enthusiastic look on the topic!
Fuel cells have come a long way. High temp fuel cells are expensive but quite efficient. Rare earths are the future for electrodes and electrolytes
@@janami-dharmam High temp, meaning high temperature? So, a pre-heating needed like on EVs battery packs?
@@Sekir80 When people know their project is going nowhere, they lose enthusiasm. BTW, did you even watch the video? If you did, you might understand why lack of enthusiasm is warranted.
@@janami-dharmam I feel like you didn't fully comprehend the substance of this video.
Hydrogen may not save us from ourselves, but folks like you just might. Keep up the great spreading of knowledge, Sabine! We 💖 your good work.
Hydrogen is the bomb!
That warning at 12:46 about the logarithmic scale was very helpful. It inspired me to put the same numbers into a spreadsheet, and graph them with a linear scale and a logarithmic scale, just to see the differences, and it was eye-opening.
Forget that nonsense... Sabine said don't leave the beer in the car overnight!
@@carlsapartments8931
I don't drink beer. Problem Solved. 😏
Once they learn how to vibrate the molecules Hydrogen will be the #1 fuel source!!
That is the basic problem with presenting data to laymen. People are only used to the term average from school days and maybe, just maybe, median. But scale and spread are two VERY important things to take into account when dealing with statistics.
So when someone presents you bar graphs without a scale, you know they want to lie to you. If they leave out median, and spread, they might just be incompetent (cough journalists cough) OR they are still trying to hide something from you...
I think there's a lot of higher math we should remove from basic schooling's curriculum and add statistics instead.
Another example: "Doing X raises your cancer risk by 19%!!!" means nothing without knowing what the cancer risk was before. Because You never add that number they present you to the initial risk. If it was 20% to begin with it doesn't become 39%. It becomes about 24% (20% plus 19% of 20). If it was only 1% to begin with, the new cancer risk arrives at 1.2%.
To determine the amount of fear you need to apply to the problem, this is QUITE significant info.
@@RetiredRhetoricalWarhorse maybe everyone should get statistics and logic fallacies in school
You've answered the wrong question. We are looking for the best alternative way to carry energy in a car. You've compared hydrogen to gasoline. You should be comparing it to other methods of portable energy storage, like lithium batteries.
Lithium batteries also use special materials available in certain regions.
Lithium batteries are also very heavy.
Lithium batteries create CO2 in their manufacture.
Lithium batteries also have worse energy density compared to gasoline.
Lithium batteries also have issues with cold temperatures.
How does hydrogen energy storage compare to lithium energy storage? You should also consider how rapidly a car can be refueled, and how the storage system might be used with regenerative braking.
You are surely joking? Li-on batteries do NOT produce energy - they need to be charged.
Thank you for your objective analysis of the challenges facing a H2 economy. I found it quite informative.
Another informative and easy to understand 20-minute lesson. Thanks so much for these.
Something major you missed/omitted/didn't mention (I say this because it affects the conclusion arguements a little) are solid hydrogen storage solution (metal hydride tanks). They are pumped at low pressure into tanks with a metal lattice which breaks hydrogen into atoms and stores it. These are leak resistant even over months, operate at low pressure, volumetrically are ~3x as energy dense as gas-pressure tanks and significantly less heavy, though not super lightweight still.
Of course, they do not affect the rest of the conclusion, but as far as storage solutions go, this one was a pretty nice development. I was recently looking into using hydrogen for power backup in homes and seems the cost of such a backup system with a best case scenraio is 50,000 to 80,000 euros for a meagre 7kWh/day setup, ignoring recurring costs of using distilled water.
Thanks for highlighting this. We might talk more about this in a future video. It's always difficult to decide where to draw the line.
@@SabineHossenfelder Magnesium hydride paste is the most commonly deployed solution. It's primary competitor is NH3/ammonia.
Hydrogen combustion, fuel cell and gas storage tanks are simply not part of any serious general purpose solution I know of. What you covered is simply obsolete.
@@crhu319 hydrogen combustion has been pushed as a path to decarbonisation in Australia over the last few years. Most of the pushing has come from the gas industry lobby, who surprise surprise favour blue hydrogen, and using existing and new natural gas combustion plants.
It's almost like they have a financial interest in maintaining demand and infrastructure dependant on natural gas. Unfortunately many politicians have a financial interest in keeping the gas lobby happy.
I am not surprised that hydrogen is not the solution. Hydrogen has clearly some problems like its size that enables a diffusion through other materials like normal steel. Naturally you also need efforts and material for infrastructure and maintenance. I also heared from a spezialist that the used membranes for electrolysis are not very durable.
The big problem is that all new technologies have to enforce themself. They need resources, efforts and time before they eventually amortize but we have only a limited contingent for carbondioxide and not much time perhaps 4 years until the 1,5° warming is reached (I personally think this period is allready optimistical because the warming is inhomogeneous). So nuclear power can also not be a solution for the climate change because it needs far too much time for planning and building nuclear power plants. 30 to 40 years wouldn't be a too exzessiv estimate. Nuclear power also creates a warming problem by directly warming water. The climate gets hotter so cooling water gets hotter too. Nuclear power is not climate-resistant like you can see in France. Here in Germany this would be also a political problem so the way to this technology is blocked...
We should also never forget that climate change is extremely inert and has an own momentum. Neverthless we forced the climate heating to a tenfold acceleration that won't stop even if we would stop releasing greenhouse gases tomorrow like a train at full speed tries to brake. This won't work.
I fear that there is not enough time for a technical solution anymore. We discuss so long without sufficient results. I don't see how this can work. We should have prepared 20/30 years ago. Climate heating is known since club of rome 50 years ago. It is so targical. I am sorry.
Thank you for the breath of sanity... Years ago I was a believer in the Hydrogen Economy too, but over the years I have come to know the reality, and you have summarized that reality magnificently. Also, I did not know about the cold-start problem until now... thanks again.
Thanks for helping me forming my own, scientifically based optionions on different energy solutions, Sabine! Loving the series
WIth a little help from Freddy Mercury...
If governments are pushing it, it's usually a loser.
Never listen to politicians, listen to people who know things.
@@johngalt3566 You just described how we made things so much worse during the Pandemic: politicians and ordinary citizens chose to listen to flim flam and poppycock, the result is we will never get rid of COVID-19. The best we can hope for is yearly vaccine boosters, since it is already endemic in much of the world.
And that is still not very good: countries that cannot afford to vaccinate their people will become breeding grounds for new variants: some milder, some worse -- especially when DNA swapping occurs in a patient already ill with another dangerous virus.
Yes, I knew there were problems with hydrogen as fuel. But I really had no idea just how many more it had. Thanks.
I was in the same boat. Mind you, I don't think the problems are absolutely insurmountable, but they are definitely far greater than I'd thought and will take quite a bit more effort (and especially research) to overcome than I'd been aware of. It is definitely some good information to have though.
One important factor that has been overlooked in this video is the appalling efficiency of the "green hydrogen" production, transport and use cycle.
According to the sources I've seen, total efficiency is more like 20% to 30% in the real world:
- Electricity to hydrogen: yield 50% to 75% (= around 50% to 25% losses)
- Compression, storage, transport, etc: yield around 80% (= around 20% losses - can be much more in some on sources or depending on the routes taken)
- Hydrogen to electricity (fuel cell): yield 50% (= around 50% losses)
==> total efficiency: around 20% to 30% (= (50% to 75%) * 80% * 50%)
This means that one needs 3 to 5 wind turbines to produce the "green hydrogen" needed for the equivalent of 1 wind turbine of final electricity... and this at an outrageous production cost!
This also means that Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) are a much better solution than Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs).
Indeed, the equivalent electricity yield for BEVs is around 85% to 90%:
- Electricity transport and distribution: yield around 90% (10% losses)
- Lithium battery storage and release: yield around 90% to 95% (10% to 5% losses)
So BEVs are about 3 to 4 times more efficient than FCEVs.
Also, they are inherently far less expensive.
And the whole electricity to electricity cycle is several tens of times less expensive for BEVs than for FCEVs!
So why on earth hasn't this "green hydrogen" idea been dropped a long time ago?
To me, the reason is simple: greens love it, and their ideology has taken over the western world...
Much of what you write is true. I was nodding my head often while reading your comment. However, the last paragraph quickly made me stop. That's populist bullshit.
@@Marcus_pePunkt if Amazon likes Plug Power, I’m in.
@@Marcus_pePunktYeah, that last paragraph should have pointed out that it’s the hydrocarbon industry that’s keeping the hydrogen dream alive. Example: In the UK the hydrogen booster clubs have been taken over by oil and gas industry insiders. The interesting question is Why?
Thank you, and yes I learned some new stuff in this video. That is, I knew that hydrogen production is a steady state process, but I had not seen the papers you reference on the subject. Hydrogen is indeed a difficult species to handle, and the proponents tend to oversimplify everything.
I work in the maritime R&D area on energy systems, and the idea here is to use fuel cell stacks to enable any power you would need. The idea is that if you have a fuel cell module of 200 kW you could just stack 5 of them together to bring 1 MW, just like Lego(tm). Nobody wants to admit that it also brings the same number of support systems (so-called balance of plant) and power electronic integration. Then there is the thing that fuel cells have maximum efficiency and lifetime at around 50-60% load, thus you would like to have 7 or 8 modules of 200 kW to enable 1 MW.
In addition, fuel cells do not like to operate at low load (less than 20%), so you need a strategy to also the need to have a strategy for which modules should run when you need less than full power. This is important because the lifetime of fuel cells are affected by starting and stopping.
In short, it is complicated.
A comment on storage, yes it makes sense to store hydrogen as compressed gas in cars and heavy duty vehicles and machines. However, it does not make sense to store hydrogen compressed for longer term storage. Then you need a hydrogen carrier, such as a metal matrix or a organic liquid. The processes for hydrogenation and release of hydrogen requires energy.
Hydrogen can be stored as a liquid at 20 K. This can be done for some days or maybe a couple of weeks before the need for refrigeration arises, again requiring energy.
Hydrogen is about energy. If you have abundant cheap energy you can make as much hydrogen as you want. We do not and will not have abundant cheap energy for the foreseeable future.
Proponents of anything almost never give you the downside. It's why snake oil salesmen were so prolific at one time.
@@Alondro77 - then there are the times when real, groundbreaking science is inhibited, and dismissed as snake oil, by those whose profit streams would be disrupted, by disruptive technologies. Liquid fuel solution thorium cycle MSR’s are one of those disruptive technologies that was suppressed and ignored for being able to provide what we were promised with nuclear... Safe, clean, and too cheap to meter.
@@orcoastgreenman Yeahhhhh, that's the stupidest excuse people ever come up with. The sheer staggering profit one would gain by patenting a perfect energy source would GUARANTEE that someone would bring it to the public. They would stand to gain TRILLIONS in cold hard cash, all for themselves, within just a few years. No one could bribe them enough. Or, the communist Chinese would steal it for themselves, and we'd see it being used over there, since China has to purchase all its fuel currently, they'd have nothing to gain by trying to suppress the new tech, and EVERYTHING to gain by grabbing it and powering their growing empire.
Is thinking really that hard?
@@Alondro77 - oh, so you are a coincidence theorist...
Got it.
@@orcoastgreenman I have investigated all these 'miracle energy sources' myself. I have found that NONE of them work even remotely as efficiently as promised. Same with the 'green energy' nonsense. They paint a rosy picture to get funding, then it falls flat on its ass, BECAUSE REALITY DOESN'T GIVE A DAMN WHAT YOUR FANTASIES ARE! Physics will not tolerate liars or frauds.
Thank you. I didn't know Iridium was going to be another problem as well. Hydrogen power didn't need another show stopper. It's got enough already.
It is still better than gasoline
@@definitlynotbenlente7671 really, it's not.
I love your wierd and dry sense of humour. Goes well with physics. Liking your channel more and more. Cheers!
I like how she put Freddie in there without then mentioning it at all afterwards. Brilliant!
An additional issue regarding green hydrogen is that of efficiency. According to all sources I've seen, the electricity to H2 conversion, to transportation of H2, to fuel cell/electricity output yields about one third of the electricity used for electrolysis in the first place.
This suggests that it would be more efficient to use battery-electric vehicles (BEV) in place of fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs), which is why BEVs are much more widely used these days. One exception applies in situations where it is impractical or cost ineffective to implement an electrical connection between a wind turbine and an electric grid. This is done is Scotland where some turbines are located on islands where the economies of scale don't justify installing a cable connecting the turbine to the grid.
All in all, it seems to me that hydrogen has been massively overhyped, especially when many of our media platforms and much of the public is under the misimpression that hydrogen is an energy source.
A gas cylinder costs a lot less than a battery!
@@niklar55 Maybe so, but we would also need a lot more of them. The gas cylinder will wear out relatively quickly because of hydrogen embrittlement while lithium ion batteries that haven't been routinely overcharged or undercharged are almost like new at ten years old.
@@calamityjean1525
Agreed.
maybe once cylinders are more widely used, ways to protect them from embrittlement will be found, or alternative materials.
@@niklar55
We can hope so, but don't hold your breath.
@@calamityjean1525
I would imagine that the best way to utilise H cylinders would be to change the whole cylinder, as is the practice with gas forktrucks, and similar.
Then it will be the gas vendors responsibility to use non-destructive testing to be sure they are safe to reuse.
.
Since lithium batteries underperform in cold conditions, I was interested in hydrogen as an energy storage medium that might be appealing for industrial transportation in northern climates like Canada's. There are plenty of issues to solve before that could become a reality.
This video was the first time I'd heard about the cold-start problem for hydrogen fuel cells. Combined with hydrogen tanks' tendency to leak over time it seems like the role for hydrogen electric transportation in cold climates will be very small indeed.
Thanks for another excellent video Sabine. Informative and funny to boot!
This seems to be a similar problem to eV batteries where you use a large part of your charge either heating or cooling the battery depending on where it is operated.
@@crabby7668 More than 2/3 of gasoline energy is lost as heat, so you're splitting hairs about nothing significant.
Lithium can perform excellently in cold weather if the pack is made of the right chemistry for that job.
Heating and cooling for lithium batteries is only necessary if you're taking them over their tolerances to maximize energy density in the pack. Tesla does this to maximize their range on a pack with relatively weak power output compared to what it could be.
The energy needed to heat or cool such a battery is actually very little compared to what you consume when you've got the throttle down.
the problem is atomised energy storage. As soon as you want to store your energy in a moving vehicle, all benefits of scale break apart and you introduce vastly more new obstacles.
the solution is to not transport your energy storage, ie : use trains instead of cars :P
no batteries to degrade, no pressurised containers to leak, no problems x)
@@aluisious yes it's crazy that you can waste 2/3 of the gasoline energy and still have it perform as well as or better than an EV, and carry much less weight of fuel to do so. If you used the same weight or volume of an EV battery for gasoline, your range would be off the charts. And you don't have to heat or cool gasoline, the tank is just formed steel not some massively complex and expensive construction, and the weight of the fuel tank reduces as you use the fuel, which extends range further.
I was comparing hydrogen and EV batteries in that post. I didn't even mention gas vehicles in that particular post, but thanks for reminding us of the remarkable benefits of fossil fuels.
I knew hydrogen had challenges to overcome but this video detailed what many of those problems are in a way I haven't previously been aware of. We use fossil fuels because they're very economical and practical. Coal and oil are tough acts to follow.
Instead if using nuclear to make hydrogen just use the electricity to charge EVs and heat pumps for home heating and cooling.
One major issue that wasn't mentioned was the huge energy loss from converting electricity to H2. In practice, it takes about 50kWh (and 9kg water) to make 1kg H2. In energy terms, this is equivalent to 4L of petrol (gas(oline)), if burnt directly (note: not used as a fuel cell). In a normal small car, typically 8-10L petrol per 100km, 1kg H2 would get you 50-60km. However, if you used the 50kWh directly to charge a battery, you could get around 250-300km range for a small car. This means you are sacrificing a factor of 4-6 in efficiency of use, simply for the convenience of delaying that use. Again, in practical terms, this means expanding the output of wind or solar (if you are stupid enough to use them, vs nuclear, hydro or gas, and our governments are, it seems) by a factor of 4-6 to account for the reduced capacity factor of H2 generation (never mind transport and storage) over direct charging. Of course , there are losses in direct charging as well, but the consensus seems to be that electrolytic H2 is only 25% as efficient as direct charging. The beautiful efficiency of energy-dense, easily transportable, liquid form fossil fuels, responsible for raising billions out of abject poverty and ending short lives, sure is hard to beat.
Fabulous summary, thank you Iain. And, indeed, oil has played a mammoth role in bringing the technological world this far. But it will, I believe, be dwarfed by what wind and solar will ultimately contribute.
> " In a normal small car, typically 8-10L petrol per 100km"
A typical current small European of Japanese car is twice as efficient as that.
@@kwhitefo I think you're referring to diesel engines, and I don't have the comparative equivalence for that fuel. Euro 4 cylinder diesel hatchbacks can certainly get 4-5L/100km, very similar to hybrids, but petrol (gasoline, or gas in the US) is typically double that. My small Kia gets 9-10L/100km in short-haul city driving, and I got down to 7L/100km with 600km of non-stop highway driving recently with a medium sized petrol Subaru. Ironically, this latter case is the worst (apart from sub-zero temperatures) driving condition for EVs (most efficient for stop-start), but I haven't seen any data for direct H2 burn or fuel cell driving. Could 110km/h for 300km overwhelm the fuel cell with overheating or reagent diffusion starvation? Who knows in practice?
@@lighthousesaunders7242 Put a wind turbine in your backyard then get back to us in a year.
I'm glad you mention that. When we convert energy from one state to another (which has to happen a fair bit with hydrogen production) you lose efficiency. You cannot convert energy from one form to another at 100% efficiency so energy is lost at every stage of the process till it gets to your car wheels.
Wonderful video as usual, @SabineHossenfelder!
Curious why the first mentioned approach of "add fire" never was brought up after as an available technology, ICE with hydrogen does work after all! While the early attempts at high pressure, high temperature hydrogen ICE was seen as a dead end, that new JCB engine proves that low pressure, low temperatue hydrogen ICE is very effective, especially for those heavy machines like excavators or trains where batteries have yet to catch up.
Also, a recent paper on "direct air electrolysis" for green hydrogen went out of its way to test with non-platinum catalysts like nickel and even under wind power (Hydrogen production from the Air, Guo et al, Nature Comm. '22). So, I don't feel like the viability of platinum and iridium as high-efficiency catalysts is a knock against hydrogen, as alternatives have a long history and new ones continue to develop, such as iron or hafnium based PEMFC anodes & cathodes, which experimentally seems to show the same durability as platinum (Nitrogen-plasma treated hafnium oxyhydroxide as an efficient acid-stable electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution and oxidation reactions, Yang et al. Nature Comm. '19).
Not sure whether you've had a chance to see developments like this yet, or just had to cut them from the video for pacing reasons!
On a separate note, knowing the above research and development, saying "the entire hydrogen economy hinges on the availability of [platinum and iridium]" and that "this situation isn't going to change" feels like a gross exaggeration. Clearly, alternative catalysts are available, even today, and the question simply is whether people within the hydrogen economy will select those for their abundancy and lower costs (monetary and ecological) in spite of potentially lower efficiency and less-established supply chains. So that fact that businesses (already well known for kicking the can down the road, hence the climate crisis) have yet to switch to ecological alternatives hardly seems a reason to spell doom and gloom for the hydrogen economy before it's "barely begun".
To the overall theme, there has been no obvious panacea for energy production and storage, so it feels like the framing of the video over-emphasised hydrogen as a "silver bullet", rather than the grounded framing that it can be one tool among many in the toolbox to a sustainable future, and like all tools has applications where it performs well, and others where it does not. Similarly, the framing on hydrogen cars is something that struck me as odd, because it assumes cars should be central part of a sustainable future, without questioning their utility and impact. The same problem exists with discussion of electric cars, where there exists this same assumption, rather than embracing the opportunity to reconsider the fundamentals, the same as how we need to reconsider the obsession with everything relying on a singular fuel source (petrol/gasoline) instead of an ensemble of power and storage approaches; batteries have shown viability with smaller vehicles, while hydrogen (ICE and PEMFC) has shown it for larger vehicles. So, it really does seem to come back to the unrealistic desire for a panacea, because whenever has nature suggested there should ever be such a thing in any domain?
Thanks for this detailed addition! Very interesting read, and also good point about different solutions for different situations. :) I guess the "single best solution" expectation is driven by marketing that want to over-hype their own solution, but also because people often prefer to see a single silver-bullet done by big corporations so they don't have to change their own behavior with respect to their climate impact.
Yamaha even made a new hydrogen powered engine. Specially for Toyota! They want to make a new race series with it. Its funny what ideas people have before admitting its all nonsense and only for their personal satisfaction. Why not take up a hobby like knitting? Costs less energy.
Nuclear fusion has the potential of becoming a panacea for the energy crisis.
Any sort of internal combustion wngine will be inefficient. Since an ICE is a heat engine, lower temperature operation is likely to result in lower efficiency.
The thermal efficiency of an internal combustion engine operating on hydrogen will be no better than one operating on petrol, and with the hydrogen taking up 6 times as much volume plus the restrictions on shape and size of a pressure vessel containing 700 bar of pressure mean the fuel tanks would take up most of the space inside the vehicle to get the range that people expect from vehicles today. And, NOx remains an issue, because with air containing both oxygen and nitrogen and the combustion process raising the temperature high enough to produce NOx, it will still be produced. Battery-electric for private vehicles is the way to go. There are applications that we don't know how to solve ... long-haul aviation, for one. Rome wasn't built in a day.
Sabine: As I listened to this and you took apart the argument for hydrogen piece by piece, I started to laugh to myself and by the end I was laughing out loud. Great argument and video. Thank you so much.
The technology is simply not there yet… however it’s a start. The production and storage has its challenges but it’s not like engineers don’t work on new approaches to old problems. Indeed, hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and we should use it effectively.
But not in free form, in order to use it you need to use energy ( fossil fuel , etc) to make it H2!
I knew hydrogen wasn't a one-size-fits cure-all, but I didn't quite realize it was *this* much of an issue. The platinum and iridium thing... Unless we take up mining in space isn't going to be a problem easily solved. Thanks for your hard work in researching this. /thumbsup
Imagine new technologies for extracting energy from hydrogen, the current one is like a hundred years old
@@jaswik2023 why not just burn it? a few issues around nitrogen emissions and doesnt solve the packaging issues but less needs for those metals i think.
The story is interesting about how Toyota and Honda executives convinced the Japanese government to go the H2 route to avoid being affected by a possible Chinese embargo on rare battery components (Sea of Japan dispute bargaining chip and all) if their auto industry was dependent on them. So they decided to go with H2 for a national economic security standpoint not knowing just how much of a success Tesla would be with their charging network. If Japan wanted an H2 revolution they needed to put R&D into affordable green H2 production at refueling stations, then develop the cars to run off of it, essentially they bought a bunch of horses, but forgot to plant any hay.
don't need platinum or iridium at all.
@@BCFalls1 this video is propaganda. The rare metals aren’t a problem anyway. The problem will be convincing the public that the 4th generation nuclear reactors needed for pink hydrogen production are safe.
A very interesting video, thank you! However being a mechanical engineer I am also curious about the efficiency when compressing the hydrogen to 700 bars. That won't be just any compressor. I've heard that piston compressors with multiple steps are used in this process and I imagine that there are some challenges involved. Cryogenic cooling is also one way of "concentrating" the hydrogen but this also comes with big difficulties. A video about these issues would be very interesting I think.
You have the problem that hydrogen can escape through the gaps between the atoms of other materials such as metal. That makes it really difficult to store under pressure.
Right! And piston compressors who can do the task normally are diesel operated. So: how about fueling the cars with diesel directly? Just a proposal. 😊
@@EDE_358 Well we could also use compressed air to run our cars, air compressed with diesel compressors.
This is a big challenge with the hydrogen projects I've seen. Compression and cooling are incredibly expensive and energy intensive. Special compressors required due to the small molecules also. Some heat can be recovered in the cycle depending on the electrolyzer technology used I've heard, but not sure. Storage tanks are super expensive from what I've seen also, and transport at scale a huge challenge due to the hazard.
@@tombowen9861 Good thing is that it is somebody else who probably will pay for this, and not us!
"This is why you shouldn't leave the beer in the car in the winter"
Small reminders that Sabine is *definitely* German lol
This was a great video, I've only ever encountered pro-Hydrogen power articles in my life and it always struck me as odd that green tech and climate researchers weren't all rushing to promote it more, but hearing how deeply that common extraction methods are tied to fossil fuels explains why
Not ethnically German, however.
The thing is, you can produce Hydrogen without the fossil fuel but, it is an energy agnostic form of energy transportation, so if you produce it with solar/wind during high production it's CO2 free.
@@quantuman100 Yes good point. A lot of criticism about renewables is that sometimes excess generated energy can't be stored easily, this is a good fit for that issue and preferable to lithium battery technology that is not that environmentally friendly.
@@aries6776 yes but hydrogen requires platinum and iridium, which is also not environmentally friendly
It's even stranger that climate activists flock to anti nuclear.
Green Hydrogen is for the climate better than fossil fuels.
It has a place, next to battery storage and pumped water-storage.
Probably mostly in some air, offroad and shipping.
Thanks Sabine, for pointing out the basics. Regarding green hydrogen I want to add on: Green hydrogen is produced by renewable energies such as solar, wind or water, is it? No, I state that this definition is very incomplete. It should rather say that green hydrogen is (a) produced by renewable energies AND (b) produced by renewable energies, which can’t be used at the same time to replace electricity produced from carbon emitting sources. The meaning of (b) is that only surplus power can be used to have a real green effect with the consequence that renewables capacity must exceed the demand. To fulfill this at scale, we are many years, if not decades away from that point. A long time, during which developments will go on and the question is whether other technologies, e.g. batteries will have an edge.
I started my career in fuel cell development, which is more than 3 decades ago and all your views here were my starting point. Working in the energy sector, I was subsequently amazed, how industry and marketing were able to skip these basics and proceed promoting a hydrogen industry as big business and the savior of our climate. They don’t talk about basic facts, there is denial, it seems to be a sort of taboo. Going forward with hydrogen is a given. Of course there are scientific studies, some of which you are quoting but that’s somewhere on an academic level, competing with other strong lobby interests in politics and business. The hydrogen hype serves as a justification for the conventional industries to continue with their old-fashioned technology and to prevent disruptions from their point of view.
Sabine, I'd love to see a video about how do you go about researching topics that are not of your field. Like what google searches do you do, how do you decide to read a paper, who do you talk to. It'd be really interesting to me.
I have learnt something and have changed my mind. I thought it was as simple as using water and separating the H from the O. Boy was I wrong. Thanks Sabine.
Hydrogen will escape anywhere it can, all the time too.
@@abdell75roussos thats the problem with car transport. pray tell... (i newer was good with chemistry) can hydrogen from ruptured tank get into reaction with atmospheres o2? because if it can, then any car incident could turn into explosion like on hollywood movies xD
@@seushimarejikaze1337 Yes. The hydrogen atom will combine with atmospheric oxygen, which will result in an exothermic reaction ie fire/explosion.
Explosion will occur if the mix is just right, but just a fire will result if hydrogen is in the presence of oxygen.
The fire reation results in pure water, and also the hydrogen atom is very small, and so has to have the best seals possible.
The atom can make some metals brittle over time.
The explosions are cleaner, not smoke, and not as hot as other hydrocarbon explosions. Hydrogen rises, so a leak may disperse harmlessly give a chance, and after all the battery fires, hydrogen looks safer too if handled correctly.
@@abdell75roussos thanks for clarification.
Nothing new there for me but, you have summed up the problems as I understand them really well. Someone I know said to me the other day that they thought hydrogen would be the future of transport. They were thinking of the ability to fill a car's tank like a petrol car. No. I didn't even get to the scarcity of PGMs before we arrived at our destination and I think the fella wished he hadn't brought it up.
It's amazing how people think you can scale up the high school electrolysis experiment by factors of several million and think there are no problems. Try telling them just because you can set off a small firework in the backyard it does not mean you can launch a full size Saturn V rocket from your back yard.