Do you think these kinds of advancements will spur more interest in hydrogen? Go to brilliant.org/Undecided to sign up for free. And also, the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium membership. If you liked this, check out The Problem With Tesla’s Solar Roof th-cam.com/video/sFwZQHZAJDc/w-d-xo.html
Hidrogen has to many problems to solve. Maybe in 30 year's and can get to being 300% efficient witch it needs for all the inefficiency in the systems until you reach the end product or byproduct.
Best Electic vehicle is are as follows:- 1300 kg 1300 watts 130 kms x2 in 1:1 ratio of rpm 😎 Meaning Tesla range have to be over 13,000 kms in single charge in 1:1 rpm and 24,000 kms and above in single charge with a transmission system with 1:13 rpm ratio mean 1 rpm of motor 13 rpm of wheels in middle level 1:1 in Torque mode 13:1 mean motor 13 rpm wheels 1 😇 Elon musk cars have over 500 to 600 miles range 😏 Change rpm to 1:1 can give us over 9x higher range which is over 4500 to 5400 miles per charge and I m not talking about using and transmission system which easily boosts the range of any Tesla cars over 13,000 to 24,000 miles in single charge 😏 And remember 1liter petrol has approx 10kw of energy 😏 But they r not going to do it cuz it’s very low profitable business and elon musk wants only money money money 😂 That’s y he is not supporting hydrogen cuz it’s even less money money money 🤣(th-cam.com/video/MjlB5VLZ5C0/w-d-xo.html) 😂 Elon musk (ironmonger) 😏 Kalki avatar (Ironman) after 2026 😎😎😎
Please, please, lets get this straight: hydrogen is not an energy source, it is an energy storage medium. This distinction is important because hydrogen has got the potential to become a vital part of stabilising the energy grid in the future, and producing hydrogen should not be seen as a competition of wind\solar farms. This is saying that the canned meat industry competes with breeding livestock, nonsensical and paradoxal at the very least.
And if you are looking for storage, with solar and wind power being the most readily available renewable energy, use the concrete blocks hoisted to 200 feet into the air, and crank out energy as gravity pulls them back towards the ground and cranking a generator as your battery. It can't be beat for efficiency or cost, and they can be put up anywhere.
Absolutely, electric is the energy source, water is just the exhaust of hydrogen and oxygen after the combustion process, corruption is the only reason we don't have a real hydrogen economy! Too many scientists have sold out to the establishment period!
I agree while I disagree. Everything in this universe only stores energy, no energy can supposedly be created. Therefor yes, hydrogen gas is only a storage medium for energy. On the other hand hydrogen is literally the only storage medium used on a bigger scale throughout the whole universe.....stars use it, plants use it, animals use it......there is probably something to it If we managed to make a semi-organic hydrocarbon oxidizer you are looking EXTREAMLY cheap solar capture and storage energy.......
Zero, sifr, zilch. Mainly because he is not an engineer, he is a content creator. He reads a new paper, or gets paid by a start up and doesn't put any thought to it. In essence, he is an unreliable lit review.
Imagine if humanity would stop spending hundreds of trillions of dollars on war machines to kill each other and invested the money (equals workhours and material) into development of renewable energy. Imagine...
I think that answer to most of the problems when it comes to hydrogen is to think outside of the box. We are trying to deal with it like its any other resource, but answer is not to store it in mass and transport it like we are used to. This is because it is easy to produce, and i think that they should be working on smaller scale decentrilized grids that produce it locall
2:57 Hydrogen is not the smallest element, Helium is. Because it has the same orbital as H, but a higher nucleus charge, the orbital is pulled further to the core, despite having two electrons in it. Furthermore Helium is an atomar gas, while normal Hydrogen is a molecule made up of 2 atoms.
It is easy when looking at the many challenges of efficient hydrogen, production, storage, and transportation, to forget to include safety management strategies. Hydrogen poses many unique challenges when considering safety management, like metal embrittlement, extreme cryogenic temperatures and/or high storage pressures, nearly invisible flame, and of course its tendency to explode!
Yes, a car with 5kg of hydrogen sitting in you garage is about the equivalent of 2000 hand grenades. People are putting a lot of faith in the valves and pipes that connect to a tank. Especially when the tank is at 10,000psi, or 700 times atmospheric pressure (insane pressure). I imagine a mother taking her children to school and pressing the garage door opener after a tank has leaked out into the garage roof cavity over night.
the explosive factor is a myth bred by images of things like the Hindenburg disaster ( which wasn't caused by the hydrogen likely, the airframe was coated w butylene dope that is extremely flammable. hydrogen gas is less explosive than gasoline vapor yet we drive around with a gas tank that has gasoline vapor in it. I saw an episode of the PBS Nova program in the late 70s on hydrogen ( kind of depressing 40 yrs later it is still TBD). They had a partially full can of gasoline which meant gas vapor was in the rest and a gas can full of hydrogen. they fired a tracer round into the two cans. the gas can exploded like dynamite going off, the hydrogen can simply burned a flame out the hole.
@@njlauren I work in the hydrogen industry. Hydrogen explosions are very much not a myth. Your statement about the Hindenburg is correct. It did not explode. But hydrogen can explode under the right conditions. And when it explodes, it can explode quite bigly. The equipment that I design all utilize redundant h2 detectors and the system will immediately shut down valves and turn on exhaust fans if a certain level of H2 is ever detected. H2 is very much in our future, but it needs to be respected.
@@brianburnside5949 I didn't say that hydrogen couldn't explode, I was saying that hydrogen is less explosive than gasoline vapor,yet we drive around with tanks full of it not thinking about it. Btw so is natural gas, whole buildings get wiped out under the right circumstances. Not saying you don't need to be cautious, I am saying that the fear of hydrogen ppl express is out of whack with the reality.
Keep in mind that green H2 is essentially free...IF it is made from Renewables (wind/solar) that can't otherwise use it. During peak sun (or wind) the grid might not be able to use all of it...hence the benefits of storage (batteries,pumped hydro, etc). If the grid can't use it and storage is already "full", the surplus can be dumped to H2 production---thus "free" H2. Overbuilding off-shore wind (and rooftop solar) is the best way to get off fossil fuels--all the excess can be stored as a buffer or used for H2 production.
While it is the standard thought that renewable surpluses on the grid can power hydrogen synthesis, that model is not really that realistic. The reason I say that is because grid operators never want a steady surplus of intermittent power on the grid, and so will likely only want to build out renewables to the point where there are small periodic spikes that go beyond demand, with stored energy sources, like fuels to make up for the pitfalls, Also, the companies that will build the electrolyzers to produce the hydrogen will not want the responsibility of regulating the power surplus on the network or to be a competitor for it among load-leveling battery banks, or other applications thus never having an assured supply of energy. I think it is more likely that hydrogen synthesis facilities would build their own dedicated renewable micro-grids, with limited grid connections so that they can accurately predict the amounts of energy they need to handle, and thus the amount of infrastructure that they need.
@@nolan4339 It is quite realistic. It is being done at NREL as wind to hydrogen, a project that has been going for over a decade. The UK and Germany are doing it too. Regarding your specific statements, IN FACT, grid operators ALWAYS want a steady surplus of power on the grid. That is kind of the "problem." Because it is a surplus, however, it must be wasted, which is the "answer." A couple of years ago, Texas was doing this with up to 15% of its wind power. Utilities will do anything that makes a profit and stabilizes the grid, period. Selling something they can't use is a no-brainer. Hydrogen generation can do that. Similarly, electrolyzer companies will want to make a profit, and would welcome cheap electricity, and electricity that is already being curtailed can be as cheap as free. You might think it is likely that electrolyzers will build their own grids. I know of one huge site that did that. But why do that when a free resource is being wasted? I am not sure why you are biased against the interests of utilities, hydrogen producers, researchers, but it is perfectly fine. They will not be deterred.
@@bradwinfast1236 yes, when there are renewable surpluses, selling this extra power for cheap will happen, but if you get multiple parties competing for this capacity, then it will no longer be so cheap, and power companies will not want to sell it for cheap because it represents over built production capacity, which needs to be paid for. So the amount of this cheap surplus will be limited. Relying on Green Hydrogen production will need extremely cheap power, and a huge amount of it in order to fulfill societies hydrogen demand, and while some of this power will likely come from grid surpluses, I think it will be cheaper and more reliable to build renewable power facilities that are directly paired with electrolyzer plants, for the majority of this production, rather than trying to funnel these huge power loads through the grid.
Use as energy storage is really hydrogen's only possible niche it could fill. It's not useful as a transportation fuel because it's too low density. It's not useful for full scale production, because if you need green energy systems like solar and wind to power your hydrogen electrolysis, you might as well just use them to power the grid directly and not waste a step. But for storage, it's an OK option if the efficiency to produce is high. Currently I think water pumping and gravitational storage require a LOT less complex technology and even though they have their own losses, the simplicity of building them is in their favor. No technological challenges to overcome, just engineering and design.
I did research into the hydrogen market about a month prior to the video and based on what I was able to read from published articles on Google, I feel like the information used is old and/or out of date. In particular I am up in arms about the types of production, color variety of hydrogen, and the cost to produce it. I found that there were about 5-6 colors, $2-8 per kilogram depending on the color, and a myriad of ways to produce hydrogen in each of those color categories. Most of which were economically unviable. I think it's important to note that the vast majority of hydrogen is purchased by the oil & gas sector, which further hinders future hydrogen production methods from being produced as it creates a volume of production barrier for new producers on the market. Most new producers will be relegated to serve very niche markets until they can scale production quantity to oil & gas levels. While the information was valuable in this video, the depth and scope I felt was misleading. And I should clarify that I am BY FAR not an expert. These assertions are all from articles found from about 1.5 hours of research on the subject.
there are plenty of ways to purify water that are not energy inefficient. The short answer is yes, the long answer is, it would need to be included in the development COGS and pushed forward with the project.
The one thought I had about this tech for any kid looking for a science project - that capillary action is really just - a sponge. For a very short term demonstrator, this looks like something that could be built from parts easily sourced online (found pem membrane almost immediately upon searching.) 3d print a support structure, experiment with different sponge-type materials (magic eraser sheets come to mind,) watch your power usage vs output - who knows? maybe a STEM student will try this and stumble upon a further refinement no one has yet thought of?
lol this isnt the movies no kid with a science project is gonna stumble upon a further refinement in hydrogen technology, and if they do they arent gonna be the ones who get the credit for it. hope one day i stumble upon a winning lottery ticket
@@MrPaxio Mate, you really have no idea how much of the leading science is done by students.. A lot of people claim their best work was done for their PhD thesis.. Nobodies talking about a kid with a science project, I know physicists in their 30's who are still studying at university..
Hydrogen is also useful in the creation of ammonia, which is a vital precursor for fertilizer, plastics, and explosives. Imagine synthesizing fertilizer using nothing but sun, water and air.
Like a cow or a horse does? That isn't new, animals produced fertilizer in the last hundreds of millions of years, and from that natural fertilizer one of the first ingredients for explosive were produced.
Even better, imagine every small community and large farm group creating their own ammonia for both fertilizer use and for use as a bulk storage of energy. Imagine the impact of decentralized fuel production like this. You would probably only need an area of maybe 10000 square meters dedicated to solar panels to average a production of a few tons of ammonia a day, and finding people trained to handle and work with ammonia is not really that hard, especially in agricultural areas.
Synthetic fertilizer isn't good for the environment it can kill soil microorganisms. But it's great to make crops to grow fast although there's debate about nutritional loss in food grown with synthetic fertilizer.
I suspect extremely pure water is necessary for this and any electrolysis process. Dissolved minerals precipitated out most likely will clog any electrolysis process and reduce efficiency.
Uh... maybe... probably? It sounds like an area for potential innovation. Perhaps there's a way we can perform efficient electrolysis on seawater without first purifying it.
@@justinminer1354 this causes an issue as chlorine is created in the process, removing that molecule is going to introduce further energy needed to separate it and efficiency will likely suffer
Nope. Electrolysis of seawater is all that anyone is seriously considering at scale. I'd link you to plenty of papers on this if TH-cam allowed links. Seriously TH-cam is literally the most useless site on the internet because it doesn't allow linking.
We all speak of storing hydrogen but what we need is to get these membranes in our houses and cars and just use what we need when we need it. If we can reduce the cost of electrolysis low enough we can couple this with a battery pack and hopefully increase EV mileage to levels where you can actually take a road trip. In houses we can hook it up to the network and use hydrogen to power and heat our houses. What we need is efficiency.
Hydrogen is a great supplement to solar. It has the ability to absorb the dips in supply and spikes in demand, by acting as an on demand power source. Basically being the battery. Produce hydrogen with the excess solar during the day and use it at night.
Actually, for such short-time-storage are batteries much better and cheaper. Hydrogen becomes attractive when you have days or weeks of excess energy (or shortage). Simply spoken: The costs of battery storage mainly depend on the kWh (storage capacity), the costs of hydrogen energy storage depend mainly on kW (storage power, energy transformation, electrolyser, fuel cells,...). However, in small units (detached houses), efficiency of hydrogen storage isn't THAT bad because you can utilize waste heat for hot water/heating at least.
Hydrogen seems like the ultimate replacement for petrol in cars. It is better than batteries in energy-density. Except for the need for pressurised and cooled fueling and storage. And the need to revise all of the systems. Ultimately there would have to be a national hydrogen grid like there is for natural gas. Which are also extreme costs. But batteries can't beat hydrogen in terms of energy-densiity for cars. Maybe with solid state batteries they'll come close defeating the purpose of hydrogen. Unless hydrogen engines are way cheaper and easier to build than full electrics and their batteries. It depends on a lot. Hydrogen's biggest advantages are energy-density and the benign elements it breaks down into. So it will have uses in these niche categories. But if solid state batteries are affordable and realistic to produce and rival hydrogen then I don't think hydrogen could replace batteries as the energy storage medium "of the future". We'll probably have a mix of both. You may dream of producing hydrogen from your own solar and driving your car with it but ultimately you probably still need very special, expensive elements and tools, products to make use of these technologies. Which may be as much or even worse than batteries. Batteries are less volatile than pressurized hydrogen.
@@raybin6873 Most of the overhyped "new" discoveries are just recycled PM and PS articles from the 50s-70s. Just like the tidal power generation stations. Practicality eventually kills the "cool" idea. Just build nukes and laugh at all these green grifts while having no need at all for complex work arounds and flim flam for the fundamental flaws.
I've been thinking of this method quite a bit lately and it seems to me this method of eliminating the formation of bubbles in a compressed gas can be used in rocketry to prevent the formation of bubbles in fuel tanks and fuel supply lines as well as in oxidizer tanks and supply lines. All you need is a good engineer to design the part.
I thought of something while watching this. You said something about the industry not wasting even a single drop of hydrogen. Somehow, We are supposed to believe that the energy sector will do everything they can to reduce the amount of hydrogen they lose....But TODAY, we don't even come close to doing that with water or natural gas. Natural gas is leaking all over the place, which is not only bad for climate change, but raises costs...and water...ohhh boy, the amount of water that we lose through all these old pipes that we won't replace is insane. So we are expected to believe that they will collect and contain the hydrogen, which by the way, has the ability to seep THROUGH metal ( causing the metal to become brittle ) because it's so small, but we can't stop water from leaking literally everywhere, when water is able to be contained infinitely easier than not just a gas, but the lightest gas, made of the smallest element. And at the end, you said "we need a variety of clean energy sources for a cleaner future". Please don't call Hydrogen ( or batteries ) an energy source. They are an Energy Carrier. They are not a source of energy. They are storage mediums. They don't "produce" anything...at all...what-so-ever.
Wow! that's a heavy comment about the lightest and smallest element.. You have a really interesting summary of an overall understanding going in your comment. You cover the politics as well as the technology. That's great! I have similar views regarding invidious racism. I hope. If you could, please, break up your final sentence of the first paragraph into two or three smaller sentences; It would sure help this 65+ yr old understand the point you are trying to make. It's the sentence that begins 'So we are expected...".
I design things that utilize fuel cells. This really is great news for the industry. There are a lot of naysayers about H2. H2 isn't a good fit for many applications, but it is a good fit for many other applications. I am excited to be part of this industry in its early years. I suspect when I retire in 15 years, the landscape of H2 will be very different than it is today.
I don't know of any applications in which batteries aren't a better solution in every conceivable way. Fuel cells have a very low efficiency, and this hasn't changed much in the last 15 years, while battery technology has made huge strides.
Immediate consumption of hydrogen for chemical synthesis is the only application that's ever going to be viable, hydrogen should be thought of as a material like aluminum which takes high energy inputs to make, not as an energy source.
@@xeridea Whenever you need high gravimetric energy density, Hydrogen wins over batteries. These cases are mostly in the aerospace field, where every gram counts. Think about large passenger aircraft and space launch vehicles.
Keeping the hydrogen stable at non cryogenic temperatures is the challenge but there are a few contenders... converting 1h to 1n3h may work better as one of these solutions. 1n3h is ammonia.
@@Bennet2391 This is supposed to be one of their advantages for cars, but they don't have a range advantage. The hydrogen is very light, but the high pressure tanks required are heavy, as well as the fuel cells. The cryogenic options are not really feasible either. So hydrogen has always, and continues to be a pipedream, better in theory, but not in real world. For space vehicles, there are far better options than hydrogen.
Matt. Check out in-situ gasification. Making Hydrogen from oilfields. Pump oxygen into the oil underground, it separates out the hydrogen and through a filter only the hydrogen comes out of the ground. The oil stays in place. Can turn most oil reservoirs into hydrogen producing fields.
Cheap Hydrogen will be the 'golden ticket' for long-term, sustainable green energy. I'm old enough to remember this being casually talked about in the 70s. I'm glad to hear that actual progress is being made. Thanks for the great video!
Despite all these advances, to deploy green H2 at scale there's also going to need to be a suitable source of fresh water (last I checked, none of this is going to run on salt water). At least around here, we are once again going to break drought records this year, and the idea that fuel production is going to siphon off people's drinking water (raising water prices) just so rich folks can drive H2EVs is raising questions for me. Maybe some requirement for H2-powered tech to capture their waste water for reuse should be considered. But at least for personal vehicles batteries make a lot more sense. And for building and water heating at home heat pumps are the way to go.
I don't know if the solution here is to ignore hydrogen, but perhaps to fix the world we have so broken with industrialized processes that have overheated the world, and stripped the land of its ability to hold water. We need less factory and massive planting of monoculture crops on unprotected fields, and more holistic approaches to dealing with our world. It can be done, just the rich don't want to.
There's definitely been research into using seawater. Off the top of my head, I can recall one paper looking at a nickel based electrode which had superior corrosion resistance.
Sea water will be required for everything, there just isn't enough freshwater to do anything. Desalinating Seawater will be big business before too long, which will likely reduce the cost per-liter to the point, where the costs are negligible to converting some of it to hydrogen since once the water is desalinated it can be used for multiple purposes, and will likely be shipped/piped inland for farming, and other industrial purposes as much as it would be used for drinking water.
Yeah I've been wondering about that for green hydrogen - water scarcity is already a problem and you would need highly processed pure water for this stuff and desal is so energy consuming I wonder how far ahead you even get
Reuters panel I watched, one of the participants is CEO of a company have built several plants and are desalinating prior to producing the H2, excess water goes to local villages and they are talking about a lake and greening the desert. They are shipping as Ammonia
Thanks, Matt, for breaking these technologies into diagrams, animations, and pictures, for an old man that is endeavouring to learn something new each day! Great channel!!!
3:45 capillary action is NOT like water rising up through a straw. It's like water rising up to moisten a whole paper towel even through you only dipped the bottom tip of the towel into a cup of water. thumbs down for a blatantly inaccurate example.
Yeah you're right - he seems to have mistaken in memory the actual capillary action (which does exist, the level in the straw WILL be higher due to surface cohesion) but not due to pressure like he after explained.
I am 90% sure that the capilliary action requires a higher amperage per cm2 from the electrodes to work through the additional resistance, significantly raising electricity consumption. The question is whether this increased amperage really offsets the hydrogen transport inhibition from bubbles in a technical setting. Exciting solution attempt to a material transport problem though! The reason why 50000 hours is a great benchmark for life time of AEMs are turnaround intervals. 5-6 years is standard in the petrochemical industry. I assume this is the reason why ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions advertises them for that lifetime.
i agree, there is already membraneless electrolyser with water pump and porous electrodes ... tada no bubble but they didn't show 95% effiency! I think this publication is pure BS, anyway resistive loss isn't the unique loss in electrolyser
I would point out that hydrogen does not absolutely require an infrastructure that matches or corresponds to the existing one for gasoline and diesel. It is not necessary to haul H2 in trucks. We can produce H2 locally as needed, using the best production method for the immediate market, with supplemental storage if required. This approach actually improves the efficiency of energy delivery, because energy need not be consumed by transporting fuel on roads. Because H2 is so different from petroleum fuels, we should be careful not to make assumptions about it from a petroleum-based viewpoint.
Pet peeve of mine is people calling hydrogen an energy "source". Hydrogen is an energy /transfer/ medium. So it can be used to store energy, or as a fuel for generators or vehicles, but the energy /source/ always comes from something else (as shown by the 'grey' 'blue' 'green' graphic in the video).
No, you mine gold H2 straight from the earth, pink is from nuclear reactors, the very hot ones, high temperature steam coms apart with a tiny current passed through.
I never comment, but always watch and like your videos. With every new video, I’m eager and decided to watch the next one. Major kudos to you and your work, man! You are helping to spread out technology breakthroughs to the common mortals. Keep going, you have a fan here 🙏🏼🔥
Hydrogen is always close to realization. Never really getting there. The energy loss in creating the Hydrogen doesn't make sense when compared to a BEV.
Yeah, if I had a dollar for each "new" technology that never came to fruition, Hydrogen, Zero Point Energy, Thorium, Tritium... the list goes on. On the positive side I have heard since the 1970's that we have 15 years to save the planet, yeah that has not panned out either.
It gets partially compensated if you look at the whole system efficiency You can have the renewable plants running at full capacity (no need to stop windmills when the demand is low) You need less conventional electricity for keep the grid stable Extra up time Less infrastructure and cheaper to scale
I have a question which isn't answered in the video nor any of the material I could find that wasn't pay walled, what purity of water is required? most electrolysis occurs in water which has impurities deliberately added. Electrolysing pure water is very difficult. If the water is not pure, I can see the "sponge" membrane quickly failing due to the deposits from the impurities.
I've believed in hydrogen power since I first saw Stanley Meyer's Hydrogen fuel cell work in person in the mid 90's. If only the oil companies would get out of the way, we could have had fuel cell technology before now.
Stanley Meyer's fraud didn't include a fuel cell, AFAIK. Just an electrolyzer-unit. And it didn't really work of course. You can't produce hydrogen with excess energy from hydrogen combustion (perpetuum mobile). Despite a number of swindlers, who claimed to have invented such a device. Like Stanley Meyer or Charles H. Garrett.
Bingo! After all this time and still almost no one is talking about how the resonant frequency of H2O can be exploited for efficiency gains of orders of magnitude. But this is much bigger than oil companies. Cheap, abundant energy cannot be allowed to become mainstream as it would destabilize the entire political power structure of the world.
The production of hydrogen via electrolysis can be made more efficient by adding a magnet. This is what researchers from the Institut Català d'Investigació Química in Spain write in Nature Energy. They showed that the presence of an external magnetic field of less than 450 mT stimulates the production of the electrocatalytic activity at the anode, thereby improving the production of hydrogen in ionized (alkaline) water. The magnetic field affects the magnetic (spin) orientation of the catalyst which in turn directs the orientation of the oxygen atoms during the reaction all in the same direction. This makes the reaction more efficient. The ferrite catalyst NiZnFe4Ox in combination with a magnet yielded the greatest improvement.
You are forgetting that you need a large source of electricity to make hydrogen from water.......hydrogen is used to make electricity as an end product.......who's leg is being pulled?
@@gangleweed Energy is also used to drill and refine oil, only for that oil be burned for energy later on, I guess the fossil fuel industry will never get off the ground either?
I've only made it through 40% of this but what an excellent, well organized presentation. Too bad that so many TH-cam presenters waste so much of our time by not writing a script first.
As someone who loves the feel of ICE powered cars i really hope we get cheep efficient hydrogen as we could convert ever car on the road today to hydrogen without the Toxic mining of lithium for batteries as well as the battery waste as electrodes degrade, if Hydrogen gets down to $1.50/kg it would be energy wise gasoline going down to 1$ a gallon
Hydrogen isn't the smallest element in the form of H2 because it's a molecule. Under normal conditions, helium is the smallest element because while the atom is larger, it's monatomic.
Hydrogen transportation is very complex. With 2 H2 + CO2 -> CH4 + O2 one could easily transform it to Methane wich is easier to transport, easier to be implemented in existing gas infrastructure and gas heating systems. It can be transported in pipelines as well. What do you think Matt? Could you discuss this in a video? 🤓
One of the biggest takeaways from this video is that an "easy" process on paper can become very complex to achieve on a large scale and even harder to make it commercially viable.
@@jorritmorrit I am not sure about the 80 bars of pressure, but what I do know is, that H2 storage requires 700 bard of pressure. As mentioned Methane can be transported easily in the already existing pipelines (97% of natural gas is Methane) and it can be used for processes which require a lot of heat, like welding, smelting, glass manufacturing and so on. Ammoniak is best fore pure H2 transportation.
@@marcelbeaucamp9330 80+ bars H2 pressure for CO2 reduction is an estemation. The pressure you mention is for liquid hydrogen, this would be inside a reactor, so not really comparable. My point is that CO2 reduction is way more difficult than you think and probably not feasable. More easy would be methane pyrolysis. I actually work with someone who is developing a catalyst for this purpose. CH4 --> C + 2H2. The problem is accumulation of carbon on the catalyst, thus suffocation of active sites and less activity. They are working on this and i believe it is being delt with quite well. This would be a good clean source of hydrogen, as it is more stable than electrolysis which is mostly done when an excess of renewable energy is available. I work on battery/electrolyzer cathode material myself.
Hydrogen is a great fuel source. I think if anything this is what commercial trucks will need since batteries are heavy and force you to carry small loads and hydrogen trucks could refuel within minutes vs hours
CNG would be a much better choice to fuel long distance trucks. Cheap abundant fuel. Infrastructure exists. Needs a champion to make it more commercially acceptable.
as a renewables expert, I can tell you that most (if not all) of the major IPPs have started developing green hydrogen strategies. it's like the new sexy thing to talk about. that said, nobody really has any viable near term projects at the moment. probably won't see much green hydrogen come to fruition until late 2020s
Reminds me of an old joke. Guy finds 15yr old shoe repair ticket, takes it to the store. 'Do you still have these shoes?' 'Oh yes sir, ready next Tuesday ' ! Will hydrogen always be ready....next Tuesday ?
Wow, very cool to see us continuing to push against the boundaries of our current tech. But I still feel that the biggest way for us to progress is in the logistics department rather than just pure tech. Hydrogen fuel just won’t work for cars, but it has many good uses like shipping, planes, steel production, etc. So if we focus on making hydrogen fuel on site for these applications then we don’t have to deal with the hassle of building infrastructure and losing fuel to leaks all along the way. Still, every bit of efficiency along the way counts!
I've never been that discouraged by the inefficiency. With a green grid, we necessarily have many peaks of ">100%" power production where we actively need to dump power. This will naturally open up economic applications for hydrogen as a high energy density fuel for uses like in aviation. Technologies like this will accelerate that process.
I concur, with the caveat that we should always be working on the efficiency of established systems. What I mean is that for regular cars, the inefficiencies of hydrogen vs charging a BEV are so great, it's more responsible to not use hydrogen there. But in grid storage, if we can massively build out renewables, the excess should be great enough to make up for the inefficiencies to work and be profitable. But necessary to whittle down the insufficiencies to make the system more robust, and perhaps not need to build as many turbines and panels
Interesting, and matches up to why Stanley Myers (sp) and his hydrogen powered car used a pulsed circuit to drive his electrolyizers. Having a sponge like substance allows a circuit to remain connected, keeping resistance and capacitance stable, unlike bare plate to plate and the bubbing problem, the gas release between the plates causes higher resistance and capacitance trying to complete the circuit through the bubble. Stanley did it with pulses, allowing the bubbles to collapse and keep resistance and capacitance stable.
Meyer also used non conductive water so it wasn't dependent on amps in the water but instead the pulsed polarity of higher voltage to pull the water molecule apart.
98 % sounds like unrealistic. Or , I would be very sceptic with this number as bubbles are only part of the problem. Oxygen evolution activation overpotentials are usually bigger than iR drops or electric resistance which is the second largest loss.. New catalysts are the more promising improvements if there really some that still can be found because that one is the clearly more tricky bit.
Ammonia produced using renewable electricity can directly replace ammonia made using carbon compounds. Ammonia is being widely advocated as a green, carbon free fuel. The incentive lies in the fact that ammonia can be made from electrolytic hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen. Topsoe among others have developed ammonia technology that is capable of intermittent operation and does not require an air separation plant. Technology for storing and transporting liquid ammonia at atmospheric pressure and at -33oC is well established.1 cubic metre of liquid ammonia weighs 690 Kg of which 121,76 Kg is hydrogen. Hydrogen has to be cooled to - 253oC before it liquefies, and then 1 cubic metre weighs 70,85 Kg. So liquid ammonia contains 1.72 times as much hydrogen as does liquid hydrogen! Ammonia can be kept liquid with a conventional refrigeration unit, while hydrogen requires compression and expansion of the gas through a turbine. Liquefying hydrogen can use up to 30% of the energy content of the feed hydrogen. Ammonia is produced as a liquid.
@@mike160543 yes this process. It would be interesting to see more attention on this as it is not widely discussed or recognises how big of a carbon impact and price stability impact it would be to in additional to hydrogen transport medium to have a replacement for carbon based Fertiliser production
In my studies of renewable power, I was first a Hydrogen fan/ optimist. Over the years I've slowly become discouraged. I feel gas is too expensive and even if Hydrogen got to the same price as gas, I'd think it was too expensive. If I could get $2 per Kw hydrogen, (which is what a BEV equivalent is) I might be interested, but I really don't see that happening.
@@dockettome Wind and Solar are already the "next Big Oil." Anywhere you shift an energy economy to will become "the next Big Oil." Your argument makes no sense.
@@SepticFuddy It makes perfect sense. With the demise of the internal combustion engine underway, Oil will loose it's relevancy. Oil companies would like nothing more than to keep selling fuel that the consumer cannot make themselves (safely), such as Hydrogen. If Hydrogen wins, then consumers will have no choice but to pay. At least with battery tech, consumers have a choice of where to get their electricity. You can charge up via the existing electric grid or maybe invest in solar panels for home owners.
@@dockettome Customers cannot make their own solar panels, wind turbines, or batteries either. And those have a far tighter grip on greedy politicians these days. Not to mention, "Big Oil" are heavily invested into wind and solar and pushing them themselves. The industry behind those technologies still requires lots of petroleum to run and that will not change anytime soon.
Seems to me that as there is likely to be a major ramp up in wind and solar, there will be times when production will outstrip demand. Except, that is when the excess electricity could be used for hydrogen production. I would say that is a win win.
Matt should do a video on "overbuild and curtail" as a renewables strategy. I would watch the video and would welcome an open-minded view of it. It is a whacky and bizarre idea that makes a lot of sense.... maybe. But you are exactly right. Hydrogen does not seem to make sense unless you figure that a lot of the electricity generated by renewables is being wasted, or curtailed, for economic reasons. That FREE electricity could be used to produce hydrogen, and would blow the "hydrogen costs too much" argument out of the water.
Except that the first 'win' is a myth that cannot then go on to produce a second win. Wind and solar, due to their gross inefficiency both in their own production and their harvest potential, are suitable only for small scale, off-grid applications. Of all the so-called renewables, they have the worst ROI. Adding the overhead of H2 production, storage, delivery and conversion back to electrical energy only magnifies that energy input sink hole.
@@dwc0 Well, that’s your opinion. Not exactly backed up by the billions of dollars already invested in renewables. I am encouraged that the availability and price of wind and sunshine are fixed for the next few million years. I say that, having lived through many explosive increases in the cost of a limited supply of poisonous fossil fuels.
@@tomarmstrong1281 Whose billions? Industry is not investing money without heavy taxpayer subsidies. It makes no sense unless the taxpayer underwrites the private profit. Not opinion, fact.
I'd like to see these incremental improvements in hydrogen gas generation eventually make Roger E. Billings' vision of the "hydrogen homestead" practical for everyman, where people could use solar panels to generate electricity for daily use and also make hydrogen gas, stored at low pressure in metal hydride tanks, for domestic cooking, space heating and water heating during periods when the sun isn't shining.
It’s a very interesting point I get the need to use hydrogen, I do do see it being used on the moon and mars, large ocean going ships is a must for use, cars not likely to happen ,
It already happened for cars in the 1970s but the inventor was promptly murdered to keep it quiet and inspire 'prudence' in any that might try to build on his work for the public good. RIP Stan Meyer.
Your videos are always so exciting and your enthusiasm is contagious, im not exactly sold on the severity of manmade climate change but you make it easy to get invested in these new technologies and i certainly am here for it! Keep it up!
Same, and the instantaneous discarding of many solutions in search of "the one" builds my skepticism towards it. For example: alcohol could (in theory) require little to no additional infrastructure, and cut down on food waste, and reduce fertilizer dependence, and cut a third off of car emissions, and be an easy conversion for existing vehicles, but it gets no traction. And that's not even to mention the fissile elephant in the room.
@@leandersearle5094 the process of making alcohol is very wasteful at the moment. Pure alcohol is also energy poor. Safe and none waste producing nuclear energy might make sense such as thorium along with renewables.
If you aren't convinced, I suggest reading the IPCC AR6 WGII report. You'll want the Summary for Policymakers. It is only 40 pages. The main report is several thousand. It is a report solely on the severity of climate change. The WGI report covers the physical and geoscience basis for proof of climate change, if you are interested, but this one is more about how bad it will be due to human activity. WGIII deals with how to solve the problem
Thank you Matt for making informative videos. I've learned so many innovative technologies with their strenghts and weaknesses because of your channel.
For the capillary technique, you would need ultra-pure water because any dissolved salts or tiny sediment particles would be left behind. Distilled water, basically, which would be a huge energy cost.
It would be super cool if we somehow could separate the deuterium from the normal hydrogen to be used in future deuterium-helium 3 fusion power plants, to prove the energy for hydrogen production
If I’m not mistaken deuterium + Helium-3 is a theoretically possible solution to fuel it, and it bypasses the need for tritium that has a short half-life, but He3 is not widely available on earth, so it would have to be transported from the moon
I'd like to see you talk about internal combustion engines converted to run on hydrogen fuel! I hear Toyota has made great progress, and as a car enthusiast I hope their efforts pay off.
Unfortunately that's probably not viable and is more of a gimmick/PR stunt than it is likely to lead to actually usable cars. th-cam.com/video/vJjKwSF9gT8/w-d-xo.html The physics just doesn't work out.
7:53 I don't get the efficiency numbers. If it takes 41.5kWh to make 33.6kWh (1kg) of H2, how is that 95% efficient? Wouldn't 33.6/0.95 = 35.4kWh be 95% efficient? Edit: Ah, I found it in your references Matt, thanks for including them. They are using the "high heating value" of hydrogen (39kWh) which includes the heat contained in the water vapor after combustion which in 90% of the applications is lost. Maybe in a heating situation where you capture the vapor and use the residual heat to heat the building, I would use the higher value, but for transportation, fuel cells, etc That is why 33.3 (33.6)kWh is the "useful energy" in real life. So this "breakthrough" technology is really 80% efficient if you're thinking about using it to drive anything.
man that's an idea, have a loop system where the exhaust water is condensed and goes back to tank, only to be split, burned and cycled again... but, does the heat of condensation mean there's a net loss of energy?
I postulated that using a dedicated nuclear power plant to produce the electricity needed for the electrolysis would be the best way to produce hydrogen. Just sayin'...
@@texastinman2189 I would think that "the best way" is highly speculative. It's certainly the most expensive way, that's for sure. At a LCOE (levelized and unsubsidized cost of energy including construction, fuel, operation and maintenance over the lifetime of the plant) of $0.17/kWh vs other electricity sources as low as $0.03/kWh. Even if this "Breakthrough" is scale-able, it would still cost $7.06/kg for the energy alone to make H2 using dedicated nuclear.
I'd suggest looking into what Cummins is doing for Hydrogen, they are developing so many green technologies its astounding. From the hydrolyzers themselves, fuel cell tech and even internal combustion engine's that run off hydrogen to help fleets adapt sooner to greatly lower emissions foot prints now. It is an exciting time to see where the development of green energy can take us.
Wasted heat from nuke plants could be used to make steam reforming almost free. Waste electricity could be used for free electrolysis. Nuclear and hydrogen fit together like a hand in a glove.
Despite the low efficiency of Hydrogen generating process, Green Hydrogen is an essential solution for achieving Net-zero CO2 emissions , applications like using the hydrogen for Zero-emission aviation and the new technology for reducing Iron Ore by using the hydrogen instead of coal, can't be done without hydrogen, Batteries can't replace the Hydrogen in such applications.
I think the problem is the heat needed melts the heating electric coils, so the solution could be using electromagnetic radiation. Surely you could make steel without coal using microwaves, arcing or laser heating from electricity. People make glass items at home microwaves.
@@AORD72 in order to make the steel you need to process the Iron ore first , this process called Reduction of Iron ore, by simple explanation ( removing the oxide from the iron ore ) which is currently done by adding the coal to the iron ore inside giant furnaces , which result in a huge amount of co2 emission . The new technology of reduction the iron ore is to use the green hydrogen instead of coal , and the side product of this process will be the water instead of co2. try to search for "green steel "
I firmly believe that hydrogen cells to produce electricity are the way to go. The cost of the distribution network for other methods could make paupers of us all. The weight of batteries means to me that transportation will be downgraded or crippled by the physics involved, not so with fuel cells.
As far as hydrogen goes, my money is on Hydrogen Carbide. Renewable, easy to transport, you can even adapt an ICE to use it. It can even be produced at efficiencies as high as 97% and literally consumes CO2 in it's creation. Better yet, it's compatible with existing infrastructure to heat homes.
I’m sure there will always be a use for hydrogen as a fuel source, and I’m sure use cases will grow. But as others have probably pointed out, the fact that you have to take perfectly storable green energy and create hydrogen means, according to laws of energy conservation, that you will always be less efficient than just making green electricity and storing in batteries. And since battery materials are in the realm of recycle-able there is literally no reason to use hydrogen. Not only is it inefficient when compared to just storing electricity directly in batteries, but it also needs an entire infrastructure build to transport it to fueling stations. And transporting via trucks itself is fuel consuming. Electricity already has the delivery infrastructure built. Its just the wires that already exist. Plus as electric cars become common, apartment complexes will inevitably have a charging station in your parking space. So its also just more user convenient. So really Matt, I think you can be decided on this one :P
Batteries don't have high density just yet. Once they do, batteries could take over cars, buses, airplanes, even trains. Until that happens (it'll take a revolution for it to happen), hydrogen makes sense for large commercial vehicles because despite inneficiencies, it's green vs fossil fuels as the only other alternative.
But the next stage problem with stored electricity is delivering it. When a decent family car stores more energy than the family needs to run their home for a week, then capacity is a critical problem in many countries. With hydrogen, you can produce the fuel local to the green power generation site.
There are likely to be things hydrogen can do that batteries can't. Hydrogen planes for example may be a more viable option than battery planes. It may not solve every problem but if we are looking for a one size fits all before we do anything we are never going to do anything.
No one said personal vehicles would benefit the most from this. However, "no reason" seems a little harsh when current battery design is still the largest reason why electrification of flight is unfeasible. Hydrogen blows battery powered flight out of the sky even with your supposed "inefficiencies". Unless you magically make batteries weigh an order of magnitude less, they will still have mighty competition with hydrogen. Engineering is rarely as black and white as you seem to propose. Even though hydrogen is less efficient as energy storage, it can still make a vehicle be more efficient in the end than using batteries, especially when weight is the primary concern.
@@Kefuddle The capacity requirements are higher with hydrogen production though. Now you’re adding transportation of the hydrogen to make it even less efficient, which makes even less sense.
If it's always the energy of the future then it'll never happen. Is that what you meant? If so, I think nuclear fusion also has that honour. Personally, I think that Hydrogen energy will one day be a reality, at least for large machinery, trucks and ships.
Great video as usual! I do hope for a hydrogen future and I’m not convinced BEV is the way to go. I also hope for Fusion to be a thing but since it’s perpetually 30 years away, I’m starting to think it might not happen in my lifetime. Although, you never know all it takes is a clever engineer/scientist somewhere to make a mistake and discover something new!
There are plenty of groundbreaking nuclear techs in the works to get excited about- thorium, molten salt reactors, etc. We need to push those techs rather than sit and cross our fingers for fusion. I'm sure their development will in some ways contribute to fusion designs anyway
Ultimately, an approach that separates hydrogen, oxygen and minerals from sea water (leveraging wind, tidal and solar energy) could be more useful than a "more efficient" approach that requires fresh water and does not have other valuable minerals as a byproduct.
I find it questionable to call hydrogen a renewable energy source - unless you can either find a naturally occurring source of hydrogen gas such as the science fiction concept of a ram scoop to fuel a spacecraft or you figure out a H-H fusion reaction that produces a net gain in power including the energy cost of separating out the proper isotopes and isolating the hydrogen (refining heavy water and electrolysing it for the Deuterium+Deuterium reaction, for instance), it's not generating power. It's storing it. Hydrogen Fuel Cells are functionally comparable to a lithium ion battery - a portable means of transporting energy that was previously generated by large grid-power installations. Which runs into a problem. Hydrogen is an extremely reactive gas. Anything that uses hydrogen storage tanks and fuel cells needs to be *extremely* careful to avoid sparks, because the explosive range of hydrogen is massive - far, far beyond the range of methane, which we already consider hazardous enough that we require annual inspections of gas appliances and add a scent chemical to the gas so that a leak is immediately apparent to everyone. These days most things run on grid power. Things get plugged in either all the time, or they've got a perfectly adequate lithium ion battery in them that can be charged as needed. Or they have a small enough power draw that it's still reasonable to use old school nickel-cadmium or nickel-metal-hydride batteries and just replace them occasionally. There's 2 major things that don't run on grid power: generators and cars. Generators are probably the best candidate for fuel cell technology. They're often used for emergency backup power in critical infrastructure - keeping life support systems on in hospitals, stuff like that - which means they're rarely used, so you'd need to work out a good long term storage plan for hydrogen, but that's feasible...even if the answer is just check the pressure on the tank every 6 months, and get a resupply when it drops below X. They're also regularly used in construction sites, where grid power has not yet been made available, but construction workers are usually already pretty smart about not doing things that generate sparks near their generator...the big difference is the fuel cell generator is an explosion hazard instead of a fire hazard. And then there's cars. Well, vehicles in general. Some vehicles operate in extremely controlled environments - the haul trucks at mines could swap out the diesel generators that run their wheel-mounted electric motors for fuel cells without much change, because you tend not to get in car accidents when driving a truck that's bigger than any tank at 5 miles an hour. But by far the biggest category here is the regular street-legal stuff. And this is the problem. Spark management is pretty easy when you're in a safe environment, but...have you seen what car accidents do to vehicles? Take a look at any significant car accident and tell me there were no sparks made in that process. Sparks are already an issue in car accidents - the first thing they did to my car in the car accident I was in (I was fine and got out on my own, presumably cutting people out of the wreckage comes first if it's needed) was popping the hood and disconnecting the battery, just in case it sparked and lit fuel that might be leaking. That concern gets a whole lot more exciting when it's hydrogen because when you pour gas out and strike a match, odds are the gas is going to put out the match rather than start burning, Hydrogen, meanwhile, will happily explode, if it's not already done so. There are engineering solutions to this: ways you can build the hydrogen tank to be stronger, anti-spark technology, etc. But with everything that you solve with engineering, you have to accept that it will occasionally fail. Sometimes the power goes out. Every year, some poor bastard has to figure out how to get a leak in their roof fixed when the first big storm rolls around. Literally everything engineers design breaks sometimes. Engineers do their best to minimize the odds of that being a catastrophic failure. The roof that springs a leak lets a few litres of water through, it doesn't *disintegrate.* The power goes out, and maintenance crews figure out what's happened and fix it within about an hour, etc. But, inevitably, there are circumstances that go beyond what engineers can reasonably design for. Tornadoes tear roofs of buildings...and buildings off foundations. Coronal Mass Ejections wipe out critical grid infrastructure that cause power outages for huge swaths of territory disrupting the lives of millions for days. And....a bad enough car accident will probably overcome any engineered safety system that is used to suppress hydrogen explosions. The best way to not have your car explode is to not put explosive stuff in your car. This is a big problem for hydrogen fuel cell technology becoming a mainstream solution because the street vehicle energy problem is the single biggest problem, by a significant margin, that portable energy storage options have to overcome.
Your entire argument is car can explode, but every other iteration we have does the same thing. Gas, and electric do the same thing. If the batteries in a tesla catch on fire, and you aren't strong enough to break a window, you will literally burn alive. Also, batteries explode too.
@@jordankelly4684 I had 2 points: 1: Hydrogen isn't an energy source, it's an energy storage medium. Unless you're doing fusion. 2: Hydrogen is substantially more explosive then methane, which is dangerous enough that we put a really pungent additive in it so we can detect leaks. Most cars that breach the fuel tank don't explode, because gasoline takes really good conditions to burn rapidly. That's why fuel injectors are so damn complex, they're getting the fuel-air mix just right. Here's some excerpts from a lab safety document on hydrogen: "Hydrogen gas forms explosive mixtures with air if it is 4-74% concentrated" "Hydrogen gas leaking into external air may spontaneously ignite" "hydrogen fire, while being extremely hot, is almost invisible, and thus can lead to accidental burns" Conversely gasoline, you can literally drop a lit match in a puddle of and it will probably go out. The difference is going from a chemical that stores energy but only burns under relatively good conditions to one of the most reactive substances known. At least nobody is suggesting we use Chlorine triflouride in our cars. So we're not considering the ludicrously dangerous option, just a concerning one.
There is also the problem of what hydrogen does to components by permeating them and making them brittle. So I do not see it being used in cars, on in space craft, but definitely in things like shipping, and perhaps aircraft, and in power generation where there are mandated repair schedules. There is likely a material science solution here, but we aren't there yet.
@@Mumbamumba It is a well understood aspect of the hydrogen molecule, related to is relatively tiny size, it can fit in between other, larger more complex molecules, and break then down. For example, if you had a hydrogen powered car, you would have to replace your engine after about 4 years.
Hydrogen fascinates me so much because of its potential to become so completely ubiquitous, anyone with a bit of extra electricity can make their own, no more reliance on specific oil or lithium producing countries, and while its a bit flammable, its completely non toxic, if a hydrogen tanker ran aground there would be no real clean up required, plus its used as rocket fuel so aligns so perfectly with the normalisation of space travel.
As an aside: "Its" is a possessive pronoun. "It's" = "It is" or "It has" "its potential" is correct but "its a bit flammable", "its completely non toxic", "its used as rocket fuel" should all be "it's" or "it is".
To my mind there is too much R&D money going to hydrogen research from the fossil fuel industries that see its potential as a replacement in their control and distribution business model at the scale they serve today. I see its niche uses at a much reduced scale, that of suppliers to the steel industry and for the few transport modes that cannot be served with battery storage methods, like long haul airliners. Short-haul aviation and virtually all land transport can be electrified more economically without siphoning off energy for hydrogen electrolysis. Those fossil fuel companies machinations remind me of the coal companies of my 1950s youth in Connecticut who dominated the home heating fuel business while the Texas based oil interests were attempting justify their recent pipeline to the region by getting folks to use "modern" heating oil instead of the dusty old coal that had to be hand shoveled into furnaces and was losing the business of fueling steam locomotives. The coal companies fought back, but were supplanted by mergers, because the oil interests were flush with money from the profits they made in WWII production. They actually paved a short street with gold leaf coated chips for my town's 300th anniversary celebration to buy good will publicity for their business. That business was dependent on heating wastefully insulated older homes, and though the oil was marginally better, People did not have to crack a window in winter to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning from a neglected coal fire late at night, the inefficiencies built into over consummation were good for their business model just as our fuel oil uses today tend to be. The transforming of our energy use patterns to a more efficient one needs to be done efficiently as well, and hydrogen will never be as efficient for the transport technologies with a reverse version of the fuel cells used to make hydrogen in a stationary process which separates hydrogen electrolysis into becoming a secondary market. BEVs have built in generators that amount to as much as 1/3rd of their energy for transport on board the vehicle. Even even the shorter range propeller driven electric aircraft can use on board regeneration from their frequent descents. That leaves the long range steady altitude flights as the only reasonable use of hydrogen fuel for clean flights. Let the clean steel production and long haul transport survive on the hydrogen from surplus renewable electricity that gets produced.
Hydrogen is actually a major feed stock in the production of steel in a carbon neutral way and in general for the chemical industry. So regardless of what certain businesses might hope to use it for, like say cars, it will for the foreseeable future still be pretty important as such for various important industries. In that sense getting cheaper Hydrogen production is a good thing, as it will help out compete the hydrogen currently being produced by stripping it from gas. So I don't know what the most appropriate amount of hydrogen research would be, but regardless of transportation, we will still be able to make good use of improved technology here by reducing waste in various industrial production.
I have seen accusations and conspiracy theories about fossil fuel companies supporting hydrogen. The only "evidence" is some lobbying for projects in the UK about a year ago by oil companies. I don't see why that makes hydrogen as part of humanity's future a bad thing.
It seems to me that the point where this starts being important is when it is used for ammonia fertilizer production. However you do it, you need hydrogen there. If you can produce hydrogen cheap enough from nuclear or interruptables to replace steam/methane reforming, then it might start making sense for other uses.
The problem is nuclear is one of the most expensive forms of energy. And in many cases the time to deconstruct them takes longer than they were online. It also has been left out of many cost analysis. I am also worried about nuclear making us dependent again on dictatorships like China and Russia who have a lot of the resources needed. I hope of course for fusion, but it's far far away unfortunately.
I’ve heard that one of the most difficult tasks will be the transportation of hydrogen. It is damn hard to transport via pipeline because it will escape or react with the material on the inner surface of the pipe. It would also require energy intensive refrigeration systems to store as a liquid, and even then the hydrogen will likely escape via sublimation or insufficient sealing. Has anyone heard of solutions to the storage problem? I think it trumps the production issue unless the plan is to produce it on site all the time.
You've heard correctly, storage of the world's most clingy element is technologically and logistically complex. Keeping hydrogen cool and in a stable state requires some tech and that tech is rather bulky comparatively to a car gas tank. On the other hand, when it comes to stationary energy storage, envelope size matters little (hence used EV batteries with reduced cell efficiency still being perfectly adequate for battery farms). That's why I say that hydrogen EV's are rather senseless from an systems engineering POV, as it is the equivalent to a ICE car being made to tow a crude oil tanker and a portable refinery because some "engineer" is stubborn and thinks this is simpler than battery electric vehicles. As with advances of hydrogen storage and transport, they are being made mostly in the rocket and chemical industry. Toyota has made a boatload of research on this for mobility for well more than a decade now, and to my mind they still havent managed to make it commercially viable nor is there any indication of such becoming a reality anytime soon. So to satisfy your curiosity, you should do searches with keywords such as "toyota" "hydrogen" "mirai", and do not be amazed to read stuff that's like a decade old and never got anywhere.
Hydrogen is a monster to work with. It will migrate through the crystalline structure of common metals. Everything to do with hydrogen is expensive. It's also highly explosive over a wide gas/air mixture range. Add to that, ignition energy is minute and it's a problem. Solvable, yes. However, I would not want a hydrogen refueling station anywhere near where I lived.
You can safely store hydrogen for fuel by combining it with carbon. Simplist version methane. To me this means the answers for vehicle fuels lie in biofuels, integrating the carbon capture with fuel production. Hydrogen can really only be used at site of production.
Batteries, hydrogen, ammonia all use electricity. And there is a couple of issues there. 1. The current grid is not updated to handle the extra load. 2. The west coast is running out of water to make hydro power.
It feels like these videos just saturate my future fatigue and on that I'm decided. I've been watching stories like this for over 40 years and the number of things that came to fruition seem astronomically low. It would be nice to see a video about something that went from the very futuristic stage into a viable solution.
The reason is the government makes too much money off oil and gas. Whatever the next technology is will not be allowed unless the government regulates and makes money off it. Period. Always been that way. What other everyday things have not changed in 100 years? Only the internal combustion engine that needs gas and oil to run. Coincidence?
I believe "cracking" the methane molecule for hydrogen production will prove to be more efficient and less costly in the long run. By producing useful hydrogen for energy, capturing carbon in a solid state, producing oxygen as well as removing a very powerful greenhouse gas from the environment a wasteless process that does not consume precious resources (water being most precious) can be achieved. Currently the German research conducted by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology shows the most promise. Any VC's interested in scaling it?
if you extract your hydrogen knowledge from this channel.. you would become as ignorant as he is. Hydrogen is the future.. 95% of what he said is WRONG... he even contradict himself here 10:43 to 10:52 You would keep trusting this guy?
No matter how efficient the production of hydrogen is it can’t get over the fact that hydrogen is an absolutely terrible medium to store energy. It leaks from everything and has a terrible volumetric energy density. Seems to me that people have become fixated on fixing hydrogens problems instead of asking if hydrogen is a good goal in the first place
The more I look at electric cars, the more I see hydrogen as the key to finally busting them wide open. Lithium ion batteries are never going to be more than a niche.
Wroing on every count. The hydrogen route wastes far more energy than charging batteries. The fuel cells are easily poisoned and do not last very long. Hydrogen requires a lot of very expensive gear to handle it and those are just a few of the many reasons why hydrogen cars will never ever take off; in fact the level of hydrogen car production is negligible and decreasing. Lithium ion batteries are already mainstream, just look around. In 8 years time the sale of new internal combusyion engine cars in the UK will be banned and lithium ion battery vehicles will completely dominate.
Just the compression, storage and transport of liquid hydrogen is not remotely green. Cleaning up the extraction process is a good step though if it works out.
Bom dia Matt Ferrel e muito obrigado pelos excelentes vídeos de tecnologias que Você sempre apresenta e muito obrigado também pela "tradução", ajuda muito na compreensão do assunto e quanto à possibilidade de aprender "inglês" é muito remota, já tenho 63 anos e sou um "quase" surdo e não tenho tempo algum para essa possibilidade ou seja, é só com tradução mesmo. Os seus vídeos, para um grande curioso como eu, é de grande valia, amo aprender e saber das coisas, valeu 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
As the old joke goes, hydrogen will always be the future of electrified transport. Maybe these breakthroughs will help achieve commercial viability. On that point, engineers seem to focus their "efficiency" claims on intermediate steps in a process. In a transport scenario, surely the relevant efficiency measure is just $ per kilometre/mile for the end user???
Big fly in the H2 argument: While the energy density is impressive at 120 MJ/Kg (gasoline is about 45) the transport density of H2 (for a given pressure) is 7X less than methane. What does this mean? A given pipeline (which is pressure limited) can't transport as much energy in H2 as methane (55 MJ/kg) by a factor of 3.66 or so. Likewise for large storage vessels - they would have to be much larger for a given pressure of containment or made to handle higher H2 storage pressures (more expensive). H2: 120 MJ/Kg, 0.09 Kg/m^3 Ch4: 55 MJ/Kg, 0.72 Kg/m^3. One trick I've heard mention of (but I don't know if it is in practice) is to co-transport H2 along with CH4 in pipelines - this way the much smaller H2 industry can "piggyback" on the well established network of NG pipelines in North America and Europe (and elsewhere, I presume).
Is there a frequency of sound that would cause forming bubbles to release? It will be great to see hydrogen replace bunker fuel in ships, if the engines can retrofitted at an affordable cost.
The frequency to be applied is in the electric charge itself and tuned to the natural resonant frequency of the H2O molecule, as discovered by Stanley Meyer decades ago.
Links to the citations would be a nice touch... But I have to say this was a very informative article and I enjoyed it greatly, thank you for doing the research for us.
I have a Toyota Mirai hydrogen car and I am so in love I really hope it takes off more nationally. I personally think where we use diesel currently hydrogen is where to go in future. Where we use gas is where we should use battery electric.
Do you think these kinds of advancements will spur more interest in hydrogen? Go to brilliant.org/Undecided to sign up for free. And also, the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium membership.
If you liked this, check out The Problem With Tesla’s Solar Roof th-cam.com/video/sFwZQHZAJDc/w-d-xo.html
Can you do a video on Ammonia? (NH3), I've heard it can be used as Jet fuel.
Hidrogen has to many problems to solve. Maybe in 30 year's and can get to being 300% efficient witch it needs for all the inefficiency in the systems until you reach the end product or byproduct.
Why dont you change the channel's name to "Undecided"? Its shorter cathcy and fits in my mobile's screen 😆
Best Electic vehicle is are as follows:-
1300 kg
1300 watts
130 kms x2 in 1:1 ratio of rpm 😎
Meaning Tesla range have to be over 13,000 kms in single charge in 1:1 rpm and 24,000 kms and above in single charge with a transmission system with 1:13 rpm ratio mean 1 rpm of motor 13 rpm of wheels in middle level 1:1 in Torque mode 13:1 mean motor 13 rpm wheels 1 😇
Elon musk cars have over 500 to 600 miles range 😏
Change rpm to 1:1 can give us over 9x higher range which is over 4500 to 5400 miles per charge and I m not talking about using and transmission system which easily boosts the range of any Tesla cars over 13,000 to 24,000 miles in single charge 😏
And remember 1liter petrol has approx 10kw of energy 😏
But they r not going to do it cuz it’s very low profitable business and elon musk wants only money money money 😂
That’s y he is not supporting hydrogen cuz it’s even less money money money 🤣(th-cam.com/video/MjlB5VLZ5C0/w-d-xo.html) 😂
Elon musk (ironmonger) 😏
Kalki avatar (Ironman) after 2026 😎😎😎
@@suny1265
hydrogen is way better then lithium or any battery or capacitors technology today understand fool 🤣🤣🤣
Please, please, lets get this straight: hydrogen is not an energy source, it is an energy storage medium.
This distinction is important because hydrogen has got the potential to become a vital part of stabilising the energy grid in the future, and producing hydrogen should not be seen as a competition of wind\solar farms.
This is saying that the canned meat industry competes with breeding livestock, nonsensical and paradoxal at the very least.
almost like natural gas or gas
And if you are looking for storage, with solar and wind power being the most readily available renewable energy, use the concrete blocks hoisted to 200 feet into the air, and crank out energy as gravity pulls them back towards the ground and cranking a generator as your battery. It can't be beat for efficiency or cost, and they can be put up anywhere.
Absolutely, electric is the energy source, water is just the exhaust of hydrogen and oxygen after the combustion process, corruption is the only reason we don't have a real hydrogen economy! Too many scientists have sold out to the establishment period!
@@barrycarpenter270 I watched a video absolutely destroying that technology. I'll see if I can find and link it
I agree while I disagree. Everything in this universe only stores energy, no energy can supposedly be created. Therefor yes, hydrogen gas is only a storage medium for energy. On the other hand hydrogen is literally the only storage medium used on a bigger scale throughout the whole universe.....stars use it, plants use it, animals use it......there is probably something to it
If we managed to make a semi-organic hydrocarbon oxidizer you are looking EXTREAMLY cheap solar capture and storage energy.......
I would love an episode or 2 looking back on how many of the technologies you've covered have actually made it to market and their impact.
Probably close to none. Most of what he reports on as “breakthrough” technology are closer to fairy tales.
Zero, sifr, zilch. Mainly because he is not an engineer, he is a content creator. He reads a new paper, or gets paid by a start up and doesn't put any thought to it. In essence, he is an unreliable lit review.
@@sethkritarth He still sounds good telling us about the technology...Lol
@@raymondtorres196 yes he sounds good because of a media background. Thanks for supporting my argument ☺️
Comment of the post.
Imagine if humanity would stop spending hundreds of trillions of dollars on war machines to kill each other and invested the money (equals workhours and material) into development of renewable energy. Imagine...
If you ever do the research into how much money is made from death. You would understand why they spend so much money into killing you. 😵🥸🤠😥☠👻
I think that answer to most of the problems when it comes to hydrogen is to think outside of the box. We are trying to deal with it like its any other resource, but answer is not to store it in mass and transport it like we are used to. This is because it is easy to produce, and i think that they should be working on smaller scale decentrilized grids that produce it locall
2:57 Hydrogen is not the smallest element, Helium is. Because it has the same orbital as H, but a higher nucleus charge, the orbital is pulled further to the core, despite having two electrons in it. Furthermore Helium is an atomar gas, while normal Hydrogen is a molecule made up of 2 atoms.
All excellent points. Wish I had more thumbs for you.
Exactly what I was thinking. lol
He meant to say 'lightest '
@@kunjukunjunil1481 people use mass to refer to size
lol hydrogen is lighter helium is second
Whoever you hired to do those 3D animations did such an incredible job omg
I'll pass that along. He's incredible.
Agreed
I thought those were produced by the company, not you. Amazing!
@@davidx.1504 yeah dude Matt goes all in on making his vids super cool like this
@@UndecidedMF you should credit the 3D artist, in description or in the end of the video
It is easy when looking at the many challenges of efficient hydrogen, production, storage, and transportation, to forget to include safety management strategies.
Hydrogen poses many unique challenges when considering safety management, like metal embrittlement, extreme cryogenic temperatures and/or high storage pressures, nearly invisible flame, and of course its tendency to explode!
Yes, a car with 5kg of hydrogen sitting in you garage is about the equivalent of 2000 hand grenades. People are putting a lot of faith in the valves and pipes that connect to a tank. Especially when the tank is at 10,000psi, or 700 times atmospheric pressure (insane pressure). I imagine a mother taking her children to school and pressing the garage door opener after a tank has leaked out into the garage roof cavity over night.
the explosive factor is a myth bred by images of things like the Hindenburg disaster ( which wasn't caused by the hydrogen likely, the airframe was coated w butylene dope that is extremely flammable. hydrogen gas is less explosive than gasoline vapor yet we drive around with a gas tank that has gasoline vapor in it.
I saw an episode of the PBS Nova program in the late 70s on hydrogen ( kind of depressing 40 yrs later it is still TBD). They had a partially full can of gasoline which meant gas vapor was in the rest and a gas can full of hydrogen. they fired a tracer round into the two cans. the gas can exploded like dynamite going off, the hydrogen can simply burned a flame out the hole.
There have been demonstrations of high pressure hydrogen tanks being pierced by bullets and the gas simply rushes out. No flame. No explosion.
@@njlauren I work in the hydrogen industry. Hydrogen explosions are very much not a myth. Your statement about the Hindenburg is correct. It did not explode. But hydrogen can explode under the right conditions. And when it explodes, it can explode quite bigly. The equipment that I design all utilize redundant h2 detectors and the system will immediately shut down valves and turn on exhaust fans if a certain level of H2 is ever detected. H2 is very much in our future, but it needs to be respected.
@@brianburnside5949
I didn't say that hydrogen couldn't explode, I was saying that hydrogen is less explosive than gasoline vapor,yet we drive around with tanks full of it not thinking about it. Btw so is natural gas, whole buildings get wiped out under the right circumstances.
Not saying you don't need to be cautious, I am saying that the fear of hydrogen ppl express is out of whack with the reality.
Keep in mind that green H2 is essentially free...IF it is made from Renewables (wind/solar) that can't otherwise use it. During peak sun (or wind) the grid might not be able to use all of it...hence the benefits of storage (batteries,pumped hydro, etc). If the grid can't use it and storage is already "full", the surplus can be dumped to H2 production---thus "free" H2.
Overbuilding off-shore wind (and rooftop solar) is the best way to get off fossil fuels--all the excess can be stored as a buffer or used for H2 production.
While it is the standard thought that renewable surpluses on the grid can power hydrogen synthesis, that model is not really that realistic. The reason I say that is because grid operators never want a steady surplus of intermittent power on the grid, and so will likely only want to build out renewables to the point where there are small periodic spikes that go beyond demand, with stored energy sources, like fuels to make up for the pitfalls, Also, the companies that will build the electrolyzers to produce the hydrogen will not want the responsibility of regulating the power surplus on the network or to be a competitor for it among load-leveling battery banks, or other applications thus never having an assured supply of energy.
I think it is more likely that hydrogen synthesis facilities would build their own dedicated renewable micro-grids, with limited grid connections so that they can accurately predict the amounts of energy they need to handle, and thus the amount of infrastructure that they need.
You are correct Michele. I have made numerous models of this.
@@nolan4339 It is quite realistic. It is being done at NREL as wind to hydrogen, a project that has been going for over a decade. The UK and Germany are doing it too.
Regarding your specific statements, IN FACT, grid operators ALWAYS want a steady surplus of power on the grid. That is kind of the "problem." Because it is a surplus, however, it must be wasted, which is the "answer." A couple of years ago, Texas was doing this with up to 15% of its wind power. Utilities will do anything that makes a profit and stabilizes the grid, period. Selling something they can't use is a no-brainer. Hydrogen generation can do that. Similarly, electrolyzer companies will want to make a profit, and would welcome cheap electricity, and electricity that is already being curtailed can be as cheap as free.
You might think it is likely that electrolyzers will build their own grids. I know of one huge site that did that. But why do that when a free resource is being wasted?
I am not sure why you are biased against the interests of utilities, hydrogen producers, researchers, but it is perfectly fine. They will not be deterred.
@@bradwinfast1236 yes, when there are renewable surpluses, selling this extra power for cheap will happen, but if you get multiple parties competing for this capacity, then it will no longer be so cheap, and power companies will not want to sell it for cheap because it represents over built production capacity, which needs to be paid for. So the amount of this cheap surplus will be limited.
Relying on Green Hydrogen production will need extremely cheap power, and a huge amount of it in order to fulfill societies hydrogen demand, and while some of this power will likely come from grid surpluses, I think it will be cheaper and more reliable to build renewable power facilities that are directly paired with electrolyzer plants, for the majority of this production, rather than trying to funnel these huge power loads through the grid.
Use as energy storage is really hydrogen's only possible niche it could fill. It's not useful as a transportation fuel because it's too low density. It's not useful for full scale production, because if you need green energy systems like solar and wind to power your hydrogen electrolysis, you might as well just use them to power the grid directly and not waste a step.
But for storage, it's an OK option if the efficiency to produce is high. Currently I think water pumping and gravitational storage require a LOT less complex technology and even though they have their own losses, the simplicity of building them is in their favor. No technological challenges to overcome, just engineering and design.
I did research into the hydrogen market about a month prior to the video and based on what I was able to read from published articles on Google, I feel like the information used is old and/or out of date. In particular I am up in arms about the types of production, color variety of hydrogen, and the cost to produce it. I found that there were about 5-6 colors, $2-8 per kilogram depending on the color, and a myriad of ways to produce hydrogen in each of those color categories. Most of which were economically unviable. I think it's important to note that the vast majority of hydrogen is purchased by the oil & gas sector, which further hinders future hydrogen production methods from being produced as it creates a volume of production barrier for new producers on the market. Most new producers will be relegated to serve very niche markets until they can scale production quantity to oil & gas levels.
While the information was valuable in this video, the depth and scope I felt was misleading. And I should clarify that I am BY FAR not an expert. These assertions are all from articles found from about 1.5 hours of research on the subject.
To use this technology, the water would have to be very pure to keep from fouling the cells. Wouldn’t you have to factor this into the efficiency?
You should factor it… but like all things hydrogen it will be ignored until the prototype doesn’t work and they need to include it.
If you have a lot of environmental heat, you could vapourize the water first.
@@theamici If you have that much heat naturally you wouldn't need to make hydrogen, you could just use the heat.
there are plenty of ways to purify water that are not energy inefficient. The short answer is yes, the long answer is, it would need to be included in the development COGS and pushed forward with the project.
Barely. Water purification is trivial, even with perfectly pure requirements
The one thought I had about this tech for any kid looking for a science project - that capillary action is really just - a sponge. For a very short term demonstrator, this looks like something that could be built from parts easily sourced online (found pem membrane almost immediately upon searching.) 3d print a support structure, experiment with different sponge-type materials (magic eraser sheets come to mind,) watch your power usage vs output - who knows? maybe a STEM student will try this and stumble upon a further refinement no one has yet thought of?
lol this isnt the movies no kid with a science project is gonna stumble upon a further refinement in hydrogen technology, and if they do they arent gonna be the ones who get the credit for it. hope one day i stumble upon a winning lottery ticket
Capillary action only occurs in narrow spaces. Adhesion + surface tension needs to outweigh opposing (eg gravity, friction, etc) forces.
@Plentus
GOP representatives come to mind.
Would be quite the headline: student managed to produce 55 gallons of pure hydrogen in science project before everything exploded...
@@MrPaxio Mate, you really have no idea how much of the leading science is done by students.. A lot of people claim their best work was done for their PhD thesis..
Nobodies talking about a kid with a science project, I know physicists in their 30's who are still studying at university..
Hydrogen is also useful in the creation of ammonia, which is a vital precursor for fertilizer, plastics, and explosives. Imagine synthesizing fertilizer using nothing but sun, water and air.
Exactly! ...ps fast reply right 😆!
Like a cow or a horse does? That isn't new, animals produced fertilizer in the last hundreds of millions of years, and from that natural fertilizer one of the first ingredients for explosive were produced.
Even better, imagine every small community and large farm group creating their own ammonia for both fertilizer use and for use as a bulk storage of energy.
Imagine the impact of decentralized fuel production like this.
You would probably only need an area of maybe 10000 square meters dedicated to solar panels to average a production of a few tons of ammonia a day, and finding people trained to handle and work with ammonia is not really that hard, especially in agricultural areas.
No need to imagine, that's compost ...
Synthetic fertilizer isn't good for the environment it can kill soil microorganisms. But it's great to make crops to grow fast although there's debate about nutritional loss in food grown with synthetic fertilizer.
I suspect extremely pure water is necessary for this and any electrolysis process. Dissolved minerals precipitated out most likely will clog any electrolysis process and reduce efficiency.
Uh... maybe... probably? It sounds like an area for potential innovation. Perhaps there's a way we can perform efficient electrolysis on seawater without first purifying it.
You can't use pure water in electrolysis, because it is non conductive.
@@justinminer1354 this causes an issue as chlorine is created in the process, removing that molecule is going to introduce further energy needed to separate it and efficiency will likely suffer
Nope. Electrolysis of seawater is all that anyone is seriously considering at scale. I'd link you to plenty of papers on this if TH-cam allowed links. Seriously TH-cam is literally the most useless site on the internet because it doesn't allow linking.
pure water is sold in any car repair for already existing accumulators
so it's not as of a problem as it might be believed
We all speak of storing hydrogen but what we need is to get these membranes in our houses and cars and just use what we need when we need it.
If we can reduce the cost of electrolysis low enough we can couple this with a battery pack and hopefully increase EV mileage to levels where you can actually take a road trip.
In houses we can hook it up to the network and use hydrogen to power and heat our houses.
What we need is efficiency.
3:50 capillary action doesn't happen because of a change in pressure, but because of surface tension.
"The Hydrogen industry hasn't lost any steam" - good one!
Hydrogen is a great supplement to solar. It has the ability to absorb the dips in supply and spikes in demand, by acting as an on demand power source. Basically being the battery.
Produce hydrogen with the excess solar during the day and use it at night.
Yep instead of natural gas plants we could have Hydrogen power plants.
Actually, for such short-time-storage are batteries much better and cheaper. Hydrogen becomes attractive when you have days or weeks of excess energy (or shortage). Simply spoken: The costs of battery storage mainly depend on the kWh (storage capacity), the costs of hydrogen energy storage depend mainly on kW (storage power, energy transformation, electrolyser, fuel cells,...).
However, in small units (detached houses), efficiency of hydrogen storage isn't THAT bad because you can utilize waste heat for hot water/heating at least.
Hydrogen seems like the ultimate replacement for petrol in cars.
It is better than batteries in energy-density.
Except for the need for pressurised and cooled fueling and storage.
And the need to revise all of the systems.
Ultimately there would have to be a national hydrogen grid like there is for natural gas.
Which are also extreme costs.
But batteries can't beat hydrogen in terms of energy-densiity for cars.
Maybe with solid state batteries they'll come close defeating the purpose of hydrogen. Unless hydrogen engines are way cheaper and easier to build than full electrics and their batteries.
It depends on a lot.
Hydrogen's biggest advantages are energy-density and the benign elements it breaks down into.
So it will have uses in these niche categories. But if solid state batteries are affordable and realistic to produce and rival hydrogen then I don't think hydrogen could replace batteries as the energy storage medium "of the future".
We'll probably have a mix of both.
You may dream of producing hydrogen from your own solar and driving your car with it but ultimately you probably still need very special, expensive elements and tools, products to make use of these technologies.
Which may be as much or even worse than batteries.
Batteries are less volatile than pressurized hydrogen.
Popular Mechanics did an article on this concept...in the 1970's! It was exactly what you've described.
@@raybin6873 Most of the overhyped "new" discoveries are just recycled PM and PS articles from the 50s-70s. Just like the tidal power generation stations. Practicality eventually kills the "cool" idea. Just build nukes and laugh at all these green grifts while having no need at all for complex work arounds and flim flam for the fundamental flaws.
I've been thinking of this method quite a bit lately and it seems to me this method of eliminating the formation of bubbles in a compressed gas can be used in rocketry to prevent the formation of bubbles in fuel tanks and fuel supply lines as well as in oxidizer tanks and supply lines. All you need is a good engineer to design the part.
what about hydrogen bonding, idk if capillary action works in a liquefied gas, wouldn't you think they would have thought of that if it was that easy?
I'll believe it when I see it applied in the real world instead of in fancy 3D animations.
Talk about all the energy efficiencies you want but hydrogen production means energy independence.
I thought of something while watching this. You said something about the industry not wasting even a single drop of hydrogen. Somehow, We are supposed to believe that the energy sector will do everything they can to reduce the amount of hydrogen they lose....But TODAY, we don't even come close to doing that with water or natural gas. Natural gas is leaking all over the place, which is not only bad for climate change, but raises costs...and water...ohhh boy, the amount of water that we lose through all these old pipes that we won't replace is insane. So we are expected to believe that they will collect and contain the hydrogen, which by the way, has the ability to seep THROUGH metal ( causing the metal to become brittle ) because it's so small, but we can't stop water from leaking literally everywhere, when water is able to be contained infinitely easier than not just a gas, but the lightest gas, made of the smallest element.
And at the end, you said "we need a variety of clean energy sources for a cleaner future". Please don't call Hydrogen ( or batteries ) an energy source. They are an Energy Carrier. They are not a source of energy. They are storage mediums. They don't "produce" anything...at all...what-so-ever.
Wow! that's a heavy comment about the lightest and smallest element.. You have a really interesting summary of an overall understanding going in your comment. You cover the politics as well as the technology. That's great! I have similar views regarding invidious racism. I hope.
If you could, please, break up your final sentence of the first paragraph into two or three smaller sentences; It would sure help this 65+ yr old understand the point you are trying to make. It's the sentence that begins 'So we are expected...".
I design things that utilize fuel cells. This really is great news for the industry. There are a lot of naysayers about H2. H2 isn't a good fit for many applications, but it is a good fit for many other applications. I am excited to be part of this industry in its early years. I suspect when I retire in 15 years, the landscape of H2 will be very different than it is today.
I don't know of any applications in which batteries aren't a better solution in every conceivable way. Fuel cells have a very low efficiency, and this hasn't changed much in the last 15 years, while battery technology has made huge strides.
Immediate consumption of hydrogen for chemical synthesis is the only application that's ever going to be viable, hydrogen should be thought of as a material like aluminum which takes high energy inputs to make, not as an energy source.
@@xeridea Whenever you need high gravimetric energy density, Hydrogen wins over batteries. These cases are mostly in the aerospace field, where every gram counts. Think about large passenger aircraft and space launch vehicles.
Keeping the hydrogen stable at non cryogenic temperatures is the challenge but there are a few contenders... converting 1h to 1n3h may work better as one of these solutions. 1n3h is ammonia.
@@Bennet2391 This is supposed to be one of their advantages for cars, but they don't have a range advantage. The hydrogen is very light, but the high pressure tanks required are heavy, as well as the fuel cells. The cryogenic options are not really feasible either. So hydrogen has always, and continues to be a pipedream, better in theory, but not in real world.
For space vehicles, there are far better options than hydrogen.
This is the most useful and satisfying channel I'm subscribed to! Thank you Matt and crew!
Glad you enjoy it!
@@UndecidedMF I'm still undecided. Lol.
Lmao
He's a growing channel, I love their descriptions and illustration on the subjects
Matt. Check out in-situ gasification. Making Hydrogen from oilfields. Pump oxygen into the oil underground, it separates out the hydrogen and through a filter only the hydrogen comes out of the ground. The oil stays in place. Can turn most oil reservoirs into hydrogen producing fields.
Cheap Hydrogen will be the 'golden ticket' for long-term, sustainable green energy. I'm old enough to remember this being casually talked about in the 70s. I'm glad to hear that actual progress is being made. Thanks for the great video!
I thought the Fusion Reactor was THE golden ticket!
First he’s geniuses will be turning lead into gold and are to pay for the pink elephant hydrogens.
Despite all these advances, to deploy green H2 at scale there's also going to need to be a suitable source of fresh water (last I checked, none of this is going to run on salt water). At least around here, we are once again going to break drought records this year, and the idea that fuel production is going to siphon off people's drinking water (raising water prices) just so rich folks can drive H2EVs is raising questions for me.
Maybe some requirement for H2-powered tech to capture their waste water for reuse should be considered. But at least for personal vehicles batteries make a lot more sense. And for building and water heating at home heat pumps are the way to go.
I don't know if the solution here is to ignore hydrogen, but perhaps to fix the world we have so broken with industrialized processes that have overheated the world, and stripped the land of its ability to hold water.
We need less factory and massive planting of monoculture crops on unprotected fields, and more holistic approaches to dealing with our world. It can be done, just the rich don't want to.
There's definitely been research into using seawater. Off the top of my head, I can recall one paper looking at a nickel based electrode which had superior corrosion resistance.
Sea water will be required for everything, there just isn't enough freshwater to do anything. Desalinating Seawater will be big business before too long, which will likely reduce the cost per-liter to the point, where the costs are negligible to converting some of it to hydrogen since once the water is desalinated it can be used for multiple purposes, and will likely be shipped/piped inland for farming, and other industrial purposes as much as it would be used for drinking water.
Yeah I've been wondering about that for green hydrogen - water scarcity is already a problem and you would need highly processed pure water for this stuff and desal is so energy consuming I wonder how far ahead you even get
Reuters panel I watched, one of the participants is CEO of a company have built several plants and are desalinating prior to producing the H2, excess water goes to local villages and they are talking about a lake and greening the desert. They are shipping as Ammonia
Thanks, Matt, for breaking these technologies into diagrams, animations, and pictures, for an old man that is endeavouring to learn something new each day! Great channel!!!
3:45 capillary action is NOT like water rising up through a straw. It's like water rising up to moisten a whole paper towel even through you only dipped the bottom tip of the towel into a cup of water.
thumbs down for a blatantly inaccurate example.
Yeah you're right - he seems to have mistaken in memory the actual capillary action (which does exist, the level in the straw WILL be higher due to surface cohesion) but not due to pressure like he after explained.
I am 90% sure that the capilliary action requires a higher amperage per cm2 from the electrodes to work through the additional resistance, significantly raising electricity consumption. The question is whether this increased amperage really offsets the hydrogen transport inhibition from bubbles in a technical setting. Exciting solution attempt to a material transport problem though!
The reason why 50000 hours is a great benchmark for life time of AEMs are turnaround intervals. 5-6 years is standard in the petrochemical industry. I assume this is the reason why ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions advertises them for that lifetime.
i agree, there is already membraneless electrolyser with water pump and porous electrodes ... tada no bubble but they didn't show 95% effiency! I think this publication is pure BS, anyway resistive loss isn't the unique loss in electrolyser
I would point out that hydrogen does not absolutely require an infrastructure that matches or corresponds to the existing one for gasoline and diesel. It is not necessary to haul H2 in trucks. We can produce H2 locally as needed, using the best production method for the immediate market, with supplemental storage if required. This approach actually improves the efficiency of energy delivery, because energy need not be consumed by transporting fuel on roads. Because H2 is so different from petroleum fuels, we should be careful not to make assumptions about it from a petroleum-based viewpoint.
Pet peeve of mine is people calling hydrogen an energy "source". Hydrogen is an energy /transfer/ medium. So it can be used to store energy, or as a fuel for generators or vehicles, but the energy /source/ always comes from something else (as shown by the 'grey' 'blue' 'green' graphic in the video).
No, you mine gold H2 straight from the earth, pink is from nuclear reactors, the very hot ones, high temperature steam coms apart with a tiny current passed through.
I never comment, but always watch and like your videos. With every new video, I’m eager and decided to watch the next one. Major kudos to you and your work, man! You are helping to spread out technology breakthroughs to the common mortals. Keep going, you have a fan here 🙏🏼🔥
Hydrogen is always close to realization. Never really getting there. The energy loss in creating the Hydrogen doesn't make sense when compared to a BEV.
Yeah, if I had a dollar for each "new" technology that never came to fruition, Hydrogen, Zero Point Energy, Thorium, Tritium... the list goes on. On the positive side I have heard since the 1970's that we have 15 years to save the planet, yeah that has not panned out either.
It gets partially compensated if you look at the whole system efficiency
You can have the renewable plants running at full capacity (no need to stop windmills when the demand is low)
You need less conventional electricity for keep the grid stable
Extra up time
Less infrastructure and cheaper to scale
I have a question which isn't answered in the video nor any of the material I could find that wasn't pay walled, what purity of water is required? most electrolysis occurs in water which has impurities deliberately added. Electrolysing pure water is very difficult. If the water is not pure, I can see the "sponge" membrane quickly failing due to the deposits from the impurities.
I've believed in hydrogen power since I first saw Stanley Meyer's Hydrogen fuel cell work in person in the mid 90's. If only the oil companies would get out of the way, we could have had fuel cell technology before now.
Stanley Meyer's fraud didn't include a fuel cell, AFAIK. Just an electrolyzer-unit.
And it didn't really work of course. You can't produce hydrogen with excess energy from hydrogen combustion (perpetuum mobile).
Despite a number of swindlers, who claimed to have invented such a device. Like Stanley Meyer or Charles H. Garrett.
Bingo! After all this time and still almost no one is talking about how the resonant frequency of H2O can be exploited for efficiency gains of orders of magnitude. But this is much bigger than oil companies. Cheap, abundant energy cannot be allowed to become mainstream as it would destabilize the entire political power structure of the world.
The production of hydrogen via electrolysis can be made more efficient by adding a magnet. This is what researchers from the Institut Català d'Investigació Química in Spain write in Nature Energy.
They showed that the presence of an external magnetic field of less than 450 mT stimulates the production of the electrocatalytic activity at the anode, thereby improving the production of hydrogen in ionized (alkaline) water.
The magnetic field affects the magnetic (spin) orientation of the catalyst which in turn directs the orientation of the oxygen atoms during the reaction all in the same direction. This makes the reaction more efficient. The ferrite catalyst NiZnFe4Ox in combination with a magnet yielded the greatest improvement.
You are forgetting that you need a large source of electricity to make hydrogen from water.......hydrogen is used to make electricity as an end product.......who's leg is being pulled?
@@gangleweed Energy is also used to drill and refine oil, only for that oil be burned for energy later on, I guess the fossil fuel industry will never get off the ground either?
Plastic into energy? You have my attention! Love your channel, always great content. Thanks
I've only made it through 40% of this but what an excellent, well organized presentation. Too bad that so many TH-cam presenters waste so much of our time by not writing a script first.
To be fair, the pay is bad.
They also have a problem of always having annoying music which interferes with their talking points.
Hydrox Holdings in South Africa has great new DEFT technology. Might be worth your time to look up if these things excite you.
As someone who loves the feel of ICE powered cars i really hope we get cheep efficient hydrogen as we could convert ever car on the road today to hydrogen without the Toxic mining of lithium for batteries as well as the battery waste as electrodes degrade, if Hydrogen gets down to $1.50/kg it would be energy wise gasoline going down to 1$ a gallon
Hydrogen isn't the smallest element in the form of H2 because it's a molecule. Under normal conditions, helium is the smallest element because while the atom is larger, it's monatomic.
Helium is a diatomic molecule too...
@@noahpfluke6981 no, it's not. All noble gases are monatomic.
Hydrogen transportation is very complex. With 2 H2 + CO2 -> CH4 + O2 one could easily transform it to Methane wich is easier to transport, easier to be implemented in existing gas infrastructure and gas heating systems. It can be transported in pipelines as well. What do you think Matt? Could you discuss this in a video? 🤓
Co2 reduction has been a scientific subject in numerous study for ages. Please check out Thomas J. Meyer and Pat Sullivan's work over 30 years ago...
One of the biggest takeaways from this video is that an "easy" process on paper can become very complex to achieve on a large scale and even harder to make it commercially viable.
I think this requiers expensive catalysts and 80+ bars of pressure. But it sound nice lol. Ammonia is easier for hydrogen storage.
@@jorritmorrit I am not sure about the 80 bars of pressure, but what I do know is, that H2 storage requires 700 bard of pressure. As mentioned Methane can be transported easily in the already existing pipelines (97% of natural gas is Methane) and it can be used for processes which require a lot of heat, like welding, smelting, glass manufacturing and so on.
Ammoniak is best fore pure H2 transportation.
@@marcelbeaucamp9330 80+ bars H2 pressure for CO2 reduction is an estemation. The pressure you mention is for liquid hydrogen, this would be inside a reactor, so not really comparable. My point is that CO2 reduction is way more difficult than you think and probably not feasable. More easy would be methane pyrolysis. I actually work with someone who is developing a catalyst for this purpose. CH4 --> C + 2H2. The problem is accumulation of carbon on the catalyst, thus suffocation of active sites and less activity. They are working on this and i believe it is being delt with quite well. This would be a good clean source of hydrogen, as it is more stable than electrolysis which is mostly done when an excess of renewable energy is available. I work on battery/electrolyzer cathode material myself.
Hydrogen is a great fuel source. I think if anything this is what commercial trucks will need since batteries are heavy and force you to carry small loads and hydrogen trucks could refuel within minutes vs hours
High voltage systems bypasses this
CNG would be a much better choice to fuel long distance trucks. Cheap abundant fuel. Infrastructure exists. Needs a champion to make it more commercially acceptable.
as a renewables expert, I can tell you that most (if not all) of the major IPPs have started developing green hydrogen strategies. it's like the new sexy thing to talk about. that said, nobody really has any viable near term projects at the moment. probably won't see much green hydrogen come to fruition until late 2020s
Reminds me of an old joke. Guy finds 15yr old shoe repair ticket, takes it to the store. 'Do you still have these shoes?' 'Oh yes sir, ready next Tuesday ' ! Will hydrogen always be ready....next Tuesday ?
Wow, very cool to see us continuing to push against the boundaries of our current tech.
But I still feel that the biggest way for us to progress is in the logistics department rather than just pure tech. Hydrogen fuel just won’t work for cars, but it has many good uses like shipping, planes, steel production, etc. So if we focus on making hydrogen fuel on site for these applications then we don’t have to deal with the hassle of building infrastructure and losing fuel to leaks all along the way.
Still, every bit of efficiency along the way counts!
You should check out the fork lift industry
Why it's not working for car? It's better than these toxic batteries
Here's hoping we are getting a little closer to cleaner and more cost effective technology.
If we could only sell these ideas to the government. 🤔
I've never been that discouraged by the inefficiency. With a green grid, we necessarily have many peaks of ">100%" power production where we actively need to dump power. This will naturally open up economic applications for hydrogen as a high energy density fuel for uses like in aviation. Technologies like this will accelerate that process.
I concur, with the caveat that we should always be working on the efficiency of established systems. What I mean is that for regular cars, the inefficiencies of hydrogen vs charging a BEV are so great, it's more responsible to not use hydrogen there. But in grid storage, if we can massively build out renewables, the excess should be great enough to make up for the inefficiencies to work and be profitable. But necessary to whittle down the insufficiencies to make the system more robust, and perhaps not need to build as many turbines and panels
Interesting, and matches up to why Stanley Myers (sp) and his hydrogen powered car used a pulsed circuit to drive his electrolyizers. Having a sponge like substance allows a circuit to remain connected, keeping resistance and capacitance stable, unlike bare plate to plate and the bubbing problem, the gas release between the plates causes higher resistance and capacitance trying to complete the circuit through the bubble. Stanley did it with pulses, allowing the bubbles to collapse and keep resistance and capacitance stable.
Meyer also used non conductive water so it wasn't dependent on amps in the water but instead the pulsed polarity of higher voltage to pull the water molecule apart.
@@yougeo Yes, exploiting the natural resonance of H2O is the real key to making electrolysis viable.
98 % sounds like unrealistic. Or , I would be very sceptic with this number as bubbles are only part of the problem. Oxygen evolution activation overpotentials are usually bigger than iR drops or electric resistance which is the second largest loss.. New catalysts are the more promising improvements if there really some that still can be found because that one is the clearly more tricky bit.
Would be interesting to discuss hydrogen as energy storage in relation to Ammonia as storage and replacement for Haber process.
Ammonia produced using renewable electricity can directly replace ammonia made using carbon compounds. Ammonia is being widely advocated as a green, carbon free fuel. The incentive lies in the fact that ammonia can be made from electrolytic hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen. Topsoe among others have developed ammonia technology that is capable of intermittent operation and does not require an air separation plant. Technology for storing and transporting liquid ammonia at atmospheric pressure and at -33oC is well established.1 cubic metre of liquid ammonia weighs 690 Kg of which 121,76 Kg is hydrogen. Hydrogen has to be cooled to - 253oC before it liquefies, and then 1 cubic metre weighs 70,85 Kg. So liquid ammonia contains 1.72 times as much hydrogen as does liquid hydrogen! Ammonia can be kept liquid with a conventional refrigeration unit, while hydrogen requires compression and expansion of the gas through a turbine. Liquefying hydrogen can use up to 30% of the energy content of the feed hydrogen. Ammonia is produced as a liquid.
@@mike160543 yes this process. It would be interesting to see more attention on this as it is not widely discussed or recognises how big of a carbon impact and price stability impact it would be to in additional to hydrogen transport medium to have a replacement for carbon based Fertiliser production
Hydrogen can only really be made on bulk when we get the molten salt reactors to provide the process heat.
In my studies of renewable power, I was first a Hydrogen fan/ optimist. Over the years I've slowly become discouraged. I feel gas is too expensive and even if Hydrogen got to the same price as gas, I'd think it was too expensive. If I could get $2 per Kw hydrogen, (which is what a BEV equivalent is) I might be interested, but I really don't see that happening.
I've never been a fan of Hydrogen for the sole reason of Corporate greed. Hydrogen becoming the next Big Oil would be bad news for us consumers.
@@dockettome How could Hydrogen become the next big Oil ?
@@dockettome Wind and Solar are already the "next Big Oil." Anywhere you shift an energy economy to will become "the next Big Oil." Your argument makes no sense.
@@SepticFuddy It makes perfect sense. With the demise of the internal combustion engine underway, Oil will loose it's relevancy. Oil companies would like nothing more than to keep selling fuel that the consumer cannot make themselves (safely), such as Hydrogen. If Hydrogen wins, then consumers will have no choice but to pay. At least with battery tech, consumers have a choice of where to get their electricity. You can charge up via the existing electric grid or maybe invest in solar panels for home owners.
@@dockettome Customers cannot make their own solar panels, wind turbines, or batteries either. And those have a far tighter grip on greedy politicians these days. Not to mention, "Big Oil" are heavily invested into wind and solar and pushing them themselves. The industry behind those technologies still requires lots of petroleum to run and that will not change anytime soon.
Seems to me that as there is likely to be a major ramp up in wind and solar, there will be times when production will outstrip demand. Except, that is when the excess electricity could be used for hydrogen production. I would say that is a win win.
Matt should do a video on "overbuild and curtail" as a renewables strategy. I would watch the video and would welcome an open-minded view of it. It is a whacky and bizarre idea that makes a lot of sense.... maybe. But you are exactly right. Hydrogen does not seem to make sense unless you figure that a lot of the electricity generated by renewables is being wasted, or curtailed, for economic reasons. That FREE electricity could be used to produce hydrogen, and would blow the "hydrogen costs too much" argument out of the water.
Except that the first 'win' is a myth that cannot then go on to produce a second win. Wind and solar, due to their gross inefficiency both in their own production and their harvest potential, are suitable only for small scale, off-grid applications. Of all the so-called renewables, they have the worst ROI. Adding the overhead of H2 production, storage, delivery and conversion back to electrical energy only magnifies that energy input sink hole.
@@dwc0 Well, that’s your opinion. Not exactly backed up by the billions of dollars already invested in renewables. I am encouraged that the availability and price of wind and sunshine are fixed for the next few million years. I say that, having lived through many explosive increases in the cost of a limited supply of poisonous fossil fuels.
@@tomarmstrong1281 Whose billions? Industry is not investing money without heavy taxpayer subsidies. It makes no sense unless the taxpayer underwrites the private profit. Not opinion, fact.
@@dwc0 I believe most informed people would agree. Successful commercial enterprises have a keen interest in the future.
I'd like to see these incremental improvements in hydrogen gas generation eventually make Roger E. Billings' vision of the "hydrogen homestead" practical for everyman, where people could use solar panels to generate electricity for daily use and also make hydrogen gas, stored at low pressure in metal hydride tanks, for domestic cooking, space heating and water heating during periods when the sun isn't shining.
It’s a very interesting point I get the need to use hydrogen, I do do see it being used on the moon and mars, large ocean going ships is a must for use, cars not likely to happen ,
Great point, pure electricity is going to work better for land vehicles. And this is scaling up as well, not just pie in the sky.
It already happened for cars in the 1970s but the inventor was promptly murdered to keep it quiet and inspire 'prudence' in any that might try to build on his work for the public good. RIP Stan Meyer.
Your videos are always so exciting and your enthusiasm is contagious, im not exactly sold on the severity of manmade climate change but you make it easy to get invested in these new technologies and i certainly am here for it!
Keep it up!
Same, and the instantaneous discarding of many solutions in search of "the one" builds my skepticism towards it. For example: alcohol could (in theory) require little to no additional infrastructure, and cut down on food waste, and reduce fertilizer dependence, and cut a third off of car emissions, and be an easy conversion for existing vehicles, but it gets no traction. And that's not even to mention the fissile elephant in the room.
@@leandersearle5094 the process of making alcohol is very wasteful at the moment. Pure alcohol is also energy poor. Safe and none waste producing nuclear energy might make sense such as thorium along with renewables.
If you aren't convinced, I suggest reading the IPCC AR6 WGII report.
You'll want the Summary for Policymakers. It is only 40 pages. The main report is several thousand. It is a report solely on the severity of climate change. The WGI report covers the physical and geoscience basis for proof of climate change, if you are interested, but this one is more about how bad it will be due to human activity.
WGIII deals with how to solve the problem
@@leandersearle5094 No politician finds traction with fission in most countries. That is the reason.
@@Prometheus720 Alright, i'll put it on my list
Thank you Matt for making informative videos. I've learned so many innovative technologies with their strenghts and weaknesses because of your channel.
Glad you like them!
For the capillary technique, you would need ultra-pure water because any dissolved salts or tiny sediment particles would be left behind. Distilled water, basically, which would be a huge energy cost.
That is the same any electrolizer
I just love how you always squeeze a few related puns in your script: "blow them outa the water", "just getting their feet wet"...
It would be super cool if we somehow could separate the deuterium from the normal hydrogen to be used in future deuterium-helium 3 fusion power plants, to prove the energy for hydrogen production
where do you get He3 by the way? D2O is not that expensive by the way
If I’m not mistaken deuterium + Helium-3 is a theoretically possible solution to fuel it, and it bypasses the need for tritium that has a short half-life, but He3 is not widely available on earth, so it would have to be transported from the moon
I'd like to see you talk about internal combustion engines converted to run on hydrogen fuel! I hear Toyota has made great progress, and as a car enthusiast I hope their efforts pay off.
Here's an answer th-cam.com/video/vJjKwSF9gT8/w-d-xo.html
Unfortunately that's probably not viable and is more of a gimmick/PR stunt than it is likely to lead to actually usable cars.
th-cam.com/video/vJjKwSF9gT8/w-d-xo.html
The physics just doesn't work out.
7:53 I don't get the efficiency numbers. If it takes 41.5kWh to make 33.6kWh (1kg) of H2, how is that 95% efficient? Wouldn't 33.6/0.95 = 35.4kWh be 95% efficient? Edit: Ah, I found it in your references Matt, thanks for including them. They are using the "high heating value" of hydrogen (39kWh) which includes the heat contained in the water vapor after combustion which in 90% of the applications is lost. Maybe in a heating situation where you capture the vapor and use the residual heat to heat the building, I would use the higher value, but for transportation, fuel cells, etc That is why 33.3 (33.6)kWh is the "useful energy" in real life. So this "breakthrough" technology is really 80% efficient if you're thinking about using it to drive anything.
man that's an idea, have a loop system where the exhaust water is condensed and goes back to tank, only to be split, burned and cycled again... but, does the heat of condensation mean there's a net loss of energy?
I postulated that using a dedicated nuclear power plant to produce the electricity needed for the electrolysis would be the best way to produce hydrogen.
Just sayin'...
@@texastinman2189 I would think that "the best way" is highly speculative. It's certainly the most expensive way, that's for sure. At a LCOE (levelized and unsubsidized cost of energy including construction, fuel, operation and maintenance over the lifetime of the plant) of $0.17/kWh vs other electricity sources as low as $0.03/kWh. Even if this "Breakthrough" is scale-able, it would still cost $7.06/kg for the energy alone to make H2 using dedicated nuclear.
I'd suggest looking into what Cummins is doing for Hydrogen, they are developing so many green technologies its astounding. From the hydrolyzers themselves, fuel cell tech and even internal combustion engine's that run off hydrogen to help fleets adapt sooner to greatly lower emissions foot prints now. It is an exciting time to see where the development of green energy can take us.
A lot of powerful people will lose their shirts if there's a hydrogen breakthrough, I wouldn't expect anything soon
You overlooked NUCLEAR energy it is also a low-carbon energy, as it emits 4 times less CO2 than solar power. It can be used to create hydrogen fuel.
Wasted heat from nuke plants could be used to make steam reforming almost free. Waste electricity could be used for free electrolysis. Nuclear and hydrogen fit together like a hand in a glove.
Despite the low efficiency of Hydrogen generating process, Green Hydrogen is an essential solution for achieving Net-zero CO2 emissions , applications like using the hydrogen for Zero-emission aviation and the new technology for reducing Iron Ore by using the hydrogen instead of coal, can't be done without hydrogen, Batteries can't replace the Hydrogen in such applications.
I think the problem is the heat needed melts the heating electric coils, so the solution could be using electromagnetic radiation. Surely you could make steel without coal using microwaves, arcing or laser heating from electricity. People make glass items at home microwaves.
@@AORD72 in order to make the steel you need to process the Iron ore first , this process called Reduction of Iron ore, by simple explanation ( removing the oxide from the iron ore ) which is currently done by adding the coal to the iron ore inside giant furnaces , which result in a huge amount of co2 emission .
The new technology of reduction the iron ore is to use the green hydrogen instead of coal , and the side product of this process will be the water instead of co2.
try to search for "green steel "
@@AORD72 Steel would still need a carbon source to alloy with the elemental iron to make steel, even more carbon to make cast iron.
@@gamechangertech Thanks' I see now. For some metals it is hard to extract oxygen by heat alone. So best is solid carbon but could use CO or Hydrogen.
I firmly believe that hydrogen cells to produce electricity are the way to go. The cost of the distribution network for other methods could make paupers of us all. The weight of batteries means to me that transportation will be downgraded or crippled by the physics involved, not so with fuel cells.
Watching this vid reminds me how very little we know about anything. We are so primitive. We know nothing.
As far as hydrogen goes, my money is on Hydrogen Carbide. Renewable, easy to transport, you can even adapt an ICE to use it. It can even be produced at efficiencies as high as 97% and literally consumes CO2 in it's creation. Better yet, it's compatible with existing infrastructure to heat homes.
LOL
I’m sure there will always be a use for hydrogen as a fuel source, and I’m sure use cases will grow. But as others have probably pointed out, the fact that you have to take perfectly storable green energy and create hydrogen means, according to laws of energy conservation, that you will always be less efficient than just making green electricity and storing in batteries. And since battery materials are in the realm of recycle-able there is literally no reason to use hydrogen. Not only is it inefficient when compared to just storing electricity directly in batteries, but it also needs an entire infrastructure build to transport it to fueling stations. And transporting via trucks itself is fuel consuming. Electricity already has the delivery infrastructure built. Its just the wires that already exist. Plus as electric cars become common, apartment complexes will inevitably have a charging station in your parking space. So its also just more user convenient. So really Matt, I think you can be decided on this one :P
Batteries don't have high density just yet. Once they do, batteries could take over cars, buses, airplanes, even trains. Until that happens (it'll take a revolution for it to happen), hydrogen makes sense for large commercial vehicles because despite inneficiencies, it's green vs fossil fuels as the only other alternative.
But the next stage problem with stored electricity is delivering it. When a decent family car stores more energy than the family needs to run their home for a week, then capacity is a critical problem in many countries. With hydrogen, you can produce the fuel local to the green power generation site.
There are likely to be things hydrogen can do that batteries can't. Hydrogen planes for example may be a more viable option than battery planes. It may not solve every problem but if we are looking for a one size fits all before we do anything we are never going to do anything.
No one said personal vehicles would benefit the most from this. However, "no reason" seems a little harsh when current battery design is still the largest reason why electrification of flight is unfeasible. Hydrogen blows battery powered flight out of the sky even with your supposed "inefficiencies". Unless you magically make batteries weigh an order of magnitude less, they will still have mighty competition with hydrogen. Engineering is rarely as black and white as you seem to propose. Even though hydrogen is less efficient as energy storage, it can still make a vehicle be more efficient in the end than using batteries, especially when weight is the primary concern.
@@Kefuddle The capacity requirements are higher with hydrogen production though. Now you’re adding transportation of the hydrogen to make it even less efficient, which makes even less sense.
Hydrogen is the energy of the future, and it always will be.
Not until we can make hydrogen with less energy.
If it's always the energy of the future then it'll never happen. Is that what you meant? If so, I think nuclear fusion also has that honour. Personally, I think that Hydrogen energy will one day be a reality, at least for large machinery, trucks and ships.
@@simongross3122 you are right Sir! I meant it will never happen. 😁
I think scientists will discover a much better source for energy than hydrogen in the future.
@@franciscocunhaetavora9132 I thought that's what you meant. Amusing to see the other responses :)
Great video as usual!
I do hope for a hydrogen future and I’m not convinced BEV is the way to go.
I also hope for Fusion to be a thing but since it’s perpetually 30 years away, I’m starting to think it might not happen in my lifetime. Although, you never know all it takes is a clever engineer/scientist somewhere to make a mistake and discover something new!
There are plenty of groundbreaking nuclear techs in the works to get excited about- thorium, molten salt reactors, etc. We need to push those techs rather than sit and cross our fingers for fusion. I'm sure their development will in some ways contribute to fusion designs anyway
Ultimately, an approach that separates hydrogen, oxygen and minerals from sea water (leveraging wind, tidal and solar energy) could be more useful than a "more efficient" approach that requires fresh water and does not have other valuable minerals as a byproduct.
Hydrogen would be great for planes and semis where traditional batteries fall short since their energy density is so small compared to carbon
I find it questionable to call hydrogen a renewable energy source - unless you can either find a naturally occurring source of hydrogen gas such as the science fiction concept of a ram scoop to fuel a spacecraft or you figure out a H-H fusion reaction that produces a net gain in power including the energy cost of separating out the proper isotopes and isolating the hydrogen (refining heavy water and electrolysing it for the Deuterium+Deuterium reaction, for instance), it's not generating power. It's storing it.
Hydrogen Fuel Cells are functionally comparable to a lithium ion battery - a portable means of transporting energy that was previously generated by large grid-power installations.
Which runs into a problem. Hydrogen is an extremely reactive gas. Anything that uses hydrogen storage tanks and fuel cells needs to be *extremely* careful to avoid sparks, because the explosive range of hydrogen is massive - far, far beyond the range of methane, which we already consider hazardous enough that we require annual inspections of gas appliances and add a scent chemical to the gas so that a leak is immediately apparent to everyone.
These days most things run on grid power. Things get plugged in either all the time, or they've got a perfectly adequate lithium ion battery in them that can be charged as needed. Or they have a small enough power draw that it's still reasonable to use old school nickel-cadmium or nickel-metal-hydride batteries and just replace them occasionally. There's 2 major things that don't run on grid power: generators and cars.
Generators are probably the best candidate for fuel cell technology. They're often used for emergency backup power in critical infrastructure - keeping life support systems on in hospitals, stuff like that - which means they're rarely used, so you'd need to work out a good long term storage plan for hydrogen, but that's feasible...even if the answer is just check the pressure on the tank every 6 months, and get a resupply when it drops below X. They're also regularly used in construction sites, where grid power has not yet been made available, but construction workers are usually already pretty smart about not doing things that generate sparks near their generator...the big difference is the fuel cell generator is an explosion hazard instead of a fire hazard.
And then there's cars. Well, vehicles in general. Some vehicles operate in extremely controlled environments - the haul trucks at mines could swap out the diesel generators that run their wheel-mounted electric motors for fuel cells without much change, because you tend not to get in car accidents when driving a truck that's bigger than any tank at 5 miles an hour. But by far the biggest category here is the regular street-legal stuff. And this is the problem. Spark management is pretty easy when you're in a safe environment, but...have you seen what car accidents do to vehicles? Take a look at any significant car accident and tell me there were no sparks made in that process. Sparks are already an issue in car accidents - the first thing they did to my car in the car accident I was in (I was fine and got out on my own, presumably cutting people out of the wreckage comes first if it's needed) was popping the hood and disconnecting the battery, just in case it sparked and lit fuel that might be leaking. That concern gets a whole lot more exciting when it's hydrogen because when you pour gas out and strike a match, odds are the gas is going to put out the match rather than start burning, Hydrogen, meanwhile, will happily explode, if it's not already done so.
There are engineering solutions to this: ways you can build the hydrogen tank to be stronger, anti-spark technology, etc. But with everything that you solve with engineering, you have to accept that it will occasionally fail. Sometimes the power goes out. Every year, some poor bastard has to figure out how to get a leak in their roof fixed when the first big storm rolls around. Literally everything engineers design breaks sometimes. Engineers do their best to minimize the odds of that being a catastrophic failure. The roof that springs a leak lets a few litres of water through, it doesn't *disintegrate.* The power goes out, and maintenance crews figure out what's happened and fix it within about an hour, etc. But, inevitably, there are circumstances that go beyond what engineers can reasonably design for. Tornadoes tear roofs of buildings...and buildings off foundations. Coronal Mass Ejections wipe out critical grid infrastructure that cause power outages for huge swaths of territory disrupting the lives of millions for days. And....a bad enough car accident will probably overcome any engineered safety system that is used to suppress hydrogen explosions. The best way to not have your car explode is to not put explosive stuff in your car.
This is a big problem for hydrogen fuel cell technology becoming a mainstream solution because the street vehicle energy problem is the single biggest problem, by a significant margin, that portable energy storage options have to overcome.
Your entire argument is car can explode, but every other iteration we have does the same thing. Gas, and electric do the same thing. If the batteries in a tesla catch on fire, and you aren't strong enough to break a window, you will literally burn alive. Also, batteries explode too.
So, you have no real point in your entirely long winded comment.
@@jordankelly4684 I had 2 points:
1: Hydrogen isn't an energy source, it's an energy storage medium. Unless you're doing fusion.
2: Hydrogen is substantially more explosive then methane, which is dangerous enough that we put a really pungent additive in it so we can detect leaks. Most cars that breach the fuel tank don't explode, because gasoline takes really good conditions to burn rapidly. That's why fuel injectors are so damn complex, they're getting the fuel-air mix just right.
Here's some excerpts from a lab safety document on hydrogen:
"Hydrogen gas forms explosive mixtures with air if it is 4-74% concentrated"
"Hydrogen gas leaking into external air may spontaneously ignite"
"hydrogen fire, while being extremely
hot, is almost invisible, and thus can lead to accidental burns"
Conversely gasoline, you can literally drop a lit match in a puddle of and it will probably go out. The difference is going from a chemical that stores energy but only burns under relatively good conditions to one of the most reactive substances known.
At least nobody is suggesting we use Chlorine triflouride in our cars. So we're not considering the ludicrously dangerous option, just a concerning one.
Have you heard about he Sulfur-Iodine cycle? Imagine the cycle to couple with the heat created at a nuclear fission core.
There is also the problem of what hydrogen does to components by permeating them and making them brittle. So I do not see it being used in cars, on in space craft, but definitely in things like shipping, and perhaps aircraft, and in power generation where there are mandated repair schedules.
There is likely a material science solution here, but we aren't there yet.
Really? That's interesting! Do you know the mechanism behind the process - does the hydrogen rip atoms/molecules out of the matrix?
@@Mumbamumba It is a well understood aspect of the hydrogen molecule, related to is relatively tiny size, it can fit in between other, larger more complex molecules, and break then down.
For example, if you had a hydrogen powered car, you would have to replace your engine after about 4 years.
Nitpick: an increase in efficiency from 83% to 98% is an increase of 15 "percentage points". This is equivalent to an 18% increase (.98/.83 - 1).
Hydrogen fascinates me so much because of its potential to become so completely ubiquitous, anyone with a bit of extra electricity can make their own, no more reliance on specific oil or lithium producing countries, and while its a bit flammable, its completely non toxic, if a hydrogen tanker ran aground there would be no real clean up required, plus its used as rocket fuel so aligns so perfectly with the normalisation of space travel.
As an aside: "Its" is a possessive pronoun. "It's" = "It is" or "It has"
"its potential" is correct but "its a bit flammable", "its completely non toxic", "its used as rocket fuel" should all be "it's" or "it is".
To my mind there is too much R&D money going to hydrogen research from the fossil fuel industries that see its potential as a replacement in their control and distribution business model at the scale they serve today. I see its niche uses at a much reduced scale, that of suppliers to the steel industry and for the few transport modes that cannot be served with battery storage methods, like long haul airliners. Short-haul aviation and virtually all land transport can be electrified more economically without siphoning off energy for hydrogen electrolysis.
Those fossil fuel companies machinations remind me of the coal companies of my 1950s youth in Connecticut who dominated the home heating fuel business while the Texas based oil interests were attempting justify their recent pipeline to the region by getting folks to use "modern" heating oil instead of the dusty old coal that had to be hand shoveled into furnaces and was losing the business of fueling steam locomotives. The coal companies fought back, but were supplanted by mergers, because the oil interests were flush with money from the profits they made in WWII production. They actually paved a short street with gold leaf coated chips for my town's 300th anniversary celebration to buy good will publicity for their business. That business was dependent on heating wastefully insulated older homes, and though the oil was marginally better, People did not have to crack a window in winter to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning from a neglected coal fire late at night, the inefficiencies built into over consummation were good for their business model just as our fuel oil uses today tend to be.
The transforming of our energy use patterns to a more efficient one needs to be done efficiently as well, and hydrogen will never be as efficient for the transport technologies with a reverse version of the fuel cells used to make hydrogen in a stationary process which separates hydrogen electrolysis into becoming a secondary market. BEVs have built in generators that amount to as much as 1/3rd of their energy for transport on board the vehicle. Even even the shorter range propeller driven electric aircraft can use on board regeneration from their frequent descents. That leaves the long range steady altitude flights as the only reasonable use of hydrogen fuel for clean flights. Let the clean steel production and long haul transport survive on the hydrogen from surplus renewable electricity that gets produced.
Hydrogen is actually a major feed stock in the production of steel in a carbon neutral way and in general for the chemical industry. So regardless of what certain businesses might hope to use it for, like say cars, it will for the foreseeable future still be pretty important as such for various important industries.
In that sense getting cheaper Hydrogen production is a good thing, as it will help out compete the hydrogen currently being produced by stripping it from gas.
So I don't know what the most appropriate amount of hydrogen research would be, but regardless of transportation, we will still be able to make good use of improved technology here by reducing waste in various industrial production.
I have seen accusations and conspiracy theories about fossil fuel companies supporting hydrogen. The only "evidence" is some lobbying for projects in the UK about a year ago by oil companies. I don't see why that makes hydrogen as part of humanity's future a bad thing.
It seems to me that the point where this starts being important is when it is used for ammonia fertilizer production. However you do it, you need hydrogen there. If you can produce hydrogen cheap enough from nuclear or interruptables to replace steam/methane reforming, then it might start making sense for other uses.
The problem is nuclear is one of the most expensive forms of energy. And in many cases the time to deconstruct them takes longer than they were online. It also has been left out of many cost analysis. I am also worried about nuclear making us dependent again on dictatorships like China and Russia who have a lot of the resources needed.
I hope of course for fusion, but it's far far away unfortunately.
Great video, Matt! I'm always in awe of the technical animations in your videos. Would you mind sharing what software is used to make them ?
I’ve heard that one of the most difficult tasks will be the transportation of hydrogen. It is damn hard to transport via pipeline because it will escape or react with the material on the inner surface of the pipe. It would also require energy intensive refrigeration systems to store as a liquid, and even then the hydrogen will likely escape via sublimation or insufficient sealing. Has anyone heard of solutions to the storage problem? I think it trumps the production issue unless the plan is to produce it on site all the time.
You've heard correctly, storage of the world's most clingy element is technologically and logistically complex.
Keeping hydrogen cool and in a stable state requires some tech and that tech is rather bulky comparatively to a car gas tank. On the other hand, when it comes to stationary energy storage, envelope size matters little (hence used EV batteries with reduced cell efficiency still being perfectly adequate for battery farms).
That's why I say that hydrogen EV's are rather senseless from an systems engineering POV, as it is the equivalent to a ICE car being made to tow a crude oil tanker and a portable refinery because some "engineer" is stubborn and thinks this is simpler than battery electric vehicles.
As with advances of hydrogen storage and transport, they are being made mostly in the rocket and chemical industry. Toyota has made a boatload of research on this for mobility for well more than a decade now, and to my mind they still havent managed to make it commercially viable nor is there any indication of such becoming a reality anytime soon.
So to satisfy your curiosity, you should do searches with keywords such as "toyota" "hydrogen" "mirai", and do not be amazed to read stuff that's like a decade old and never got anywhere.
Hydrogen is a monster to work with. It will migrate through the crystalline structure of common metals. Everything to do with hydrogen is expensive. It's also highly explosive over a wide gas/air mixture range. Add to that, ignition energy is minute and it's a problem. Solvable, yes. However, I would not want a hydrogen refueling station anywhere near where I lived.
You can safely store hydrogen for fuel by combining it with carbon. Simplist version methane. To me this means the answers for vehicle fuels lie in biofuels, integrating the carbon capture with fuel production. Hydrogen can really only be used at site of production.
Batteries, hydrogen, ammonia all use electricity. And there is a couple of issues there. 1. The current grid is not updated to handle the extra load. 2. The west coast is running out of water to make hydro power.
It feels like these videos just saturate my future fatigue and on that I'm decided. I've been watching stories like this for over 40 years and the number of things that came to fruition seem astronomically low. It would be nice to see a video about something that went from the very futuristic stage into a viable solution.
The reason is the government makes too much money off oil and gas. Whatever the next technology is will not be allowed unless the government regulates and makes money off it. Period. Always been that way. What other everyday things have not changed in 100 years? Only the internal combustion engine that needs gas and oil to run. Coincidence?
matt, this was very informative! here's to the future of hydrogen power 💚
Fix your website
TH-cam You're killing us with ads .
I thought it's a bot account. 😂 It's TH-cam itself. TH-cam literally uses atleast 1-2% of global electricity consumption. How bout fixing that.
Thanks!
I believe "cracking" the methane molecule for hydrogen production will prove to be more efficient and less costly in the long run. By producing useful hydrogen for energy, capturing carbon in a solid state, producing oxygen as well as removing a very powerful greenhouse gas from the environment a wasteless process that does not consume precious resources (water being most precious) can be achieved. Currently the German research conducted by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology shows the most promise. Any VC's interested in scaling it?
if you extract your hydrogen knowledge from this channel.. you would become as ignorant as he is.
Hydrogen is the future.. 95% of what he said is WRONG... he even contradict himself here 10:43 to 10:52
You would keep trusting this guy?
Ah man, just did a episode of my podcast about something similar. You beat me to it. Great video bro!
No matter how efficient the production of hydrogen is it can’t get over the fact that hydrogen is an absolutely terrible medium to store energy. It leaks from everything and has a terrible volumetric energy density. Seems to me that people have become fixated on fixing hydrogens problems instead of asking if hydrogen is a good goal in the first place
The more I look at electric cars, the more I see hydrogen as the key to finally busting them wide open. Lithium ion batteries are never going to be more than a niche.
Wroing on every count. The hydrogen route wastes far more energy than charging batteries. The fuel cells are easily poisoned and do not last very long. Hydrogen requires a lot of very expensive gear to handle it and those are just a few of the many reasons why hydrogen cars will never ever take off; in fact the level of hydrogen car production is negligible and decreasing. Lithium ion batteries are already mainstream, just look around. In 8 years time the sale of new internal combusyion engine cars in the UK will be banned and lithium ion battery vehicles will completely dominate.
Just the compression, storage and transport of liquid hydrogen is not remotely green. Cleaning up the extraction process is a good step though if it works out.
Exactly. I don’t know who’s paying under the table for all this promotion of hydrogen, but it’s ridiculous.
Bom dia Matt Ferrel e muito obrigado pelos excelentes vídeos de tecnologias que Você sempre apresenta e muito obrigado também pela "tradução", ajuda muito na compreensão do assunto e quanto à possibilidade de aprender "inglês" é muito remota, já tenho 63 anos e sou um "quase" surdo e não tenho tempo algum para essa possibilidade ou seja, é só com tradução mesmo. Os seus vídeos, para um grande curioso como eu, é de grande valia, amo aprender e saber das coisas, valeu 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
As the old joke goes, hydrogen will always be the future of electrified transport. Maybe these breakthroughs will help achieve commercial viability. On that point, engineers seem to focus their "efficiency" claims on intermediate steps in a process. In a transport scenario, surely the relevant efficiency measure is just $ per kilometre/mile for the end user???
Big fly in the H2 argument: While the energy density is impressive at 120 MJ/Kg (gasoline is about 45) the transport density of H2 (for a given pressure) is 7X less than methane. What does this mean? A given pipeline (which is pressure limited) can't transport as much energy in H2 as methane (55 MJ/kg) by a factor of 3.66 or so. Likewise for large storage vessels - they would have to be much larger for a given pressure of containment or made to handle higher H2 storage pressures (more expensive).
H2: 120 MJ/Kg, 0.09 Kg/m^3
Ch4: 55 MJ/Kg, 0.72 Kg/m^3.
One trick I've heard mention of (but I don't know if it is in practice) is to co-transport H2 along with CH4 in pipelines - this way the much smaller H2 industry can "piggyback" on the well established network of NG pipelines in North America and Europe (and elsewhere, I presume).
Is there a frequency of sound that would cause forming bubbles to release?
It will be great to see hydrogen replace bunker fuel in ships, if the engines can retrofitted at an affordable cost.
The frequency to be applied is in the electric charge itself and tuned to the natural resonant frequency of the H2O molecule, as discovered by Stanley Meyer decades ago.
Elon Musk disagrees…
Well I disagree with him
Links to the citations would be a nice touch...
But I have to say this was a very informative article and I enjoyed it greatly, thank you for doing the research for us.
I have a Toyota Mirai hydrogen car and I am so in love I really hope it takes off more nationally. I personally think where we use diesel currently hydrogen is where to go in future. Where we use gas is where we should use battery electric.