Hydrogen is making inroads behind the scenes. Many 24 hour warehouses use hydrogen fuel cells in the forklifts so they can be recharged virtually instantly.
That is one thing I remembered when I worked for a short period at a brick factory and all the fork lifts used propane, would just start up in an instant, no motor noise or idling. Was not sure why we did not use other vehicles that were propane powered as well and even using hydrogen. I’ve only seen a limited number of UPS trucks and concept cars that had it but pretty much no options for you to buy as an everyday commuter.
The production of H2 is the big problem that can't be ignored, H2 has a lot of uses, but 95% of H2 is produced by Steam Reformation of Fossil Fuels, this is why big oil is pushing H2 for vehicles. If they were to use Electrolysis then great, but it is much cheaper to produce methane form Steam Reformation.
Really?! Do you know off the top of your head how much more expensive H² from electrolysis is than steam reformation? Just curious. Thanks for this info either way!
UCF puts the cost at twice as much per unit measured. "The cost of hydrogen production is an important issue. Hydrogen produced by steam reformation costs approximately three times the cost of natural gas per unit of energy produced. This means that if natural gas costs $6/million BTU, then hydrogen will be $18/million BTU. Also, producing hydrogen from electrolysis with electricity at 5 cents/kWh will cost $28/million BTU - slightly less than two times the cost of hydrogen from natural gas. Note that the cost of hydrogen production from electricity is a linear function of electricity costs, so electricity at 10 cents/kWh means that hydrogen will cost $56/million BTU."
Solar power would be enough for electrolysis, using that method would lead it paying for itself, but weather would effect the amount of hydrogen produced making it an unreliable solution. Methane Pyrolisis is a relatively new technology and it may be a better option as it produces no greenhouse gases, water pollutants nor co2 gas, the only byproduct is solid carbon, which can be sold as manufacturing feedstock where it could be used for more bio fuel and fuel production.
@@keith7673 I would be happy if it were an MSR powering a H2 plant, but what is happening now is pretending they are doing something to save the environment while still drilling and releasing CO2, they are just doing it at the H2 plant instead of the exhaust pipe.
When i was 12 i used to make hydrogen for baloons with zinc and sulfuric acid. Once i didn't follow my dad's instrustions and lost an eyebrow and some hair :) i have healthy respect for H2
I saw it myself and I can only give my full support to that idea. I swear, the Orkney Islands are literally living in the future. I concluded in that video that the Orkney Islands are second only to Norway in terms of how heavily they subsidize electric vehicle ownership there.
Just as LPG is the cheap and friendly byproduct of fossil fuels, hydrogen should be the cheap and friendly byproduct of electricity. It should not be a goal, only a means. It sounds as if the Orkney Islands got that right.
My house runs on batteries at night. Energy is generated during the day and stored for my low power usage at night. Even on super rainy and cloudy days the solar generates enough energy for my daytime use - excluding air conditioning - and charging for overnight. Working on wind power now before winter rolls in.
But at what cost? Generaly without government subsidies, solar & batteries is not cost effective. Plus we haven't really hit the point of where "what's the cost of disposing of all this solar & battery waste" when they hit end of life. Not to mention the environmental cost of producing them in the first place.
@@awesomeferret it's not the case anymore for the energy to produce them, those numbers are old. It only takes a couple of years to produce the energy needed to produce them.
@@douglascaskey7302 In Australia, a family home with solar panels, and, even with expensive battery storage, will still break even the solar system investment in eight years. Once both vehicles are EVs, the break even point comes down dramatically to less than four years. Petrol is bloody expensive at $1.80 to $2 per litre! 30% of Australian homes already have solar panels. Batteries and solar panels can be reused and recycled. This is non-issue for governments and societies who address the issue seriously. As for the environmental cost, if a family home persevered with wholly coal powered electricity for 10 years, the total CO2 emissions would be a staggering 67 tonnes. Plus, if the two ICE cars are kept for that 10 year period as well, the cars’ CO2 emissions are another 40 tonnes. So, over 10 years, an astonishing 107 tonnes of CO2 emissions can be avoided with renewable electricity and EVs. And you wonder why the Tesla Model 3 was Australia’s biggest selling passenger car for March 2022. 🇦🇺⚡️
When I worked in the UK weather service I used hydrogen balloons to lift weather measurement equip into the atmosphere. The only cases I heard of was when a smoker was filling the ballon and lost his eyebrows when his cigarette ignited the hydrogen, the other was when hydrogen cylinders were being craned from a boat to a dock, a cylinder slipped off, as it fell passed the dock the cap caught the edge of the dock. The cylinder shot across the harbour like a torpedo, luckily nothing was between it and the far bank.
Batteries are ideal for powering houses etc., but not necessarily lithium - there are several other chemistries - iron air, vanadium flow and liquid metal, for applications where the power density is less of an issue. In terms of efficiency from electricity to powering cars, you are just plain wrong about efficiency, H2 is a terrible solution, about a third the efficiency of BEV. Power generation is a totally different argument. Grid capacity issues vary a lot by country. In the UK our National Grid, in charge of generation and distribution has stated that they will have no problems at the currently envisaged growth rate of EVs, and only some local LV distribution upgrades will be needed. Most people will charge overnight, when demand is lowest. The already have the generation capacity, and the use of smart charging for balancing will be a net benefit.
Yes, China has build the largest battery storage system operational. It stores up to 800MWh of electrical energy with a redox flow battery. My question to Fran: When it's so much more pratical to do this with hydrogen, why we haven't build something like this before? Also other battery chemistries are evolving. CATL made the first usable sodium ion batteries. We are not limited to lithium or cobalt anymore.
a new electrolysis plant today delivers energy efficiency of around 80%. where Lithium-ion charging efficiency is close to 90%. but considering tesla battery weights 625 kg, I am not so sure which is more efficient. as a vehicle 1/3 of energy taken by the weight of battery.
Probably because the UK uses a lot of Nuclear ☢️.. For efficiency numbers it’s not really easy even for combustion engines we don’t have clear numbers. For power generation for offshore batteries are not a option really there are several grids planning to use h2. And actually it’s not just car’s needing it but planes, heavy vehicles, the heavy industry… How will you load your car at night when there is mostly no wind and also no solar. Also that grid didn’t experience 12kv truck chargers and everyone heating there home with energy..
The visible fire of the Hindenburg was not the burning hydrogen, it was the outer aluminum-impregnated fabric that was ignited by static electricity and that burning subsequently ignited the hydrogen that burns invisibly.
Possible, but I doubt that sequence. It’s more probable that Hindenburg’s design flaws contributed to a static discharge high up that ignited escaping gas H2 gas. That burns at the high temperature required to ignite that fine powdered Al-impregnated skin. Modern aircraft are built with thin Al skins but they routinely survive direct lightning strikes. It takes an incendiary missile to ignite a fire hot enough to take out an Al metal ship.
@@dranthonyv5475 Not really comparable. Modern aircraft are built with solid sheets of Aluminium the skin of the Hindenberg was coated with a mix of powdered Aluminum and dope, so individual very fine particles of Aluminium with a correspondingly huge surface area partially suspended in a matrix, as such it burns a WHOLE lot easier. FWIW powdered aluminium is regularly used in pyrotechnics.
@@dranthonyv5475 Nonsense. Static electicities dangers were not known as well back then. The outside of the airship was essentially a giant Fourth of July SPARKLER.
I don't have an axe to grind, but I work in the aircraft engine industry and interface with the aircraft manufacturers from time to time. They don't seem to believe liquid hydrogen is a viable fuel source for long distance (more than a couple hundred miles) flights because the volumetric energy density is so much lower than for kerosene. Because of this, so much more of the airframe would have to be devoted to fuel storage that it would be impractical. Any thoughts on this?
They are correct and keeping it at higher pressures makes the tanks heavy, when in fact batteries in the labs right now are suitable but hydrogen is never going to magically get more dense
Dianna (Physics Girl) has done a couple of very interesting ones that are related to this. One is looking at storage being where the big developments need to be made. In the other, she's comparing battery electric vehicles with hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles - and she's driving round California in a hydrogen car while doing it. I recommend both.
Note that FCEV hydrogen cars also have small traction batteries to support fast acceleration and regenerative braking. If you delete the fuel cell and increase the battery size then you end up with a BEV. It is more efficient to directly charge the battery from the electricity grid than to charge the battery from a fuel cell. FCEV cars will never dominate the EV market as BEV has already won.
@@Android-ng1wn Yep, it was pumped hydro - up to the top dam during low demand, down again for high demand. I remember visiting a plant like that in North Wales many years ago - it was very impressive.
The only issue I have with using hydrogen as a fuel is the storage and transport of it. In a liquid state it needs to be refrigerated to extremely low temperatures, and I'm not sure how well it can be compressed in a gaseous state. I think the benefit of biomethanol is that it can just be kept at room temperature in a sealed container and its not likely to go anywhere.
There are Gas pipelines, and they have improved that much that you can mix Hydrogen in the natural gas you transport. And then you can filter it out, pressure it and cool it where you have to put it into mobile engines. And if you only need to make electrical power, you can just use a electrical fuel cell. The storage is key, and there you are right, biomethanol can be stored more easily. In Germany we get natural gas from gas fields in the netherlands that run out slowly. We have the wind turbines in the sea, but not the electrical capacity to transport it from the north with the turbines to the south where it is used. And no way to store electrical energy. We have to sell energy with negative prices to other countries if we have too much energy that can not be used up on electrical power. So it is cheaper to create hydrogen-even if it is not very efficient. And, btw, Daimler split cars and trucks, trucks are supposed to run on hydrogen in the future, while the cars get the Batteries (I worked in a tiny part on the EQS car ;-) Stay safe! Do the right thing!
Yes hydrogen is a pain to store and transport. special steels that will not get brittle at cryogenic temperatures, and also will survive with being hydrogen embrittled as well. Very hard to contain, seeing as the cryogenic liquid will literally condense air at every thermal leak, and also because any small leak is incredibly dangerous, unlike the other fuels, where you need a reasonable volume to make it burn, hydrogen is explosive from 5% to 95% concentration, so a tiny leak from a frozen seal is just as dangerous as a burst pipe, and will likely result in the explosion as the shock wave rocks the tank. Convert the hydrogen to methanol, even if you do it using a less than optimal process using CO2 from the air, and it will be a better fuel. You can make it from electrolysis of water from excess power from intermittent sources, and at the same time scrub CO2 out of the air to run the reformer plant as well. Needs a big plant to do it, but so long as you can have a load of power to provide the energy, you can easily do it in a few large facilities where the wind or solar is. Just needs to generate a gas that is hydrogen and another that is CO2, with a bonus product of LOX as well, which is a lot easier to handle than hydrogen.Then your standard Fischer Troph process will make liquid out of the gas, and this will be a feedstock for either other things like plastic, or as a room temperature stable fuel that is not as deadly to transport and dispense.
@@SeanBZA the better option is a mix with water or alcohol. You don't have to necessarily store it as liquid by itself. In fact if you use water in the take with pressurized hydrogen it may be safer. This is again why some more scientific studies should be centered on this instead of wasting it on battery technology
Something closer to gasoline/diesel would be Butanol the 3rd alcohol. Less of a solvent than methanol or ethanol and mixes more easily for blends. The bio routes are much less explored or are expensive though.
Fran, I've always loved your videos and agreed with most of what you say, but this is where I have to disagree. The Hydrogen cycle is horribly efficient! You either burn it in a heat engine, or run it in a fuel cell. Have you looked into how poor the systemic efficiency is? You say batteries have a high manufacturing energy budget? Take a look a fuel cells. Then you also need to build all the huge infrastructure required! I've driven electric since the 90s, and I also generate all my own power from the SUN! What a crazy concept! WHERE do you think we are going to get the energy for Hydrogen electrolysis? And where you get it, add an additional 80% cost, because you are lucky to hit 20% total efficiency. It might make sense for a transcontinental flight, but definitely not for EVs.
My uncle worked for Aragon National Labs in the 1950's. He was perplexed that all our cars weren't nuclear. He may have over looked a few issues in his enthusiasm. Thinking things through completely sometimes defies our best efforts and well intentioned desires.
I wish I could remember my source, but I saw a documentary that showed the Hindenburg's paint and/or rubber shell was basically rocket fuel. Much of what made the fire spectacular was the skin, not the hydrogen. If the skin had instead been fire resistant, if the accident had even occurred, it likely would have been more survivable. As a side note, my grandfather was an eyewitness and kept a sample of the skin. The university I attended worked on hydrogen storage. At least at the time, storage was the main problem making it impractical for transportation--required very high pressure and a large volume. I believe the solution they were working on involved zeolites or MOFs (metal organic frameworks) which allow a greater mass to be stored at lower pressure. I don't know how much success they ultimately had but they seemed to be getting encouraging results at the time.
Thanks - excellent comment. I believe that skin was also a German and, later a US, Top Secret since it was efficient not only for balloons but also for solid rocket fuel. Putting the blame on hydrogen distracted attention away from the finely Al metal and oxide powered skin coating secret.
Isn't the real problem with hydrogen is that it has low energy density and cannot be sealed. All its weight advantages disappear when you have to consider the heavy duty pipes and tanks.
"Blue hydrogen is often hyped as clean, but in actuality, it might be even worse than burning coal." (universal-sci com, August 14, 2021, Stanford and Cornell-based scientists)
I've followed these developments for decades. I'm not on board with hydrogen as the main "fuel". The energy density of a battery is improving, we can make boats, cars and short haul planes already & use the sun & wind to power it all. Saying long haul planes won't be battery is to me is cherry picking data, ignoring other uses. The O&G industry is wringing their hands as they are already set up to steam methane into hydrogen & of course CO2, MEGA-tonnes of it. Not to mention all the energy used to achieve it. We've been dependent upon this industry for a century. They leverage governments & by inference, us. They need to be deposed. Solar PV on homes with battery storage is essential if we are to take our personal power back. US politics is seen by us outside as corrupt as Russia or China. I hope you can all rise above it. We have similar issues to deal with too (🇨🇦) Hydrogen also a pernicious gas that eats through metals and of course explodes as we've already seen in Europe where they started to build a station! If we are blind to this, this planet will continue to burn. The safest way is to store solar PV, wind & wave turbine energy in gravity storage, battery storage, heated salt storage, etc. It may not be ideal, but it's sustainable & safer.
Luckily modern hydrogen tanks are made from composites and doesn's degrade in the hydrigen atmosphere, and are also very durable. Hydrogen fuel cell electricity scales really well, as you only need another or a bigger tank. Batteries are far from sustainable. If fuel cell tech keeps progressing as it currently does it's a no brainer, if it doesn't, it will still be better. As for the safety aspect, hydrogen has been used industrially for many decades without any particularly serious accidents (at least post Hindenburg). Just weeks ago a Tesla battery bank caught fire in Australia (as you may know). Maybe it's because of Teslas shitty quality, but still.
I heard this funny but true statement, "Gasoline is still the best deal in the world, how many guys would you have to pay how much to push your even your 12 mile per gallon truck 12 miles?"
Do some real comparison Toyota Mirai Range ~650km Weight: 1900kg Storage Room: 321 Liter Tesla Model 3 Range ~ 614 Weight: 1844kg Storage Room: 649 Liter Why is Toyota heavier than Tesla and has less storage room? Because the hydrogen tank is very heavy and needs a lot of space. At a Mercedes truck it need a 125kg tank for storage of 4.4kg hydrogen And if we talk about green and efficient. The best way is to have own solar panels at the roof and store the energy direct in the vehicle battery. I do not know a better efficiency of any other technology. If so - give me feedback - with numbers and/or links of the source.
The Mirai is smaller than a model 3, hence the storage space. The weight probably stems from how shitty Teslas quality is. The Mirai composite tenk is quite light, 87.5 kg or 193 lb. One can safely assume the Tesla batteries weigh more than that. Lastly, despite being slightly heavier (56 kg, lol are you fucking kidding me), it gets much better range. Also, i have friends with BEVs, and in winter you get like slightly over half the advertised range, an issue hydrogen fuel cell cars shouldn't run into. The only thing better with a BEV is the convenience of plugging it straight into your wall fo fuel.
@@Rob2 Sorry Rob, I should make it more clear - I thought more about the roof of the house. But even with roof of car it would become better in the future, when dual wave length solar panels get in mass production. And energy for the house during winter time? I believe in the next 10-20 years we will heat our houses (where real winter happens) with heating oil or gas. But if we replace the simple heater with a small power plant (e.g. about 1kw / family) you will produce electricity much more efficient, because all the heat will warm your house and water. And during summer time you get the energy from solar panel. So it will roughly produce 50% less CO2 than an external power plant produce for electricity. The normal power plant waste about 50% of the energy in cooling towers. What happens after 10-20 years? Maybe the batteries are much better and cheaper. Or the flow batteries get in mass production. They have the advantage, to have independent electrolyte storage and anode / cathode. So to increase the capacity of the battery you simply need to increase the electrolyte tank, which is much simpler than a hydrogen tank.
@@fellenXD The issue with hydrogen and fuel cell is, that you need anyhow batteries, because fuel cells don't like quick load changes. And to have several technologies in the vehicle to solve one problem is usually not very cost effective. The other issue is, that hydrogen is the tiniest particle and need to be stored with real high pressure. So it went slowly through a lot of materials. At BMW hydrogen vehicle they had the issue, if it parks for 2-3 weeks, it lost half of the hydrogen. The other issue with high pressure is, that compressing gas leads to heating up (very likely the heat gets wasted if you cannot use it immediately). And if you release it you have to ensure that nothing get to cool, while it is expanding. My personal view is, that the issues with batteries can be handled in the future easier than the one with hydrogen. But we will see what the future brings to us.
You make two main faillures in this Video. First you compare two things that have absolutely nothing in common (Hydrogen & E-Fuels). Second Hydrogen is only sustainable if it is produced by 100% Sustainable Energie (Wind or Sun) That allone brings lost of 70% of the produced Energie The Storage and Transportation (The Technics are all there) Take 70% of that too. The Monay had been invested but threre is no way in Produce, Store and Transport Hydrogen efficient for such Users as Cars or Houses. The only efficient way we have now are Batterys and Lithium is only the beginning.
Love the hydrogen idea always wondered where it went. I honestly think the biggest issue is storage? If memory serves hydrogen is extremely difficult to contain!
Problem with hydrogen is that it takes 10x the electricity to make, compress, store and transport the hydrogen per mile driven compared to just charging a battery. So you would need 10x the renewable generation to do the same work - it doesn’t make sense! Also, the reality is that the fossil fuel Industry will flood the market with cheap grey hydrogen made from steam reforming natural gas which is far worse for the environment than simply burning the natural gas in a power station and charging battery electric vehicles. Hydrogen has a use case in terms of shipping, long distance haulage, aircraft etc but not for passenger vehicles or home energy solutions.
The amount of chasing speculative technologies during the late 90s and early 2000s.... then, well, then we kind of forgot why we were speculating thanks to distractions.
But remember Fran, there is no "free" hydrogen. It must be extracted from somewhere, like electrolysis in water, and action itself requires energy, even if it is solar.
And thats why it's used in some places with "too much energy" for the grid. When wind farms produce too much sometimes it's too expensive to distribute it elsewhere. So it's like an overflow usage that make sens even if it's not perfect yet
Yeah, that's also a huge problem too the more land you dedicate to fuel production the less you have for you know, feeding people to keep them alive... That being said there are ways to use waste products from food farming in biofuel production (you can turn pretty much any organic material you want into alcohol with the right microbes) but that's not how it's being done.
The word "biofuel" is a trick, its not ethanol anymore, they're cutting down trees to burn and calling it biofuel. They switched it without changing the name. Biofuel means cutting down forests to burn.
@@SomeMorganSomewhere true, however most restproducts from plant-based food production can be used as fodder for animals, since, you know, some people like to eat meat. at this moment however, quite some land is used to produce corn and soy for animal fodder.
I don't usually like to just write a short word as a comment, but I've never experienced a more appropriate moment to use "Amen", than to what you just talked about, Fran.
@@JCBeastie sure it is. All that's needed is dispersal and an ignition source, both of which a powerful crash can provide. Batteries are better compartmentalized, and even in a big fire they don't go up all at once, but pop individually. Fun fact: most of the energy released when contemporary batteries catch fire, is not stored electrical energy, nor is it burning lithium. It's the electrolyte burning, which has flammability properties resembling gasoline.
@@galfisk IIRC lithium battery fires are nearly impossible to put out, so gasoline fires are preferable in that regard. Remove oxygen and the gasoline won't burn but batteries self-oxidize. But even knowing that I'd rather have the batteries. When we have batteries with energy density rivaling gasoline we will probably have developed technology which can easily neutralize battery fires.
I don't know if you know this, but there are thousands of people driving hydrogen cars in southern California, Hawaii, Canada, and more in Europe. There's a theoretical path to hydrogen generation carbon capture. Current generation technologies use methane steam reformation instead of electrolysis, but most of us drivers want more green solutions
3 года назад
Nice video about hydrogen. Would you like to expand a bit and tell us your take on fusion energy and why it is taking so long?
As a carpenter who was around before the wide scale use of lithium ion batteries - things are being done with efficiency and in locations one would have had serious logistics working on in days past both in ones immediate surroundings and in planning for remote building. Even a "normal" construction sight. Many generators used to be needed to fire up power for a job site in the 80's with no power connected to it already. Less are needed now. Efficiency" has many facets.
And one of the dumbest programs ever. bio-fuels is so energy and water intensive! We also don't have the climate either for crops that are superior to corn for bio-fuel yield.
@@wngimageanddesign9546 Yes it's a pretty dumb program: using oil-powered vehicles to grow biofuel to partially power oil-powered vehicles. Insanity that only a politician could love.
Fran, do you scuba dive? Check the pressure in a scuba tank. 241 bars, maximum. Those things are steel, and even so, they're fairly fragile, especially around the neck. They're explosive. Look at the compressed H2 refueling sites. 350 bars for the low pressure, and 700 bars for the high pressure. That kind of pressure is pretty scary in a crash, not for the H2 burning, but just for the pressure in the bottles. Think how much energy is needed to compress hydrogen to that point. You don't get that back. The car actually uses energy to compress air so that the oxygen is at the same 350 bar as the hydrogen in the fuel cell. More loss, and there's no gain, except fuel tank density. That, and currently hydrogen refueling costs 5 times what charging a BEV at your house costs, per mile. And nearly all hydrogen in those pumps come from steam reforming, where the carbon is released to the atmosphere. Using electricity to electrolyze water uses up precious fresh water, makes heavy water waste water, and the resulting hydrogen, once compressed, would cost double what steam reforming would, when using network electricity. I'd like to see them use liquid ammonia, NH4, for fuel. Releasing nitrogen into the air is not polluting. Even water vapor is a greenhouse gas, you know? There are already fuel cells that can use NH4. Right now it's made from fossil fuels, but there's nothing says it HAS to be. The tech is years ahead to produce green ammonia, but it can be kept liquid with simple AC tech, at one atmosphere pressure. It's less poisonous than gasoline.
The reason we're even bothering with the corn bioethanol is that governments around the world but especially the US and more recently the UK have been subsidizing the shit out of it, and have been basically fueling (no pun intended) the industry even though it costs more to produce the ethanol than the price it's sold at when mixed with fossil fuels sold at gas stations.
Yeah, the subsidies on corn production in the US are ridiculous, it is actually unprofitable in many cases to grow crops that AREN'T corn (or soy) because nothing else has the same level of subsidy. Which means that the US (and other countries to a greater or lesser degree) produces so much corn that they're actually LOOKING for uses for it, which is why everything in the US is sweetened with HFCS instead of "normal" sugar.
I’ve been hearing a lot more about hydrogen as fuel lately. Airbus has 3 hydrogen planes they’re aiming to make in the next few years. There’s some applications where batteries make sense, and others where hydrogen make sense. Large airplanes and cargo ships, as you mentioned, will likely never run off batteries alone. Hydrogen makes a lot of sense for the applications that are the worst carbon offenders.
Yes, trained people with procedures that are followed to fill. Can you imagine the carnage when Bubba, with no more than 2 brain cells left from the moonshine, from deep south, when he decides to drive off with the nozzle still filling the vehicle, and tears it out of the island, spewing explosive hydrogen liquid all over, and he is smoking, and tosses the match out the window.
The extreme amount of water vapor that hydrogen fueled airplanes would release is even more harmful than the CO2 from kerosene turbines. That´s something I read somewhere - no guarantee for correctness, but it was not a source known for BS. According hydrogen energy storage, it turns out that big hydrogen storage facilities are significantly more efficient than battery storage, but it changes when scaling down to cars for example. The weight of the battery doesn´t matter so much, as you have recuperation. Fuel cells+tanks are also heavy ang have only 60% efficiency. Hydrogen is also a middleman: Solar->Battery->E-motor, Solar->hydrogen->fuelcell->motor or Solar->hydrogen,combustion
as a gas, hydrogen is awful. Storage is an issue, cooling and refrigeration takes a sh!tload of energy, losses due to diffusion are high, even breaking up water into H2 and O2 is - at best - 50% efficient. Gaseous H2 isn't a solution it is a problem. Ehanol or Ammonia however are not a problem, but a real solution....
I used to be big on hydrogen, but i learned a few things about it. Burning hydrogen with oxygen does produce water. Burning hydrogen with air produces some water, but also creates the nitrogen compounds that gas cars create. High pressure vessels have their own issues. Most hydrogen right now is produced from oil and natural gas. I am not sure what the efficiency of solar hydrogen is. Keep the positive thoughts going!
Looking at compressed hydrogen it seems hard to make it work with passenger cars because of the sheer volume of the tanks if you want near normal travelling range of ice car. Option would be to settle for compressed hydrogen refueling every 150 miles. Looking at current state of art hydrogen F-Cell(yeah lossy too) it takes up volume and add weight. The Toyota Mirai weighs as much as an Battery EV and has less seats and less useable volume/storage. Cryogenic hydrogen will evap some %'s per day or use energy and really clunky cryogenic equipment. Cryogenic tanks and the metallurgy thereof is probably questionable for high stress use like collision proof in a vehicle. When you say turbine, I ask to what? To wheel by gearbox? To a generator like a range extender? It seems like humanity is screwed no matter what option. Using fertile farm land to produce fuel to burn is an absurd idea in the first place considering soil shortage and we really can't chop down much more forrests to make farm land without completely upset the global eco system.
Don't forget to compare the performance of a hydrogen FCEV against a BEV such a Tesla. The Tesla Model 3 AWD Long Range is cheaper than the Toyota Mirai, and the Model 3 has much better performance than the Mirai. FCEVs are not going to dominate BEVs.
@@skullandbones99 Yep! Tesla has about 3x power and weighs almost exactly the same as Mirai. If Tesla M3 would remove a motor and axle it would still outperform Mirai and be lighter. Trading that motor weight for batteries would probably also set them equal in range... except the Mirai would have to make two turns to move 5 ppl =o)
Can't agree more Fran. Most folks don't realize how most of the electricity is generated in the U.S. (dead dinos anyone?) and that's not going to change any time soon. I was on a long-distance ride across the mid-west some time ago and ran into a group of old farmers having coffee in Iowa and asked them what they thought about the ethanol fuel idea and the consensus was the only people who thought it was a good idea were the farmers who were selling corn to the ethanol producers. One guy summed it up best when he said "who burns their food?"
I've been hearing the opposite about hydrogen from the petrochemical industry from what you suggest. They all seem to be gearing up for it and advocating it. For them, hydrogen is something they can easily produce by cracking natural gas, and more cheaply than generating it from water with green electricy.
I posted this link earlier today but the comment got lost after Fran reuploaded for some reason. It's a pretty interesting watch. "Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars Aren't The Dumbest Thing. But... | Answers With Joe" ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xU-LDZ0HTGc.html
Actually, the first hydrogen locomotive was just made in Poland by Pesa company. In the year 2022 it would be in the regular use. For me that is super cool. Love your videos. Cheers from Poland
The energy density argument you made for hydrogen is wrong. If you look at energy per kilogram, H2 looks fantastic but in reality it just sucks! You need enormous pressures to store only a few kilograms in a relatively large container. Look at hydrogen cars: They usually store only around 5 kg of H2 but need a storage/energy conversion technology that is as heavy as a li-ion battery and needs much more volume. Another example: A H2 delivery truck can only transport a tenth (1/10 !!!) of the energy of a comparable gasoline truck.
Millions of cars made every year, millions of miles of highways just to get us to work and back. Miles to the Walmart, miles to the supermarket. We have to go here and there and everywhere. When I was a child in the 50's our family walked to the grocery store, walked to the hardware store, walked to the barber shop, walked to the radio and television repair shop, beauty shop, school and on and on. The country and the world have had self defeating policy for the last 60 years. Just as things go in Afghanistan today, it will be with fuel and environment. Wait until the very end and then do something about it. Guess what...too late. 500 years from now? Wasteland!
The explosive limits of hydrogen is vastly wider than for hydrocarbon fuels, that's why it's so dangerous. As for liquid hydrogen, you will never see that used as a fuel for anything other than spacecraft.
Hydrogen doesn't hug the ground though, so unless it leaks into a confined space, it'll probably just leave without exploding. If it does burn it won't puddle or run. Having a pressurized H2 tank in a fire can be very dangerous though.
Over here in Australia batteries have worked very well to improve the efficiency of our power grid because it helps reduce the extra generation to maintain a stable base load.
Aren't we more setup to slowly beef up our current grid management and migrate to EV, instead of trying to integrate H2 everywhere? If the plan is renewables everywhere to power our homes, how would we convince the "people in charge" to simultaneously modify an entire infrastructure to include H2 also, which has nothing to do with powering housing. It seems like if the problem is "the grid can't handle it", its way easier to work on a solution for the grid and use renewables(since we need them anyway for non vehicles), than to figure out how to reliably get H2 everywhere, which is very vehicle specific. We can't assume the grid will always be coal, its on the way out. Also, as we transition to electric everything, battery recycling and manufacturing will increase efficiency as well(remember to take coal and ethanol out of the picture). And that is without mentioning that there is a ton of promising battery tech that does not use lithium. I think the air travel industry will always be a(very large!) edge case with their own solutions. Some planes still use leaded gas today! Could they run on H2? Sure, that sounds like a reasonable argument.
None of this is ever happening. Renewables are too expensive to rely on entirely for the production of grid energy, energy storage is far too expensive to make renewables viable for use as baseload generators, hydrogen vehicles and their refueling infrastructure are both far, FAR too expensive for 99% of the population, battery electric vehicles are still too expensive and too undesirable... None of that even begins to cover the issue of heating in homes and other buildings, which will have to transition to heat pumps, which are hugely expensive when compared to natural gas heaters. All of this is supposed to be happening at a time when the working class has been absolutely gutted of its buying power, thanks to the greed of the wealthy, so....yeah, not happening.
@@platin2148 Forcing all of this would just cause a collapse, as some of it simply doesn't work, while the rest simply isn't affordable. If you only give people the option to buy something that they can't afford to buy, they just wont buy it.
@@PistonAvatarGuy Or they take credit for it. But yeah i’m with you on that sad thing is that policy makers are so far away from reality that they don’t care. I wonder what will happen after they try this experiment with h2 in natural gas lines ohh yeah they close these down here in 2025. EVN a local energy supplier has now there energy production basically running at 100% and they still want them to shutdown all spare energy producer’s.
Big Ag in the USA can't even figure out how to do ethanol right. In Brazil, almost all cars have been running on 100% ethanol since the 1980s, but here in the U.S., the best we have is E85, which is still 15% gasoline, and is only widely available in the Midwest -- and only a small percentage of vehicles are designed to run on it. GM and Ford tried pushing Flex-Fuel E85 cars 10-15 years ago as a response to hybrids, but it went nowhere. And we didn't even totally phase out leaded gasoline until 1996!
The big problem with Ethanol is the amount of BTU’s it produces. What little money you save using ethanol blended gasoline is offset by the lower MPG you get. Pretty much makes it a wash. There’s just no financial benefit to the average consumer. And E85 is just worse yet.
Dianna Cowern on the Physics Girl channel is worth a look for hydrogen powered vehicles and energy storage, interesting in spite of the Toyota video sponsorship.
I once read somewhere that they're working on a sort of gelatinous paste that can absorb large amounts of hydrogen, so it can be stored in more of a liquid state without having to be pressurized. That's the golden ticket, right there.
@@Android-ng1wn sure but we didn't have to make it, its already done, everything on earth is solar powered if you want to go down that line of thinking, but with hydrogen we have to make the electricity first then convert it, this is very lossy and makes little sense for things like passenger cars
@@Android-ng1wn the difference with that loss is you didn’t start off with a great source to start with aka electricity so it’s not a loss in the same way
Problem is biofuels are already a dead end. Maybe CO2 -> synthetic fuel might be a stop gap measure for long haul transport but electric battery power is the go forward tech. To date the efficiency of hydrogen fuel cells is very low and the source of hydrogen is natural gas and energy intensive to create and the storage of hydrogen is hard. Most storage vessels leak due to the small molecular size. Finally to move the tail pipe to a central location does allow for management of the pollution or to later change from a dirty source to a clean one without forcing everyone to buy a new car. So let’s beef up the electrical grid and solve the transportation of electricity problem my plugs are waiting no upgrades required.
Hydrogen has 2 problems. 1, it is made from hydrocarbons today and the losses in producing hydrogen from electricity in the future are much higher than battery electric vehicles. 30 to 40% energy in to energy used at the end, vs 70 to 90% for electricity in batteries. Hydrogen COULD be clean at some time in the future but at the moment it is not, the big oil companies are investing in hydrogen far more than bio fuels. 2, You need to transport hydrogen via the roads in tankers, to the filling station where as you can fill up at home from the grid with electricity battery vehicles. Hydrogen is useful for some things but not heating or day to day transport.
That explains why they've made methanol illegal to buy in California. On a side note, the use of corn to make fuel has done nothing but raise the cost of food.
Great video. Everyone says the Hindenburg was this huge disaster, but it wasn't even. The first jets (De Havilland Comet) were dropping out of the sky with 100% fatality rate, and no one knew why; it happened multiple times and no one says jets are unsafe. It's stupid. Most of the people on the Hindenburg survived the stupid thing blowing up.
The real problem is that the human race, at its current population level is dependant on fossil fuel. There is no alternative which can replace the level of energy we get from fossil fuel. You cannot grow enough bio-fuel, there would not be enough land left over for food crops To go from electricity to liquid hydrogen is a very inefficient process. liquid hydrogen is technically difficult to transport and store. The trucks used to transport liquid hydrogen will them selves use a fair percentage of the fuel. Hydrogen fuel cells have been ten years away from mass production for the last thirty years and they still are. Going from electricity through an already existing distribution system to batteries in cars is far more efficient and there is plenty of spare capacity in the electricity generation process as most electric vehicles will charge over night. However, there are not the resources available to produce enough batteries to replace every gasoline/diesel vehicle with battery vehicles. We are dependant on oil. as oil runs out wars will be fought over the last few drops, most of the people not killed in those wars will die of starvation (80% of the world's population is dependant on mechanised farming). A very small percentage of the human race will remain who will have to revert to an agrarian society. We are a blip on the geological timescale, we are only a few generations away from a complete collapse.
I'm with you on the hydrogen as a fuel, in the intrim it can be used to run conventional ic engines which are manufactured easily making the change over far less traumatic.
You are correct. H2 as a basic power conveyance makes a lot of sense. Conveyance, yes, because, like batteries, it holds a portion of the energy of production for later consumption. The production chain is certainly more efficient than the current modalities and projections. The most outstanding benefit of H2 is the reduction of carbon in the cycle. This assumes that some carbon will be expended because solar/wind will _never_ supply all our energy needs ( all together now - high temp Thorium salt reactor). Of course, the only truly viable solution is to move ourselves into space. Smith was right -- we are a virus.
Renewables + grid storage + Nuclear will be capable of supplying us with all the power we need. You just need to look at Norway with 98% hydro power and France with 75% Nuclear power to know that it can be done. In the UK, on some stormy nights, wind has provided most of the power for 6 hours or so. More and bigger wind turbines are being deployed into the North Sea. The UK has almost stopped using coal.
You talk about Hydrogen like it is a fuel similar to gasoline however hydrogen is just another way to store energy like lithium batteries but it is several times less efficient. I agree with you though, I still think hydrogen will come out on top, we will overcome the technical issues with hydrogen before we deal with the mining issues with meeting the crazy levels of battery production that people expect. However the amount of energy we need to produce hydrogen for a "hydrogen economy" is insane, 4-5x the amount we are producing now. That wont be done green without nuclear power.
a) you should not use electricity from coal, oil or gas for your electric vehicle b) charging/discharging of a Li-ion battery can be as efficient as 90% c) electricity to electric motor the efficiency is also up to 90% d) splitting water to hydrogen by electrolysis is today at an efficiency of 70-80% e) your gas turbine which you mention follows the same thermodynamics that limits other combustion engines to about 30% efficiency f) with a turbine or combustion engine you need a gear box g) fuel cells would the reasonable way to go h) you are talking about a tank of liquid hydrogen - not likely, because you could not afford to keep it cryogenic. 300 bar pressure is what is reasonable, perhaps 700 bar, but it's still a gas. You need a 200 liter tank for a 300 mile ride, 4-5x bigger than a regular gasoline tank i) hydrogen is a tiny molecule which tends to diffuse easily out of pipes and tanks... j) an electric infrastructure is already partly there - a wide-spread net of hydrogen stations woule mean a significantly larger effort than reinforcing the existing electricity grid There ongoing developments in the electricity-assisted generation of methane and higher organics from water and carbon dioxide. That is what I would bet some money on.
For me as a car mechanic the hydrogen stuff is awesome. Lots more parts to repair than an electric car. Dont make me lose my job guys... On the boring electric cars nothing breaks. :)
It's a kineograph, or "flip book". They were common in amusement park arcades when I was a kid. You can make a tiny one yourself using the edge of the pages of a book. Change each preceeding drawing just a little, then flip through. I used to make cartoons in all my school books when I was little.
Bio fuels won’t last they’re inherently inefficient and that’s pretty much established fact, you’re a bit late on that one, they’re already on the way out. hydrogen is just too explosive, the pressure chambers required are too heavy and get the mix just slightly wrong at any stage and you get a bomb. You say “if only you knew” that’s a bit patronising frankly. You talk about inefficiency but your suggested fix is itself inherently inefficient.
I don't want a frickin' hydrogen engine in my car. I don't want a hybrid car. After 200 years, we should be done blowing stuff up in machines that have hundreds of moving parts to make them work and that all need maintenance. An electromotor only has one moving part. The only thing that will wear out in a brushless motor is the bearings, and those can be replaced or rebuilt. Biofuels are BS. There are forests that are getting cut down and shredded into woodchips to feed biofuel generators in Europe. I don't know about anyone else but I would LOVE to sit on an 8 ton lithium battery in a plane with solar cells and electric jet engines where I wouldn't need noise suppressing headphones to keep me from going insane flying from the USA to Europe for 10 hours.
You're welcome to try to make hydrogen tech actually efficient you know... If I have the choice between 90% roundtrip efficiency for batteries and 40% for Hydrogen... I know what I'll choose. This is such an uninformed position you're holding there.. to put it nicely.
I am not a scientist by any means ,but even I understand and have been saying for a long time ,that electric cars and other transportation ,are never going to become commonplace . Human nature alone dictates that in it's current state of delivery ie: charging stations, electric vehicles will NOT work . We are so used to filling up our cars in 5-10 minutes and being able to drive 400-600 miles with gasoline ,that even the notion people will suddenly be ok with only getting maybe 100 miles on a "charge " and then having to plug in for ( even with fast charging ) 30 minutes to 8 hours ,only to drive another 100 miles ...lunacy ...it will NEVER happen and those pushing for it are delusional . Thanks for voicing reason Fran !!
Fran reminded you the energy needed for that-you need to split the metals forming it, meaning you have to re-smelt the stuff. And that takes looots of energy ;-)
This is a problem no one mentions. But a gas engineer said the big problem with H2 is its so f-ing small it leaks out of things that are air tight at 700 bar. A car that is new - great. But what will a hydrogen car be like in 15 years??? Is it going to fill your garage with H2 and detonate when you turn on the light switch...
There are cars on the road right now that run on hydrogen, using a hydrogen-cell, and there are hydrogen pumps at some gas stations. So the safety aspect has already been solved. It can always be improved of course, but storage, transport and pumps are safe and usable! And you're absolutely right, it would be in all our interests if the hydrogen technology was to be developed faster, instead of so many in between technologies. And wind / solar energy is still very important to generate hydrogen! It's safer and less expensive to store hydrogen as opposed to using batteries. I was somewhat weary of hydrogen tanks in cars, but then I found out about the technology they developed to do so safely. That was the biggest hurdle, storing it safely.
Outside of the USA, green electricity generation is a reality. In Scotland, we generate 97% of our electricity needs from renewables. So using batteries in EVs to make that green electricity portable in a car is more efficient than using that green electricity to make hydrogen.
Allso in the UK they are allready experimenting with hydrogen as a replacement for natual gas ,one town in Newcastle is having 20% H2 added to there gas supply.
The 97% statistic is very misleading. What it means in reality is, when the wind blew, Scotland generated 200 to 300% of demand and exported the excess, but on days when the wind didn't blow, generated a few percent and exported nothing - a completely different thing and a misuse of statistics imho. Wind is unreliable so, until some method of storing the energy efficiently is found, then some other form of generation to provide a balanced supply will need to be provided.
The BIG problem with hydrogen is that it's inefficient. Why take expensive high grade electricity and make hydrogen, with huge losses? That's only feasible for special applications like space rockets and so with no other alternative. And for bio fuels, the win is that we can use them in existing cars, machines and equipment. With hydrogen we would have to scrap everything and buy new stuff. Totally unrealistic that will ever happen. New cars should run on batteries! Existing ones on HVO100 or ethanol, and maybe we can use hydrogen for aeroplanes and such.
The speed of said decomposition is what I find really scary. You're basically driving a bomb. Gas is also problematic and Li-Ion is beyond toxic when it burns. Least dangerous would be Diesels but they have environmental implications.. My favorite is probably Ethanol but it's way too costly (environmental impact) to produce. They all suck one way or another
The classic example people use is the Hindenburg but that didn't explode. It burned fast, yes and the death rate was 35 out of 97 passengers and crew but a bomb it wasn't. Also remember that contained hydrogen in a fabric bubble not a secure tank as today's hydrogen vehicles are.
@@ColinJonesPonder Did not explode because the gas bags were 99% hydrogen, so it did not explode, except for the interface to the atmosphere, where it was burning very fast. Most of the fire came from the flammable skin of the airship, and the gas bags themselves burning, the hydrogen went straight up as it burnt.
Diesel is safer till it catches fire then it is as dangerous as any other flammable liquid fuel. Liquid fuels disperse along the ground carrying their flames with them. Hydrogen will rapidly disperse, mainly vertically, in an incident causing a leak.
The other problem with biofuels is they’re taking up agricultural land which could otherwise be used to grow food. Land which is becoming scarcer as climate change bites, and soil erosion occurs. Which is driving the destruction of rainforest to use as fertile land at the moment - and exacerbating climate change!
For the record, I have sat on gasoline and LPG tanks without a problem, though I prefer the safety profile of light gasoil (diesel fuel). LPG is relatively safe as well because in case of a fire the tank blows off its contents in a controlled way - maybe that can be done for hydrogen as well.
Gasoline - fill up your tank in 5 minutes and then drive 300 miles. Electric - fast charge your batteries in 45 minutes and then drive 300 miles. In the words of Buffy, originally of vampire slaying fame, "Does the word DUH mean anything to you?"
15:00 irrelevant, electrical grids always grow, secondly, there are less steps in changing an electric car battery, you are literally making the energy on the roof of your house.
As a kid in the late 70's I was drawing cars that I imagined ran on hydrogen (combustion I think, it is long time ago) I guess I was fascinated with the idea that by using hydrogen the emmission was water... so no damage done. We really need to move fast to transition to an energy storage device like hydrogen to store the energy that we create using green energy sources. An other advantage of hydrogen over lithiumion batteries is charging your car will likely cause a lot more time than filling it up with hydrogen for quite some time yet, not even considering the lack of infrastructure to be able to charge the amount of vehicles that are used these days. Battery weight and size are also an issue of course. Green energy does have the issue that you still need to build and maintain the infrastructure to produce/gather, store and deliver this energy, but so does fosil fuel or biofuel. Big money is still causing a lot of damage and delays we really do not need.
Hydrogen is really difficult to work with, and especially to transport, and has a low overall system efficiency. Electrolysers have an efficiency of around 66%. But then you either have to compress the hydrogen, or liquefy it, because it has such a low density. This uses between 10- 30% of the available energy. And every time you transfer compressed hydrogen, you lose another 5-10% of the energy. And then fuel cells are less than 50% efficient when near their maximum output. The problem of transporting hydrogen is so difficult, that it might be as efficient to make ammonia and then convert it back to hydrogen. So while hydrogen will no doubt be part of the answer, it is hard to see how it can be the wholesale replacement for hydrocarbon fuels.
Personally, I prefer the idea of biofuels to hydrogen. My pet idea if genetically engineering a plant to produce biodiesel, or even just really large amounts of oil. That's effectively a self maintaining solar panel with its own energy storage that grows from the ground.
Yep it is same as the water that gets to be vapor when we extract lithium from the underground waters. And that on a incredibly huge scale + most likely there where there isn’t a lot of water either..
