The Shocking Truth About Hydrogen Energy: What They Don't Want You to Know
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- Опубликовано: 30 сен 2024
- Cutting through the hydrogen hype! Are we getting a hydrogen economy or is Elon Musk right to call hydrogen fuel cells "fool cells?"
Probably the answer is somewhere in the middle, but what are the applications with real potential, and what is just hot air? In this video series I am going to be looking into individual applications and talking to experts to try to figure out what makes sense.
This is the first video, where I have done some basic engineering and commercial analysis which forms the basis of my initial opinion on hydrogen. The plan is that I learn and update my opinion throughout the series as I learn more!
You can find a written version of this on Medium, which also has links to all my sources:
/ cutting-through-the-hy...
#engineering #stem #educational
Sources for images:
00:14 Water to hydrogen reaction By JSquish - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikime...
01:09 'Integrated modelling of variable renewable energy-based power supply in Europe,'
Energy, Volume 123, 2017, Pages 173-188
01:20 Tumut 3 By Cmh at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikime...
01:21 Medium and low pressure storage in the hydrogen station pad outside the ESIF. Photo by Dennis Schroeder / NREL 40081
03:45 IEA (2019), The Future of Hydrogen, IEA, Paris, All rights reserved
05:16 IEA (2019), The Future of Hydrogen, IEA, Paris, All rights reserved
06:40 Energy 101 video U.S. Department of Energy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
11:00 Natural gas demand in Europe in 2017 and short term expectations, The Oxford Institute of for Energy Studies Anouk Honoré
11:24 Steel forging By Payton Chung from DC, USA - Fiery Finkl Forging, CC BY 2.0, commons.wikime...
Thanks for watching the video Green Hydrogen Explained - Is it all it’s hyped up to be? | Engineering with Rosie
I have heard it said by others that Electrons are easy to transport and molecules (even of hydrogen) are MUCH hard to transport. I think the logistics of the H2 economy are what are getting the existing Petrochemical distribution companies excited and so pro Hydrogen. They have big plants for manufacturing, big trucks for distribution and big forecourts on the streets for sale of H2. Most of which will become dead assets in a couple of decades when 80% of our cars can be charged at home. We are on the cusp of a massive upheaval and H2 is not the solution to most of the problem. Excellent video thanks
For the transportation of molecules and electrons I think in most practical cases the opposite is true. I know that in the Netherlands the infrastructure for electricity costs about 5 time as much is the transportation of natural gas for the same capacity. And try to stick electrons in a ship, it's possible but loading and unloading will take a while.
@@joostvandergun5518 LOL very good points, but also transportation is only a marginal part of the final cost of energy. Much of the cost of hydrocarbons goes to those who are gifted it by geography, with prices effectively set by global demand. Similarly there may in future be a good business case to ship green hydrogen produced by low population countries with abundant renewable resources. This could have very interesting effects on the balance of supply and demand, so perhaps the fossil fuel suppliers should not get so exited.
Good points, here in the UK I think the forecourts already make more revenue from the convenience store than from selling fuel. The biggest UK forecourt chain just brought a major supermarket, so it looks like maybe they are already shifting their business model away from liquid fuels and you call this just right.
Electrons take a long time to charge.. not practical for practical people. 😊
Hydrogen is an economy, and should not be shackled with green hydrogen.. batteries are for golf carts, of grid with year round solar.. rest is just patch work..
Carbon tax is a scam..
One other problem with hydrogen is embrittlement. Hydrogen causes embrittlement of the metal leading to eventual failure. I don’t think this can be ignored if we plan to use existing natural gas infrastructure to pump hydrogen.
maybe the Hydrogen could be blended with hydrocarbons until that problem is solved, a natural gas hydrogen blend.or ceramic engine components,browns gas is quite destructive is pure hydrogen the same?
@Wildly Optimistic
A huge amount of hydrogen is already used in industry as Rosie pointed out. All the details of how to store and transport hydrogen in low carbon steel, etc. are well known and it's done safely without issues.
You’re right that hydrogen is used in industry already and that the issue of embrittlement is well known. Natural gas already has some hydrogen in it. As a case in point, the company I used to work for makes fuel metering valves for industrial gas turbine engines. For the most part they burn natural gas with some exceptions. We have to plan for a hydrogen content in the natural gas, I believe the specs called for around 20%. The issue we faced was the call for what they called “high hydrogen” where the percentage is much greater. This requires using different metals that resist embrittlement.
All I am saying is that where you have existing infrastructure, is it suitable for high hydrogen gas. If not then those pipelines and pumping stations would need to be retrofitted to handle it. That could be extensive and very expensive. This issue cannot be ignored. As stated, our customers are well aware of the push for high hydrogen and taking steps to prepare for it.
There are metallurgical solutions to hydrogen embrittlement so this is not a show stopper
@@wildlyoptimistic1352
The existing infrastructure does not have to be replaced to use hydrogen because the green hydrogen can be generated on site by electrolyzers and consumed on the spot @Wildly Optimistic
The existing infrastructure does not have to be replaced to use hydrogen because the green hydrogen can be generated on site by electrolyzers and consumed on the spot. The gas utilities want to maintain their market share and are adamantly against generating hydrogen on site. They demand that their existing infrastructure be reused so they can keep their market share. The switch to hydrogen, like most other paradigm changes, is fraught with political maneuvering for financial gain. And it's extremely bad when fossil fuels must be ended and replaced by sustainable energy. Naysayers be damned; the changes must occur or it will be the end of civilization as we know it.. The gas utilities want to maintain their market share and are adamantly against generating hydrogen on site. They demand that their existing infrastructure be reused so they can keep their market share. The switch to hydrogen, like most other paradigm changes, is fraught with political maneuvering for financial gain. And it's extremely bad when fossil fuels must be ended and replaced by sustainable energy. Naysayers be damned; the changes must occur or it will be the end of civilization as we know it.
Congrats Rosie!!...indeed a very clear, rational and comprehensive analysis about hydrogen economy.
One of the best videos I saw on hydrogen. Also remark that it is not easy to store hydrogen because the atoms are so small that they escape through many other elements traditionally used as containers or piping. Spot on explanation about do’s and don’t s, thank you
And that's even before the word embrittlement was uttered...
@@derloos Thank you for pointing that out, English is not my native language.
@@paulbrouyere1735 gosh, sorry, I wasn't nitpicking at all, I'm not a native speaker either 😂🤦♂️
I only meant to say that yes, storage is hard, and so is the transmission. I've recently read a couple of research piece summaries about the embrittlement, and they said 4..7 mm deep penetration (sorry!) of hydrogen isn't a problem for the modern pipes but it may be a problem for the intermediate compressor sub-stations.
@gautha pandith
The losses in transmission are no more than 5%. You're making false statements.
www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Energy%20Information%20Administration,States%20in%202016%20through%202020.
Hydrogen has been stored and transported for almost a hundred years without leakage or embrittlement problems. These armchair pundits are making invalid claims that have no meaning because all this stuff has been dealt with for decades.
Thanks for creating the perfect video to share with anyone with well-intentioned but excessive enthusiasm for hydrogen as the solution to our energy problems!
Amen!
I see it as an emergency energy reserve. It seems pretty reasonable for governments to pay some regular fee to keep a certain amount of hydrogen storage available. Then they can deploy it in cases where other storage methods run low and demand management tops out. They can still buy electricity at the lowest rates and the rates they sell at will be quite high as well if it's an emergency.
Yes I think you get this exactly right, this is what already happens with natural gas. Gas is much more expensive than renewables but it's also extremely valuable, as a bulk on-demand reserve, which is not needed often. So the fuel cost is not actually very important, because the electricity produced commands a very high price, at those few times when renewables and battery storage are not available. It needs to be swapped to a low carbon alternative, like Hydrogen. Its expensive to produce, but it can be stored in huge quantities very cheaply, so it's better for this occasional, high-demand, profile, than things like batteries, which need to be utilized regularly, to pay for their much higher investment cost per storage density.
@@enemyofthestatewearein7945 Interesting point. Basically you're saying we could use h2 as peaker plants (so localized) or for longterm storage (maybe seasonal). I believe we'd need to check the economics against alternatives. Looking at what's happening in Australia for instance, with battery storage, they're using batteries to replace peaker plants successfully. Su much that the investment broke even in less than 2 years. Not sure h2 could do the same. Maybe someone can shed some light on it?
As a chemist, I'm all in for green h2 to replace old fashion brown one for steel, cement and ammonia production. This has a double effect: decarbonize and bring prices lower. In a matter of a few years we could have cheap green h2 and afford to use it as seasonal storage or else. We need a lot of renewables in the first place thou
It wont work, because hydrogen cannot be contained, it will boil off, even through metal tanks. You will pay to constantly re-fill your "emergency reserve". For emergencies, we can just do what Germany does, burn fossil fuels. All that will cost is the mothball maintenance of an already built power station.
I am not a technical person but I think Rosie did a good job with this. I have seen videos stating that either hydrogen is the answer to all of our prayers or concerns or it is a total fool's errand. I think the truth lies between these two extremes.
Storing energy in pumped water is a great use of hydrogen (if every 2 atoms are combined with an oxygen atom already.)
it also only outputs water and electricity!
@@Maric18 Yes, and no Heat, whereas a Combined Heat and Power( CHP) HFC will provide both!
You have made many, well explained reasons why cautious optimizm is appropriate.
Your Hydrogen needs a friend to share another electron with, it would make both of them happier.
I don't see h2 as a good option in the aviation sector due to the extremely low volumetric density... but I'm also not an engineer, so we'll see how off i am
We are able to make artificial kerosin out of it.
@@Atef-ph6cs kerosin?
Assuming you mean kerosene, kerosene isn't hydrogen. So it wouldn't really fit in with this discussion.
Additionally, the losses from converting hydrogen to kerosene aren't small either, meaning you have to pump a significant amount more energy into its production than you can hope to recover. Basically, a shitty battery.
Rooftop solar avoids power distribution costs.
EV batteries can accumulate rooftop electric power every day.
Central electric power is concentrated power that is then dispersed to the ends of the grid.
Hydrogen is concentrated power that needs to be distributed.
In both cases of concentrated power that ends up as electric power at point of use, EXPENSIVE infrastructure is required and LARGE NEW EXPENSIVE infrastructure.
The existing grid is perfect when the home portion of the grid load is removed. UNLOAD the grid.
Home demand is 40% of the grid.
We have new existing technology and we have lost a huge amount of time for the climate action we must achieve.
Hydrogen is seen as a taxable revenue by governments.
Yes governments need income but let's face all the matters we are deciding on.
Australia is the same latitudes as the Sahara Desert in the north hemisphere.
8million billion m2 of sunshine.
Politically stable.
A major problem is getting the energy back out of hydrogen as a direct vehicle fuel.
Hydrogen is different from *_fossil fuels_* in a few VERY significant ways.
a. Unlike fossil fuels, Hydrogen doesn't "burn" as such, it detonates. The mechanics of any reasonable conversion of an internal combustion engine (ICE) will easily be overloaded by the abrupt impulses of detonation well before in can respond inertially. A bit like bouncing your head off concrete as opposed to a pillow. It's nearly impossible to bounce your head off concrete gently enough to be comfortable.
Engines will fail rather quickly. Don't expect to get 300'000+ miles out of them. Maybe not even 10k. *
b. Fossil fuels are basically _low_ yield explosives in a controlled burn, much slower than detonation, allowing ICE pistons, cranks, and other moving parts time to overcome inertia, to move and change direction.
This also increases the time that torque can be asserted on the pistons' travel length and thus to the wheels, increasing mechanical life, smoothing power transfer (ride comfort), traction, and controllability of the vehicle.
c. Hydrogen dissolves into and embrittles many metals including steels and can cause premature failure.
d. Moving parts generally need lubricants. IECs use oil for lubrication. ICE pistons 'seal' the cylinder compression with rings, but the seal isn't perfect. In a modified ICE hydrogen will mix with and hydrogenize the lubricant oils causing immediate loss of lubrication and engine failure.
These are fundamental to modern ICEs so revolutionary engine designs would be necessary. IMO these designs are extremely unlikely.
* _not to mention micro.detonations which can adversely affect turbines as well._
Maybe get to the root of *who* is funding all the hydrogen research and development... During the last hydrogen fad in 2012, my energy engineering lecturer was very keen to point out this cycle of pushing hydrogen every few years when the petroleum industry needed a distraction. Whether they needed to counter the promise of non-oil technology, or just raise their share prices, its self fulfilling either way.
As James Kunsler said: "there isn't going to be a hydrogen economy. Forget it. Its not gonna happen". Simple - now can we move on from there petroleum industry obfuscations?
Hydrogen is the tiniest probability cloud, and that's part of why it's so hard to confine and store. Because of this, hydrogen never made sense to me.
Then I found out where most of the hydrogen comes from, and it (the hydrogen hype) all made perfect sense.
Hello Rosie, first thank you for that neutral an honest review. Most of my concerns are confirmed.
But - to be open to new technologies - I'm interested in "green fuels". One side of the medal, as I assume, hydrogene is mostly the base of green fuels. On the other side - for transportation uses (trucking, airplanes) these use cases need much more dense and easy to handle fuels - perhaps green fuels.
I'm German - you made me cry in anger: You mentioned, that in Germany only 2% of green electricity ist wasted . On the other hand there are huge fights about these - for example the wind energy shall rise "a little bit" - but no one in the government cares about the fact that many old wind turbines need to be "re powered" - but this needs a new license. Most of that old sites would not get a new license due to hard limitations. So - calculating the new systems and substract the old going off systems many are afraid that the wind energy in Germany will be less in near future.
Surplus renewable energy isn't free, current levelised cost of electricity for renewables assumes that the grid can always take the electricity. If it can't you are curtailing the renewables and reducing its capacity factor and this increasing its cost of generation. If you create a new user for surplus generation from renewables at best you get the price back down to the one you currently pay.
I think government is very exited about hydrogen because of tax revenues. Their return could be much greater than say, investing in passive housing.
On driving vehicles charging times typically is not an issue at all. Normal vehicles have battery ranges that last the whole day. So you simply refill at night. Or if on a long range journey you combine topping up the battery with some lunch break. The same is true for heavy duty vehicles. While loading or unloading them, they could easily be recharged as well. So the ubiquity of electric power will easily outperform any hydrogen use case, Vehicles with wheels will all get electric soon. The only reason we don’t already see trucks on the roads in numbers is, that the obviously needed gigantic amounts of batteries are not available, yet.
Hydrogen will be used in steel production or other chemical processes to replace coal or natural gas. In transport application I do not see that much of a potential. Maybe on airplanes. But even there batteries are coming close to be a viable solution already.
"Can I haz subsidies?"
"So you can produce hydrogen with renewable energy?"
"yeeeeess"
"Natural gasso taim!"
Regarding the economic incentives to build more renewable solar generation. It can still be profitable to overbuild solar if the price per installed watt keeps falling so dramatically.
Especially if you can export the energy.
at 36% efficiency? There is no way you will be able to compete with fossil fuels at 36 percent efficiency. You'd be better off shipping charged batteries at 95% eff. At least they don't leak hydrogen during transport.
@@garethbaus5471 You won't be exporting hydrogen around the world mate. You would need to cool it to liquid form to put it on a tanker. That's gonna take you to probably 10% efficiency.
@@technokicksyourass I wasn't necessarily advocating for the use of hydrogen to export the energy. I am not a huge fan of using hydrogen for energy storage, for exactly the reason you listed.
Wow, my thoughts exactly… for storage air liquefaction seems more efficient. Hydrogen is also dangerous. The flame speed is really high, as witnessed by the destructive explosions of storage facilities…
12' 18" "It will be very easy to get perverse outcomes if we don't carefully target hydrogen to the right applications where it has the most potential to reduce emissions." Exactly. A clear exposition once again. Thanks
Your concerns about fossil fuel companies and resources dependent economies embracing hydrogen production that still emits significant carbon are spot on and already materialising. The West Australian government just announced a new Woodside hydrogen project in Kwinana on land provided at no cost by the government. It will produce grey hydrogen, dressed up as blue hydrogen, since they claim emissions will be offset. If true, the offsets will no doubt be paid for by the Federal Government's Climate Solutions Fund that pays polluters. As a further greenwashing measure there will be a token green hydrogen electrolyser which it is claimed can produce up to 1/3 of the hydrogen output. This will be a perverse outcome, heavily subsidised by taxpayers, that does not reduce emissions. Further it will make it less likely that true green hydrogen projects (such as those promised by Andrew Forrest) will be able to compete as their costs will be significantly higher.
Yeah I read that they're trying to change the definition of blue hydrogen to not just mean with carbon capture, but with any kind offset. It really just reinforces a point that I've been making about blue hydrogen: it is just grey hydrogen with CCS, why not put the CCS on an already-existing power plant and then let the new grey hydrogen's business case be assessed on its own (polluting) merits? It's such rubbish, but I can't see it working because our hydrogen will mostly be for export, and countries have no reason to change to hydrogen except if it has lower emissions than what they're currently using.
I'll do an update video on blue hydrogen soon (I'm just finishing up a few on carbon usage/ storage first). It's all pretty depressing really 😥
I see the red flags similar, but not quite the same:
1. Once installed, there is zero incentive for a solar panel to be turned off. It has to be regulated for grid stability. In Germany the same solar panel provides 10 times the power in july that it provides in january. So people are already looking for what to do with surplus solar.
2. As you pointed out there is a much larger need for natural Gas in Winter in northern countries. Peaple have to heat their homes. At the same time Solar provides only a small fraction to nothing.
Some renewable fuel ( hydrogen or derivated Ammonia or methane) is needed through the winter. If we use fuel cell small scale cogeneration for heating and electricity, a large portion of the conversion losses can be saved.
3. Since there is no Battery for seasonal Storage availible, and a lot of extra electricity and heat need goes together in winter, hydrogen or derivated fuel is currently the only technical vialble option for a 100% renewable Grid in Regions off the Equator.
Thank you for the good video,
I agree 100% on road transportation, that case is already hopeless for hydrogen.
While there exists short periods with negative electricity prices, they are by far not enough to warrant a large scale wasteful hydrogen extraction. It would only make sense if/when, in a hypothetical future, a good economic case can be made for setting up solar panels or windmills for the main purpose of hydrogen production, and/or the hydrogen can be used for applications where the much higher energy price is warranted due to logistical or other challenges. Obviously, energy production from other sources are already being turned down to match solar peaks, and the lower amount of winter and nighttime solar is significantly mitigated by higher availability of wind energy in these periods. While long-term (seasonal) hydrogen storage sounds nice, it is still a "challenge to be solved", unless significant additional losses and leaks are accepted.
The one hole in the 'Hydrogen for winter domestic heat' (as opposed to high grade industrial heat) use case is that excess summer VRE electricity can be stored via deep storage Pumped Hydro (where topography allows) - which may be 70-85% round trip efficient. Electrified heating with heat pump (COP >4) in that case will already achieve the decarbonisation goals of domestic heating at lower cost rather than creating new H2 infrastructure to achieve the same end.
@@andrewpintar1620 Do you have numbers for the potential energy storage of theese systems. I can see the large elevation drops produce nice peak power, but the cavern sizes aren't close to big enough to cover the storage need for a whole winter.
The third most important thing (after air and water) is food, and agriculture uses huge amounts of hydrogen in making fertilizer. Now, the hydrogen is made using fossil fuels, mostly methane, and the fossil fuels must be eliminated ASAP. The hydrogen must be made by other than fossil fuels and the governments must force this to happen, by carbon taxes or by laws.
Rosie spoke a lot about the economics, but the "green premium", the additional cost of going green, must be dealt with by governments. The economics will come as various methods are developed to solve the needs for hydrogen *without* generating CO2.
There is no time for ruminating about this. It must be done at all costs and the details will be worked out as it's done. There is no argument among scientists about this; we have to get the ball rolling immediately.
Hydrogen plane makes way more sense than hydrogen car or electrical storage
Yes, it is called a Zeppelin.
H2 for air travel is not that great, consider the tanks where it needs to be stored, very high pressure tanks, which basically says cylinders. This tank form is not easy to accommodate in the wings, or in the airplane body, and the huge volume they will require. Also the tank cannot have any stress, as a leak might be problematic.
Metal smelting really seems the most practical application, metal ores must have the oxygen removed from them to become metal and hydrogen is the only chemical able to do this other then carbon monoxide. Even if you were to electrically melt ore you would not have smelted it unless a chemical capable of stripping oxygen is applied. As system that collects and stores solar thermal energy would be most promising here as it provides the process heating for smelting and allows heat energy to substitute for electricity in electrolysis which raises it's efficiency, and it means the electrolysis is able to run much more consistently.
The only other application I see being practical is some long term seasonal energy storage. This might actually mean synthesizing hydrocarbons and simply storing them in large conventional tanks allowing conventional burning of it in a turbine. Hydrogen would thus just be an intermediate step in the process.
Great comments! There's a big green steel project (using hydrogen) starting up here in Australia, I hope to get a tour of it some day.
Making fertiliser that used to be sourced from natural gas
This reminds me of the cheap flashlights that are battery operated. They almost give you flash light so you have to buy the disposable batteries. 35% efficiency for hydrogen and the company supplying the source of energy makes profit off the least efficient process.
The claim at 6:24 that battery storage can achieve 95% efficiency needs to be supported. According to the EIA (see quote below), measured round-trip efficiency in 2019 was 82%. The article is available online here: www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46756
"According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA),
in 2019, the U.S. utility-scale battery fleet operated with an average
monthly round-trip efficiency of 82%, and pumped-storage facilities
operated with an average monthly round-trip efficiency of 79%.
"
Does the 82% figure includes charger and inverter losses? I guess it does. Li batteries are 90% or more in general, so it not 100% incorrect what she said, but the 82% is more realistic.
Nice video :-) Another problem with hydrogen for passenger cars is the fueling infrastructure. It will be much more expencive to build that charging stations, and I believe with the current tech, a fueling station takes about 15 min to repressurize. Thus, they can only serve about 3 cars pr. hour.
Absolutely correct! Of course, you can increase the number of pressure tanks, and the power of the compressor pressurizing them, but then, you also increase the cost of the hydrogen fueling station substantially... and this cost is already atrocious: around $1M for a capacity of refueling 3 car per hour. A (Tesla) fast DC charger (aka Supercharger) can also refuel about 3 cars per hour, but costs only around $45'000 to install!!! Furthermore, EVs are being recharged 80-90% of the time at home or at work, vs HFC vehicles 100% of the time at hydrogen fueling station! The total investment for a network of hydrogen-fueling stations offering the same service than a network of fast DC chargers is 50-100 times greater!
There is just NO case for hydrogen in light road transport!
Great video! My guess is that government and industry back hydrogen because this way the seem to do something green without actually doing anything at all.
That was jolly interesting. You explained your views clearly and succinctly and explained your reasoning intelligently. Thank you.
After working in the sales and project development of PV systems for 10 years, I can say that you are spot on, when it comes to personal usage. But hydrogen might prove valuable in the future for logistics as you mentioned. I think off-grid PV systems can be used here (where you have energy costs of around 0.03-0.04 €/kWh), with on-site hydrogen stations to fill the trucks/ships/planes.
It is a very difficult gas to deal with after produced. I looked at this over a decade ago with former engineers of a major petrochemical company.
FTR, I do know about electrolytic separation and use in Fuel Cells as Dow Chemical with free hydrogen produced from its Chlor Alkali process went back to using as supplement boiler fuel instead of a 5MW fuel cell after a brief trial and massive press release while I had an offices in their plants.
10:35 But you still need to get the hydrogen to where it's needed. If a area is difficult to connect to an electric grid in a efficient way, wouldn't that problem will be exponential with trying to get hydrogen from that area? If you send the hydrogen via pipe, wouldn't loss from leaks be a big issue? And if vehicles driving on roads exclusive for this purpose are used, that's really wasteful, better to connect via long distance wire.
10:51 Similar problem here. How do you collect and get the hydrogen to where it's needed without too much waste? You avoid the cost of undersea cables only to trade it for the cost of... boats? used to collect the hydrogen then further land transport necessary to get it to it's final destination.
All good points, thanks for commenting. I am working on a video about hydrogen transport through natural gas pipelines, stay tuned for that one I hope to release within a week.
@@EngineeringwithRosie
But doesn't hydrogen being so much smaller than natural gas leak much more? Also are natural gas lines easier to lay than electrical wires? Why would that be?
@@firstlast-cs6eg yep, leakage is an issue due to small molecule size. And the idea is to use existing gas pipelines, not install new ones.
Sounds like you will be interested in what my gues has to say on the topic :-)
@@EngineeringwithRosie Thanks for a great video!
Many large cities have reticulated gas networks. If these were built before the middle of the 20th century, they were originally built for "coal gas" or "town gas", and the urban landscape was littered with gasometers used to store and distribute gas. When town gas was replaced with natural gas, existing distribution pipes were used. Town gas was typically 40-50% hydrogen, so the issues with pipes being embrittled by hydrogen-rich gas were well understood back then. It's really "back to the future" with the proposals to inject hydrogen into the natural gas reticulation network.
The hype around the "hydrogen economy" is likely in part due to the petroleum industry looking for a way to save stranded gas assets - just add a bit of CCS to the existing steam methane reforming (SMR) plants and Bob's your uncle! Unfortunately (as with CCS added on to coal-fired power stations) it only succeeds in making the production process less efficient (and thus less competitive with electrolysis).
One interesting alternative to SMR is a process under development to split methane into hydrogen gas plus solid carbon (as graphite) rather than hydrogen gas + CO2 as is the case with SMR. This has the potential to offset process cost with the value of the graphite "waste" product. They are currently building a pilot plant in WA to use methane from a waste water processing plant as feedstock.
hazergroup.com.au/about/#hazerprocess
Thanks for making a video about hydrogen which is not pure hype. Great job!
At last - a sensible video about hydrogen and all its shortfalls. Batteries are far more efficient at storing surplus electricity than the production, storage and use of hydrogen. Hydrogen cars are a case in point; expensive to but, expensive to run, inefficient and still require a battery for acceleration boosting and energy recuperation, when braking.
0:38 Now is the time for Hydrogen to shine???
It has been doing that nicely for billions of years already
I agree hydrogen passenger cars don't make sense.
First to argue against myself. I've heard the case that as bad as hydrogen can be for passenger cars, with the many inefficiencies, it's still more efficient than a ICE (internal combustion engine) With a HV (hydrogen vehicles), you can get the advantages of ICE but cleaner. That is, very fast refueling and long range. (since EV[electric vehicles] have the battery issue and very fast charging has issues I've heard) Also the process of burning hydrogen produces heat, like ICE, which is a advantage in areas that get really cold as EV have to waste alot of their energy just keeping the humans warm and the windows defrosted (though arguably it's not necessary to heat the whole vehicle cabin, directed heat on seats etc. could allow more efficiency in cold environments with EV) But with ICE and HV, the waste heat can be used to warm the cabin.
Also EV's, those batteries require rare elements, there is not enough of the rare elements needed to go full EV, at the moment last I heard. Also some of these elements are found almost exclusively in very problematic areas where buying from means supporting dictators and contributing to slave labor as well as bad environmental practices. Though to be fair, rare elements are needed for all sorts of things including stuff in ICE and HV. Tessla and others have been working hard to improve battery technology, and they have also given effort to reduce dependency on rare elements.
EV's already have infrastructure for charging, it's called any electrical outlet. Regular outlets might be slow, but cars spend alot of time sitting around as we sleep, work etc. and for regular use, a regular electric outlet is enough. The batteries in EV can also be used to even out electricity supply.
On the other hand, infrastructure for HVs is almost none existent. Massive effort, expense, construction (thus environmental impact) would be needed to make HV practical, with no promise that it would catch on. if you can lure someone from buying ICE, it would likely be to get EV. But for some massive hydrogen refueling network to make sense, you'd need a massive switch to HV. Some half way effort would not work. And then you'd run into hydrogen supply issues and alot of it would have to come from dirty sources.
Rosie makes the best case against passenger HV's though she doesn't state it directly. There are alot of better uses for hydrogen. If we have some extra hydrogen gotten from extra green energy, that hydrogen already has uses, it can go to those existing, and up and coming uses. Uses that don't need building extensive hydrogen refueling networks. (like if a town has a airport, it has one, not a network of it everywhere demanding getting it everywhere)
Tesla's have good range and their charging network covers the entire USA. Still, the mass market has not converted to BEV. In 2020, BEV only made up 1.8% of the market share in the U.S. Why are 98 out of every 100 cars sold still ICE cars? That is the question we must answer to convert our transportation industry to zero emissions. If hydrogen was available at all gas stations, do you think it could convert more than 2% of buyers to go zero emissions?
@@k1fizz BEV?
@@firstlast-cs6eg battery electric vehicles
@@k1fizz As opposed to? All EVs use batteries, even hybrids.
@@firstlast-cs6eg hydrogen EV's don't use batteries to store the bulk of the energy.
Compressed CO2 is better (cheaper, safer, efficiently) to store green electric energy. Ammonia is better (cheaper, efficiently) to transport it. Sodium-ion battery "will" be better for cars than H2.
As long as electrolysis is the production mechanism then the maximum efficiency that can be achieved is equal to 60% as this is reflects the energy requirement to break the hydrogen/oxygen bond with is about 40% greater than the energy the liberated hydrogen holds. This ignores losses, storage, transmission and conversion back to energy again. This means there is another generation method needed for green hydrogen, not electrolysis.
Well analysed, bravo
Well put Rosie! I keep thinking that storage, transport and piping hydrogen is another red flag. H2 molecules are smaller than the gaps between molecules of most other materials. So leakage is a massive problem! Like containing sand in vessels made from apples....
I have not yet had a chance to watch this video. That said, I wanted to 'throw this out there' regarding Hydrogen Fuel Cells vs. Batteries for ground vehicles.
Switching to all-battery vehicles means either replacing ALL the vehicles, or ripping out their existing drive trains and replacing them with batteries and electric motors.
Existing internal combustion engine-powered vehicles can already be converted to running on hydrogen. I know spark ignition reciprocating engines and gas turbines can burn hydrogen. AFAIK so can Wankel Rotaries and Diesels.
Since an infrastucture for H² would be needed to support H² Fuel Cells anyway, such a system would immediately go into operation, {probably} decades before a majority fleet of H² Fuel Cells was operating.
{Just my two cents.}
Taking Carbon Costs into account, I think Hydrogen is about as efficient as Fossil Fuels.
Considering they BOTH get their energy from Hydrogen....is that a real surprise?
We barely get 35% of the energy out of fuel in a combustion engine....plus the carbon etc.
Also you didn't mention how dangerous Hydrogen Leakage is as a greenhouse gas.
What about WATER consumption???? In A paper written in Alberta Canada by Rain Saulnier, BSc, MASc. it is estimated at at 1980 gal. Of water are needed to produce 1 metric ton of hydrogen. Minimum! what does that mean for green hydrogen production in deserts where abundant sun and wind are available for electricity generation. Plug power’s plant in Arizona and other hydrogen hubs proposed in Texas are an example. How about you drill down on this issue. Thanks. Loyal follower.
Rosie, please review recent DOE (Feb 2021) announcement of catalyst boosted ambient temperature-pressure hydrogenation-dehydrogenation for LOHC technology, has implication for energy storage and carrier (e.g. repurpose fossil fuel pipeline infrastructure); there's now several emerging LOHC companies both European and Asian; can LOHC energy tech make the leap to be scaled up or down efficiently as energy cache/carrier for a true distributed hydrogen economy? Why not emulate Nature's millions-year Darwin development of energy cache/carrier metabolic systems of the role of biological ATP molecule and catalytic enzymes?
1. You state without evidence that wind and solar companies wouldn’t produce their product if they expected to be paid little or nothing for their product. But that is EXACTLY what they do- at least at peak production hours, which isn’t peak consumption hours. This is because of corrupt government subsidies being funneled into dark green corporate billionaire operations.
2. Your right about Hydrogen storage. But we have MINIMAL short term storage for wind and solar and SEASONAL batteries don’t exist.
3. Again… batteries don’t provide long term storage for winter months. And batteries are ASTRONOMICALLY expensive.
Nice video!
There is something more to mention: scale. It's true that at the current production volumes, batteries outperform hydrogen storage in price and other metrics. However, it's not clear how quickly and how much they can scale. The raw material for hydrogen storage is practically unlimited and available immediately. The same is not true for batteries. This factor alone, combined with low wind and solar power prices could be enough to make hydrogen not just viable, but necessary.
Further, some aspects of the technology may be new, as you say, but a lot of the infrastructure, such as pressurized tanks and long range pipelines are known very well from natural gas. Battery production and *recycling* at a 100x current scale however is not (not to say it won't get there).
Yet, your red flags are quite valid. As you say we shouldn't believe that hydrogen is a panacea to our energy problems, but it could also be much more useful than your tone suggests.
Hydrogen is a very aggressive and volatile gas. Transporting it in pipelines is not a good idea for a long term application, since they would get brittle and break. Tanks must be checked and replaced on a regular basis to avoid undetected material degradation. You can not swap out a complete pipeline. To be able to transport and store hydrogen your best option would be to further transform it into maybe methane. That basically is natural gas with all its applications. Anyhow doing that on top will further reduce efficiency of the complete process.
Battery manufacturing is expanding very rapidly. China will soon have more than 100 battery 'gigafactories'.
The problem there is not only storage but also production/conversion.
Most hydrogen storage options don't need rare materials to make, so they got an edge over batteries there true. But the more efficient ways of either making green hydrogen or transform it back to electricity later requires even rarer materials than batteries, while batteries mainly just need transformers which hydrogen also needs, and which require very basic materials only.
@@reappermen
It's looking very likely that the majority of EVs and battery storage will use an iron, phosphate, lithium (LFP) chemistry.
No material shortage there. No 'rare' materials.
Hydrogen is so energy inefficient that it's not likely to play a role in storage. There are some other storage systems that make make it out of the lab and into the real world that might serve for grid storage.
This issue is not likely to be settled for some time. LFP batteries are likely to get the majority of use for the next several years but, theoretically, we could see even better option.
Tesla's LFP 4680 cells should bring cell price to
@@bobwallace9753 oh, i agree that 'rare' materials is a term that should be used very loosely here, and 'expensive'is probably better to be honest.
Even stuff like Lithium, Cobalt and similar that we currently have a shortage of, or the somehwat ineptly named 'rare earth' minerals aren't actualy rare. It's only the easy/cheap to mine deposits of them that are rare. Up the price of the raw materials by 50% and you suddenly have orders of magnitute more deposits that become interesting to mine/exploit.
Hi Rosie as much as I enjoy your video you need to get your head around facts. There is every reason to expect that Hydrogen will go above 100% conversion efficiency from electricity through adding heat as energy. The 95% RTE you herald is only achievable in best case lab conditions. Current PEM fuel cells are about 50% efficient but +70% has been achieved for both SOFC and Alkaline so your numbers does not stack up.
The only scenario where hydrogen makes sence to me is this:
The country has many plants recycling food and bio-waste to produce clean methane (or biomethane) and there are plenty of renewable sources, e. g. photovolatic panels on the roofs of buildings and houses. In summer with excess production of electricty instead pf batteries (which use heavy metals, degrade over time etc.) the excess energy is used for hydrogen production from the biomethane - since It's more efficient than from water and It comes from waste (so It's somewhere between blue and green??) ofc with carbon capture. So during the summer you create hydrogen and during the winter or bad weather you use that hydrogen back to generate electricity (and water).
So in this scenario you're basicaly producing hydrogen from waste without mining oil or gas or heavy metals from Earth (ofc. with the exception of the metals needed for the photovoltaic panels)
H2 is even worse than hydrocarbons because of its uncooperative nature. It doesn't like to be contained, requiring vast pressures to liquify, and finds its way out of vessels, making long-term (eg seasonal) storage unfeasible. Also, hydrogen embrittlement is a problem for the machinery. Elon Musk is my favorite source for explaining the inappropriateness of H2 for applications being pushed by the liquid fuels industry (but Rosie does a great job too).
No energy content at atmospheric pressure, take it to 700barr and there is, that's 7km and the sea pressure... not like good old petrol, liquid at stpvery high energy density.. 45mj per kg....h2 pipe dreams...btw I fully support necessary action to address our human made climate disaster..
Rosie said, "I can't imagine any investment in ... consistently low or negative energy prices."
Right now (in the US) there are utilities that have built gas turbine plants where they knew before the plants were built that these "peaker plants" would only be used 15% of the time, or even less. The rest of the time, the plants have to shut down because solar is generating so much energy that electricity is being curtailed. So the owners of these plants knew the plants were unsound investments, but there was no other choice because new generation was needed to meet peak demand. Now, these peaker plants are being replaced by battery storage.
After 10:25 she says "...situations where the red flags I have outlined are not relevant."
Rosie, you are nitpicking about trivial items while fossil fuels are killing the Earth. Some form of very large scale, fossil fuel-free energy storage must immediately replace fossil fuels! It can be a choice of a number of various methods: hydrogen, pumped hydro, CAES, etc., etc. But it (or they) must replace fossil fuels immediately! There are only 4 degrees C between us and catastrophe! And we are already more than 1/4 of the way there. If global warming reaches 4 deg. C by 2100, most inhabited areas will become unliveable! This is not the time for irrelevance!
medium.com/climate-conscious/the-climate-will-be-lost-without-a-total-commitment-14d6a9116e48
Thanks, Rosie.
Smoothing the production/demand differential doesn't require free electricity, just cheap enough relative to peak prices that it is worth storing. If I can by electricity for $5, and sell it the next day for $10, I can potentially make a profit, and if a bank knows that even when overproducing the current demand, electricity sells for $5 to a storage company, they'll be more likely to finance a project.
The problems with hydrogen are numerous and significant though, low utilization is a problem, it drives up cost, the efficiency is terrible that drives up cost, hydrogen is explodey af, that drives up cost (it can be made reasonably safe with a lot of effort, which costs money), electrolyzers and fuel cells are expensive. It is extremely unlikely that hydrogen will ever be competitive with any other form of storage where energy density isn't critical.
And hydrogen might not even be best in those cases, I'm very curious to see things like methane and ammonia as chemical fuels that might be easier to work with. Between the terrible volumetric energy density, and the leakage, I'm far from convinced that hydrogen is the way to go for aircraft, rockets, long haul trucks, or ships.
The real reason we should push a hydrogen economy is to make combustion light gas guns more accessible >:)
It's perfect for nuclear. We can reduce nuclear risk by placing it in low risk areas, have the kind of larger generator capacity that doesn't make sense if we're plugging it into the grid, and export the hydrogen. It decouples the location of consumption and the location of production; which is absolutely necessary in many regions of the world. The current price of green hydrogen isn't something that makes sense to even bring up. Most things we own would cost insane amounts if not mass produced.
I agree with most of the information and was a great video, only a couple of things that could have been mentioned the Victorian Government and Toyota did an investment program into Hydrogen Fuel cell fleet about 2 years ago and the Mirai already has about 250 KM longer range than the Electric equivalents not to say that this is the best solution for green Hydrogen but is commercially available although fuel distribution is an issue. Also Lavo a Sydney startup who has government and market funding for their Hydrogen Batteries using metal hydride storage and local water supply for electrolysis system with three times the storage ten times the life. too expensive currently but with further development they could assist in firming supply with power generators and the distributor which is something discussed. Then the recent announcement from Rex and Dovetail Electric Aviation to deploy a fleet of small shortrange Fuel Cell planes first by 2024 and potential fleet change by 2030. Not to suggest this clears any of the red flags entirely just to provide some context to some of the points.
Hydrogen in Aviation will never make it. Hard to manage and contain in a sector which is incredibly safety conscious. Add to this the weight of Hydrogen tanks would wipe out any range advantage the light weight fuel will give you. My guess is Heavy Aviation will be suited to synthetic fuels when can reduce Co2 with Light aviation moving to EV Planes. Conversion jobs of aircraft to EV is already happening to showing some success.
Whenever something is terribly expensive to produce (and hydrogen is), I take that as a warning that it's consuming a lot of resources, and bad for the environment. It's not always true. Some things are expensive because of tax, or a fancy brand name, or a patent, but when something basic like hydrogen is expensive, it's a bad sign. I cringe when somebody asks "Would you be willing to pay extra for something that's better for the environment?" I ask - is it really better for the environment, or is it worse and just hiding it? I read that politically, post-consumer environmental harm is weighted as 7 times worse then pre-consumer, so I generally ask if there's hidden harm in the production stream.
Don't need to do that now, H2IL, I didn't here you mention that. I could have sworn you said you like new technology. Obviously not . Its gone way past 100% for hydrogen production. It doesn't have to develop faster, just better and that's already a reality. It most certainly is purely green now. Hydrogen will be dominant very soon. Hydrogen to the grid in the form of electricity is going to happen efficiently. From your comments to me, one might just say your mind is fairly closed to new technologies in hydrogen production and electrical output to the grid.
Only a moron would want a hydrogen car. As any EV owner will tell you who has free home solar charging.
Even with current EVs, 500km or so of range is all that the average Australian will ever need. The daily average driven distance is only 33km. This means the EV can be driven for 15 days straight until a recharge is needed. 🇦🇺 ⚡️
I think Hydrogen will make it with large vehicles; ie buses, trucks, planes etc; but not cars. Cars have already made it with batteries & hydrogen has a pretty poor loss of efficiency so far. It'll struggle to catch up.
Looking specifically at drier countries like Australia. I propose we saturate areas of the outback with pipelines & solar panels to run the pumps. We pump vast amounts of ocean into the desert areas using osmosis to filter the water into vast tanks. The salt remaining becomes an energy source to be used as molten salt utilising concentrated solar power plants or the tower heated by mirrors. I know I've said I don't trust the heating of metal or rocks but I think the molten salt tower is better insulated, much being underground. Anyway just food for thought. There is a company in Australia working on molten silicon, Australian company 1414 Degrees.
My thoughts also incorporated the greening of desert areas of the world, supplying regular water & turning desert-scapes into something more useful as well as removing more CO2. Large tracts of land could be revitalised & then left to do what rainforests do without human interference.
I know its a "I had a dream..." sequence but what of it?
I have two problems with the arguments in this video. The first is that you don't need to use free, overproduced solar to create hydrogen for energy storage. Using hydrogen storage will create demand for afternoon solar where there currently isn't enough demand. The supply and demand for solar will balance out throughout the day and you won't have to shut down solar in the afternoon because of oversupply. Hydrogen storage just has to be cheaper than battery storage for hydrogen to be a viable solution.
The second problem is the claim that we shouldn't deploy hydrogen storage until the grid is not yet 100% clean. Deploying hydrogen storage will drive its price down as it becomes more and more efficient. While this will actually release more CO2 because it is only 35% efficient, this will be offset because it will allow more and more wind and solar to be deployed. This will continue to decrease the CO2 problem until you have 100% solar, wind, and hydrogen battery running the grid. An alternative would be to use lithium batteries for a generation then have hydrogen storage replace lithium to clean up lithium's environmental problems and limited supply problems. You don't want to wait for a clean grid to deploy hydrogen storage because without a solution to the intermittency problem, you won't be able to get started building a clean grid.
The problem I have with hydrogen is that it takes attention away from compressed natural gas in combustion engines, the cleanest (and potentially cheaper) of fossil fuels with infrastructure already in place and the perfect option for plug-in hybrids.
Being conservative, you could power twice as many plug-in hybrids with the same amount of batteries required for bEVs, cutting twice as much emissions, possibly more. And at the end of its battery life, you can replace it with the latest battery technology, potentially turning that hybrid in a full time EV for practical purposes, because in the end of the day, electricity should be even cheaper.
The only BIG problem with it is the long term business strategy for natgas suppliers. However they could turn some of those fracking wells into geothermal to power the EVs they once fuelled so there is still hope.
Now we just have to actually think long term without the interference of lobbyists. The great thing about this is that it does not only makes environmental sense, but economic sense as well, for everyone involved.
The key point this video misses is that the robustness of a system isn't determined by the average, but at the extremes. We don't build wings to withstand the weight of the aircraft, we build them to withstand many times that weight, plus some additional safety reserve. For a grid to operate using stochastic sources of generation, we won't be generating the amount we need on average, because we still need the grid to function at the extreme ends of the weather distribution; rather, we'll almost always be generating excess, where the amount of excess is driven by whatever reserve is deemed statistically sufficient. This is also implied by the idea of connecting otherwise separate grids to improve reliability -- site A can send power to site B to cover for a shortfall, but of course, for this to be a strategy at all, site A must have an oversupply.
The reason hydrogen is getting a lot of traction now is because it scales better than any other form of energy storage for this type of scenario. The US has operated roughly 350GWh of underground hydrogen storage for several decades now, with the oldest site running continuously since 1983, so the technical knowhow already exists. You can add hundreds of GWhs of salt cavern hydrogen storage at a time, and you can burn it in a gas turbine the same way we run peaker plants today. Electrolyzers themselves are also a more efficient use of materials than say, batteries, since they decouple the components of the redox reaction from the storage of energy. An electrolyzer inherently uses less material, and stores more energy over the course of its life than a battery does, even after accounting for thermodynamic losses.
Whether or not you believe hydrogen will be used in cars (because that's what is driving a lot of the pushback against hydrogen -- the BEV movement), it's definitely here to stay. Personally, I think methanol -- which is made from hydrogen -- is what we'll eventually use in cars. It's a good fuel, and can be even be carbon negative. It's what the shipping industry will most likely use, and you have to ask yourself why you wouldn't also use it in cars if it's cheap enough, especially if hoped for improvements in battery technology don't pan out.
I wish Rosie was the Australian Prime minister. Our current one came from a background in marketing and it shows. He has no interest in facts, physics or chemistry but only cares how he can serve his fossil fuel buddies by climbing on the H2 bandwagon. For those unaware the vast majority of today's commercial H2 comes from natural gas (methane or CH4), a resource that fossil fuel companies own, most of which they currently just flare off at their well heads as an unwanted by-product of the oil/petroleum industry.
About the economic argument: The reason why Germany has one of the highest proportions of wind energy is because it was subsidised for years and years! The regenerative energy producers, even those who produced electricity on their own roof, were guaranteed a minimum price for feeding it into the grid. That subsidy is, unfortunately greatly reduced now, but it is still the best way to go. Subsidise renewable energy and hydrogen production and tax CO2 producing energy supplies. It’s that simple! If you subsidise hydrogen production, then the production companies can sell it cheap and companies like steel producers will be motivated to use it. And I really think that we’re not going to be flying over the Atlantic on battery planes. A battery makes sense for bikes, it’s kind of OK for cars, but for big trucks, planes and trans-oceanic ships, you’re going to need hydrogen. Let’s start now.
Good analysis. The "hydrogen economy" has more holes than a wedge of Swiss cheese. And even the few applications you alluded to in the second half of the video sound very suspicious. The best and surest way to find out if there is anything at all to this "hydrogen economy" is to make sure there are no government subsidies or tax breaks of any kind being funneled into it. Then, if the sector takes off under free-market conditions, I will stand corrected and eat my left shoe in the town square. Until then, people need to understand that as of now, hydrogen is a fossil fuel, just like methane and gasoline, only way more expensive to extract. And by "expensive" I mean "energy intensive", and subsequently inefficient. It is important to understand that production costs are indicators of energy efficiency, just like prices are indicators of supply and demand. This is true for all products and services, not just hydrogen. Which brings me to the prices of electricity going negative for 2% of the time in Germany as you mentioned. This phenomenon happens sporadically, and it is very short lived. And if it became more common and longer-lived, it would immediately attract investment for more large-scale storage (batteries) or a permanent reduction in production, whichever the operator deems more profitable. So no, widespread and lasting negative prices for electric power will never become a thing, because prices are indicators for the most efficient capital allocation.
Rosie I think you miss a very significant point. There is generally a fresh water deficit in many highly populated areas and water is needed for other things than generating H2. Using brines creates another issue. First, electrolysing brines generates Chlorine and NaOH as well as hydrogen. Second, if RO is front ended to remove salt, the costs go up dramatically. I agree that hydrogen will be a niche commodity unless large natural accumulations are discovered and developed . They do exist, but have not been widely discovered like fossil fuels have.
H from marine methane hydrate would be “blue/brown” hydrogen?
Not a big fan of Hydrogen economy, I guess it only popular because
The biggest H producer would the same company that produces fossil fuels…
Liquid Air seems a better path. High flammability, embrittlement all against LH2. Air available any where. Water not so much.
All this talk of "negative electricity prices" I've been hearing lately. Who dreams this stuff up? That will NEVER, EVER happen. NO generation owner will PAY to have his power consumed. EVER. He will simply stop generating once the price drops below his cost to generate. Curtailment. And that price will ALWAYS be a Positive number. I agree with all of your points though. Just as rushing to electrify everything while our grid is primarily powered by fossil fuels is inefficient, and wastes those fossil fuels, so too is the rush to make things hydrogen powered is putting the cart before the horse.
When green hydrogen produces all of the worlds ammonia. That's when it will be time to start talking about green hydrogen.
Until then its applications will only be niche. Like powering submarines.
H2 round-trip efficiency of 35% Whoa! that's getting down towards ICE energy conversion efficiencies.
The hundreds of Chinese electric vehicle makers have chosen batteries over hydrogen. Nearly unanimous. Only H vehicles are government supported.
High temperature electrolysis is more efficient, if we preheat the water using waste heat from fission and gas power plant condensers, it would reduce the power cost...
Solar and geothermal preheating may also be possible..?!?..
Electrolysis should be cheaper in the Sahara, than the Antarctic
I can see some use cases for hydrogen in long range vehicles, trucks, aircraft, spacecraft and buses etc..
We may also see smaller, cheaper, gimballed H2 thrusters on more flying vehicles and drones in the future, which could be fun :)
We need to find a way to make green hydrogen cheaper than anything produced by fossil fuels to replace existing hydrogen. THEN, we can look at it for cars, grid storage, or whatever else.
Couldn’t agree more with your view of hydrogen, although one element which you seemed to miss was that burning hydrogen in air creates oxides of nitrogen which are potent greenhouse gases. In the U.K. the government is pushing the idea of hydrogen replacing natural gas for domestic heating as 80% of U.K. households rely on gas for heating, I suspect this is on the basis of gas companies having stranded assets if we move to electric heating and therefore lobbying hard. As you point out the inefficiencies this would introduce is huge. Hydrogen for specific processes yes, ( steel, cement etc) and possibly as a long backstop for electricity production, but distributed storage at the domestic level by batteries ( including idle electric cars) plus demand management and the other grid scale storage is a much better economic solution than large scale hydrogen storage.
Have you seen the problems NASA has with using hydrogen? If their specialists have such problems, try to imagine what it will be like when the common man has hydrogen on his hand.
Let's put solar panels on every home, business and covered parking rooftop and switch to electric vehicles making nearly everything we do solar powered while completely decentralizing our power supply and empowering everyone as power generation owners.
Solar power is CHEAPER and electric vehicles are soon to be CHEAPER to make and already are considerably CHEAPER to maintain and operate, especially if charged from your own solar power.
A 3-5 year ROI (return on investment) for a solar array that will generate power for decades is a no-brainer and the panels can even be made locally too.
#EndFossilFuels #SwitchToSolar #SwitchToElectric #GreenNewDeal #EmpowerEveryone
You are definitely "missing something" (14:02). First, you're all over the map. You're conflating the "hydrogen economy" with the "green hydrogen economy." Those are very different things. You complain about prices, but anything can be lower in price if you make enough of them. Around (12:06) you claim that "Hydrogen is no silver bullet." Again, no one is saying that it is. "Green hydrogen" however, is - being very specific. Using renewable energy to make clean hydrogen fuel from water. "Green Hydrogen" is a silver bullet.
If you ask yourself is "Green Hydrogen" the silver bullet, you'd have to admit it is if you consider the facts. What is the most potent fuel? Hydrogen. What is the safest fuel? Hydrogen, (being lighter than air escapes if breached). What is the most universally available feedstock for All people on earth to power their economy? Water, from which you make clean H2 fuel as explained. And, after all of that, "Green Hydrogen" has 100% no toxicity in operation. It's 100% clean because we're only using Renewable energy as the primary source. That's why it's called "Green Hydrogen." The only answer which can actually work for everyone. What else do you want? Isn't that the point? If you'd do some calculations on how much storage you need, then calculate how much Lithium-ion you'd need to meet that, you'll very quickly discover that Lithium-ion could never even reach 5% of the transportation fleet requirements, let alone anything else. We don't have 6 earths. Right?
If you stop conflating Hydrogen's "colors"... because each mean Very specific things. You need to focus on Green Hydrogen specifically, if you want real answers. If you do these calculations, then all your "concerns" are shown to be unfounded. Green hydrogen offers the world a real solution. You should try to get up to speed on the specifics of Green Hydrogen and redo your program. It's our only hope to decarbonize, after all, there's nothing else which can work at scale. Green Hydrogen does.
Let be honest using electricity directly is the best option, storing electricity in batteries you lost power over the time stored. Currently EV have good range for local commuting but charging the batteries take more time them pumping gas/petrol into or car and the gas/petrol has a higher fuel density than a battery EV car, giving the gas/petrol car greater range cross country driving. Over time the batteries will lose there recharge capacity holding less power. We should look at the cost and energy used for mining andor recycled the raw metal use plus the manufacturing and shipping of the batteries also.
Crude oil is pumped from the ground and shipped to refineries then put on a truck and shipped to the local Pump Fuel Station and finally put in your car.
Hydrogen has a much higher fuel density than a battery EV car giving a hydrogen car greater cross country driving with quick feuling time. We should be looking a energy used to make hydrogen compared to gas/petrol.
Every time I listen that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe i realize how misleading this information is. We people live based on oxygene for respiration and if hydrogen gas would be floating in the air together with the oxygene that we need, we would burn to death almost instantly because burning hydrogen means the reaction between hydrogen and oxygene (in chemistry the reacton with the oxygene is named combustion).The reaction between hydrogen and oxygene is a spontaneous reaction. So If I cannot leave without oxygene then I certainly cannot leave with atmospheric hydrogen either, because hydrogen destroys my way of living. In fact all the water means burned hydrogen so obviously as there is still oxygene in our atmosphere it means all hydrogen has been burned. If you google Hindenburg on the net you will see what hydrogen and oxygene can do together.
"No point in eating a veggie burger, because it just doesn't get you drunk" A meaningless statement, just like the first 10 minutes of this video. The point of hydrogen is caught up in about 45 seconds only. The rest is doom and gloom.
I think the best way to produce green hydrogen that no one talks about is using the thermochemical Sulpher-Iodine cycle with a heliostat solar power tower to skip the conversion to electricity and expensive membranes for electrolysis. doesn't solve any of the practicality problems, but it should certainly cheaper for applications where hydrogen actually makes sense.
H2Pro is a company in Israel that have a higher efficiency for hydrogen production on a 1MW scale than PEMs. Interestingly bill gates has invested a lot of money in them recently.
One of the biggest things going against Hydrogen is the usual suspects, Oligarchs, University trained financial wizards scamming for profit or property, Old Tech corporations who won’t benefit from the new clean offers … we really should be teaching people to be more efficient, using the Gas from processed waste is a cheap way to power generation systems … where I live Summer is a demanding time thanks to Air Conditioning systems … we still have steam and Air pressure to exploit. So we really need to find a way to get our students to learn the things that will help their world rather than protest about the past. There is a great need to create the new world …
you don't need the price of electricity to be zero to make hydrogen, it just needs to be around 10-20 euros/MWh so that the hydrogen you produce is competitive with grey hydrogen. fossil fuel extraction is an expensive business, and there's no evidence that the price of hydrocarbons will stay low long-term. still, you need to add a lot of renewables for this to happen; realistically, countries are better off just adding renewables and transmission so that they can decrease the percentage of energy from fossil fuels for the time being.
however, as european countries are seeing this winter, gas is of strategic importance and is only sold by a few countries. it won't be that hard for politicians to create extra subsidies for companies that produce hydrogen from renewables. the potential for a hydrogen economy is here, but because hydrogen so far has been tightly linked with the fossil fuel industry there are also some significant risks with it.
Companies who could use hydrogen to e.g. reduce coal use will be interested in green energy - perhaps could even build it on their own. E.g. SSAB and Vattenfal are cooperating in green energy production in an effort to produce coal free steel with hydrogen. Wind farms and solar are rather competitive ways to produce energy nowadays while old generation polluting power stations continue being closed as there are ever increasing penalties for emissions. The need for energy is not going away which means we're going to get that green energy even if it doesn't make short term economical sense - and we need to store it for less windy days. So, this has been decided and it will happen. It might not make economical sense in the short term but in the long term it makes absolutely clear sense. I believe you forgot to think about long term alternative costs, like millions and millions of dead people and refugees escaping intolerable heat waves and famine. Anyways, nuclear is also a possible option for hydrogen generation as you can split water also directly with heat but it has its own problems - biggest one being there's no affordable supply of nuclear plants. You mentioned subsidies but polluting energy sector has enjoyed these subsidies in the form of polluting rights but these days are over. We cannot afford fossil energy, it makes no economical sense.
Using Hydrogen in vehicles, either burning it in internal combustion or fuel cells, will produce a lot of steam. A lot of traffic in a city street with tall building will mean pedestrians will end up soaking wet and in my case my glasses would fog up and I can't see much without them. Probably better than breathing petrol fumes but still a poor experience.
Australia may be different then other countries in Green energy production but its your politics that keep this country to moving forward on Hydrogen. Its not the Hydrogen technology. Australia has vast deserts that are in vast sunlight. Australia has wind swept ocean coasts and Australia is surrounded by the ocean ie water. Those are the ingredients needs to produce Green Hydrogen.
Rosie I wrote Hydrogen Hope or Hype ? in 2003 you need to speak to me Lindsay Leveen GREEN LIES MATTER
Yes, I find it unlikely that grids will overbuild intermittent renewables to the point where there are persistent oversupply issues, and I don't think this cheap energy will be reliable enough for synthesis companies builds to be at large enough scales to ensure the capture of all excess power while needing to compete for this power from other storage technologies. Short-term fast-reacting storage technologies like battery setups are likely a better fit for shaving the peaks and troughs of intermittent power.
Instead I think it could be more feasible if hydrogen synthesis becomes directly paired to dedicated renewable power installations on micro-grids. That way these companies can directly estimate their needed capacities and will be able to tune their system to be as efficient as possible, rather than needing to be super flexible in order to react to a volatile grid supply.
If this method were to be used then a portion of the produced hydrogen can be stored and utilized by the grid to keep power production stable, while reducing the amount of over-build required by renewables to ensure the grid supply remains reliable.
What does Twiggy Forest think about Refining and Hydrogen nowadays?
The problem then lies in the business model and so then the most important thing is that money is made, then efficiency is highlighted which goes back to how much money is made. I am beginning to se the problem. Why is hydrogen made with polluting resources oh yes cost. Hmmm.
The shortage of lithium and other minerals and parts will stop BEV dead in its tracks. Hydrogen will for that reason win out. Gases emitted isnt the only factor in the equation. We have to look on materials usage too which isnt mentioned in this video. All those batteries production and discarding in EV will become a huge problem in the future and we are already started to see cracks in the EV armor.
As for red flag #1 - Rosie failed to consider that most renewables projects are built with a PPA - power purchase agreement - where the generator has a contract with buyers at an agreed upon price. The US has carbon credits that the renewables generator sells to other polluters and this subsidizes the sale of power.
Ur absolutely correct. I Wish u should talk about hydrogen ships 🚢 in future.