Replacing fossil fuel with hydrogen seems like an ideal solution to make transportation environmentally friendly and to provide a backup for intermittent energy sources like solar and wind. But how environmentally friendly is hydrogen really? And how sustainable is it, given that hydrogen fuel cells rely on supply of rare metals like platinum and iridium? In this video, we have collected all the relevant numbers for you.
Many thanks to Jordi Busqué for helping with this video http://jordibusque.com/
00:00 Intro
00:49 Hydrogen Basics
03:39 The Hydrogen Market
06:04 The Colours Of Hydrogen
12:11 Water Supply
13:34 The Cold Start Problem
14:05 Rare Metal Shortages
15:55 Hydrogen Embrittlement
16:45 Summary
18:16 Protect Your Privacy with NordVPN
HT/P Gosselin
Retrieving hydrogen from burnt hydrogen. Yikes! Sounds like making trees from charcoal doesn’t it?
Well, we sort of do make trees from charcoal. I mean, we don’t. Nature does. A seedling sprouts in the ashes, starts making glucose from CO2 and water using the sun’s energy and the residual minerals from the ashes of the tree that burnt. Wait a few years: a tree!
Perhaps burning it in an ICE is the solution then?
For those interested in the engineering aspects of a hydrogen economy, search for “The Future of the Hydrogen Economy Bright or Bleak.” This paper reveals that so much energy is required for the handling of hydrogen (compression, shipping and so forth) that in many scenarios most of the energy content of a given amount of hydrogen is used up in the handling.
as long as we are getting science from you tube
It doesn’t take much to impress Steve, it’s almost like he’s being paid to distribute this propaganda.
There is also the problem of where you produce the hydrogen, at lots of local sites or at remoter but cheaper large production sites.
According to rail engineer.co.uk a typical hydrogen tube trailer carries about 1 tonne of hydrogen equivalent to 130bn joules of energy whereas a diesel tanker carries typically 40,000 litres of diesel which is 1800bn joules. If hydrogen was not produced on site a depot with a fleet of hydrogen trains would require 14 times as many road tanker deliveries than one with the same sized diesel fleet to fuel their trains.
https://www.railengineer.co.uk/scotlands-hydrogen-train-supporting-the-hydrogen-economy/
And what happens if you are in an accident with one of those tankers?
Shortly after my wife died, my son came to help drive the motor home back east. Car parts were flying past from the accident in front and I was standing on the breaks. Just about anyone can stop faster than a motor home except the tanker trucks.
In my mirror, was blue smoke from the tires of the jack knifing tanker. Call that a free cremation.
Hydrogen detonates. You will not feel a thing.
Hydrogen has some chemical properties that require its use, but there are much safer fuels.
I think a lot of the broad but very shallow support among the general public for the idea of fighting climate change is based on the false hope that there is a whole menu of cheap efficient effective alternatives to fossil fuels out there. They think it’s just the greedy oil companies aren’t letting us have them because they value profits over people or some such. If it sinks in that there aren’t any out there — they will all be really expensive or really unreliable — then people will start saying, “Gee, maybe this isn’t worth doing after all. The costs will be so much higher than I sort of assumed when I said we have to fight climate change.” That’s when they’ll start voting out of office the politicians who want to force this on us. It won’t matter if they still “believe” in climate change or not. They just won’t want to pay for it.
That’s why I like Hossenfelder’s videos on this. Even if she does, like me, accept the mainstream scientific consensus that the earth is warming to some degree due to us and will continue to, she is effectively showing it doesn’t matter. There is nothing we can do about it that anyone is going to put up with. For most people, if there is no cheap fix, there is no fix at all. Africans can die for all we care. If “climate refugees” invade our shores we’ll sink their boats. People are sensible most of the time once they see the money going out of their wallets.
The dangerous people are the ones who are just irrational zealots bent on destruction. They still have a hold on the politicians and policy executors who kind of like the idea themselves.
Sorry for being late on this discussion, but I would like to know why methanol has been dropped as a source of hydrogen for fuel cells.
It wasn’t too long go that Toshiba were prototyping a PC with a fuel cell power supply using methanol. I understood that there had to be a rectifier to produce H2 from the methanol, but as a liquid fuel it would have much better economics than hydrogen gas and it isn’t all that difficult to produce through fermentation.
I have no issues with fossil fuels, but given that fuel cells have very low tailpipe emissions, a way to use them for transport would have certain advantages as long as the method for getting/storing the hydrogen was economically (and energetically) feasible.
I have seen nothing more on this for a few years now and I wonder if anyone knows why. Is there some underlying reason why it won’t work?
Thanks for the help.
I’m confused. Do you mean on-board generation of H2 from methanol stored in the vehicle’s fuel tank, and the hydrogen is reacted in a fuel cell in the usual way?
Three barriers I can think of:
1).Methanol is a serious poison. You don’t want people drinking gasoline either but it’s not so acutely dangerously toxic IMO. Spills that got into the water supply would be dangerous. A European industry blurb says it is no more toxic than gasoline but I am skeptical of that. We see methanol poisoning because it gets into beverage alcohol accidentally or is drunk intentionally when a binge drinker runs out of liquor. They get very sick and go blind. The flame is invisible in sunlight so you don’t know your car is on fire.
2) Generating H2 from methanol leaves formaldehyde behind. The formaldehyde can’t just be gassed out into the atmosphere as the engine operates because it is poisonous too. It has to be recovered and compressed into a vessel on board the vehicle and “traded in” for methanol at the refueling station where it has to be pumped under pressure into the receiving tank. Some market would have to be found for all this waste formaldehyde, if it was cheaper than formaldehyde already made for embalming, etc. If there was no market the refueling stations would have to dispose of this toxic gas safely. Some might just vent their storage tanks into the atmosphere when no one was looking. It could happen that you wouldn’t be able to refuel your vehicle if the formaldehyde storage tank at the “gas” station was full and the truck that was supposed to come to transfer it hadn’t shown up as scheduled. But in any case it doubles the supply chain for fueling stations. Methanol in, formaldehyde out. Two different containment vessels on the trucks (edit): and two different hook-up operations for the driver, one into a pressure vessel like maybe a propane tank? Tunnels and other enclosed spaces don’t want vehicles with pressure vessels full of toxic gasses.
3) Remember you are getting only one molecule of hydrogen (H2) from one molecule of the starting carbohydrate usually pectin. This is not very efficient in terms of land area you need for whatever crop provides the carbohydrate. (A molecule of glucose fermented gives you a molecule of ethanol, all of which can be burned, not just one H2 molecule.) Grain like corn doesn’t have pectin. You need fruits like plums and cherries. There are other ways to make methanol industrially but they might emit carbon dioxide or need input of other energy — I can’t be arsed to find out since you implied abundance from fermentation.
Hydrogen won’t save us because we’re all idiots and not worth saving
A little late commenting. Does anyone use or know anything about
https://www.yahoo.com/now/linde-increase-green-hydrogen-production-113000621.html
Their website touts green hydrogen with all the usual fanfare and they look like a very successful industrial gasses company. How does their Green Hydrogen product work? Is it economical and scaleable?