What IS the hydrogen economy?

What is the hydrogen economy? How does green hydrogen power work, why do so many people say it’s impossible and why is it going to happen anyway? And which old technology could change everything? The chemistry and science of the hydrogen economy is explained here with 3D animations.

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Three Twentysix Project Leader: Dr Andrew Robertson
Assistant Editor: Purple Saptari
3D Animations: Es Hiranpakorn
Graphic Design: Maria Sucianto

This video was produced at Kyushu University and supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP21K02904. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Kyushu University, JSPS or MEXT.

[zhzh]

As a nuclear chemist, I haven't seen a video on this topic with a better and clearer explanation. Extremely well put. Thank you! :)

[fishyerik]

There's no real practical advantage of directly splitting water with sunlight, over producing electric power and use the part that you have use for directly, and only store excess, assuming a hydrogen economy, using electrolysis. Electrolysis is somewhat difficult, but that's not a big issue, we can already produce hydrogen from electrolysis at reasonable cost and at with decent efficiency, at least if we get to do it for long periods at a time and in large scale. There are other problems with the hydrogen economy that makes the electrolysis a nonissue.

Direct solar hydrogen production would require distribution of water and collection of hydrogen, and somehow handle the oxygen over the entire collecting surface, that is unlikely possible to make less than 1000 times more expensive than solar PV and electrolysis, per unit of useful energy out, because of undeniable fundamental practical problems. And that besides the fact that producing hydrogen directly instead of electricity is, well, not logical.

IF any type of synthetic fuel is going to be a part of the solution for grid balancing, then it should be produced from "relative excess" in the grid mix, regardless if it's mainly solar or wind or anything else, or a combination that causes the relative excess power.

If the relatively simple process of electrolysis in a highly controlled environment where energy losses in the process can be used to produce the heat and pressure necessary to get good efficiency is a bit problematic, how do you get from there to the conclusion that direct photohydrolysis that actually is somewhat difficult even at laboratory scale is promising for general energy supply?

If hydrogen i supposed to fill the gaps when power generation doesn't completely cover the demand it's kind of an emergency option, insurance if you prefer. With all the added costs, energy losses, practical problems, dangers, you do absolutely not want to take the detour over hydrogen unless you have to.

We can actually distribute electric power over long distances, at reasonable cost and with reasonable losses, and we're still getting better at it. It's not extremely cheap or easy, but compared to transporting hydrogen the cost and energy loss using HVDC is negligible, at least in the long run.

Sure, alternatives to fossil fuels get to be more expensive, but can't be after subsidies and regulations and other aspects, the cost before such factors can absolutely not be 1000 times higher, that doesn't work in reality.

Most of us are connected to huge grids, connecting areas that actually never gets completely dark and windless at the same time, especially not when you include offshore wind power. Production obviously doesn't follow demand exactly, but we can control some production, like hydro power, and some of the demand, most charging of EVs can be delays days if needed without any real issues, or hardware. People are getting home batteries primarily to be able use their own solar power better, but also to buy power when it's cheap, and sell when it's expensive.

If it turns out that we get periods with demand that is difficult to solve with improved transmission, generation, batteries and demand side management as we phase out fossil fuels, it wouldn't be a new scenario, we've experienced such problems all the time, and, hydrogen storage would still not be the answer, as hydrogen is among the worst possible fuels to store. We could produce some synthetic fuel that is easier to store than hydrogen, it's not really a "hydrogen economy" then, is it? But then again, just burning waste or biofuels for that small part of energy demand that won't easily be met with a combination of solutions would be much easier, and cheaper and could be done reasonably sustainably.

When hydrogen is used as a fuel commercially, as in not some subsidized greenwash project it's never stored or transported more than necessary, because that would be stupid. It's produced when and where it's needed, because it's among the worst combustion fuels to store and and transport, that's a fundamental fact, how that would make it a great candidate for storing and transporting energy is beyond me.

There are two main reasons for the big commercial intressent in hydrogen as a fuel, besides the billions in subsidies, the first is the fact that you can produce it from fossil fuels, which could save fossil fuels from becoming worthless. Produce hydrogen from fossil fuels, and say that working on a way to catch and store the carbon. The other reason is what Toyota et al find so attractive, they know hydrogen cars won't ever take off, unlike EVs, so they can continue to make profit on their fossil fuels cars, by pretending hydrogen cars will provide a viable alternative.

About fuel cells, they can actually be more efficient than combustion engines, but only at very low power output for their size, and therefore cost. That shouldn't come as a big surprise as the individual molecules has to reach electrolyte at the molecular level, and react with each other from either side. If you use air, each oxygen molecule have to compete with space with about 3.8 other molecules, initially, as the oxygen gets used the number of other molecules from the air per oxygen molecule increases, but on top of that you get all that water that also gets in the way of the oxygen. Solid particles that get into the system decreases power output further, including truly microscopic dust particles, so you want to use extremely clean air. In essence, the higher the power requirement gets, the worse fuel cells gets. For combustion you just mix fuel and air, super simple, and scaling up gives advantages.

Because of how fuel cells work, they are unsuitable for grid scale storage, storing energy in form of "green hydrogen", and then using fuel cells to extract the energy at scale relevant for grid is not going to happen, it's not realistic, there are a number of much better alternatives available, that requires much less subsidies/regulation to replace fossil fuels.

About transport, hydrogen is very expensive to transport, as a liquid it needs to be kept at about or 20 K, or colder at atmospheric pressure, you can get away with slightly higher temperature if pressurized, but you really don't want to rely to heavily on high pressure at such low temperatures that still is required. So, either you bring equipment to keep that ridiculously low temperature, and fuel for that equipment, or you let the hydrogen boil off, and except the losses, which is the norm. These losses are significant when hydrogen is transported by ship. And still, at the extreme conditions, you can only fill the tank capacity with ~71 kg per cubic meter, which means you need ~4 times the volume for the same amount of energy as with say oil, or similar fuels. To start with, the loss during transport makes it worse. What is even worse than that is the requirements on the tank, with liquid fuels you can practically fill the ship, you can only get a fraction as mush usable tank volume when you transport hydrogen. Natural gas is also "difficult" to transport, but not so much i you compare it to hydrogen.

Some fellow hydrogen economy "skeptics" like to point out the round trip efficiency, well it's not as great as with batteries, but if the round trip efficiency was among the bigger issues with long term energy storage in hydrogen we'd already be living in a hydrogen economy. The main problem with the hydrogen economy isn't the round trip efficiency, it's the fundamental fact that it's an extremely bad choice for the intended purpose, storing and transporting energy.

The Hindenburg, also not relevant, that was uncompressed hydrogen, that just burned. Highly compressed hydrogen can cause very intense explosions, if that amount of hydrogen had been stored in a tank, at normal storage pressure, at ground level, and that tank had bursted, there would probably not been many surviving eye witnesses, if any.

Rocket fuel, sure, transporting hydrogen and oxygen to space and use it use in fuel cells there and use the water, instead of transporting say batteries and the water, sure. As a process input, sure. As meaningful energy carrier for grid scale energy storage and transport, absolutely no way.

If we start producing "green hydrogen" in large scale from "excess" power generation we could use that in much better ways than energy storage. One way would be producing nitrogen fertilizer, which currently is done with natural gas, on a huge scale. Solid fertilizer is much cheaper and easier to store than the hydrogen, and we need the fertilizer anyway. So there's no need to create an artificial demand for "green hydrogen". Another seamless route would be producing methane to start replacing natural gas in current systems. Yes there's a pesky carbon atom in the methane molecule, but you don't have to burn fossil fuels to produce that carbon.

The fuel cell was invented 185 years ago, that is before the first rechargeable battery was invented. The idea of a hydrogen economy was seriously proposed, without using that exact term 100 years ago, would have made some sense then, instead of building electricity grids in some places, but couldn't compete with building electricity grids where there were none. For ground based vehicles even lead acid batteries have a much bigger niche that they are viable option for.

[wilfriedhahn]

Look at Copenhagen Atomics , they are developing a thorium molten salt reactor. This could be a very good solution for producing electricity and hydrogen for 2 cents per kWh, no investment needed for the reactor, could manufacture one 100 MW th reactor per day. This can be a fast track solution for the climate and resources problem.

[rockybond]

This is the best, most informative, yet simple explanation of the issues with hydrogen that I've ever seen. Amazing!

[PsychorGames]

11:40 "Living in clean cities always costs more than living in dirty ones."
west coast bros...

[Martinit]

Since this is a chemistry channel I had hoped to learn how hydrogen is needed to make stuff, like NH3 or other useful chemicals? Will you be making a video about that?

[menecross]

Having the waste heat from nuclear power plants also be used would increase the power plant's efficiency, making the price of the products (electricitfy and hidrogen) lower.

[triple_gem_shining]

Hope you never stop making videos! Incredibly entertaining and educational in the best way. I wish i could attend one of your classes!!

[angellestat]

12:38 You are wrong.. The Efficiency is 90%, you lost 10%, when you mention Solar to direct hydrogen, without using a solar cell, then in that case the new record is 20% efficiency, which is not bad, taking into account that solar farms has a 22% efficiency and they still need an electrolyzer to transform that electricity to hydrogen.
10:39 currently half wrong and full wrong (if we wait 7 more years).
Solar and wind are the current cheapest ways to produce electricity and in few years hydrogen would reach 1usd by kg which at that point would be cheaper than natural gas (that value is already possible depending the place and the technology used).
16:23 No is not.. First, I would not call Chernobyl and Fukushima just an issue for "green goups lacking knowledge". No when each one of those accidents are still the most expensive accidents in human history (with a government cost higher than any natural disasters), Chernobyl total cost was 700 billions and Fukushima would be close to 600 Billions in few years.
With less capital than that you can remplace all nuclear plants in the world with a mix of solar, wind and hydrogen that would work much better to follow the demand than Nuclear.
New nuclear real cost is at 130 usd/MWh without subsidies, when you see prices below that, is just because they had low discount rates or because they are just pointing the operation cost without including the capital cost.
When the discount rate is low, investors are not paying for the capital, citizens are, mostly the future generations. I also can mention 10 more killing points against nuclear, but I guess the cost is just enough.
Current Solar is at 35 usd/MWh with some record farms reaching 16usd/MWh.
The rest of the video is well made, so congrats for that.

[allgoo]

Hydrogen economy isn't going to takeover the world.
Mark my words.
It's the cost issue.

[charlessao]

My employer, Hitachi Energy Sweden (formerly ABB Power Grid Sweden) has been building long range High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) Transmission lines for the past several decades. Back in 2010, we designed, built and commissioned the Shanghai-Xiangjiaba HVDC transmission line that can deliver up to 6400 MW over a distance of 2000 km long. The other major player in this niche market segment is Siemens AG of Germany and they have also delivered multiple HVDC projects all over the world. Given that, I am wondering why you claim (at around 3 minutes in this video) that long range direct transmission of electricity is very much on the border of science and engineering problem.

[ananto_kusumo]

berilah ilmu dari orang yang memahaminya dan sebarkan supaya masarakat menyadari apa yang terjadi dan apa yang seharusnya dilakukan . . .

[JunchiiFR]

Great video Doc! Informative straightfoward, and entertaining at the same time. Keep it up!

[sheenapearse]

Multiple problems with H2 eg stored compressed at 700 Bar, compressed liquid at ~ -250 C, leakage with explosive potential, cost of tank storage, inefficient conversion to electricity ~ 35% at best vs ~80 for batteries - require practical solutions that are readily available and affordable . Not yet .? Hype

[CesarM]

The main reason to change to hydrogen economy it is we need something to replace the fiat currency and gold or silver isn´t big or flexible enough for that .

[kidzkidz]

m Great wisdom as here in Uganda we are soon starting to build a nuclear power station, and it can be used for Hydrogen Energy, and me as a researcher, this is very important
Thank you so much

[penumbraman]

To take on climate change, we need to produce massive amounts of H2 to make green NH3 and green steel. Using energy to compress H2 into liquid H2 for storage is not very efficient for other uses. For transportation, we need to use cable cars/trucks for most cities without hauling around batteries. Utilities need to gear up smart electrical grid three fold. They should use green energy or nuclear as much as they can. Electricity should be storage in cheap bulk storage batteries. The best way to storage energy is green (or nuclear) powered pumped hydro combined with desalination plants and irrigation systems. If breakthroughs in technology makes H2 cheap, like more efficient compressors, cheap fuel cell catalysts, more efficient desalination systems, more efficient H2 tank systems and nuclear fusion, we should start using liquid H2 for powering aircraft and H2 fuel cell vehicles.

[GeaVox]

Also, would you mind discuss the options in terms of : 1) electrolysis of seawater (as perfected in China) and 2) Hydrogen stoprage as a Metal Hydride in powder form, safe at standard pressure and temperature (as perfected by Electrique Group).

[IndigenousEarthling]

Hydrogen and Nuclear are more likely to play a significant role in densely populated wealthier nations that don't have abundant solar and wind energy resources, e.g., places where it snows. Cheaper solar is likely to be much more prevalent in places with lots of sunshine, e.g., places where it mostly doesn't snow. It is important to remember that the majority of people live in places where it mostly doesn't snow. Solar and batteries are also highly transportable. They can be carried in a pocket, a backpack, a car, a van, a truck, a train, a ship, an orbital satellite, or an interplanetary space.vehicle. A varied range of sustainable energy solutions will likely be developed in different parts of the world to suit different environmental, economic, industrial, social (e.g., degree of utility centralization, nomadic lifestyles, etc.), and political conditions.

[Timc]

If water boils at 100c ?

A solid oxide electrolyzers must operate at temperatures high enough for the solid oxide membranes to function properly (about 700°–800°C, compared to PEM electrolyzers, which operate at 70°–90°C, and commercial alkaline electrolyzers, which typically operate at less than 100°C). Other than constant power, Why would you need the heat from a nuclear power plant if the electrolyzer provides it? Just run the water through a radiator and using the waste exhaust heat to heat the water. The opposite of how are you cool ICE engine down.