Hydrogen Will Not Save Us. Here's Why.

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.

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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

#science #technology #climate

[davidreichert]

I spent two years working as an engineer in the hydrogen fuel cell industry. Going in I was so excited to be part of what I thought was going to be the future, but the reality of it set in pretty quickly. Been back in nuclear ever since.

[euchiron]

Shout out to your co-host Mercury for explaining the pressure requirements

[franks]

Love that you included the full lifecycle of environmental impact. Powering our world is not a fad.

[oldtrkdrvr]

I am a mechanical engineer. I knew about most of the problems you mentioned years ago and I couldn't understand all the hype. I am glad someone is finally getting the information out.

[kevinstenger]

Nice presentation. I worked for Air Products & Chemicals as a hydrogen plant operator back when we were producing all of the liquid hydrogen for the space shuttle program. We also filled hydrogen tube trailers for shipping gaseous hydrogen to food processing and semiconductor manufacturers that were filled to 5000psi. What you didn’t get into is the safety hazards of hydrogen fueled cars. Leaks are a real problem if you aren’t very careful and dealing with that makes things expensive. If you do get a leak, and you likely will because those tiny little buggers are very good at escaping, having your car in your garage can easily turn your garage into a bomb that is attached to your house. A little bit of static electricity is all it takes to ignite hydrogen. I’ve helped put out several hydrogen fires and let me tell you, they are not easy to extinguish unless you have large quantities of steam, nitrogen, and dry chemical fire extinguishers at your house.

[mitsterful]

You've made a lot of good points, Sabine. Unfortunately, I haven't really learned anything new since I work for a glass company and we've done trials which attempt to burn hydrogen in our furnaces instead of LNG. Indeed, the UK government has put together funding for such projects, which enabled us to do the hydrogen trial, so that hydrogen is not just for cars but also used in the so-called 'foundation industries' like concrete, steel and in our case, glass. 

Glass furnaces run 24/7 for around 10-15years, constantly burning gas. There are usually around 6-8 gas ports in a furnace and the hydrogen trial only used one of ports while the others continued with gas. Even then, the trial could only be run for a few hours at a time since there was not enough hydrogen (we used largely grey hydrogen; blue is rare and green almost non-existent) i.e. we speak of hydrogen in the context of cars, but in the context of the most carbon-intensive industries, where we arguably need to decarbonise the most, there is simply not enough hydrogen, let alone green hydrogen. This is partly because of the energy difference with gas you mentioned, hence more hydrogen is needed, and also the fact that such 'foundation industries' are some of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters and hence require the most fuel. 

Nuclear power is looking more and more like the only way forward, in combination with renewable energy.

[stefansikora]

Interesting that people talk about the scarcity of platinum and paladium when it comes to fuel cells but everybody has been using the same material in millions of catalytic converters in cars for about 50 years.

[jgp]

This is a great example of why we should expect any problem to be more complex than it appears a first glance. Thanks.

[christeankapp]

a good vid on Hydrogen. As an engineer working in Power and compression in the Oil & Gas industry in Houston, I can add one more insight. Methane is easily transportable in pipleine. Easy still means you easily need a hundred Megawatts in a modern, large pipeline. The molewight of Mathane is 16+, most pipeliens have a methane mix slightly higher thn this. Hydrogen's moleweight is about 2. A factor of at least eight which increases the head and the power requirement by the same factor, everything else being the same this is linear. So now if we complete the back of the envelope calculation we need nearly a Gigawatt of energy instead of a 100 MW, increasing CO2(e) emissions significantly, so Hydrogen is effectively not transportable with any environmental effectiveness.

[paulhaynes]

Coming to this a bit late, but one of the problems identified here in the UK - where it has been generally assumed that hydrogen can simply replace the domestic supply of natural gas - is that it leaks out of the pipes. Not only does this mean that much hydrogen is lost, but potentially pockets of the highly explosive gas can accumulate under our roads and pavements...

[kaursinghi]

How well made and well researched is the video. ChatGPT couldnt even scratch the surface when asked for similar information.

[Elemental_disarray]

I work as an engineer in a synchrotron, and various experimental gases are delivered. Hydrogen is one of them. A major issue with handling hydrogen is how broad a concentration it is explosive in. Interestingly it has a negative Joule-Thompson effect at room temperature ie actually heats when expanding into lower pressure.

EDIT: Some comments correctly pointing out that negative JT won't push hydrogen to autoignition point. Edited to address this oversight (I deal with a lot of gases and got mixed up). The point is still broadly correct of H2 being a uniquely difficult gas from engineering compliance point of view.

[scomo]

I worked with fuel cells for 10 years back in the 1990s. We were trying to developers alternative catalysts that could replace Pf. We failed. Work has proceeded with Pt and now high surface area catalysts require less Pt than ever. The downside is the high surface area is very energetic, so the Pt migrated to lower the energy, which reduces the activity of the catalyst. It’s a no win situation. For a long time savy FC engineers used to say, “Like Mexico, fuel cells will always have a bright future”

[kulupal]

I am a chemist and I totally agree with you. I mentioned my concerns years ago but nobody listened.

[johnfranchina]

I realized H2 was a problem when as a kid I read about the airship fires:

The following is a partial list of hydrogen-inflated airships that were destroyed by fire from accidental causes (the list does not include ships shot down in combat operations):

LZ-4 (August 5, 1908)
LZ-6 (September 14, 1910)
LZ-12/Z-III (June 17, 1912)
LZ-10 Schwaben (June 28, 1912)
Akron (July 2, 1912)
LZ-18/L-2 (October 17, 1913)
LZ-30/Z-XI (May 20, 1915)
LZ-40/L-10 (September 3, 1915)
SL-6 (November 10, 1915)
LZ-52/L-18 (November 17, 1915)
LZ-31/L-6 and LZ-36/L-9 (September 16, 1916)
LZ-53/L-17 and LZ-69/L-24 (December 28, 1916)
SL-9 (March 30, 1917)
LZ-102/L-57 (October 7, 1917)
LZ-87/LZ-117, LZ-94/L-46, LZ-97/L-51, and LZ-105/L-58 (January 5, 1918)
LZ-104/L-59 (April 7, 1918)
Wingfoot Air Express (July 21, 1919)
R-38/ZR-II (August 23, 1921)
Roma (February 21, 1922)
Dixmude (December 21, 1923)
R101 (October 5, 1930)
LZ-129 Hindenburg (May 6, 1937)

[SanePerson]

The overwhelming number of chemists who have been hearing hydrogen-research colleagues talking about the "hydrogen economy" have been rolling our eyes for decades. Very few chemists ever bought into the hype - you do a good job explaining why.

[Alex-uhmj]

Theres a really important part to this you have overlooked. With renewables you need massive oversupply for the days sun and wind isn't great, on the days it is you are generating 150% or more of the power you need. You cannot store this in batteries right now for a number of reasons. So as you touched on Hydrogen is really energy storage and in this case is probably the best option and almost free as the turbines would be off otherwise

[herringnjd]

I'm wondering if meta materials would be able to solve the cold start and hydrogen embrittlement problems. I have my doubts about a replacement for irridium though.

[RWBHere]

Thanks for pulling all of this information together, Sabine. 

I've been trying to tell people for several years that Hydrogen is problematic because of its sources, production methods, transportation and storage, let alone because of the inefficiency of using it in fuel cells or in combustion engines. This video will be shared at every opportunity.
A few more considerations are: 
1) The Hydrogen storage vessels in cars have a life expectancy of only 5 years before they will need replacing for safety reasons. 
2) When transferring H₂ to the vehicle, the speed of transfer is also constrained
by thermal issues. 
3) A storage tank at a filling station has to be larger and much more expensive than the tanks for storing gasoline or Diesel fuel.
4) The Oxygen used in fuel cells really needs to be very pure, but air is not pure Oxygen. This leads to accelerated degradation of the fuel cell membranes. 
5) If the Hydrogen is burned in a combustion engine, the exhaust is not pure water; it also contains Nitrates, because of the Nitrogen in the air in the combustion chamber. 
6) It's also worth remembering that water vapour is an efficient greenhouse gas.
7) Overall efficiency of the Hydrogen-powered car alone, ignoring all other stages of the Hydrogen processing, is only about 21%, comparable to the efficiency of a petrol car. But the efficiency of the systems in a fully electric car is roughly 71%.

That inefficiency, coupled with the high costs of production and storage, along with the dubious sources of Hydrogen and of the catalysts, mean that Hydrogen can never replace fossil fuels or displace battery electric vehicles, unless drivers are willing to pay a much higher price for their fuel, and are prepared to continue to breathe polluted air which will shorten their lives.

[charles.e.g.]

Sabine, this video is such a marvelous example of when I didn’t realize a topic truly interested me until I listened to you talk about it. That’s a sign of a brilliant teacher. This has occurred a number of times with your extraordinary videos, and each time this happens you help to broaden my world beyond what I had ever conceived or considered. Thank you for sharing this rare and precious gift with us. 🙏