Green Hydrogen Systems Electrolyser Tour

Your questions on green hydrogen and electrolysers answered!

I visited Green Hydrogen Systems in Kolding, Denmark to ask an expert all about electrolysis and electrolysers.

Check out my other videos on hydrogen technologies here:

01:11 How does an electrolyser work? (tabletop electrolysis demonstration)
01:49 What are the components in an electrolyser?
02:30 What consumables does the process use?
03:17 How can we make electrolysis more efficient?
04:25 What are the advantages of alkaline water electrolysis compared to PEM (polymer electrolyte membrane) or SOEC (solid oxide electrolyser cell)?
05:09 How much does an electrolyser cost? (levelized cost of hydrogen, capex, efficiency)
06:07 What do you do with the oxygen after you split water?
06:39 Electrolyser tour: an up-close look at a real electrolyser
08:06 Do you have to use pure water for electrolysis, or can polluted or salt water be used?
08:46 How much hydrogen can a shipping container sized electrolyser produce?
09:02 Applications for hydrogen: will we use hydrogen to store and generate electricity?
09:46 What about the low efficiency of using electricity to make hydrogen instead of just using electricity directly?
11:01 How do you calculate the efficiency of an electrolyser? (electrolysis thermoneutral voltage)
12:06 How much more efficient can electrolysis get?
12:26 What kinds of improvements are needed to improve efficiency?
12:59 How long will it take to develop a more efficient electrolyser?
13:16 Is it realistic that the price of hydrogen can come down as quickly as it is predicted to?

“There's a natural hierarchy somehow, you should use electricity as electricity for all the cases you can. Of course, that's obvious. But when you cannot use electricity, you need to convert it to something else. And then hydrogen is a very good candidate.”

This was the answer from Kasper Therkildsen, Head of Technology at Green Hydrogen Systems, during our recent tour/ interview when I questioned the low efficiency of using electricity to make hydrogen relative to just using electricity directly.

We discussed likely applications for hydrogen (Kasper anticipates transportation, industrial purposes and in some cases process heating), and we ran through as many as time allowed of the fifty viewer questions you all suggested ahead of the tour.

There’s a benchtop demonstration of alkaline water electrolysis, we talk electrolyser technology development, how much more efficient it can get (and how, and how quickly).

But is it realistic that the price of hydrogen can come down as fast as it is predicted to? According to Kasper:
“10 years back nobody believed that the price of electricity would be where it is now from renewable sources. And we'll see the same with hydrogen. You know, once things get rolling, it's gonna be tremendous.”

Thanks to Kasper Therkildsen and the rest of the team at Green Hydrogen Systems for spending an afternoon with me and patiently answering all of my questions!

#technology #engineering #educational

Thanks for watching the video Green Hydrogen Systems Electrolyser Tour

[richdobbs]

When I was a teenager back in the 1970's we made an electrolyzser in my friends basement (which was definitely a den of various iniquities, such as foosball, underage drinking, etc). We use it to fill up balloons with the off-gas. We lit the balloons on fire to produce wonderfully impressive conflagrations. Only recently did I find out that because of the chemistry that we used we probably produced chlorine, along with the hydrogen and oxygen. So kids, if you try this at home, you probably should use lye rather than table salt to increase the conductivity of your water.

[seraphcms]

Rosie,
What is so interesting and refreshing about your videos on hydrogen (and many oither topics) is that you approach it from an unbaised, pure engineering standpoint. Normally the standpoint on hydrogen videos is very much from the point of view of battery electric cars and nothing else!

[ishaangupta]

Thanks this is very informative video. Pl share more. I soon update of membrane and details of electrolyser.

[juanguilarte]

Thank you Rosie, you have given me the first approach no Electrolyzers in a very easy to understand way. Please keep on doing such a good work

[possart]

This was the title of my research at the university in 2018
Greetings to you from the South of Iraq

[latemnetlom]

A couple things: 1) his efficiency is in terms of the HHV of the hydrogen produced, which includes the heat of condensation of the product water once you burn the H2. That value is 39.4 kWh/kg. You don't get that back- 6 kWh is lost therefore, so you really should use the LHV of H2 which is 33 kWh/kg. So they use 39.4/.76 = about 52 kWh per kg of H2- but really, when you feed it to a fuelcell, even an impossibly perfect one will only give you 33 kWh back again (most give you only 16.5!) So the efficiency really is 33/52 or about 63%. Once you store it (90% best case) and then use it in a fuelcell (50%), you have a "round trip" efficiency of only .63*.9*.5 = 28%, versus over 90% for a lithium ion battery. That's a lot of loss, so he's dead right- you would only convert electricity into hydrogen to use it AS hydrogen, not to make electricity again from it!

[seasidescott]

I live in the Western USA and we put solar cells on the roof of one of our shops that produces much more than all our needs combined. It is set up to feed back into the grid but we discovered that this feature is only active when there are local peak usage. With a couple neighbors installing them we are wanting to do something with all the unused power. We did try setting up some hydrogen production with a company in Oregon that was producing some nifty 2way hydrolyzer/power units but before we could get them that company was bought by some unknown giant corporation (through shell subsidiaries) and we never heard from them again. We dropped plans for any more solar and cancelled wind turbines because we couldn't use or store the power.

[johnwesterduin]

Thank you Rosie, your video is very informative. I watched your video several times to see how my small mobile system that I’ve built (and still improving) compares to the one from Green Hydrogen Systems. My system has been built on a shoestring budget but the important components seem to be present. One difference is that I don’t vent the O2, I dry the O2 and compress that too. My biggest challenge at the moment is the degradation of my membrane (or diaphragm as Kasper calls it), my KOH dissolves my membrane much too fast when I run my system at full power; 200 Amps at 27 VDC. Most of the gas that I produce is grey H2 and O2. I recently install a solar system with battery bank to produce green hydrogen instead. It would be great if you could make a video on the different types of membranes, design, manufacturing, availability and cost thereof. Thank you in advance John.

[arjunprajapati]

Thanks for given my future plan green hydrogen production knowledge, I need your support in future, thanks

[leecollins]

Great video! I remember doing the experiment in high school, 22 years ago!

[Thunderbuck]

This is a fantastic video that clearly presents the challenges. The energy cost here is going to be hard to overcome.

Your guest validated a conclusion I arrived at a couple of years ago: that green hydrogen only makes sense if you have a massive surplus of renewable generation, you've maxed out all your storage, and that excess is otherwise just going to waste. We can build a grid that does this (particularly with a healthy nuclear baseline), but it's going to take us awhile to get there.

[edward]

Hello Rosie This is my first Engineering with Rosie video 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻. I’ll be checking out your other video and looking forward to your new ones too.

[dalsenov]

Very informative video! I watch chemistry and renewable energy topics. I became a subscriber.

[hermengild]

Loved 1926❤❤❤ Cutting edge tech has never been so old 😂😂😂

[RodrigoMartel-gf]

I would like a report like this but about PEM electrolyzers, Thanks Rosie

[PaulBrassington_flutter_expert]

Good video and shows how hydrogen is the battery that we desperately need when too much renewable energy is available

[FoamyDave]

I think the most relevant thing he said is to use electricity as electricity and covert it only if you have too much or have a specific need. I still have a hard time with H2 as a widespread fuel. As a storage medium I think there are better alternatives. Compressed air takes less energy to create and coverts back to electricity easily. You can also extract useful gasses for ancillary sales and if you believe in CO2 sequestration then you can get that too. Certainly better than blue H2.

[noiseoid]

It was awsome, it answered a lot of questions I had about the technology. Thank you.

[sylvesterayodejibamkole]

Hi Rosie, this was a great video. The questions were great without being too simple and very informative. Feeling more confident for a hydrogen job interview next week!

[ChurchofCthulhu]

Great video! So glad to see something with intelligence on YouTube instead of kids doing pranks or stupid stunts.