Hydrogen Will Not Save Us. Here's Why.

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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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

As a chemical engineer I've been telling people this for decades, and lacking understanding they just argued maintaining that I was wrong, or protecting the oil industry, etc.However, they see a youtube video and suddenly they are experts. I fear for the future of humanity.

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

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

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

I developed a fuel cell program with a company for the US Navy. The idea was to convert methane or diesel fuel to Hydrogen via cracking. The company was purchased by GM, and the next thing, the fuel cell leaked and needed to produce the power we expected. The Navy wanted to demonstrate the fuel cell in a tow tractor for towing aircraft, but we needed help to proceed with the project. There are actually 4 fuel cell technologies. Who knows what the future will be after we have evolved technically. Instead of eliminating greenhouse gases, we could shoot for reducing these emissions so much so our human footprint is minimal.

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.

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.

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.

Thank you, Sabine. I began studying hydrogen solutions in 1991. I agree with your conclusions. The oil and gas companies are spending a lot of money trying to turn hydrogen into a solution except it isn't. As you mentioned NASA started using hydrogen solutions in the 60's and here we are 60 years later trying to figure out how to make it work for transport....maybe not.