Energy Storage in Hydrogen : Does this beat batteries?
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- čas přidán 1. 06. 2019
- Energy storage is pretty well accepted as the route to making renewable technologies a globally workable solution for reliable grid level electricity production.
But traditional batteries have some limitations, not least in capacity and duration of storage. Hydrogen has no such limitations and as a result it's rapidly gaining attention as a potential market disrupter.
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Thanks for this video. This is something I've been trying to explain to many people for quite some time now. Hydrogen provides the seasonal storage wind and solar energy so desperately needs. It can also act as a bridge for renewable energy to cross into applications that are very difficult to electrify: large ships and aircraft. Now, if Hydrogen can be reacted with CO₂ captured from the air, you'd effectively have green synthetic fuels. Methanol is already being looked at to replace bunker fuel for ships. For jet fuel, it would have to be some direct substitute using the Fischer-Tropsch process to make synthetic fuels.
i'm surprised you didn't talk about the efficiency of this process say vs. batteries or other forms of storage
It definitely seems like the efficiency is really bad all that time and just a little flame
I have liked your presentations in the past and thought they were really good this one was not. You go on and on about needing to store energy but very little about the pitfalls of hydrogen. I would have expected much better
@@cliffordnelson8454I doubt graphite was the best choice of electrode(as well such a low surface area for said reaction) nor was the direct current applied to it. It was demonstration for simplicities sake. Noble metals and high frequency resonance generator matching closely the required frequency to crack the water molecule would likely be way more productive but not near as easy to implement in such a short period of time for simple demonstrations. If your at all interested look for more info on electrolysis, Hydrogen production, or Browns Gas production to get a better hold onto what others are actually doing to produce these gases. I agree with your next comments of the pitfalls of storing and getting such productions to consumers. It would be best to engineer a plant to use the resource on demand (much like current power plants)to generate energy.
Batteries lose about 15% during storage and release, and have low energy density. He did cover energy density and that is a big issue for transport and storage. Hydrogen has high energy density but in atmospheric conditions is a low density gas so has to be pressurised and/or cooled which takes a lot of energy so it has its own inefficiency. So far there is nothing that comes close to matching the low cost, high density, transportable energy nature created in carbon based fuels.
@@cliffordnelson8454 How would there be more severe "pitfalls" with hydrogen as a domestic gas utility than lpg or natural gas? If the hydrogen is stored in those under ground caverns and released into the domestic grid there is virtually zero difference to any other utility gas.
On submarines, this is one of the ways to create oxygen for breathing air. The machine uses 1250 volts to separate the molecules and throws away the hydrogen. The machine is referred to as the O2 bomb.
There's still a lot of work in removing CO2 then, just adding O in a submerged environment means the CO2 saturated air must be vented with the H2. That's a possible position give away even if they compress it for a few days and then vent. I thought they used CO2 scrubbers. Not saying you're wrong (you've obviously spent time on a sub), only that I'm surprised.
Unless theres some technology I dont know about, (its possible, Im not particularly knowledgeable in the subject) theres no CO2 scrubbers that can be used for the lengths of time a submarine would need, so they use an amine type CO2 scrubber, which is regenerative (it absorbs CO2 normally, and discharges it when heated).
And if youre only discharging the CO2 youre only discharging about 0.3-0.6m^3 of volume a day per person,
0.0004m^3 per minute on the high end (my cursory search on how much co2 a person emits per day turned up 0.35m^3).
Which is trivial, all these values are also at standard temperature and pressure, not the incredible depths a submarine can be expected to operate at, lowering them even further, also sea water absorbs and adsorbs CO2, lowering it even further.
Also I just realized I typed a wall of text, sorry about that! I like doing math!
@@rjwaters3 Yes, Destin from smarter every day did a video on this. They mostly use amine to absorb co2 which they then vent to the sea. They pressurize it to match outside pressure and vent it in tiny bubbles so it dissolves into the water very quickly
why is h2 made on one terminal? what happens to the o2 from that terminal? the o2 doesn't teleport to the other terminal.
Amazing video!! I have recently started studying to become an alternative energy technologist and these videos are helping me to better understand the real world applications of what I’m learning, while also keeping me updated on exciting emerging technologies. I truly appreciate the effort put into these videos!!
All the best to you!!
hello Maria I approve of this message 🤗
It’s certainly an important part of the overall storage mix. Well presented!
I’m always amazed that so many persons get hung up on your feed on industry. We need industry involved for real solutions and scalability. Very few persons will have the ability to reliably produce their own energy. Plus who do you think works for these companies? Persons who need jobs. We need clean renewable energy desperately now. Love the H concept
not desperately. Water front property still the most coveted by the richest and best informed. Most home owners now have solar panels. I'd rather have this hydrogen bomb sorry hyrogen storage in the garage than it going into the grid.
Brilliantly well thought out and presented. Getting people thinking about these ideas is the first step. Looking forward to more videos
That is such an exciting intro, i'm commenting before watching, i'm thrilled :-) really appreciate your good effort!
A big side benefit of fuel cells is that their byproduct is fresh water. Using solar power to electrolyte sea water will generate hydrogen for storage and fresh water later when converted back to electricity in a fuel cell👍
Fuel cells are very expensive because of the materials used. This is one of the reasons BEVs are more prevalent now. For large scale grid storage cost is less of an issue. But I'm curious how much energy is lost by needing to compress the hydrogen.
Commercial PEM electrolisers (these are the ones with the best efficiency) do NOT run on sea water. The chlorine ions would destroy the membranes, catalysts and electrodes. Instead, they run on deionised water. The conductivity is provided by the separator. To produce the DI-water, large amounts of drinking water are used.
more info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_electrolyte_membrane_electrolysis
Couldn't use of hydrogen power create too much water for the planet possibly flooding it or something? And couldn't the extra vapor heat the planet even faster?
70% energy loss from water to electricity. hydrogen makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE. lithium batteries make the most sense. even lead acid batteries make a WHOLE LOT MORE SENSE than fuel cells. so why do we keep seeing vidoes like this? because NO ONE commercially produces hydrogen from water. they get if from the refinement of natural gas. short explanation? BIG OIL. they showed you all those big tanks and talked about hydrogen and you TOOK THE BAIT... and made the ASSUMPTION that they were getting the gas from water. THEY ARE NOT.
20% loss at electrolysis.. minimum. 10% loss to pressurize hydrogen. 40% loss at the fuel cell.. MINIMUM. starting to see why it's a dum idea?
I loved your experiment. It was fun. Do it again. Oh wait I can rewind.😁
awesome show, always practical , always in the realm of today , this is the Real Stuff we should be doing. Thanks for the info
Great video appreciate the hard work.
The hydrogen could be used to make ammonia rather than using natural gas. That would save the stored methane to be used for other uses.
Or you could make methanol, which is slightly less energy dense, but easier to store.
First video I always click on in my sub box! Love your work brotha :D
Get a life idiot.
El Matador funny because I always thought that kind of insult was coming out of non smart guys!
Thanks MC. I really appreciate your feedback. All the best. Dave
Hello, I have just discovered your channel, and your videos are of amazing quality and interest, and I hope you keep doing what you're doing.
Well Done "Just Have Think". This Presentation is a beautiful, crystal clear illustration of how surplus renewable energy can be converted to hydrogen and power many things as well as grid storage. Although it avoids an explanation of the relative efficiency of the production and burning of hydrogen.
I have questions about the round trip efficiency of electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen, then, burning the hydrogen in a gas turbine. It sounds like about 400 watts out, per each 1 kWh of energy in, not counting compressing the hydrogen for the purpose of storage. It is a sure fire solution for getting the capacity necessary to firm up the grid against the intermittent nature of renewable energy, but, we're going to need more than twice as much, perhaps as much as 3 times the capacity, that would be necessary if the energy could be stored in batteries, which can approach 90% efficiency. Even with fuel cells, rather than turbine or reciprocating engines, you're at best, up around 50% efficiency.
Wished he had mentioned what the companies employing this claimed their efficiencies and costs are.
@@skiinggator I agree 100%. Some hard data and a few minutes on a calculator would make this video much more informative. These are neat concepts, but the cost per kWh to install, the maintenance costs as well as the efficiency will dictate weather this is actually practical.
Today NEL electrolyzers are at 93% of efficiency without compression, then you need to add 12% for 700 bar compression or 30% for liquefaction, but the new Electrochemical Hydrogen Compression new units are way superior to mechanical compression with 8% for 700 bar (way more small,, less capital cost, they also purify and silent) and 15% is possible for liquefaction just scaling up production, even more if you apply EHC or magnetocaloric.
New high temperature reversible fuel cells in lab already achieves 75% in round trip efficiency (electricity-->hydrogen-->electricity) with relative high endurance, they just need a water vapor input at 500c, which could be obtained from any thermal plant as waste heat and they can work with pure hydrogen or methane or anything in between without modification.
In addiction, you dont need to convert hydrogen back to electricity to power the grid, you can work converting all the excess to hydrogen and then use hydrogen to power all those thing that can not work with batteries, like the utility transport sector or the natural gas grid (which does not need extra compression).
Vincent Robinette
Nickel Hydrate stores H2 expensively (uses heat to release H2 for Fuel Cell (to drive EV)) Can also be compressed (with some losses to leakage) IDEAL: Use
Solar to electrolysis to H2 & Solar to Compress H2 (transfer to EV or hydrogen to
power Vehicles// Pollution_Free Zero Carbon Footprint !!🙀🙏🏼👽
HI Vincent. Fair point. I did do a bit about comparing battery and hydrogen efficiencies back in September at this link
czcams.com/video/uG4lmtOxz6E/video.html
By no means completely full and comprehensive but a reasonable layman's guide. All the best. Dave
Awesome video! Really informative plus fun to see the electrolysis work
I love the delivery of this content and the practicality.
Great stuff as usual. Thanks.
Love you for this clip, it's up and running already but not advertised because of the control of capital flow towards Oil and $. With the "Sabatier Reaction" even utilising CO2 and the use of resonant frequencies replacing the galvanic process and the catalyst in both reactions it is together with anaerobe digestion the best way of using renewable energy. By decentralised generation with thermo coupling achieving an efficiency of more than 0.5 and supplied by a gas grid a robust, (Carrington Event) safe, sustainable and clean way into the future use of energy. "Don't be insane drive with METHANE!" you've just got a new subscriber.
That stereo rack behind him gave me flashbacks to the 70s.
This video and the comment section have taught me well. Thanks!
As always, great job Dave ! Really interesting to see the process of making hydrogen. I didn't know it was that simple. Thanks for all those hours you spend on helping others such as me to open their eyes, in order to make sustainable choises!
Thanks Lihan. I really appreciate your feedback. All the best. Dave
DUDE! you have a cassette player - love that.
There's a guy in New Jersey that did designed a hydrogen storage system from left over electricity made by his solar roof. He had a low pressure tank for the hydrogen and a low pressure tank for the 02. When he needed more electricity he would call on this system for electricity. It took time for approvals by the township.
Of course the "tank" was larger than his house.
@@rob1248996 Actually no. He did have a series of tanks in the back yard. It did take up a lot of space as one would expect
@@beebob1279 I would expect that maybe you could cook with h2 at low pressure but that's about all. Anything else you use it for will have to be compressed to high pressure (>1000psi) which destroys the effeciency that you might have by generating it with solar electricity. Commercial plants Reform h2 from natural gas because it's the cheapest way to get it. Anything else and it's just a hobby.
@@rob1248996 He's on youtube and has the whole thing explained. I can't remember his name though. And no, it's not high pressure
Extremely interesting video, something I have been behind for many years. A controversial chap called Bob Lazar claimed he stored hydrogen in pressurised tanks containing hydrolyte material, when heated gently the material would readily give up the hydrogen on demand thus removing the danger of storing the hydrogen. You have my sub, P.S. I owned a company for many years which was a the very front end of renewables, made it in the local paper around 2000 for having my house electricity and heating running from a waste oil engine and a home made wind turbine.
Yes it works - a small community located on an offshore island used to rely on two diseal powered generators, one covers general usage while second covered for excess usage or as backup. One was converted to hydrogen (simple minor modification that still permits switching back on demand). The hydrogen is produced on the island with a wind generator. Most of their power is generated by hydrogen and battery power provides automated control of the generators.
What a positive video (except for the horrible reminder in the graph at 10:48 - yikes!), nice humour too. Subscribed!
4:50 there's a 3rd method, Lithium-6 Deuteride Hydride Storage but the defence department ain't gonna let that one go mainstream for obvious thermonuclear reasons....
Ahh, they're just big wusses.
Great, yet easy to understand presentation on the future role of hydrogen in energy system. Well done!
Splendid, as always! 😎
Again, a stimulating and interesting video. Thanks.
You could do a second video which went into a bit more detail about the low energy efficiency of hydrogen storage compared with, for example, batteries and the extent to which that might influence the future direction of technology for light vehicles, heavy vehicles and static energy storage.
Ye hydrogen is VERY inefficient as a means to store energy BUT
1. Less pollution (current battery technology produces a lot of toxic waste.
2. Good energy density (again current battery technology just isnt there yet)
Efficiency is not what it matter most between clean sources, only overall cost.
BTW, there is a lot of misinformation on internet about the efficiency of hydrogen technologies.
I even hear some sources saying that you need 5 times more energy to produce hydrogen which is stupid to said the least.
Today NEL electrolyzers are at 93% of efficiency without compression, then you need to add 12% for 700 bar compression or 30% for liquefaction, but the new electrochemical hydrogen compression units way superior to mechanic compression are at 8% for 700 bar (less size, way more small, silent, etc) and 15% is possible for liquefaction just scaling up production, even more if you apply EHC or magnetocaloric.
New high temperature reversible fuel cells in lab already achieve it 75% in round trip efficiency (electricity-->hydrogen-->electricity) with high endurance, they just need a water vapor input at 500c, which could be obtained from any thermal plant as waste heat.
In addiction, you dont need to convert hydrogen back to electricity to power the grid, you can work converting all the excess to hydrogen and then use hydrogen to power all those thing that can not work with batteries, like the utility transport sector or the natural gas grid.
Hi Matt. All good pointers. Thank you. I'm looking at hydrogen for heating and hydrogen fuel cells in the next video, but I do think the fuel cell thing is far better suited to big fleet vehicles like buses and lorries, as well as trains and boats (and maybe one day even short haul planes?). As for inefficiencies in static storage - I'll do a bit of digging on this one, but I think essentially the technology is proven in principle even if it will indeed benefit from better technology to improve performance. All the best. Dave
@@JustHaveaThink check the numbers I provide and check those with your own research on the state of the art.
I did it hundreds of times, they are very update.
If you want to search info about hydrogen fuel cells for houses, check the hundred of thousands units that were sale in Japan, using methane as input to provide electricity and heat for the whole house.
@Frank Olsen you are the clown talking over a topic that you know nothing about.
BTW, the amount of time that you can keep certain charge is not the important here, the important is the capacity, each time you double the capacity with batteries you need to double the cost, with hydrogen you just increase your tank size a 25% (this doubles the volume) or you inject more to the natural gas grid.
Without capacity any extra efficiency that you get with batteries (your numbers are totally outdated) it would be totally wasted.
If you have to store 2 or 3 days of strong winds, you will need a battery storage capacity for 72 hours, but batteries can not store more than 4 hours in a cost efficient way, this mean that you lost 68 hours of power, what is the efficiency of that?
Take a look, page 15:
www.all-energy.co.uk/RXUK/RXUK_All-Energy/2016/Presentations%202016%20Day%202/Energy%20Storage/Graham%20Cooley_Kris%20Hyde.pdf?v=635996073021366827
Next step: methanisation of hydrogen, aka combining CO2 for the air (or other sources) and 2 H2 to make CH4 + O2.
This can be store indefinetly and without any limitations inside the natural gas grid and can be used for a lot of things using existing technology (heating, cooking, gas turbines, PNG/LNG cars)
huh, CO2 is the waste product of the spent hydrocarbons, why would you want to "combining" them back in you said fuels?
@@6969smurfy for the same reason we use bio-fuels like wood or corn based methanol
It's carbon neutral and - as i wrote - can be transported and stored (and used) without any problems using the existing gas infrastructure.
@@6969smurfy CO2 and carbon is always here the problem is we dug up all the carbon that mother nature locked away.
Thank you for your video it's very educational your knowledge is very impressive.
very good video, thanks for this information.
9:55 Salty Utah Mormon here 😁
We need more large-scale projects like these if we are going to save the planet from ourselves. I'm very surprised this is happening considering the attitude of the current political administration in the U.S. It gives me even more hope with future administrations 🤞
Very cool. Plus the concept of seasonal power storage is a lovely one.
An excellent video! Well researched and clearly explained.
You do awesome work mate. Glad it's spreading.
Thanks Mark. Much appreciated. All the best. Dave
Hydrogen to ammonia conversion makes storage vastly cheaper and safer. Australian scientists have worked out how to do it efficiently so within the next few years hydrogen might do what many expected of it decades ago.
Matt TheChosen QLD state government just put 20 million into a hydrogen plan along with prior investment in infrastructure. It’s going to happen. Ministers are in Japan announcing it because they are asking for hydrogen to buy from Australia there.
It has always been "a few years" before something "new" would be ready for the market. For decades... Sure it might be the real thing this time, but don't hold your breath.
bridging the gap between full scale renewables and our current system is dependent on distribution and storage, if we can use the existing gas infrastructure that's huge!
@@biomecaman3514
You can't. Hydrogen needs it's own infrastructure, unless you can make 100% sure there are no metals in the existing one that get brittle through hydrogen.
@@zber9043 The QLD state government are also pushing for the Adani coal mine development. I'll never vote for those clowns again. H2 to NH3 does offer some hope for our future though, lets hope that pan's out.
so good to hear something positive re our energy and environmental future. Thanks from Australia!
Wow. Thank you so much. I always learn so much from you and you give me hope for the future. Be well.
loved this video. new sub for sure!
think you forgot to talk about efficiency?
In the world of hydrogen one shall never speak about efficiency.
@@Simon-dm8zv 😂
Faithful hydrogen worshippers must shake off the earthly shackles of logic and economy so their souls can soar into the eternal bliss of hydrogen heavens filled with negative entropy.
Efficiency is slightly irrelevant. As you can use surplus renewable energy to store as hydrogen which can either be used in a gas power plant or even to heat your home. The UKs gas grid was originally designed to run on hydrogen before the discovery of the gas reserves in the North Sea so the infrastructure is pretty much already there.
@@samhunt8240 Cents per kwh is key. If hydrogen production is say 30% efficient it can never compete with pumped hydro that is 60% efficient. So the plant you make for producing the hydrogen would only run after the hydro and every thing else is maxed out. You still pay the same for the plant though so the price pr kwh becomes prohibitively high. I think heatpumps and heat-storage will be the future for the northern countries.
I'd like to see the analysis of efficiency of H2 storage for both Compressed and Liquify methods.
Compressed H2 creates complications in proportion to its pressure, due to the fact that hydrogen atoms can fit into the crystaline structure of the container and associated hardware. Synthetics are highly resistant to this, but not immune and not as strong as other materials.
Liquifying hydrogen is incredibly power intensive, and unlikely to ever be an economical solution.
Best video is a long time. Sub'ed. Cant wait to watch more.
Hi, just came across your channel (subscribed). Really great work you are doing. Excellent discussion and explanations! Thanks! Will be watching all your new vids and catching up on your previous ones.
Thanks Stephen. Much appreciated. Welcome to the channel. All the best. Dave.
I did not hear anything about how hydrogen causes metal engines and gas pipelines to become brittle and crack. We cannot use hydrogen without new technology for these pipelines and combustion / turbine engines. And hydrogen is very hard to store. But it can be converted to methane which is easy to store. I wish hydrogen was an easy solution but it is not.
its a myth...sorry to burst your bubble. hydrogen can be stored in high pressure tanks or hydride tanks for decades with no issues
@@HydrogenFuelTechnologies - The high pressure tanks would indeed qualify as "very hard to store"
the modern way we are researching is by having it attach to a metal hydride substrate with extremely high surface erea. but the key there is researching, so the're workin on it.
As usual facts twisted to suit point of view hydrogen not good for home gas supply dangerous stuff I read
high pressure stainless steel or aluminium tanks are not a hard way to store. it's standard hardware. and the hydrogen is meant for energy storage, not to work on machinery as you seem to assert
Might be okay, when we have tons of extra solar electricity to store, but as a physicist I know that it takes 5 times as much energy to make the hydrogen to go a mile, as it does if you put it in batteries in an electric car. And that inefficiency is built in to the chemistry involved and cannot be reduced.
The better way to store electricity is to turn it into some form of carbohydrate. I remember that one company used electricity to improve methane production in biodigester. I cant find it anymore
In some areas in rare days there is indeed extra energy produced by renewables that has no where to go but the bigger problem is we really need to plant more of them
I mean we need to solve the bigger problem (fossil fuel to energy) after that it is really easy to use the extra energy in various potential solutions ex: sea water processing ; pump water up to a dam then use it as hydro power when needed and there is really a lot of things to do if you have above demand energy.
But it can be accepted easily, especially when lithium becomes scarcer & much more expensive. Ease of production & abundance counterbalance inefficiency.
@@thedamnedatheist Lithium is very abundant element and we wont run out of it. We can only run out of cheap lithium
@@thedamnedatheist lithium is used because it has great energy density per weight. For grid storage, weight isn't a factor. So we need to develop a different type of battery. Liquid metal batteries might be this solution.
You are one amazing teacher
As always, excellent talk!
Doubtless your next vid will discuss overcoming/safeguarding the volatility of hydrogen in general & domestic supply situations. It has a fearsome reputation from the Hindenburg disaster.
The same way we currently do with propane, methane, natural gas, LPG, etc.
no more dangerous than the coal gas I grew up with - it's largely hydrogen. They kept it in big gasometers around the town.
I was laughing as soon as i heard "What could go wrong?"
BOOM!!!
Great stuff, thank you
Excelent... I d like a lot... keep giving more vídeos....
Lots of comments on Hydrogen storage snd transport problems. .
This video completely ignored the Ammonia to Hydrogen Via Catalyst Membrane technology that will make storage snd transport way easier.
Great video.
Hydrogen storage, like normal battery storage, is a form of chemical storage. You use energy to chemically alter substances after which you reverse the process and get the energy back out.
There's nothing new or special to this concept. The only question is: "how efficiënt is it?"
comment on point
Effiency matters, but also its Relation to cost. Of course, one can accept 10% less efficiency, if cost is reduced by 25%. In this case, to get the same overall energy, you need to put some saved money to conpensate the losses by e.g. increasing solar panel area by 10%.
@Manny Santiago Yes, you are right, also ecology is a factor that matters, of course also a few other things, like size, design, etc.
Awesome keep up the great work, and there is no wonder Proton Power PLC just installed robot to make thousands of fuel cells
Awesome presentation as always. Reminds of an idea I had years ago while looking at wind maps: converting oil tankers as wind generator platforms to convert high winds into hydrogen. Basically floating wind farms. Turns out someone had patented this years ago and i don't know if they have followed up.
Very likely a company like Shell patented it. They tend to stock up on all these patents to keep the fossil fuel industry alive
Hydrogen is great as a last resort energy storage. It will always be chosen last, but for some applications it's the only option.
The best energy storage is a combination of several different solutions, for example: a combo or a mechanical storage + liquid air storage + hydrogen would complement each other nicely and give redundancy needed if one of them fails.
The mechanical battery is fast at responding + powerful and works great for balancing the grid (might need a 500 milliseconds supercapacitor buffer for even faster response), the liquid air storage is cheap and relatively efficient (60%), hydrogen is not very efficient, but it's great for storing endless excess energy when both the other storage systems are already full, and you can sell of the hydrogen when the storage gets full for profit.
Just transport the hydrogen using hydrogen powered trucks to the buyers (Airplanes and boats will both be using hydrogen as a fuel in the future). Since hydrogen would be too valuable to use for the grid except at huge emergencies, over 99% of it would sold instead of returned to the grid.
@Allen Loser Boats only option is hydrogen. Those huge cruisers will never use batteries.
@Allen Loser Hydrogen will become cheaper in the future if power plants start to make it of excess power. California for example produces more electricity from solar than they need and could store part of the excess as hydrogen. The energy would have been wasted otherwise, so it's a great profit.
Also I just discovered than instead of storing hydrogen directly, ammonia could be used instead, avoiding high pressure or very low temperature for storage.
@Allen Loser Well, we will see in the future how it goes. I think hydrogen definitely have a place when travelling at sea and in the air. Ammonia and urea seem to have great potential to make hydrogen more viable. It will never be the main fuel in the world, of course, but it will have its niche.
Batteries and hopefully supercapacitors will definitely dominate the land vehicles.
@Allen Loser The future will tell who of us two will be right, if either. I actually don't think that hydrogen will be used for much at all, only for air and sea which is a small niche where batteries are not possible to be used. Pipes makes transporting it cheap and easy and since it's it's made from surplus energy it will be cheap enough.
@Allen Loser Why are you talking about cars? Hydrogen for cars would be a really stupid idea, batteries is the only choice for cars. I will be able to charge my Cybertruck for free over here when it arrives, so why would I use hydrogen? There are no charging station at sea or in air though, so for those vehicles hydrogen is the only choice.
1) - Isn't it so that Hydrogen due to its small atom size is highly volatile and manages to escape from all sorts of contrapments much easier than any other kind of gas?
2) - And might this not lead to potentially explosive "hydrogen gas"-"oxygen gas" (air) mixtures at the leaking locations along the pipe?
3) - Therefore, where do you see power plants working with hydrogen gas to be located due to the legal safety requirements? - These type of power plants don't seem to be scalable due to the safety requirements involved, especially not close to populated areas.
Quote: "The flammability range for hydrogen in dry air at atmospheric pressure and ambient temperature is about 4 to 75%. With so wide a range, virtually any release of hydrogen has a great potential of igniting."
Source: www.chemengonline.com/how-to-handle-hydrogen-in-process-plants/?printmode=1
> Therefore, where do you see power plants working with hydrogen gas to be located due to the legal safety requirements? - These type of power plants don't seem to be scalable due to the safety requirements involved, especially not close to populated areas.
Same place as the solar panels/wind farms and/or other power stations that already exist...they're not often close to populations, and there's no need for them to be.
After all, we use nuclear and chemical power plants which have been proven to be dangerous as well. At least, in the case of a H2 plant explosion, the only residue would be water.
Hydrogen does leak easily, but compared to pretty big losses when producing, compressing and converting back to power, it is minor thing. Still better than not using the power at all.
Another more important thing with hydrogen's small molecule/atom size is that it diffuses into metals and makes them brittle. So you can't use your normal pipes and fittings like for other gases, but have to be careful what you choose.
Unless you trap the leaking hydrogen in a room, where it can mix in the right proportion with oxygen, it is very safe. It immediately rises and won't "fill" the floor like many other (heavier than air) gases like propane or butane or vapor coming off of gasoline and other fuels for example. The most dangerous part of hydrogen is it's almost invisible flame. So should you have a leak big enough to support combustion and catching fire somehow, you'll have an invisible welding torch.
The quote is very misleading, because it sounds almost as if it would ignite on itself. And it isn't anything special either. Acetylene and carbon monoxide, both gases in wide use in the industries, have similar mixture ranges (acetylene from 2.5 to 80% for example).
Leaks of hydrogen in open air are not as dangerous as heavy petroleum gases, because it lifts quickly and doesn't concentrate at the surface.
1) quite true.
2) yeeees.. in the same way that the leaking gasoline from your car can react with the grease on the bearings, making Napalm. I.e. it works on paper, in reality it is no issue.
3) For sure, to the same or very slightly greater extent that gasoline manufacturing, storage and delivery also needs all sorts of safeguards.
The hydrogen leakage issue *is* a problem for the metal parts that are continuously exposed to the hydrogen. Iron compounds, for example, get brittle over time if saturated with hydrogen. Some plastics experience similar problems. But all of these issues are known and easily handled.
The real problems with Hydrogen are that its energy *per volume* is pathetic. Per mass it is quite good, but that mass wants to occupy an enormous volume, even if you cryogenically liquidize the H2 (which presents a whole slew of other problems).
Or you could mechanically compress the gas, which requires a lot of energy, *very* heavy containers, and turns H2 storage into miniature bombs by pressure alone.
Very interesting and clear explanation well done!
How have I not seen this channel earlier!
I subscribe to many CZcams channels but yours is rapidly becoming one of my favo(u)rites. Keep up the good work!
Cheers Bob. Very much appreciated :-) All the best. Dave
Was that English sunshine I almost saw?
Excellent, mate.
Hello, thank you for posting this insightful presentation about hydrogen storage. I would like to make some constructive suggestions in order to create more clarity around this important topic and hydrogen in general 😊.
1. it would be interesting if you could also talk about solid hydrogen carriers, which use metal hydrides to store hydrogen in a more safe and efficient way, at relatively low pressure in comparison to compression and/or liquefaction. There are a myriad of companies out there, all over the world, which in recent years have come out with metal hydrides solid hydrogen carriers storage technologies. One of them is an Australian startup LAVO, which created the first hydrogen storage battery. The overall round-trip electrical efficiency is low though, around 50%, but this is because they are not recovering the thermal energy wasted from the electrolyser and fuel cell.
Solid hydrogen carriers are an important breakthrough, which will allow hydrogen seasonal storage to be done in a more efficient way.
2. comparing hydrogen storage versus battery storage is a hot topic, as there are a lot of economic interests attached to it. Opinions are polarised, therefore we need, now more than ever, transparency, integrity, clarity and efficiencies. It’s important to mentions all the pros and cons of these two different ways of storing energy.
You did put emphasis on seasonal storage, which is a very important concept to understand about hydrogen.
3. It would be interesting if you could create a video which covers in detail the different types of Electrolysers and hydrogen fuel cells, their efficiencies, pros and cons, application types, costs, maintenance, life span, etc... there are a lot of misconceptions and misunderstandings about these technologies. It’s important to clarify that fuel cells are co-generators of electrical and thermal energy, therefore when we use these technologies we enter the realm of combine heat and power (CHP) systems. In some applications and circumstances the thermal energy component will be lost, but in others it will be retrieved, increasing therefore the overall system efficiency.
Electrolysers also generate thermal energy during the electrolysis reaction. Energy that can be retrieved.
4. When we talk about energy, and in particular “energy transition”, it is limiting to only mention electric energy and electrification, without bringing into the equation the thermal energy. We often forget that thermal energy exists and that it also accounts for a big portion of GHG emissions. Burning hydrogen is not seen as an efficient way to decarbonise the thermal energy generation. Perhaps it might be necessary in the short term, in order to rapidly reduce CO2 emissions, but in the long term thermal energy will be generated by the fuel cell itself, therefore increasing the system efficiency.
Warm regards,
Marco
Someone is a Jeremy Clarkson's fan hahaha very informative video, very well explained
I'm only 4 minutes in, but the 'what could possibly go wrong' and the 'on that bombshell' made me go look for your comment :-) Thank you!
Hydrogen is good idea on paper but it is stupidly expensive way to make electricity also keep in mind that these storage facilities are basically one big bomb
It is stupidly expensive if we are using fossil fuel to make the electricity to turn water into hydrogen but if we are using renewable energy methods like wind, solar, geothermal etc. Then its not, and it is a necessary way to store excess energy generated for later on when there is not so much wind and/or sunlight.
@@ScamallDorcha I worked on hydrogen rc car project it was mid size rc racing car which was running on 20liters of hydrogen the fuel cell cost over 800euros and deliver max output of 27 watts and it was the best at that time (2017). The hydrogen generator cost something like 450euro and produced ~5liters per hour of clean hydrogen. It was paid be our sponsor who organized the race but still hydrogen is not the best way to go
I have been thrilled with the properties of Hydrogen for a long time. The idea of compressing it for energy storage use had not occurred to me. Thanks.
Update from New England: solar power production regulations that had limited it to 37% of total power usage in Lowell MA (4th largest city in MA) were expanded to allow as of 7/19 a total not exceeding 82% coming from Solar. Perhaps this will improve our renewable generation capacity. Perhaps we should mix in wind and hydrogen for various uses.
I had thought of electrolysis as a slow and inefficient process but on revisiting the idea I have come to the conclusion that it could well be the opposite for instead plain old graphite rods we can use stacks of porous membranes or sponge-like structures to increase the surface area of electrodes which can occupy the whole space of a generator and the gas produced could be self pressurizing
You forgot to mention the difficulty in storing hydrogen gas. It being a really small molecule
Hydrogen is diatomic. It's easier to store hydrogen, than it is to store helium, even though helium is a heavier element. Helium is monatomic. But, your right. it is more difficult, than storing nitrogen or oxygen.
Thank you for teaching the world about this concept. I have been saying it for years. I would like to see vehicle fuel stations that make and compress hydrogen gas on site.
They already exist. The problem is, quite simply, for an average UK sized station, you need a 3MW grid connection power an electrolyser 24/7. This is VERY expensive and there isn't enough power. Not to mention the cost of electrolysers. Hence why battery cars are taking off. The infrastructure is so much cheaper and easier to install. Leaving aside the efficiency problems of H2 cars, they really arent a great solution. Better to use H2 to store energy or inject into the gas grid. Which is exactly what is happening.
We are talking about energy store and retrieval cycle efficiency at a cost here.
Efficiency with electric cell versus hydrogen tank. Hydrogen can diffuse through its holding tank versus battery self discharge.
You should check out photocatalytic hydrogen production! Solar cells that convert water in directly into "HHO" and could feed PEM fuel cells or gas turbines directly.
If you want to find out about storing hydrogen go to NASA. It is really hard to store hydrogen. There is not a fitting made or a weld that can hold it.
L.R. Norris really?
@@kevingrove4379 Yep. Hydrogen brittles steel. Best container is carbon fibre but it still leeches out over time. Hydrogen is a very pernicious molecule!
@@edwardbyard6540 We'll nail it. We're good at the technical stuff.
I wish you hadnt said that. I will now have to Google hydrogen storage and transmission.
I thought Northrop Grumman had solved this in 2004, I mean composite "Cryotanks" are regularly used in deep space missions?
Brillant presentation! if you'd have been my science teacher at school. i'd have been a scientist!
Cheers Peter! Glad you enjoyed it :-)
Great video I will show everyone thank you
Great video! I watched a video about JCB who are using hydrogen to power big internal combustion engines, it works very well! We just need the hydrogen infrastructure!
Communities will use salt water batteries in shipping containers before trying to plumb hydrogen
They already are, no? But why not just use the excess electricity to pump water into elevated storage then when needed run that water through a turbine?
water's not heavy enough - you need a lot of water, high up, to store not very much energy.
Thanks for a great video. Lets hope, that the americas will grow up, and get away from coal and oil.
Edison said to Ford that he hoped that the sun and wind would be used.
Friends of mine have gone off grid. Time to do the same?
70% energy loss from water TO electricity. NEXT. I'll stick with my lithium batteries & solar cells.
This is really, really interesting. Hydrogen produced by electrolysis can run conventional power plants like the ones that currently run on natural gas. A simple solution to the problem of energy storage! There is one issue - that hydrogen can be hard to store. But there are a lot of promising solutions to the problem, e.g. take a look at the Wikipedia article "hydrogen storage".
HYSR is a start up company attempting to do just that using sun light and water, but it is too early and has not produced commercially. If and when that happen we will have plenty hydrogens for use. Can’t wait!
Wooow you have a nice Voice and great explanation. Please next time less music.
You mean lithium batteries. Flow batteries is a different matter
Except flow batteries have worse energy densities than lithium ion.
Doesn't matter much for stationary applications.
Are you guys talking about 'Redox Flow Batteries"? I've got them on the schedule for later in the year, but I must confess I haven't started doing any research on them yet, other than watching the brilliant programme that Robert Lewellyn did for the 'Fully Charged' You Tube channel about 2 years ago. Well worth a watch. All the best. Dave
@@JustHaveaThink czcams.com/video/_qsKUVQtAhA/video.html
@@JustHaveaThink looking forward to a vid on the subject
Awesome video. I would love if you dug deeper into the efficiencies. F.x how much energy is lost converting the water to oxygen and hydrogen and also what is the energy loss converting the hydrogen back to energy and how it compares against other storage methods, like pumped hydro, compressed air, etc...
You are the greatest teacher on green technology and everything related to climate crisis !!
Bless you Veck. Very kind :-)
Thorium reactors will be great in combination with hydrogen production.
I have read about thorium. Sounds promising to me, is anyone working on that?
I wonder how efficient hydrogen energy storage is long term vs short term in comparison with batteries
Hydrogen is a far more efficient medium than batteries if done properly (i.e. not at all like it is done in this video).
Lithium ion batteries are twice as efficient as electrolyser + compression storage + fuel cell in respect to electric energy. Long term vs short term does not affect both systems very much, as Li-ion batteries have low self discharge (1-2% per month) and compression storage has no boil-off (compared to cryo-storage).
@@s9juvolzrebuilt984 absolutely and totally incorrect. In fact, the precise opposite is true.
In order to consider efficiency you need to consider the entire lifecycle and you also have to consider the myriad of ways in which hydrogen can be produced.
The first thing is that the form of electrolysis shown here is incredibly crude. It is the battery equivalent of a zinc/copper lemon battery.
Actual electrolysis is done using PEM electrolyzers which are 86% efficient.
Next, the entire idea of using photovoltaics to generate electricity from photonic energy and then use it to electrolyze hydrogen is asinine in the first place. Direct photonic energy to hydrogen is the exact same efficiency as PV -> battery, but it is actually far better than just that. Storing hydrogen requires only a very low carbon debt container, not a high carbon debt battery and is far more scalable (salt caverns can hold hundreds of terrawatt hours of energy for zero carbon debt).
Then there is using electrical energy to crack renewable methane which is GHG negative (since it converts CH4 which is a 24x stronger GHG than co2 into atmospheric co2).
@@homomorphic The round-trip efficiency is approximately 40%
source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage#Underground_hydrogen_storage
@@homomorphic would love to read into it more. CN u provide sources? Thanks
Great video!
Great info
Keep it up
9:15 - Unfortunately, we just can't change the use of our existing methane gas transmission and distribution systems to hydrogen. Hydrogen has the property of bonding to the trace elements necessary to make high strength steels such as titanium and vanadium. By bonding to such elements, the hydrogen causes what is called hydrogen embrittlement and the steel pipe becomes brittle, cracks under repeated stress loading and fails very quickly. The switch to H2 is possible, but would need to be phased in over time as the infrastructure warrants replacing.
No but we can setup a home H2 system which stores solar energy during the day and uses the compressed H2 at night this way there will be more than enough energy but ofcoarse the battery companies and energy companies don't want people to know about!!
@@pehgt5099 This is not what he was talking about. And as far as your revised suggestion, the mechanical and electrolytical losses of generating and compressing H2 compared to other solar energy storage options make it just plain silly.
We are going to use our turbine to create and store hydrogen . Our variable pitch vertical axis wind turbine has just started to work and is now free from our electric motor test unit. www.vertogen.eu
Do the bearings last longer than a normal turbine which we have found is the major cost in a wind turbine operation and do you still need a transmission and another costly expense or can you control the speed by variable pitch control?
@@rogerreimer6787 It's early days, we tend to use the best bearings anyway. Do you have any advise or products?
Thanks for what you do.
Hi Phillip. I'm glad to hear the videos are useful in some way. I Appreciate your feedback. All the best. Dave
Try storing as a hydrate. It is still a gas and no excess energy used to compress or liquify
I did this in 1976 as a high school science project. When I said this could replace our reliance on oil, I was told that it was "impractical." Solar cells are too expensive. Hydrogen is too bulky to store. It would cost too much to convert cars to hydrogen fuel. What I did not realize until recently is that the real reason it was "impractical" is that the fossil fuel industries have no intention of allowing anything to replace their dominion over the World's energy supply.
Don't feel too bad. Back then, electricity was half the cost that it is now, and solar panels were ten times more expensive than they are now. Back then, they were right. Now, I think they would have a "rethink". It's also worth noting that wind is much less expensive per watt to install as well.
It still completely impractical.
@@PistonAvatarGuy I agree: that's just too much energy lost in the storage process.
You know what isn't? Nuclear. Switch all cars to electric and we all pay a stipend for it. That just will never happen, there is just too much money in burning dinosaur bones or coal.
solar cells are cheap. but fuel cells are a HORRIBLE way to do ANYTHING. only 60% efficiency AT BEST. electrolysis of water to hydrogen loses another 20% at best. pressurizing & storing the hydrogen loses another 10%. by the time you've sent electricity out the other side- you've lost 70% of the energy you collected. lithium batteries make the most sense. they have a long life.. lifepo4's can go a LOOOOOOONNNNNGGGGG TIME. and there are developers working on patenting recycle methods for all the materials used in lithium batteries.
Hydrogen tends to escape any containment its in, thats WHY its not used as much as it could.
Hi, I have spent time with hydrogen, this statement is real! I am yet to have a container/tank which can not let hydrogen out, I have read that cabon fiber do a better job.
L Shayo that’s the problem with using the smallest element on the atomic table. To say we could just use it as a substitute for natural gas using existing infrastructure is a “pipe” dream.
Dual layer container with recuperating apparatus could be a good solution to the caveat. As long as you can recuperate the escaped gas and re-feed it into the compression system it then becomes an almost lost less storage solution.
Jim Viau There are already sophisticated solutions. They just require a heap of energy.
@@mondotv4216 But what if we only want it to last between sunset and sunrise only since the tanks would be refilled on the next day anyway?
There were a few little firms, some years back, promising hydrogen storage tanks filled with metal dusts, giving a metal hydride as the storage medium (low pressure, but high capacity, lots of gas is adsorbed onto the metal surfaces - the gas comes out when you warm the hydride). There _were_ a few of their sales pitches on YT. I wonder what happened to that?
we really need to get away from electricity generation using heat to do the work. Great video, good points
Even though we're only just starting to talk about this seriously. Hydrogen grid storage is the obvious winner over li-ion for these applications. In fact its just cars and SUVs where batteries have major advantages over hydrogen. When you scale things up to say buses, trucks and trains. Just the fact that you are carrying a massive battery whether its fully charged or nearly depleted is a massive drawback. For grid storage you don't have transportation losses. It's true you lose a hell of a lot of energy concerting it to a liquid but that doesn't really matter because filling the same capacity with batteries would cost more than just putting up more solar panels and it really doesn't matter that much when you're charging your system. There is an upper limit to how fast you can charge batteries however. Technically with much better equipment you could super charge the batteries but on a grid scale that would be very expensive. On a car the super charger is actively cooled.
You don't need much in the way of batteries on electric trains, you can get all the power you need via an overhead pantograph or a 3rd rail.
Grid storage doesn't need to move, so the mass (weight) of the batteries is irrelevant. Storing excess electrical energy in batteries is far more efficient than using it to split water to liberate hydrogen, storing the H2 - and if you compress it using more energy - and then later putting it back through a fuel cell - losing yet more energy through the conversion, to make electricity again.
@@freddiefox. That didn't stop humans from using fossil fuels and engines instead of readily available electricity and motors even before the ICE car.
@@Furiends I know, right. As a species, once we find something that works, we tend to stick with it, and refine it, rather than looking for alternative solutions, even when our chosen solution has significant drawbacks and costs, but still offers us a beneficial advantage. Actually, I don't have a problem with hydrogen as an energy storage medium. It could well be part of the solution, especially for long-term storage, and as a transportable energy source for remote locations.
@@freddiefox. We didn't though. The electric car came first. It's more like engines just didn't have drawbacks because most of us didn't know of them. Efficiency is irrelevant when you can pump energy out of the ground.
The goal here is reducing emissions. Efficiency of energy collection isn't as important as people make it out to be. Just that its renewable and scalable both of which hydrogen is. Otherwise we might as well start building our Dyson sphere now.