How Green Hydrogen Could End The Fossil Fuel Era | Vaitea Cowan | TED
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- Опубліковано 13 вер 2022
- As climate change accelerates, finding clean alternatives to fossil fuels is more urgent than ever. Social entrepreneur Vaitea Cowan believes green hydrogen is the answer. Watch as she shares her team's work mass producing electrolyzers -- devices that separate water into its molecular components: hydrogen and oxygen -- and shows how they could help make green, carbon-free fuel affordable and accessible for everyone. "This is how we end the fossil fuel era," Cowan says.
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#TED #TEDTalks #greenhydrogen - Наука та технологія
Please come up with a solution of how we are supposed to store Hydrogen. How much more energy does it take to compress it, and how much can it be compressed before it can be used in a car or an airplane? How heavy will the tanks be to hold enough hydrogen to fly a 737 1000 miles? These details are extremely important.
There are solutions as mentioned green methane(CH4) made out of H2 and CO2 or methanol(CH3OH) which is a liquid.
Those can be used for long term or mobile use.
The problem now is the efficiency and scale.
Who said anything about cars here?
@@TheGoncas2 she mentioned airplanes
MgH2, hydride, nanotech
@@Eng_Simoes lol
We switched to natural gas because it was supposed to be cleaner but the oil industry leaks methane constantly and methane is worse than CO2. Hydrogen also produces a greenhouse effect when leaked. I’m sure it will still have limited applications but the oil industry is pushing it hard because they can make it from methane.
Gas pipes leak plenty of gas as well.
@@s0.0s Hydrogen is the King of all leakers - and has the additional benefit of exploding when people dont even know its leaking. Not just your house but your neighbors house will be reduced to toothpick before and all you did was turn a light on in the garage - BOOM
One day I will speak at Ted.
Good luck
It seems they let anyone talk on anything, you could do it tomorrow.
Ya just did
🎉
We will meet there
For me, the key message of this talk is that Hydrogen can help decarbonize industries that actually need gas as an ingredient in their production processes. Independent of the whole discussion around what method of electricity production is best, this fact means that hydrogen production needs to be a key initiative supported by governments to enable us to go carbon neutral.
The reason they use certain gasses is a matter of chemistry. You can't just substitute in hydrogen for any old gas. We'd already have hydrogen cars if that were true.
Actually, all of the examples in her talk can be done with pure electricity, hydrogen is not required and not wanted because it is highly inefficient in terms energy use, in other words, it is a waste of energy when compared to methods that use pure electricity, anyone who argues otherwise is either ignorant or evil.
Traditional steelmaking often uses coke as fuel, in a process called blast furnace steelmaking. Coke is a coal-based material. In steelmaking, its purpose is to pull out the oxygen from iron ore. While it is true that you can use Hydrogen in place of Coke, which emits water instead of CO2, a much better way is called Molten oxide electrolysis, this process was developed by Donald Sadoway and Antoine Allanore at MIT, this process requires only electricity, and emits oxygen gas, rather than water or CO2, which is even better since oxygen is a much more valuable by-product.
@@_BangDroid_ We did. Like the electric car the reason it was not accepted was the infrastructure needed to allow for them in mass quantity. It was about 20 years ago. It would only cost $700 to change a vehicle over to it.
@@jwyllor right..
@@andymetzen "evil." Why would someone arguing for that be evil? Evil is a word not to be used lightly.
Hydrogen is a greenhouse gas.
Hydrogen is the smallest atom, and as such is the hardest to keep contained. That means the more we produce, the more leaks into the atmosphere. In the atmosphere it impedes the natural processes that remove Methane, a super greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere. Therefore, the more Hydrogen we produce, the longer Methane will have an impact, meaning the more of it will be up there at any one point in time.
Hydrogen has the potential to not only not decrease climate change, but to accelerate it.
Also, there were a number of fallacies with claims she made. Hydrogen is not more energy dense than Diesel, not in practice. Hydrogen is a very light gas and a whole bunch of energy has to go into compressing it down into a liquid for it to be useful to vehicles. This removes a chunk of its energy efficiency, nevermind the power that needs to go into actually removing it from water.
Overall, it is so inefficient to remove Hydrogen from water, compress it, then transport it, all while losing some of it to leakage, that it doesn't really compare to using the electricity that would have gone into producing it for other tasks directly.
I'm not a Hydrogen hater, but the reality is that the vast majority of the Hydrogen produced today is made from fossil fuels.
While this technology may sound good in her speech, she didn't say it was actually much more efficient or used any less rare minerals in its manufacture. More, she didn't realistically show how much green power generating would be needed to produce enough Hydrogen to offset fossil fuels.
Most likely, any sort of Hydrogen economy is greenwashing for the fossil fuel industry and claims like this to make advancements into green Hydrogen are to blind you to the fact that just like today, the vast majority of Hydrogen in a continental scale Hydrogen economy would likely be fossil fuel driven. The scale is just too large for any green generation for a long time. We can't even produce the relatively tiny amount of Hydrogen we use today greenly. It would take years just to get fossil fuels out of what we use now, nevermind scaling up production.
Saying hydrogen is a greenhouse gas is a fallacy because it depends on how it was produced. Hydrogen indirectly contributes to greenhouse gases if produced by Steam Methane Reforming (SMR) or Coal Gasification. Just as lithium battery chemistry makes for less environmentally friendly battery production, new battery chemistries are being worked on and discovered to make more environmentally friendly batteries, the same is true for hydrogen production particularly using water electrolysis. A lab in Japan just recently published their breakthrough in Nature where they have achieved water electrolysis without the use of rare earth metals. Stop spreading misinformation with your fallacies as you generalized hydrogen productions emissions based on only 2 methods of production. While a hydrogen economy may still not be feasible it is still worth developing as a backup or to supplement energy demands of the future.
@@mystermont2019 actually no. That is not why Hydrogen is classified as a greenhouse gas, that is why it can be said creating Hydrogen causes greenhouse emissions. There is a clear and distinct difference in the language.
Hydrogen it classified as a greenhouse gas, which means Hydrogen actually continues directly to the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere, because it interferes with the natural process that removes Methane from the atmosphere. Basically, it extends the lifespan of Methane in the atmosphere. It is said to have such a significant impact on the greenhouse effect that it is itself labeled a greenhouse gas.
@@haddow777 Hydrogen does not interfere with the natural process of methane removal in the atmosphere. Methane is primarily removed from the atmosphere through chemical reactions with hydroxyl radicals (OH) in the atmosphere, which break down methane into carbon dioxide and water. Hydrogen itself does not directly interfere with this process.
@@haddow777there may be a solution on the horizon. The introduction of the thunderstorm generator coupled to the exhaust essentially returning the output Back to atmospheric gases. Strike foundation tech
@@mystermont2019 The hero we all needed in this comment thread!
I am happy to see such a solid fraction of criticism in the comments. We are not with hydrogen not because of its price but because of numerous downsides and impracticality of its usage. It's so funny to hear, that hydrogen is most energy dense molecule by mass. Yeah, that makes sense, when you're able to store it as liquid in a rocket fuel tank, but compare a kilogram of gaseous hydrogen coming with a high pressure leak-proof container to a bottle of, say, kerosene... Hydrogen looks impractical at least.
Storing hydrogen could have been a problem 50 years ago..but not in today's technology and science....
There is no need to store hydrogen in kerosene bottles... there can be small hydrog3n storage units...
H20 electrolysis makes total sense when the hydrogen and oxygen can both be put to good use ... as with steel making and rockets. However, using hydrogen to store energy will only make sense in specific situations because the technology costs and energy losses with electrolysis and fuel cell technologies are high when compared to other technologies.
That said, small, low cost, energy efficient electrolyzers that can be located near where hydrogen and/or oxygen are needed should greatly reduce the transportation and storage costs associated with the use of these gasses.
I would be interested in more information related to the use of hydrogen to produce other fuels as the speaker referenced in relation to shipping.
I think electrolyzers are becoming more efficient in producing hydrogen now, just a feeling tho. And fuel cells are also quite efficient in producing electricity, from what i remember it's more than 60% efficient.
@@MuhammadAzzam92
In a battery solution, cathodes and anodes store lithium ions. Electricity is stored (and released) when lithium ions move between the cathode to the anode through the electrolyte. Today's lithium batteries are roughly 95% efficient.
In a comparable green hydrogen solution, An electrolyzer converts electricity into hydrogen and a fuel-cell converts the hydrogen back to electricity. Today, at least one electrolization technology claims to be 80% efficient, and most fuel-cells have demonstrated around 60% efficiency. Using those numbers, a hydrogen solution would be 60% of 80%, or 48% efficient.
I can't imagine that a hydrogen solution will ever be as efficient as a battery solution, but there are energy storage problems that batteries can not solve due to battery weight, energy density, and other factors. I can clearly see scenarios where a hydrogen solution would be better for many of these use cases.
@@gradmiral yes, maybe in terms of efficiency, full battery ev systems are the most superior now. But if the main aim of using full battery ev is to reduce our carbon footprint, then i think bevs are not the right solution in the long term bcs of the high carbon emission produced during its production stage. I can't really say much abt the carbon emission of fuell cell production, but at least it doesn't require mining a lot of rare earth metals like the batteries since fc, from what i know, uses some kind of polymers.
Transfer energy from electricity into hydrogen is not 100%. You could lose a significant portion during the transfer process. Just use electricity as the energy form directly…
*RE: "Just use electricity as the energy form directly…"*
You are proposing we power the world through lightning? That's the only direct form of electrical energy that I am aware of - perhaps electric eels and lightning bugs might be a consideration.
The pie graph at 1:30 illustrating the ratio of electricity to fossil-fuel ("molecules") consumption actually points out the reason why hydrogen-as-primary-fuel doesn't work. Electricity is required to power electrolysis equipment in order to manufacture and pressurize hydrogen in the first place. To replace the 80% dependency on fossil-fuel energy with 80% hydrogen energy, the pie graph must rapidly evolve to reflect 100% availability of electrical energy. Hydrogen power is a downstream form of electric power. If anything, the case for hydrogen-oriented applications is another case for immediate, worldwide transition to modular nuclear reactors.
On a positive note, the world desperately needs an emergency energy conversion in the shipping industry and hydrogen derivatives might be a practical option once terrawatts of electricity are available to power H2 production facilities. Each of the giant, 21,000 TEU container ships burning bunker "asphalt" spews more SOx than about 50,000,000 cars - a mere 15 of them emit more than all the cars in the world combined... Assuming commercial nuclear reactors will be limited to terra firma, the idea of applying clean, hydrogen-based fuel substitutes to the entire shipping industry does sound like a great leap forward if\when feasible.
Can we stop giving a platform to so called experts that have no technical expertise/education of the topic they are discussing? Tedx is really scrambling to find quality speakers.
100% - this comes off as a platform for her to tout a company goal.
Anyone got sources for this?
I did that experiment at secondary school! 🙂👍
Using electrolysis and fuel cells is only about 20% as efficient as storing that electricity in batteries. Fuel cells are extremely expensive and uses MUCH more expensive materials such as iridium, palladium and platinum. Hydrogen is also VERY difficult to store and transport.
Granted those are valid points, indeed these are challenges for the hydrogen economy. However, it is very possible that future electrolysers can be designed without rare earth materials as iridium and palladium like you mentioned. Today, many research teams are exploring possible processes for water electrolysis using common cheap materials. Also, roundtrip efficiency can be improved from today's 20% to something higher. Regarding the storage and transportation, in the last months I have seen news of a powder that can trap hydrogen, facilitating storage. So, indeed hydrogen is not perfect and far from ideal TODAY, however there is a LOT of room for improvement, hydrogen has the potential to be THE perfect energy solution for humanity, something that no other fuel has the potential to be.
@@fernandodesouzavieira hydrolysis needs electricity, which is produced by burning gas, coal and oil
What do people mean when they say? "Hydrogen is difficult to transport"
@@axelpalacios9232 As a liquid, it has to be kept near absolute zero, it has low density so requires enormous containers, it's the smallest molecule so tends to leak from the tightest seals, creating losses and explosion risks, and hydrogen embrittles steel
@@axelpalacios9232 you cannot transport it by pipelines, there is no container which can keep Hydrogen without leaking. Maybe this?
Hydrogen storage tanks need to be robust to handle the pressures, so this makes those tanks heavy. I dont see hydrogen fueling cars to be very efficient or practical. But i do see hydrogen heating and electrifying our homes to be a very viable possibility.
Hydrogen fuel for cars is a mistake, a dead end as hydrogen can be converted back to electricity and can be used to power battery electric cars. "Hydrogen storage tanks need to be robust" - yes, and also put under the surface some meters so a possible explosion will not make much trouble.
Sadly she completely ignores that the price of hydrogen is determined by both system and electricity cost.
She completely ignores the latter to glorify the first and her employer. Isn't that lobbyism ?
Not to mention storage and transportation. I expected more from TED, very disappointing
Currently a lot of energy is being lost or dissipated when there is overproduction. Converting it to hydrogen just means it's a viable strategy for storing solar, wind or tidal energy. The only downside is hydrogen production stores around 30% of the total electric energy put in for hydrogen production. In other words 70% losses. But still better than producing renewable fossil fuels.
@@kokokokow1760 Very true, but she ignores that point completely.
An additional complication to this: you are talking about overproduction on electric energy, which, as she mentioned, is only 20% of the total energy need. Overproduction on electrical alone will never be enough to meet the 80% required for the rest and THEN you need to build renewables solely for producing hydrogen, which will drive the price up massively.
Very convenient for her to ignore this point entirely ^^
@@thrall1342 Yes, even if we ignore the electricity production costs, current electric transmission infrastructure won't be able to manage the extra electric capacity required for hydrogen production on top of current household electricity demands. Extra amount of money would have to be invested in infrastructure alone. Though I still think it will be worth it. No point in waiting for fossil fuel exhaustion, before we start transitioning to hydrogen or battery storage or whatever the scientists invent next.
@@kokokokow1760 I think the future of hydrogen is being the new oil. Countries like Marokko have ridiculous amounts of sun, typically 3 times as much as western countries, if I remember correctly. They will produce the hydrogen a lot cheaper and ship it to other countries in one form or the other. We therefore will not even need the transmission infrastructure.
That, however, means industrial hydrogen production in scale, not the small units the presenter is advertising ^^
This presentation ignores substantial challenges in making Hydrogen an economically viable medium for energy 👎
I hope they get there in 2030, but at the moment "green hydogen" is not even the source of a significant share of the Hydrogen used in the chemical industry...
Mainly grey hydrogen which isn’t economically sustainable and people know this but isn’t talking including car companies that say hydrogen is so green when in reality it’s not 😂😂😂
Uplifting presentation! A lot of comments correctly pointed out the problems with hydrogen transport & storage: (1) embrittlement from small hydrogen atom (2) extreme 700-bar pressure to keep hydrogen liquid. As well as energy loss from conversion.
But what about the hydrogen derivatives she mentioned? Specifically ammonia (NH₃). Nitrogen is readily available from the atmosphere (78% of atmosphere) and so can be combined with hydrogen (H₂) using the Haber Process. Ammonia has much lower liquid pressure ~10bar and does not suffer from embrittlement.
One problem is ammonia has a much high ignition temperature than gasoline so may be less energetic when used directly in an combustion-style engine. But, alternatively, there could be on-board equipment that converts NH₃ to back to H₂ so hydrogen can be re-used on-the-fly as needed while retaining the benefits of ammonia storage & transport.
Sure, there are energy losses with all this (H₂ → NH₃ then NH₃ → H₂). But mostly just need to beat the efficiency of gasoline and diesel. Gasoline engines are terribly inefficient at 20% and that doesn't even include the huge amounts processing it took to explore, drill, refine and distribute the stuff. Lets not forget the existential crisis of continued fossil fuel use too.
What about EROI indicator for hydrogen?
Green H2 will only be viable if/when the clean electricity grid capacity is about 5x baseload requirements, which is not mentioned in the presentation. It will be needed though.
What makes you say that? You could still have every sector on fossil fuels, and convert only steel manufacturing to green hydrogen, and you'd still be kicking 7-9% of carbon emissions out of the equation. That could be done without green energy even reaching baseload capacity.
Nice approach.
Thank you very much indeed for this great and very insightful talk, THE BEST.
hydrogen has to solve 4 major problems.
- cleaning water
- electrolysis
- storage
- fuel cell conversion
each aspect will need to get 99% less expensive since batteries will be 90% better/cheaper by 2035 which means that solar + batteries are most likely the dominant energy source and storage of the future.
That may be true, but hydrogen is the most abundent resource in the universe, any cutting back on research on hydrogen power will only set our generations in the future back.
Regardless of how fruitless it seems now, this work is important.
You're missing low HHV, NOx emissions and low efficiency among others
@@akeemperez8509 i agree with you that we should keep pushing forward in research but at the same time, many of these technologies such as hydrogen and fusion seemed much more amazing prior to Solar and Lithium Batteries gaining prominence.
Everything that we want Hydrogen & Fusion to do, Solar and Lithium will be able to do but in a much more decentralized manners - and thus, cheaper manner. Decentralization is the key.
Even if fusion and Hydrogen were near free, it will soon cost more to ship that energy than to simply produce your own Solar Electricity and store in a battery.
It costs 5-15 Cents per KW just to ship electricity via the grid.
Once home Solar and Storage gets to 5 cents (next decade), it will make the grid and all other "Centralized" forms of electricity generation and storage near obsolete.
and there are other materials, sodium, silicon & even lithium that are very very abundant and very cheap as well. I wouldnt bet on hydrogen solving 4 major problems whereas lithium just needs to keep scaling.
@@shake6321 lithiums power to rate ratio will come to a finite solution at some point. Yes it is very good right now. And im not discouraging it in anyway, infact i do embrace it.
But more forms of renewable technology drives innovation. Keeps dependance off of 1 solution vs many, protecting ourselves from an inevitble shortage in the future be it, oil, gas, hydrogen, lithium ect.
Fusion does not need to be shipped, each municipality/region/nation can incorporate their own fusion technology for their own space.
Hydrogen is being worked on as stated in this video to be more user/mobile friendly. Hydrogen is already being shipped around the world, and their are companies out there now creating innovative new ways to package/store this element more safely.
1 solution should not be the end all be all, we have to stop this method of thinking, this is how monopolys prosper and innovation dies. Im not saying stop lithium production, but other methods should have a simmilar investment just like lithium
@@akeemperez8509 I see what you are saying and i agree but at the same point, we can have other batteries that are very suitable for personal use.
Even if you made a fusion reactor for every municipality, you'd still have to ship that via wires - that has a huge cost. even if you made electricity for 1 cent per KW, you'd then have to ship it for 10 cents per KW via the grid. with home solar there will be zero shipping costs. then, we can store that personal energy via batteries, either Lituium or some other form that is even cheaper (soduim, iron, etc) i think personal electricity via solar will be very hard to beat, even for fusion.
The push and pull of centralized energy versus decentralized energy will be very interesting to follow. I see many people moving away from big cities to harvest cheap solar energy on their own property; thus, bypassing the added expenses of the grid. Will it be better for you to get near free solar energy on your own acre of land to power your AI or live in a big city and have more expensive energy via the grid? thats the questions i want to see answered.
but lets see. the future should be amazing.
Green is water and other renewables; blue is carbon capture; gray is steam; black is coal; turquoise is methane; purple is thermal nuclear; pink is Nuclear electrolysis; red is catalytic and white is naturally occuring
We’ve already given up on photosynthetic, and metabolic energy? They enabled life to thrive since it began. Add in minimal organic combustion that supported our ancestors for tens of thousands of years - importantly, also within biophysical and geochemical limits. Why make everything more complicated than necessary!
@@Rnankn Biomass is a lousy option if you care about greenhouse gas production and cost of energy. Minimal organic combustion-- I take it you mean wood burning-- is typically incredibly dirty (lots of particulate production) and emits GHG. Metabolic energy? You mean like eating food and doing work with your muscles? Good luck using that to power an airliner or manufacture steel. We need industrial scale solutions here.
In our Uni we have installed hydrogen electrolyser and fuel cell by enapter and it is costly.
The talk is mainly about the PRODUCTION of green hydrogen. That is only a part of the challenge of using hydrogen as a main source of fuel for buildings, manufacturing plants and vehicle transportation. This is a very good first step but there are the other 2 challenging obstacles with using hydrogen; storage and distribution. Hydrogen is the second smallest molecule known to mankind (after helium). It leaks easily. A very good example of this is NASA’s SLS rocket that holds the Artemis module destined for the moon. It’s been delayed months because of hydrogen leaks. Storage is the second problem. The best “proven” way to store hydrogen is in liquid form for it provides the highest energy density. Again, hydrogen rockets don’t carry compressed hydrogen gas, it is in liquified form. Hydrogen is transported around on land also NOT in gaseous form but as a liquid. Hydrogen needs to be cooled down to -423.2 degF, which is almost absolute zero! This requires a lot of energy and also requires a lot of insulation for any storage vessel containing the liquid hydrogen. There are other ways to store hydrogen at room temperature in the form of hydrides and other hydrogen containing molecules. But they are still faced with challenges of energy density and energy required to trap the hydrogen in these molecules. And thus so far no company have scaled up such processes for mass production and use.
Agree and agree and agree. Only thing that might be worth adding is that there are other ways of producing hydrogen like gasification but that has its own problems.
Cant agree more! Also another concern to me is that: we are STILL using and we have to use fossil fuels to build all those machinery and factories, and containers to build such a hydrogen fuel supply chain.
@@tianqilong8366 well, we have to transition somehow and this may be a good start.
Now don’t get me wrong … I am not against this technology of making hydrogen generation thru electrolysis. If they can make it efficient enough, and I mean as efficient as how batteries convert electrical energy to chemical storage, this efficient electrolysis process could be a feasible alternative to battery storage. It will eliminate both technical requirements of hydrogen transport (over significant distances) and storage (at ultra-low temperatures). You can use this process to flatten the demand curve of our electrical energy infrastructure and store (short term) intermittent GREEN electrical energy sources sources such as solar and wind much like what battery storage does. The hydrogen gets generated during low electrical demand/high supply phases and stored in compressed gaseous form, therefore no need for liquefaction and efficient insulation, an underground storage tank will do. And this stored hydrogen can be converted to electricity using high efficient fuel cells during high electrical demand/low supply phases in the daily electrical demand cycle. This will reduce the demand for raw materials required for battery production since batteries are better suited for transportation.
@@cedriccease8385brother we can't change laws of physics, hydrogen has very low energy density, and it can leak through any metallic container, so we can't even store hydrogen.
Maby explaining how Mutch energy is needed to create the hydrogen would have been a point to make..
Actually, that is the first point. Green means wind turbines and solar panels, right? Costs of producing them should be added. Plus, how many would we need on top of electricity for home use? And how much space would that take up?
The best benefits of electrolyzer or other means of generating hydrogen is the fact that you no longer need to store hydrogen in order for it to be used. The best means of handling hydrogen is as it is stored in water or ammonia or other suitable molecular medium.
Great Talk, Thank you!!
Well as metallurgist engineer I just want to ask one question.... What are the effects on the residue water after the electrolysis of water with the separation of hydrogen... Could it be drinkable or useable?
Just found out about this! I hope for humanity to keep thriving, and with this development we can go the extra mile.
Hydrogen is not a source of energy. It is a storage medium for electricity that is generated by other means. It's a battery equivalent, that's all.
And that is the point of producing it.
Quite Insightful
Is she a scientist or a salesperson? And was that a bought and paid for audience?
Hydrogen may be a valuable method of energy storage, but it's very costly to produce when you take into account the conversion efficiency of turning electricity into hydrogen. "Very roughly, a new electrolysis plant today delivers energy efficiency of around 80%. That is, the energy value of the hydrogen produced is about 80% of the electricity used to split the water molecule." That's a huge loss of energy in the conversion process. It's a pipe dream to think that renewables will ever be able to meet rocketing demands for energy. We could never afford the loss of so much energy converting the precious stuff to hydrogen.
Green hydrogen is possible to carry out you need 9 tonnes of water and 2.7 tonnes of KOH to produce hydrogen gas and oxygen with D2O as a byproduct. If using sea water you have to filter the salts using reverse osmosis which adds cost of producing so 50KW for hydrogen and 5KW for the reverse osmosis so 55KW of energy for 1 Kg of hydrogen. At the moment only small electrolysis units on the market like 5MW and the large 50MW will come in 2030 . The major goal is to cut the 55KW energy input to 43KW more research is needed.
Well...here in Brazil our renewable energy resources consist of: 39.1% sugarcane and its derivatives, 27.6% hydroelectric power plants, 18.8% vegetal coal and firewood and 14.5% other renewables (solar, wind, biomass, etc), and 59% of our territory is covered by natural and planted forests, I guess we aren't so bad as E.U blame us for the global warming!🙃🙃
Dude this idea is older than the idea of the metaverse, I read about this stuff 10 years ago...
Electrolysis and hydrogen are NOT the (singular) solution, very inefficient, very hard to store and transport etc.
IMO the biggest challenge is still building smart energy networks where storages (like also car batteries...), producers and consumers communicate with each other in order to optimize for the lowest energy costs overall
Fusion will probably get here before widespread adoption of hydrogen 😂
Feels like someone is presenting a product instead of an idea, I thought ted talks were about ideas
We can implement multiple solutions at once:)
@@alien9279 true but the way she presents it, like it’s the only thing we need, is a bit ingenious
Well, that is why she is calling green hydrogen.
As, you already said, hydrogen is old, so when it is GREEN hydrogen, it somehow become the "new" thing.
Could you please address the fact that water vapor is a greenhouse gas?
Er, no, it isn’t. It floats around the atmosphere until it condenses and falls as rain, replacing the water you took to free the hydrogen in the first place. Or, you can exhaust it straight back into your water supply, cutting out the raining part.
@@Twittler1 I understand that. However, I am referring to the ability of water vapor molecules to absorb some wavelengths of the Infrared spectrum and occasionally emit IR radiation back towards earth (occasionally the radiation will be emitted into space). In effect, water vapor is a greenhouse gas. To your point, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is determined by air temperatures (water cycle), but I wasn’t claiming in any way that water vapor was an emission.
water vapor blocks heat from radiating to space at night because the heat is bound up in the molecules in the air. UNLIKE co2, it is in a daily water cycle and is balanced daily by the Earth and human activity. The impact of releasing any water vapor from exhaust pipes will be far less detrimental to the environment, if at all, than continuing to burn fossil fuels.
@@dudewithapoint6065 Water vapor can be a greenhouse gass but the quantities required to reach the level of Co2 is incredibly diffrent. Almost not even worth comparing
Finally some positive news! Keep pushing guys :)
It's out there. Keep looking.
Too expensive to produce transport and use this gas. This is the airship dieaster gas. Requires pressurised lines, heavy, big tanks to store and use it. Not to mention fuel cells that are extremely expensive and complex. This might work only for planes etc
The Hindenburg was due to the airships fabric, not the gas itself.
Then she is a liar OR you are mistaken and it now IS possible. Without intending any offense, i hope the latter is true
@@CityPlannerPlaysChair gas made it 100x worse though
Everything gets cheaper over time. 30 + years ago, you wouldn’t have been able to buy and ‘house’ the equipment needed to send your comment. Now it fits in your pocket. Look at history!
@@glennryzebol4472 she didn't go into economics and real world problems of hydrogen unfortunately. This was a positive talk.
It has been a while on watching about hydrogen for me. But I remembered the main bits and that's the most important thing
Amazing thank you.
Oil dies or species 😕
How much does it cost to build the battery and how much does it cost to use this hydrogen?
When there won't be any oil left, cost won't matter.
This is about finding a way to continue existing after we run out of oil. Not about imaginary values.
The hydrogen technology can be shrank down to the size of a typical car's fuel injector now, but as she said the technology needs funding. The new way to store hydrogen will be the safest way that we know as all that will be in the vehicles tank will be water, be it in the air, on the land, or floating in the waterways.
What? Cars won't be running around with water in their tanks. It takes a huge amount of power to separate Hydrogen from water, that's why for the Hydrogen produced today, the vast majority is made with fossil fuels.
The best they can do for cars is to compress the Hydrogen down so much it becomes a liquid. That compressed liquid would be in pressure vessels.
Actually, all of the examples in her talk can be done with pure electricity, hydrogen is not required and not wanted because it is highly inefficient in terms energy use, in other words, it is a waste of energy when compared to methods that use pure electricity, anyone who argues otherwise is either ignorant or evil.
Traditional steelmaking often uses coke as fuel, in a process called blast furnace steelmaking. Coke is a coal-based material. In steelmaking, its purpose is to pull out the oxygen from iron ore. While it is true that you can use Hydrogen in place of Coke, which emits water instead of CO2, a much better way is called Molten oxide electrolysis, this process was developed by Donald Sadoway and Antoine Allanore at MIT, this process requires only electricity, and emits oxygen gas, rather than water or CO2, which is even better since oxygen is a much more valuable by-product.
Due to high renewable uses, we're going to have a TON of excess energy at times, which we can use to create hydrogen, even if it isn't perfect it's still good.
Also planes and other things still need to use gas/liquid fuels. Hydrogen is a decent option, and a potential byproduct of excess green energy:)
So batteries have the energy density to power commercial flights? What have you been smoking?
yes electrolysis is highly inefficient, and again is doubly inefficient when combusting it for power, but planes and cargo ships are not feasible with current battery technology (biggest battery powered planes are 6 seater prop planes that can just make a 30 min trip)
like she said in the talk, hydrogen's main advantage is it's energy density (by mass)
we can't wait for decades for better and lighter batteries to be available and need to use what's feasible now
we won't have enough energy storage capacity at off peak and high production times so might as well do something useful with all that energy
"anyone who argues otherwise is either ignorant or evil." nope, only need to be realistic to make an argument for use of hydrogen
@@mintheman7nope, we can't run jumbo jets from batteries or hydrogen, physics would not allow us.
And How much did you get grants from Exxon?
Theory is great. Actual working equipment on a large scale, affordable basis is a different matter. Many ideas work fine in the lab on a small scale. They always stumble scaling up. Here is the main problem with using hydrogen as a fuel, how do you generate that hydrogen when and where you need it? The original power source to make your hydrogen is what? Hydrocarbon, or fuel oit.
great idea also make hydrogen h2 or so called water gas with geothermal everywhere why was it not mentioned
Hydrogen’s issue is not efficiency (fossil fuels are even less efficient or about the same).
It’s volume. High power by weight, but extremely low by volume.
The good thing about Hydrogen is scalability, it can be used for almost everything fossil fuel is currently used, including some of the examples in this video, where direct electricity would not be possible.
Like who is listening TED talks for IELTS preparation.
5:00 "by mass" yes but we cant use that much mass inside one tank with specific volume to be able to get same amount of energy as what fossil fuel can carry. most h2 are compressed gas.
How electric vehicles have already done it.
Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.
Electric vehicles still have a battery problem. Hydrogen doesn't have that.
@@CityPlannerPlaysChair Its a real shame that EVs are more efficient than hydrogen already and they will only get more efficient, cheaper and made from more commonly made materials that, can be recycled.
Oh whats that. Its the grave for the argument of hydrogen cars
@@thisismyname8627 Whats the problem with having the ability to use both? This isnt about competition between Hydrogen or Electric, its about solving a much bigger problem.
@@Power_to_the_people567 The bigger problem is that hydrogen isn't viable.
Its as inefficient as petrol. Its also irrelevant.
@@thisismyname8627 Exept we cannot call something not viable when the tech is not fully developed yet. Thats like saying solar is not viable because it produces less than other fossil fuels. Perhaps hydrogen can be viable for a specialized role. I wouldnt draw the conclusion about viability when the tech is advancing
Amazing!
Guess what? She's hawking the Electroliser. There are good applications for Hydrogen (it too is a "molecule"), but it's practical uses are few at this time. Production and storage are the biggest barriers. First we first need to expand our wind and solar production by a factor of at least 10 in order to generate the energy required to separate the constituents from water.
Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic
It's easy to speculate about companies easily making hydrogen from seawater. Realistically, a wealthy corporation will find it cheaper to not deal with the salt. They will park their hydrogen plant at the head of the cleanest water supplies they can find. You'll compete with your car for drinking water.
we have an abundance of clean water in a majority of places. there is no reason for a company to use water in a water constrained area. what advantage would they gain? transportation costs?
The last time that I looked up the numbers- 1kg of hydrogen contains ~33.4 kWh of energy. The typical electrolyzer requires ~53 kWh's of electricity to produce 1kg of hydrogen, then it require another 12 kWh to 13 kWh of electricity to compress it. So about 65 kWh/k./ Are the these electrolyzer more efficient ? or do they just produce more hydrogen at the same efficiency ? Looking at the Toyota Mirai, Toyota's state of the art HCFEV, "experiment" in California. Toyota has been selling these Mirai's at a loss and giving away a $15,000 fuel card when you buy one, There re something line 49 hydrogen filling stations in he U.S> and most of them are in California. There have been a myriad of issues with them including costs of as high as $36/kg. The Mira has a 5kg tank and reportedly can go about 280 to 300 miles a full tank. From an energy perspective that would require 5kg x 65 kWh/kg = 325 kWh to produce , if those efficiency number above are correct. A Tesla Model 3 long range use 0.30 kWh/mi of electricity. On that 65 kWh's of energy that can take the Mira 300 miles, the Tesla Model 3 LR can travel 325 kWh/0.30 kWh/mile = 1,083 miles.
Impressive, albeit slightly smug presentation. Anyway, what’d be infinitely more impressive is persuading those who hold the power and will squeeze fossil fuels to their maximum uncompromising potential to income generate. That’s the greatest challenge.
Well, not any more smug than any celebrity CEO I know. Some great confidence helps to push great ideas out there. It's actually great that we have an actualy working technology they're presenting here and not a ficitonal handheld blood testing device. And no. You don't need the permission of the big corporations. If Vitaea's team can provide the use cases, the consumers will see the advantage and buy the technology. Some things that can branch out from this are (at the domestic level) 1) cooking and heating gas, 2) converting ICE to run on H2, 3) fuel cells household use (with an added benefit of generating usable water.... etc etc etc
That’s what this video is an attempt to help do. It’s a challenge because people need to work together on it
She is also only talking about how it is useful to store energy like a battery would. You still have to generate the energy and there is still a loss for conversation. Generating the energy is the hard part not storage right now
What's wild to me is why they don't take that oil money and both be the bridge and establish themselves as the next monopoly for another cycle. Fossil doesn't just hit zero one day and the world switches - it'll need to phase out. So they keep those people employed in that industry WHILE retraining those same workforces to clean energy and siphoning their employees out slowly. All the while buying up innovations and new tech and whichever ones stick - expand those and put those retrained workers on the line. Re-establish themselves as global energy providers with just a different base. But lemme guess... G R E E D & I N C O M P E T E N C E (why mess with a good steady thing probably)
Sounds like more of an infomercial rather than a TED talk. If you look up the company, their electrolyzer datasheet shows 4.8 kWh/Nm³, beginning of life. Has to specs on deterioration rate.
Sure, give the output in Nm³ like no one else. OK, 11.126Nm³ of hydrogen is 1kg. So that’s 11.126*4.8 = 53.4kWh/kg. Not terrible, but typical for the type. But in order to get hydrogen down to $1.50/kg you need electricity to be $1.5/53.4 = $0.028/kWh. That would be awesome in the world of 2.8¢/kWh electricity. It won’t be in my lifetime.
small hydrogen machine anyone can buy and use in their homes to store energy produced by solar panels or other source is very cool - you invest in equipment and then it works for you.
This way hydrogen cars start to make sense even.
Please come up with a solution of how we are supposed to store Hydrogen.
The main issue with Hydrogen is
Its very hard to store for long and its pretty inefficient
Plus expensive to make
@@minoraoz but with renewable energy
Its like free wifi
I would recommend a video from corridor crew upon renewable energy
@@FictionalEngineer Renewables are far from free
@@minoraoz ik
The initial investment and the maintenance costs exists
But the energy they can produce over their lifetimes cover their initial cost eventually
@@FictionalEngineer That is still far from free.
Where does the necessary green electricity come from? Wind, water and sun? Well, maybe in 30 years ...
Where do you get that timeframe from? Wind and PV are making electricity at the Terawatt level right now.
Check out npjNature - Clean Water. They announced an new modular device called, “The Quantum Kinetic Fusor” to split water for green hydrogen. It operates at 0.146mA/cm^2! It also transmutes elements.
Check it out!
But waiting for this happen!
Fusion nuclear is the main energy source and hydrogen is the energy storage, that are the images of the future energy that the human should focus to build from now on.
From the title, END is a strong statement.
Would love to know how Hydrogen gas will lubricate the machinery used to create Hydrogen technology.
Or to lubricate the bearings in an EV.
'End' is a very misleading term.
And her mainframe analogy is wrong. Datacentres are not mainframes, mainframes still exist for a reason and they are not PC based.
Totally agree. The whole presentation seemed more about promoting a product rather than a solution to a problem.
I did this as a science project in 4th grade.
I really wonder where would you get the hydrogen When water shortage is still a problem
And where is Australia at... Politicians
In order to safely store, ship, and transfer hydrogen one needs to cool the gas to a liquid.... Requiring more energy
Fusion fuel green symbol HTOO should be able to get close to $2 per kilogram by 2025-2026 using their hevo solar technology which can be used even at small scale and perfect for mobility applications
This is the epitome of excellence. I read a book with similar content, and it was the epitome of excellence. "The Hidden Empire: Inside the Private Worlds of Elite CEOs" by Adam Skylight
What is the definition of green H2? What is the source energy for electrolysis? Is H2 an energy source or artificial energy storage? When none of those questions is addressed, green H2 is either scifi or misinformation
I think this Ted was missing many bold challenges on hydrogen usage
Felt like you want me to invest, instead of convincing me😢
yes
Maybe green hydrogen will have difficulties in powering the transport sector. This is due to the low energy density on a volume basis. But it can easily decarbonize the steel and other such industries, which are also major contributors to carbon emissions. On thenother hand biofuels from algae, seaweed and agri waste will help in decarbonizing the transport sector.
And you can promote the best and most safest energy tech that we have in the form of nuclear energy. And once fusion becomes reality the sky will be the limit.
Really good presentation and I have very high hopes for Hydrogen.
Something I was wondering though, if we use electricity to split hydrogen and oxygen in water, can the resulting components provide more energy than the electricity that was used? Is the ongoing refinement of the technology focusing on improving the splitting of H2O, on the combustion of hydrogen/oxygen energy, or in new compounds based on hydrogen/oxygen? I suppose, pre-treatment of the water could have an effect too. I'm just wondering where the research is heading.
Wait that's what i thought when I was in 10th standard 😳
نظريا صعب جدا تطبيقها عمليا ❤❤❤
I'm sorry, but 14- year old Vaitea wasn't paying attention in science class. She should have learned about the conservation of energy. You can't get more energy out of a source than what you put into it in the first place. Free H-2 molecules are a higher energy state than the salt water or whatever other source you derived them from. You must put in MORE energy to get the hydrogen from the low-energy source (e.g., water) than the energy you will get out when you use it. Her school diagram showed a lead-acid battery as the original energy source. But where was it charged from? From the wall outlet? And its source? A coal-fired utility? A nuclear power plant?
The sun put energy into fossil fuels millions of years ago. The supernova of a star put the energy into uranium nuclei billions of years ago. Where will she get the immense energy needed to derive the massive volume of hydrogen needed to power the world envisioned by this pipe dream? At the beginning, she discounts conventional sources but never explains what she'll do instead.
What more need one say?
She said right at the beginning she's talking about "Green" hydrogen, as opposed to the other colors which derive hydrogen from fossil fuel. Green hydrogen uses wind and solar to do the work. Though these new Small Modular Reactors are pretty interesting too. Dig a 6 foot wide , 20 foot deep hole and drop a 20 megawatt SMR in it to make hydrogen and charge battery electric cars too. On site, it'll still be a gas station, but the gas will be hydrogen.
yes conservation of energy exists, but she wasn't saying it doesn't, so not sure how you made that leap in logic ?
there's already hydrogen electrolysis plants in the UK producing hydrogen off of extra wind energy in off peak times, then they use the hydrogen to power ships. Really hydrogen production is a win-win for solar and wind power sources that are much less consistent than fossil fuel plants but much cleaner so need to figure out what to do with all that extra energy
this is no longer a pipe dream and is reality
Energy capture is the main driver these days. I am referring to smart money.
Just capture energy via dams, wind, or sun.
@@FlameofDemocracy It's got a way to go yet: "The share of renewables in global electricity generation jumped to nearly 28% in Q1 2020"
But! Do you ever know how the hydrogen is produced? Its just electrolyse of water. And you have to produce electricity, then make the hydrogen, and after again make electricity... It's a little stupid, isn't it?
You are right. There is no need for water electrolysis if there is an immediate demand for electricity. It is better to use electricity as it is.
On the other hand, there are scenarios where electricity production does not happen at the same time or at the same location. That is where converting electricity to fuel makes sense. With water electrolysis, we can use solar energy at night. Or even on different days or different seasons. Hydrogen can also energize various transportation means, e.g., trucks, shipping, and airplanes. It is impractical to connect cables to electrify those vehicles. The hydrogen fuel can also be transported to places where electricity grid interconnection is impractical.
Hydrogen fuel has a lot of technical challenges, but it is worth thinking about.
You can't use electricity for planes and other processes dude. You need a liquid/gas fuel
She is setting up solar panels on her factory. Smart money would invest.
Thank You, Vaitea Cowan
Explained it Nicely.
What a great and inspiring impulse Vaitea!
Way to go!
kept waiting for the engineer to walk on stage and switch off the robot but it didn't happen :/
ENAPTER:
1. "Weight" is important, but equipment is heavy with a secondary shield. This does not work for remote use in vehicles or while flying with solar panels.
2. "Fossil fuels are completely the wrong direction" except hydrogen is a combustible fuel source similar to natural gas and the world has a large number of combustion engines. There is nothing green about throwing those engines away, especially not if they can be run on hydrogen.
3. Hydrogen is supposedly mineable, or can be the result of radioactivity (complete opposite direction of this technology.) That is also an excellent source of hydrogen for existing combustion engines, especially with changes to fuel intake and fuel trim. A more direct method of its creation is to transition nuclear powerplants to hydrogen production. However, that would require additional transportation costs in comparison to micronuclear reactors, natural gas piping, or boring old AC power transmission.
The only reason to invest in this hydrogen production method, is if it is cheaper than the cost of a battery bank - either Lithium Polymer, or ideally a salt battery as that salt takes up about as much space. Or, if this hydrogen production method is very light for installation on aircraft with solar panels and is tied to a combination combustion + electric engine or perhaps combustion alone as fuel cells do not typically provide enough wattage for electric engines - especially not for Vertical Takeoff and Landing which is critical for electric aircraft, taxis, etc. Otherwise, it is cheaper and faster to produce hydrogen with radioactivity, or to mine it.
P.S. Bill Gates likes to produce electricity with micro nuclear reactors, In case you want to frown at nuclear after a photo op with him.
P.P.S. I am skeptical about Enapter marketing persona in general, far too much charisma without addressing these glaring holes and a layman summary of electricity, cost, and accessibility for daily use. All the while partnering with strategic people / nations who are heavily invested in Nuclear Power (France & Bill Gates at the least) and touting "green hydrogen." I'm all for nuclear and natural gas, but this company seems to dance ridiculously with them.
Here is the real use case (which is left out of the video for some reason) - remote access to high density fuel, primarily ships with either nuclear powerplants, or huge tidal/solar membranes around them for getting electricity. So that those ships can fuel smaller vehicles, like smaller VTOL drones, etc.
Green hydrogen is as green as an electricy used for its production. No one see the problem that the most energy is produced by using coal, gas, oil? How those conversions will help us to rid of fossil fuels?
Food is going to be insane next year!
Elon Musk: Come Buy Teslas at $50000 each to end fossil fuel era.
This is great, the problem is politics though. If we can't get our governments on board to change policies than it's all for nothing.
NO comments were made about the cost and losses for converting, transporting, and storing hydrogen. It is extremely inefficient compared with using green energy directly or storing green energy in batteries. It's also really hard to keep fossil fuel companies honest about how green their hydrogen sources are. Hydrogen should be a niche tech for the things that are hard not to electrify--let's talk about that instead.
Has some Theranos vibes for sure!
50% true. PHYSICS "The conservation of energy". Processing naturally occurring energy (or anything) to a manufactured output (phase/molecular shifting, heating, cooling, compression, storage and "Friction" Loss etc) requires repeated energy input to achieve the desired output. The desired output will always be less pure and efficient than the input. (the original input - the process/storage/transport energy loss! (with the notable exception of nuclear fission) Expending Naturally occurring energy to create artificial energy "Hydrogen of any colour" and then more energy to transform that energy to any other medium (ammonia or methanol etc), requires massive inputs at every step. (heating/electrolysis, freezing and then compression for storage/transport. ADD transport and Storage which is again subject to constant energy loss and maintenance inputs. thus requiring again more energy constantly.
But even her first example is wrong. The electrolyze of salt water does not give H2 and O2 separately - it decomposes the salts first of all, which is useless for this purpose. In order to split H2O, you need different conditions and it comes with quite a lot of difficulties. I was hoping to hear how they overcome those difficulties - how they mass produce super clean water for the input, what catalysts they use for the reaction, how much energy is needed and and what rate, etc. Also, some scientists say that free H2 can escape atmosphere and get lost in space - how significant can that effect be, if we start mass producing H2? Lots of open questions, no answers.
A sentirla si direbbe che entro la settimana prossima l'umanità comincerà a intravedere finalmente un po' di luce, almeno dal punto di vista energetico.
Intanto io m'appresto a trascorrere il quarto inverno con i termosifoni chiusi.
Fantastic talk. So sad they do not take care of hydrogen compression and make it a usable product as is. That is why we produce, all in one 300 bar electrolyzers.
Great presentation showing us our future transition to renewables through green hydrogen! A huge success is that wind and solar PV powered electricity is now cheaper than fossil fuel powered electricity. Exciting. Let's do this fast and together!
Green hydrogen is still expensive and companies aren’t doing enough and oil companies like it that way 😏
@TGamer Boss We invested one trillion into renewables for the first last year. Even more will be invested next year. Sure we need to go 6 times faster but the transition is happening.
Been telling this forever..... hydrogen is the future....
Can't run an industry on it as it requires energy to produce, energy to store, and energy to maintain. It's application specific. You need a foundational source of fuel.
Using electrolysis and fuel cells is only about 20% as efficient as batteries. Fuel cells are extremely expensive and uses MUCH more expensive materials. Hydrogen is also VERY difficult to store and transport. So...why is it the future?