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Speaker 1: tex stole from how stuff works dot com. Hi, everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to tex Stop. My name is Chris Poulette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, as always, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Hey there, do you not have a quote for us?
Speaker 1: Not today? Okay? No, I I've been occasionally throwing in
Speaker 1: random quotes from various movies I like, But I didn't
Speaker 1: think of anything today I could have. I guess I
Speaker 1: could say, uh, you keep using that hurd. I do
Speaker 1: not think it means what you think it means. So
Speaker 1: there we go. All right, then I'm happy with that.
Speaker 1: Now let's tackle our subject, which is how fuel cells work.
Speaker 1: Fuel cells, the mystery, uh energy problem, savor of the future,
Speaker 1: or we would we would hope anyway. Yeah, fuel cells
Speaker 1: are this, uh well, it's it's kind of like a battery,
Speaker 1: you know. Let's let's go ahead and kind of define
Speaker 1: what it does. It's an electrochemical energy conversion device. Yes,
Speaker 1: actually that's that's sort of what I meant about mystery
Speaker 1: because everybody talks about how cool they are, but nobody
Speaker 1: really knows exactly what they do. But they convert chemicals
Speaker 1: into electricity. That's that's like a battery. Yeah, No, it
Speaker 1: is very much like a battery. Others. There are some
Speaker 1: differences which will get into but in general a fuel cell.
Speaker 1: What most people tend to know about fuel cells is
Speaker 1: one they create electricity and to their byproducts are heat
Speaker 1: and water. Yes, that's it tends to be what most
Speaker 1: people know about apart from the people who specifically work
Speaker 1: in the fuel cell industry. Clearly they know a lot
Speaker 1: more than that. Well, of course we always see that
Speaker 1: mainstream media, you know, reporter going out to the back
Speaker 1: of the fuel cell vehicle and putting a cup underneath
Speaker 1: the tailpipe and drinking the water, right, And I think
Speaker 1: that sticks with us. That's why we don't we don't
Speaker 1: know that much more about it, because we go that's
Speaker 1: really cool. Yeah, because because you think about that, you're like, well,
Speaker 1: if we have this energy source that can create electricity
Speaker 1: and the only byproduct really is heat and water, and
Speaker 1: you know, water is not toxic. It's not like water
Speaker 1: is going to be throwing out greenhouse gases into the
Speaker 1: atmosphere or polluting in some other way. Why don't we
Speaker 1: have more of these? And really the answer to that
Speaker 1: question is that the technology is not sophisticated enough and
Speaker 1: reliable enough, and most importantly, really, when you get down
Speaker 1: to it, cheap enough to do on a widespread basis
Speaker 1: to allow us to to switch to a fuel cell economy.
Speaker 1: So let's let's kind of talk about what how a
Speaker 1: fuel cell works, what it does, where it came from. Um.
Speaker 1: First of all, well let's talk about Sir William Grove. Now,
Speaker 1: Sir William Grove, he's the fellow who kind of invented
Speaker 1: fuel cells, if you will, all right, he knew this
Speaker 1: was back in nine by the way, he knew that
Speaker 1: if you if you took some water and you ran
Speaker 1: a trick current through the water, it would produce hydrogen
Speaker 1: and oxygen molecules of water apart. Yeah, it's called electrolysis.
Speaker 1: And actually this this tends to happen with various molecules.
Speaker 1: If you add enough energy to the molecule, it tends
Speaker 1: to break the molecular bonds and it will eventually break
Speaker 1: apart into its individual elements. Most molecules will do this.
Speaker 1: If you if you pour in enough energy. That's going
Speaker 1: to be another important point later on. So Grove he theorized, well,
Speaker 1: if you if you add electricity to water and you
Speaker 1: get hydrogen and oxygen. Uh, if you if you then
Speaker 1: combined hydrogen and oxygen, you should get water and electricity,
Speaker 1: you know, because you know it should be the same
Speaker 1: coming out as it is going in. Right, So if
Speaker 1: you're yeah, So he's like, well, um, how he rans
Speaker 1: some experiments and he created what he called a gas
Speaker 1: voltaic battery and in this gas will take battery. He
Speaker 1: then combined hydrogen and oxygen and he really is that
Speaker 1: he got water and he got free electrons, which you know,
Speaker 1: if you direct free electrons through a path, that's electricity.
Speaker 1: So it's signed a little sign on the side of
Speaker 1: the said electrons free. Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's a protest
Speaker 1: held off the cell. Fifty years later you get uh,
Speaker 1: Ludwig Mond and Charles Langer and they're they're the ones
Speaker 1: who coined the term fuel cell. Those are the guys
Speaker 1: who actually found a fairly practical way to do this.
Speaker 1: Uh that was easily repeatable, so you could you could
Speaker 1: repeat the experiment improve. Yes, something is happening here, because
Speaker 1: of course we know in science, just because you get
Speaker 1: a result doesn't necessarily mean that you have proven your
Speaker 1: hypothesis correct. You need to have a repeatable experiment that
Speaker 1: can be done by anyone who has the facility to
Speaker 1: do it at any rate um to prove that that
Speaker 1: something really is going on. Yes, So that's where we
Speaker 1: get into the fuel cells and unlike battery, like a
Speaker 1: battery is a self contained mean chemical reaction. Uh, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's chemical reaction. It can very good. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: nothing's going in, nothing's going out except electrons, right, yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: The battery has chemicals inside it that react together. The
Speaker 1: reaction produces electrons, and that is where we get you know,
Speaker 1: our little electric power from a battery. Fuel cells are
Speaker 1: a little different. You can pour fuel into a fuel cell,
Speaker 1: thus the name, and it will convert that fuel into
Speaker 1: the water and the electricity. So as long as you
Speaker 1: have a supply of hydrogen and a supply of oxygen
Speaker 1: going into the fuel cell, and as long as the
Speaker 1: membrane of the fuel cell and the other components remain
Speaker 1: remain viable. We'll get into that in a little bit. Uh,
Speaker 1: it should continue to to produce electricity. It's not gonna
Speaker 1: it's not like it'll die. After all the hydrogen runs out.
Speaker 1: If you add more hydrogen and more oxygen, it should
Speaker 1: can to new to work. Right. Okay, so we've covered
Speaker 1: the basics there. Uh, let's let's talk. I'm gonna shift
Speaker 1: my notes around. I actually have paper notes today. I
Speaker 1: usually don't do this. Uh. Let's talk about the various
Speaker 1: components within a fuel cell. Okay, we can do that,
Speaker 1: all right. We've got the anode. Yes, Uh, the anode,
Speaker 1: It that's the that's the negative post, not meaning that.
Speaker 1: I know, I was trying to listeners. I apologize. I
Speaker 1: was finish. I mean, we all suffered for that besides Chris,
Speaker 1: um no, no, no, it was good. So that's what's
Speaker 1: conducting the electrons and that that get freed from the hydrogen.
Speaker 1: So the anodes on one end. On the other end
Speaker 1: is the cathode. Yes, that's the positive post. So that's
Speaker 1: where the hydrogen. Uh. This, this is what's conducting the
Speaker 1: electrons back from the external circuit. So I'm sorry. We've
Speaker 1: got we've got the anode. That's where when the electrons
Speaker 1: come out from the reaction, electrons go to the end,
Speaker 1: would go into a circuit. So what electric motor or
Speaker 1: a light bulb or whatever. Right, Um, the electrons continue
Speaker 1: their path once they go through that circuit to the cathode. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then we've got the electrolyte uh in the center. This
Speaker 1: is a usually approach a proton exchange membrane. Thing of
Speaker 1: the membrane is kind of like a force field. Now
Speaker 1: this force field will, Yeah, the force field will allow
Speaker 1: positively charged ions to pass through, but will repel negatively
Speaker 1: charged particles. So electrons have a negative charge. They cannot
Speaker 1: pass through the membrane. If they could pass through the membrane,
Speaker 1: fuel cells would not work. It is the bouncer of
Speaker 1: the fuel cell. Yes, you may not come in, but
Speaker 1: we're not cool enough because you are negative exactly, but
Speaker 1: the close enough. So the so the high hydrogen are
Speaker 1: the hydrogen ions are positively charged because they have given
Speaker 1: up an electron. All right. So now now essentially what
Speaker 1: you have a hydrogen ion is essentially a proton. So
Speaker 1: you've got a proton. Protons are positively charged. You've got
Speaker 1: this puzzledly charged element there. It can pass through the membrane.
Speaker 1: Now why would it pass through the membrane to get
Speaker 1: to the other side. But what's on the other side oxygen,
Speaker 1: and oxygen has a negative charge. That it exactly the
Speaker 1: proton has attracted across the membrane to the negatively charged oxygen.
Speaker 1: If if there were no negative charge, then the proton
Speaker 1: would not necessarily migrate through the membrane. So, uh, when
Speaker 1: it migrates to the membrane, it then combines with the oxygen,
Speaker 1: and uh, you get the two hydrogens, the one oxygen
Speaker 1: together and then the electron that had passed through the circuit.
Speaker 1: Remember it passed from the anode through the circuit into
Speaker 1: the cathode. On that end, the two hydrogen atoms the
Speaker 1: oxygen atom have combined into a molecule. The electron joins
Speaker 1: that molecule, and that's when you get water, right, So
Speaker 1: you don't have any free electrons at the end of
Speaker 1: this process. It all recombines on the cathode end, and
Speaker 1: that's where you get the water. There's one other element
Speaker 1: that's important with this, that's the catalyst, and this is catalysts.
Speaker 1: What they do is they help reactions, right, the thing
Speaker 1: that makes it possible to react. Yeah, otherwise you would
Speaker 1: have to pour even more energy in in order for
Speaker 1: this to to react and it wouldn't be viable at all.
Speaker 1: So it's a special material and it it helps this
Speaker 1: reaction of oxygen and hydrogen. And in most fuel cells
Speaker 1: that you that that people talk about tends to be
Speaker 1: made out of platinum nanoparticles. Right. So a nanoparticle, of
Speaker 1: course is insanely tiny, like tinier than the microscopic scopic scale, right,
Speaker 1: but it is on a thin sheet of materials um
Speaker 1: with as much area as exposed as possible to facilitate
Speaker 1: more reaction. Right. So it's almost like you've spray painted
Speaker 1: a sheet with platinum. And because you can imagine, that's
Speaker 1: pretty expensive. Platinum is a precious met all, it's pretty rare.
Speaker 1: It's hard to get your hands on it. Even when
Speaker 1: you're talking about nanoparticles, which are really tiny. You're talking
Speaker 1: about billions of nanoparticles. Like a nanoparticle is not going
Speaker 1: to do much for you. Um, so yeah, you definitely
Speaker 1: want to maximize that service area in order to allow
Speaker 1: the reactions between hydrogen and oxygen to to happen or
Speaker 1: else your your fuel cell doesn't do anything all right,
Speaker 1: So you're pouring hydrogen in, you you're pumping oxygen in.
Speaker 1: When I say pouring. I'm really mean pumping, because you're
Speaker 1: probably pumping hydrogen gas. You're pumping both into this fuel cell.
Speaker 1: They combine. You get the electrons, you get the water.
Speaker 1: So why don't we have lots and lots of fuel
Speaker 1: cells already running all all of our power, all of
Speaker 1: our electronics. You've already hit on it. Why is that?
Speaker 1: What was that? The biggest one being the cost? That
Speaker 1: would be a huge one. Yeah, the platinum, that kind
Speaker 1: of it's simply not it's simply not practical, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you get down to it, You're like, well, in a
Speaker 1: in an ideal world, we cost would not be would
Speaker 1: not even be a consideration, right, we would just be
Speaker 1: talking about the fact that this is clean energy that
Speaker 1: we have and uh, and we could run our cars
Speaker 1: or other devices, our homes, even powered plants, we could
Speaker 1: run them on hydrogen and uh and then we we
Speaker 1: not pollute and we'd have a nice clean energy source.
Speaker 1: But it comes down to the fact that cost is
Speaker 1: an element. It's not the only one, of course. The Yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole process of of splitting the water into two pieces. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know that's actually is I guess should be
Speaker 1: the source of hydrogen more than anything else. Yeah, source
Speaker 1: of hydrogen is a huge, huge problem. Hydrogen does not
Speaker 1: It's plentiful, but not in its elemental form on Earth.
Speaker 1: It's usually combined with something else like oxygen to make water.
Speaker 1: We we it's not like there's a hydrogen mind we
Speaker 1: can go to and mind hydrogen, pure hydrogen and use
Speaker 1: that we when we we can get hydrogen from stuff
Speaker 1: like hydrocarbon fuels or even water, as we pointed out
Speaker 1: by breaking down compounds, right, which takes energy. Right, So
Speaker 1: in order to get this fuel cell fuel, you already
Speaker 1: have to expend energy to create the fuel. So now
Speaker 1: you're now you're looking at a fuel like an energy
Speaker 1: deficit situation. Does it take more energy to create the
Speaker 1: fuel than the energy you will get by using that
Speaker 1: fuel to power a fuel cell? And as long as
Speaker 1: it takes more energy for you to create the fuel
Speaker 1: than it does to actually power whatever it is you're
Speaker 1: going to power, it doesn't make sense. We already have
Speaker 1: a fuel that does this, by the way, gasoline. Gasoline.
Speaker 1: Actually it actually takes more energy to create a gallon
Speaker 1: of gas than a gallon of gas can create through
Speaker 1: putting it through a motor or whatever. Yeah, because gasoline
Speaker 1: is a pretty inefficient fuel, it turns out, especially compared
Speaker 1: to a fuel cell, and you have to again look
Speaker 1: at the entire life cycle. You're not just looking at oh, well,
Speaker 1: how much how much energy did it take to ship
Speaker 1: the gasoline from the refinery to the UH to the
Speaker 1: gas station. It's also how much energy did the refinery
Speaker 1: have to expand in order to produce that gasoline? How
Speaker 1: much energy had to be expanded to to get the
Speaker 1: oil out of the ground to eventually become what would
Speaker 1: what would eventually become gasoline. Um, it's really a big
Speaker 1: picture thing, and that's that's the real problem with a
Speaker 1: lot of these energy issues, is that once you start
Speaker 1: looking at the big picture, you begin to realize, oh,
Speaker 1: this is this is a much more difficult problem than
Speaker 1: I originally imagined. Um. Now, there are many different kinds
Speaker 1: of fuel cells. Yeah, I thought I thought we were
Speaker 1: getting ready to hit that because the one that we've
Speaker 1: been talking about, I guess, probably without actually saying its name,
Speaker 1: is the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell. Right. Also sometimes
Speaker 1: it's called the polymer exchange membrane fuel cell UM. But
Speaker 1: saying why membrane in the exchange. Okay, I got it. Yep,
Speaker 1: that's it. They're used in cars a lot, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of the stuff we're looking at cars. See, now,
Speaker 1: some of these fuel cells work really well at a
Speaker 1: certain temperature range, and outside that temperature range, they don't
Speaker 1: work very well at all. Now, the polymeer exchange has
Speaker 1: a couple of different issues that make it not the
Speaker 1: most ideal method of power generation within a car. And
Speaker 1: I'll one of those is that, um, well, I mean
Speaker 1: it's heat range is okay, because it's it works best
Speaker 1: somewhere around uh a hundred for you, two d seventy
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit, So you could you would first have to
Speaker 1: heat your fuel cell up to this temperature for it
Speaker 1: to be able to to work properly. So there there
Speaker 1: is a warm up period. It's not like it's gonna
Speaker 1: work immediately as you get in your car. One of
Speaker 1: the things about the polymer exchange membrane fuel cell is
Speaker 1: that it has to have a hydrated membrane. The membrane
Speaker 1: must remain hydrated, which means essentially wet. All right, So
Speaker 1: if you live in Minnesota, you know, the winners in
Speaker 1: Minnesota get really cold. And when you get really cold
Speaker 1: and you've got water, you know what happens. It freezes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen much here in Atlanta, but up in
Speaker 1: Minnesota it could. Yes, if the temperature fell far enough
Speaker 1: the water used to hydrate that membrane. And remember the
Speaker 1: membrane is key to this, uh, to this exchange. If
Speaker 1: the water could freeze, that would make the membrane extremely
Speaker 1: brittle and it could break, and then you've got a
Speaker 1: broken fuel cell, right, so that he's problematic. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a bit of an issue. And there are other types
Speaker 1: of fuel cells. There's the solid oxide fuel cell. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is one of my favorites. This would
Speaker 1: not work well in the car. No, no, not at all,
Speaker 1: um simply the uh, simply because it requires so much
Speaker 1: more in the way of temperature for it to operate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it operates best between seven D and a thousand degrees centigrade. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's a that's pretty warm. Yeah, no, it's pretty pretty steamy.
Speaker 1: But but steam, now that you mentioned that, see that
Speaker 1: that generates uh, you know steam as a resulting that
Speaker 1: can be used to create electricity as well. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can use the steam to generate too, to push turbines,
Speaker 1: or you could even use the steam, well not just
Speaker 1: or and you could use the steam to help heat
Speaker 1: uh the facility. So let's say it's in the dead
Speaker 1: of winter. Uh, the steam coming from this reaction could
Speaker 1: go back into the heating unit to try and keep
Speaker 1: the plant warm, so that you don't have to generate
Speaker 1: you don't have to burn as much energy to keep
Speaker 1: the plant running. Right right now, Uh, they're not as
Speaker 1: efficient or they're not it's it's not cost effective yet.
Speaker 1: The cost effectiveness of the solid oxide fuel cell. Um
Speaker 1: that the target is four dollars per killer? What right
Speaker 1: now it's about ten times that? Is that four thousand
Speaker 1: dollars per kill? A what to run one of these things? Um,
Speaker 1: that's a problem. Well. Um. I'd also like to point
Speaker 1: out that the solid oxide fuel cells have been in
Speaker 1: the news recently in a in a pretty big fashion.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I believe we've talked about
Speaker 1: one on this podcast not too long ago. The bloom box, Oh,
Speaker 1: the bloom box bloom energies. Bloom box fuel cells are
Speaker 1: solid oxide fuel cells, and I don't know that they
Speaker 1: run exactly the same way as the information in our
Speaker 1: article about that on our side, I don't slightly different process.
Speaker 1: They probably do because the ones that we're talking about
Speaker 1: are mainly um. The solid oxide tends to often be
Speaker 1: used to come in the form of coal, so you
Speaker 1: actually have coal running a fuel cell, which you know
Speaker 1: you first sit there and think like, WHOA, that's weird.
Speaker 1: I thought we were going to try to get away
Speaker 1: from fossil fuels. Not necessarily. In some cases, we may
Speaker 1: have to use fossil fuels to create the hydrogen or
Speaker 1: whatever the compound is that we're going to use in
Speaker 1: the fuel cell, because hydrogen is not the only one,
Speaker 1: it's just the most popular one. Um. But we may
Speaker 1: have to use fossil fuels in that process to generate
Speaker 1: the fuel we need to run to to make the
Speaker 1: fuel cells go. UM. There are other types as well.
Speaker 1: There's the alkaline fuel cell. That's the kind that we're
Speaker 1: that they that uh, the Space Race used quite a
Speaker 1: bit back in the sixties. UM, not really use that
Speaker 1: much anymore. It's not it's not as it's really expensive.
Speaker 1: It's not as reliable as some of the other technologies,
Speaker 1: as it requires pure hydrogen and oxygen. Yeah, pure hydrogen
Speaker 1: and oxygen is hard to get your hands on or
Speaker 1: at least the pure hydrogen is Um, there are fuel
Speaker 1: cells that can use hydrogen that's not pure, but that
Speaker 1: also tends to take its toll on the membrane. So again,
Speaker 1: the membrane is a is a fairly delicate part of
Speaker 1: a few will cell and uh, if you damage that
Speaker 1: that membrane, then the fuel cell is not gonna work anymore. Also,
Speaker 1: I guess we should also point out that a fuel cell,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about a fuel cell, an individual fuel
Speaker 1: cell does not generate that much power. It's when you
Speaker 1: have a bunch of fuel cells working together that you
Speaker 1: can generate enough electricity, essentially in an array. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: fuel cell stack is usually what we call it. Uh
Speaker 1: we being those of us in the fuel cell industry say,
Speaker 1: and journalists, um, yeah, So an individual fuel cell is
Speaker 1: like think of it, like we talked about cell processors.
Speaker 1: A cell processor is just one part of a group
Speaker 1: of processors that all work together, same sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Fuel cell is just one little electricity generation device that
Speaker 1: works with several others to create enough electricity to actually
Speaker 1: do something. But you also have the molten carbonate fuel cell,
Speaker 1: the phosphoric acid fuel cell, the direct methanol fuel cell.
Speaker 1: These are all very sans um. They all basically do
Speaker 1: the same thing, but they're doing it through different ways,
Speaker 1: and some of them have different operating temperatures, different parameters.
Speaker 1: Some of them are more reliable than others, but they
Speaker 1: require such a high operating temperature that you wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to use in a car. Like you don't want to
Speaker 1: use a solid oxide fuel cell on a car because
Speaker 1: you would die. You would have to have such she
Speaker 1: some sort of protective material to to shield you from
Speaker 1: the heat that your car would weighe so much that
Speaker 1: it wouldn't matter how much of the electricity you're generating,
Speaker 1: because it wouldn't move anywhere. It's gonna say, you'd have
Speaker 1: to use most of the power for your air conditioning,
Speaker 1: you know. They either the air conditioning or just getting
Speaker 1: the wheels to have enough torque to actually push that
Speaker 1: incredibly heavy vehicle forward torque. Um. So then we have
Speaker 1: the phosphoric acid fuel cell um and uh you know
Speaker 1: those those are those are a little smaller. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: those aren't. Those aren't as huge, but they have such
Speaker 1: a long went warm up time. Yeah. So again, if
Speaker 1: you try idea, if used a phosphor. I guess that
Speaker 1: Jill cell in your car, you'd have to start warming
Speaker 1: up your car an hour before you were leaving, So
Speaker 1: that's not really sort of impractical. Yeah, and the direct
Speaker 1: methanol fuel cell, Uh, again we're talking about it's not
Speaker 1: as efficient. It can um use methanol, but since since
Speaker 1: the energy output isn't as great, it's not really seen
Speaker 1: as a viable feel cell. Yeah, I've seen I've seen
Speaker 1: some methanol fuel cells out and about. In fact, Uh,
Speaker 1: when I went to the c E S in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, um, I believe it was Toshiba, if
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, had a methanol fuel cell powered MP
Speaker 1: three player on display, which was pretty cool. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not it's one of those things where you're like, really, seriously,
Speaker 1: I have to pour methanol in this thing. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it was so small, you know, the
Speaker 1: size of an MP three player that you know, I
Speaker 1: couldn't imagine empowering you know, I'm building or a car.
Speaker 1: It's much more tiny. But that's what they talked about
Speaker 1: when they talk about the possibility of using fuel cells
Speaker 1: to power say, laptop computers and things like that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: personal electronic devices, that kind of stuff. It still it
Speaker 1: still seems odd to me that you would, you know,
Speaker 1: flip your laptop over and pourans and meth at all,
Speaker 1: And I guess it would probably be an external supply
Speaker 1: of some sort. My MP three player has a drinking problem.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna talk very briefly about about the efficiency of
Speaker 1: a fuel cell. This is kind of a complicated topic,
Speaker 1: but let's uh, fuel cell efficiency depends on a lot
Speaker 1: of different factors. Let's say that you have a fuel
Speaker 1: cell that runs on pure hydrogen, and somehow you have
Speaker 1: a reliable source of pure hydrogen, so you don't you know,
Speaker 1: there's no problem with actually getting fuel for it, so
Speaker 1: eliminating that as an issue, yeah, uh. Assuming that the
Speaker 1: a pure hydrogen fuel cell has the potential to be
Speaker 1: up to eight percent efficient in generating electricity, so you
Speaker 1: get you're getting eight of the energy generated by the
Speaker 1: reaction to actually become electricity. However, now then you have
Speaker 1: to put it through an electric motor. So we're talking
Speaker 1: about this for for cars. So electric motors are not efficient.
Speaker 1: They don't they don't convert a pc of electricity into
Speaker 1: a mechanical power. You lose some in heat. Yes, So
Speaker 1: let's let's say you've got a really good electric motor,
Speaker 1: and the electric motor is also efficient. You're getting down
Speaker 1: to about six of your of the power that's generated
Speaker 1: by the reactions within the fuel cell to actually do work.
Speaker 1: So you've got sixty four percent efficiency. Now that's amazing
Speaker 1: compared to a gas powered automobile, which has got about
Speaker 1: uh like, like Chris said, gasoline is just not that
Speaker 1: efficient at generating power. Then you think about, all right, well,
Speaker 1: what about electric vehicles like you know the Prius. Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's a hybrid. That's true, you're if you're talking
Speaker 1: about a pure electric vehicle. I'm sorry, I should have
Speaker 1: said a pure electric vehicle. So it's just running on
Speaker 1: an electric battery. Electric batteries on their own can be
Speaker 1: really efficient, like nine percent efficient. When you get to
Speaker 1: the electric electric motor part, it eventually comes down to
Speaker 1: about efficiency. Now here's where you have to go into
Speaker 1: the big picture again. How was that electricity generated that
Speaker 1: that went into charging the battery. In a lot of cases,
Speaker 1: at least here in the United States, we're talking about
Speaker 1: fossil fuels again, Yeah, coal power or something like that.
Speaker 1: So Once you factor into the coal power that was
Speaker 1: needed to generate the electricity that initially charged that battery,
Speaker 1: you start seeing the efficiencies dropped. Now, if we assume
Speaker 1: that the electricity was generated through some sort of renewable source,
Speaker 1: like let's say hydro electric facility, so no fossil fuels
Speaker 1: went into producing this. Even then, when you're looking at
Speaker 1: the efficiencies, it goes to around it's in the mid
Speaker 1: six so six six six percent something like that efficiency.
Speaker 1: So it's just a little bit more efficient than a
Speaker 1: hydrogen car that's running on pure hydrogen. And again, if
Speaker 1: we look at that with the electric battery, we kind
Speaker 1: of had to look at it with the hydrogen as well,
Speaker 1: like where did we get how did we get that
Speaker 1: pure hydrogen? Once you factor that, and this is why
Speaker 1: it gets so complicated, you're like, well, in the big picture,
Speaker 1: does it make sense to move to hydrogen? So we
Speaker 1: first have to answer that question, doesn't make sense to
Speaker 1: move to a hydrogen based uh fleet of automobiles? M
Speaker 1: Will that from an energy standpoint makes sense? Or will
Speaker 1: we just be switching one inefficient method for ultimately another one.
Speaker 1: That's that's one question. There's another one though, that's even bigger.
Speaker 1: How do we build the infrastructure to support hydrogen powered vehicles? Yes,
Speaker 1: this is uh, this is one of the problems that
Speaker 1: organizations like better Place, which is a car manufacturer or
Speaker 1: not car manufacturer. Um, they are a a systems manufacturer
Speaker 1: that's trying to work out a way to make electric
Speaker 1: vehicles possible. And um they basically have been adapting vehicles
Speaker 1: to run on as plug ins. Uh, which is all
Speaker 1: well and good, but say what happens if you haven't
Speaker 1: had a chance to get your car charged up? Um,
Speaker 1: you know, and you are running out of electricity. We're
Speaker 1: talking about the possibility of stations where you could go
Speaker 1: and swap out your battery for another you know, our
Speaker 1: battery array for another one. And uh, you know that
Speaker 1: would be a convenient thing if that already existed. But
Speaker 1: it's the same thing any kind of alternative fuel, uh
Speaker 1: to what we've got now, whether it's you know, needing
Speaker 1: more hydrogen for your fuel cell powered vehicle or requiring
Speaker 1: more batteries for an electric vehicle. Um, they're just simply
Speaker 1: aren't you know, power stations on every corner like there
Speaker 1: are with gasoline vehicles. You're going to have to either
Speaker 1: strike deals with those companies to do that or start
Speaker 1: your own really expensive, and we're talking billions and billions
Speaker 1: of dollars, or as Carl Sagan would have you, billions
Speaker 1: and billions of dollars. You really need to check it
Speaker 1: with the patches in the old vesp. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: little too warm for that at any rate. Uh, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it costs. It's gonna cost a lot of money to
Speaker 1: build out that infrastructure. Um, everything from the actual facilities
Speaker 1: where they sell the hydrogen, to all the vehicles that
Speaker 1: are going to be necessary to transport the hydrogen, to
Speaker 1: the facilities that are there to generate the hydrogen. UM.
Speaker 1: It's it's not a small task. And uh, the Hydrogen
Speaker 1: Fuel Initiative I just founded back in two thousand three,
Speaker 1: when was it lost? It is it's working to try
Speaker 1: and find a way of making fuel cell vehicles practical
Speaker 1: and cost effective. By I think that's in incredibly ambitious,
Speaker 1: especially when you consider that their budget is pretty low.
Speaker 1: In the grand scheme of things. Now, it would be
Speaker 1: great if we could switch to a hydrogen based uh
Speaker 1: transportation system, because then you're looking at you no longer
Speaker 1: dependent upon on oil, and because so much of our
Speaker 1: oil comes from foreign nations that may or may not
Speaker 1: have very friendly relationships with US. Um it means that
Speaker 1: we're no longer pouring money into into governments or into
Speaker 1: countries that we may think ultimately you could use that
Speaker 1: money to do things that are not within our country's
Speaker 1: best interests. That's a good way of putting it. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to like dance lightly around the whole thing. But
Speaker 1: but hydrogen we could produce right here at home if
Speaker 1: we found an efficient way of doing it, so it didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, so no longer cost more to create the
Speaker 1: fuel than the fuel itself would would benefit us. So
Speaker 1: that's how fuel cells work. That's kind of the the
Speaker 1: whole detail. Did you anything else to add before I
Speaker 1: go into No. I mean, there's there's a lot more
Speaker 1: to it in terms of the depth of the reaction
Speaker 1: and how all of that works. But no, I think
Speaker 1: we did a pretty good job of hitting the high
Speaker 1: points of it. Yeah. Yeah, And and it is a
Speaker 1: huge challenge and we may be one that we overcome.
Speaker 1: It's a little early to say, but before we get there,
Speaker 1: I'm afraid we're gonna have to answer a little listener mail.
Speaker 1: This listener mail comes from Megan from Boston, Massachusetts, and
Speaker 1: Megan says, I love the podcast, keep them coming. Could
Speaker 1: you please dedicate one podcast to Internet Protocol Version six.
Speaker 1: I don't fully understand why i p v four is
Speaker 1: running out of addresses and how the switch to i
Speaker 1: p V six will be implemented. I think that would
Speaker 1: make a great and informative podcast, and I'm sure there
Speaker 1: are other listeners interested in this topic. Thanks. Well, it's
Speaker 1: not really a big enough topic to do a full
Speaker 1: podcast on necessarily, but we can give you a real
Speaker 1: quick rundown on what the issue is. Yeah. Um, the
Speaker 1: issue is basically your I i P enabled cell phone,
Speaker 1: and your laptop and your you know, iopod, and your
Speaker 1: tablet and your three desktop computers, and your roommates gear,
Speaker 1: and the people downstairs and everyone else in the building
Speaker 1: and everyone else in the city, in New County, in
Speaker 1: the state, and the country and the world. There's a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot of of of devices that everyone has now
Speaker 1: that used their own individual I P address, And as
Speaker 1: as robust as i p v four was, it just
Speaker 1: is going to run out of addresses with all these
Speaker 1: new devices coming onto the network and uh not retiring
Speaker 1: enough of them to make room. Yeah. See, I p
Speaker 1: V four is a thirty two bit address system, and
Speaker 1: that when you translate three two bit into actual managers.
Speaker 1: Uh and most you would have four billion, two four million,
Speaker 1: n sixty seven thousand two dresses. Once those addresses are gone,
Speaker 1: that's that's it. If you're on an IP four system,
Speaker 1: you cannot add any more devices to the Internet because
Speaker 1: each device has to have its own unique IP address.
Speaker 1: That's the way the Internet works. If you don't have
Speaker 1: your own unique address, you cannot send and receive information
Speaker 1: because the information wouldn't know where to go. So I
Speaker 1: was gonna say to Starry interrupt that one nice thing
Speaker 1: about the switch is that it's uh they coexist. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The IPv six uses a hundred and twenty eight bit
Speaker 1: addresses as opposed to thirty two bit, which gives you
Speaker 1: about three point four Okay, take a three, put it,
Speaker 1: you know, put a four behind it. Then behind the
Speaker 1: four putty zeros. Okay, that's how many addresses. So many
Speaker 1: that we would not run out in the foreseeable future.
Speaker 1: It would take everyone having everything they own the Internet connected,
Speaker 1: and even then we still would have plenty of addresses
Speaker 1: left over. So uh and yes, like you said, the
Speaker 1: two systems can coincide. Um. The issue about implementation is
Speaker 1: that that's a an organization by organization process. It's not
Speaker 1: like there's gonna flip a switch and everything switches from
Speaker 1: I P four to I P six. And there's as
Speaker 1: far as I know, no official timetable for migration, so
Speaker 1: people are sort of taking their time to do that,
Speaker 1: although some people have already gone ahead and upgraded their
Speaker 1: systems to run on I P P six so UM
Speaker 1: and I think pretty much all the mainstream operating systems, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Windows, Mac and Lenox will accept either. So
Speaker 1: it's it's not really an issue of of having the
Speaker 1: infrastructure in place, it's just a matter of you know,
Speaker 1: doing it, Yeah, getting off your button switching over UM
Speaker 1: and what I'm saying, getting off your butt. I mean
Speaker 1: that as the organizations that are all running these servers
Speaker 1: that are they the kind of the backbone of the internet. Um,
Speaker 1: and so we're kind of at their mercy whenever they
Speaker 1: get around to switching it over. And some organizations don't
Speaker 1: prioritize it very highly, so it may be a while
Speaker 1: before everyone's over to I P six. Now, whether we
Speaker 1: get to the point where we run out of addresses
Speaker 1: before uh we before that happens. That remains to be seen.
Speaker 1: Chris is skeptical. I'm scared. Well, they've been. They've been
Speaker 1: talking about it for quite some time now, years, several
Speaker 1: years now, So it's not like this is a new problem, um.
Speaker 1: And thankfully it's not something like the y t K
Speaker 1: problem where we have any solid deadline that we have
Speaker 1: to hit otherwise things might go for blue. So now
Speaker 1: this is more of a we don't know when it
Speaker 1: will happen. It will all depend on how many UH
Speaker 1: devices get connected to the internet, right, So that's much
Speaker 1: more comforting anyway. Megan, thanks for the listener mail. If
Speaker 1: any of you have anything you'd like to write to us,
Speaker 1: you can send an email to text stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com and we will talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. If you're a tech stuff and be
Speaker 1: sure to check us out on Winter tech Stuff hs
Speaker 1: wsr handle, and you can also find us on Facebook
Speaker 1: at Facebook dot com slash tech Stuff h s W.
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