Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Johnathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and I am currently
Speaker 1: hard at work putting together more podcasts about space stations. Uh.
Speaker 1: These take a long time because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff I have to look up, but also there's just
Speaker 1: a lot of data, particularly about space stations that almost
Speaker 1: happened but didn't, and I want to make sure I
Speaker 1: cover all of them because I think it's fascinating stuff. However,
Speaker 1: it means that I'm running a little behind. So rather
Speaker 1: than go without an episode, I thought that we could
Speaker 1: listen in on a classic one, and I thought I'd
Speaker 1: go way way back. So Tech Stuff is several years
Speaker 1: old now. It launched in two thousand eight, so we've
Speaker 1: been around longer than some tech has. And one of
Speaker 1: the early episodes we did was way back on June
Speaker 1: twenty one, two thousand ten. How fuel cells work. This
Speaker 1: is one of those technologies that people often turned to
Speaker 1: and they look at that as a possible move forward
Speaker 1: to get away from, uh, you know, carbon emissions with
Speaker 1: vehicles in particular and fuel cells could do that if
Speaker 1: we met some other very tough challenges, and so I
Speaker 1: thought it would be fun to listen to this classic episode.
Speaker 1: This is from the Crisp Palette era of tech stuff.
Speaker 1: How fuel cells work? Enjoy. Now let's tackle our subject,
Speaker 1: which is how fuel cells work. Fuel cells the mystery,
Speaker 1: uh energy problem, savor of the future, or we would
Speaker 1: we would hope anyway. Yeah, fuel cells are this, uh well,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like a battery. You know. Let's
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and kind of define what it does.
Speaker 1: It's an electrochemical energy conversion device. Yes, Actually, that's that's
Speaker 1: sort of what I meant about mystery, because everybody talks
Speaker 1: about how cool they are, but nobody really knows exactly
Speaker 1: what they do. But they convert chemicals into electricity. That's
Speaker 1: that's like a battery. Yeah, no, it is very much
Speaker 1: like a battery. Others there are some differences which will
Speaker 1: get into but in general a fuel cell. What most
Speaker 1: people tend to know about fuel cells is one they
Speaker 1: create electricity and to their byproducts are heat and water. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's it tends to be what most people know about
Speaker 1: apart from the people who specifically work in the fuel
Speaker 1: cell industry, clearly they know a lot more than that. Well,
Speaker 1: of course we always see that mainstream media, you know,
Speaker 1: reporter going out to the back of the fuel cell
Speaker 1: vehicle and putting a cup underneath the tailpipe and drinking
Speaker 1: the water, right, And I think that sticks with us.
Speaker 1: That's why we we don't know that much more about it,
Speaker 1: because we go, huh, that's really cool. Yeah, because because
Speaker 1: you think about that, you're like, well, if we have
Speaker 1: this energy source that can create electricity and the only
Speaker 1: byproduct really is heat and water, and you know, water
Speaker 1: is not toxic. It's not like water is going to
Speaker 1: be throwing out greenhouse gases into the atmosphere or polluting
Speaker 1: in some other way, why don't we have more of these?
Speaker 1: And really the answer to that question is that the
Speaker 1: technology is not sophisticated enough and reliable enough, and most importantly, really,
Speaker 1: when you get down to it, cheap enough to do
Speaker 1: on a widespread basis to allow us to to switch
Speaker 1: to a fuel cell economy. So let's let's kind of
Speaker 1: talk about what how it fuel cell works, what it does,
Speaker 1: where it came from. Um. First of all, well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about sir William Grove, Now, Sir William Grove, he's
Speaker 1: the fellow who kind of invented fuel cells, if you will,
Speaker 1: all right, he knew this was back in nine by
Speaker 1: the way. He knew that if you if you uh
Speaker 1: to some water and you ran an electric current through
Speaker 1: the water, it would produce hydrogen and oxygen molecules of
Speaker 1: water apart. Yeah, it's called electrolysis. And actually this this
Speaker 1: tends to happen with various molecules. If you add enough
Speaker 1: energy to the molecule, it tends to break the molecular
Speaker 1: bonds and it will eventually break apart into its individual elements.
Speaker 1: Most molecules will do this if you if you pour
Speaker 1: in enough energy. That's going to be another important point
Speaker 1: later on. So Grove he theorized, well, if you if
Speaker 1: you add electricity to water and you get hydrogen and oxygen. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you if you then combined hydrogen and oxygen, you
Speaker 1: should get water and electricity, you know, because you know
Speaker 1: it should be the same coming out as it is
Speaker 1: going in. Right, So if you're yeah, So he's like, well, um,
Speaker 1: how he ran some experiments and he created what he
Speaker 1: called a gas voltaic battery and in this gas will
Speaker 1: take battery. He then combined hydro ygen and oxygen and
Speaker 1: he realized that he got water and he got free electrons,
Speaker 1: which you know, if you direct free electrons through a path,
Speaker 1: that's electricity. So he signed a little sign on the
Speaker 1: side of the said electrons free. Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's
Speaker 1: a protest held off the cell. Fifty years later you
Speaker 1: get uh, Ludwig Mond and Charles Langer, and they're they're
Speaker 1: the ones who coined the term fuel cell. Those are
Speaker 1: the guys who actually found a fairly practical way to
Speaker 1: do this, uh, that was easily repeatable, so you could
Speaker 1: you could 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 chemical reaction. Uh, and it
Speaker 1: can and yeah, it's chemical reaction. It can very good. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean 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 hyrogen and more oxygen, it should
Speaker 1: continue to work, right. Okay, so we've covered the basics there. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk. I'm gonna shift my notes around. I
Speaker 1: actually have paper notes today. I usually don't do this. Uh.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the various components within a fuel cell. Okay,
Speaker 1: we can do that all right. We've got the anode, yes, Uh,
Speaker 1: the anode. It that's the that's the negative post, not
Speaker 1: meaning that. I know, I was trying to listeners. I apologize,
Speaker 1: I was finish. I mean, we all suffered for that
Speaker 1: besides Chris. Um, no, no, no, it was good. So
Speaker 1: that's what's conducting the electrons and that that get freed
Speaker 1: from the hydrogen. So the anodes on one end. On
Speaker 1: the other end is the cathode. Yes, that's the positive post.
Speaker 1: So that's where the hydrogen. Uh. This, this is what's
Speaker 1: conducting the electrons back from the external circuit. So I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: We've got We've got the anode. That's where when the
Speaker 1: electrons come out from the reaction, electrons go to the anode,
Speaker 1: go into a circuit. So what electric motor or a
Speaker 1: light bulb or whatever, right, Um, the electrons continue their
Speaker 1: 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 puzzlingly 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 is 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 together,
Speaker 1: 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 and 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 people talk about, tends to be made
Speaker 1: out of platinum nanoparticles. So a nanoparticle, of course is
Speaker 1: 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 spy a
Speaker 1: painted a sheet with platinum. And because you can imagine,
Speaker 1: that's pretty expensive. Platinum is a precious metal. 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 are 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. So in
Speaker 1: order to get this fuel cell fuel, you already have
Speaker 1: to expend energy to create the fuel. So now you're
Speaker 1: now you're looking at a fuel like an energy deficit situation.
Speaker 1: Does it take more energy to create the fuel than
Speaker 1: the energy you will get by using that fuel to
Speaker 1: power a fuel cell? And as long as it takes
Speaker 1: more energy for you to create the fuel than it
Speaker 1: does to actually power whatever it is you're going to power,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense. We already have a fuel that
Speaker 1: does this, by the way, gasoline. Gasoline, Actually, it actually
Speaker 1: takes more energy to create a gallon of gas than
Speaker 1: a gallon of gas can create through putting it through
Speaker 1: a motor or whatever. Yeah, because gasoline is a pretty
Speaker 1: inefficient fuel, it turns out, especially compared to a fuel cell.
Speaker 1: And you have to again look at the entire life cycle.
Speaker 1: You're not just looking at, oh, well, how much how
Speaker 1: much energy did it take to ship the gasoline from
Speaker 1: the refinery to the uh to the gas station. It's
Speaker 1: also how much energy did the refinery have to expand
Speaker 1: in order to produce that gasoline. How much energy had
Speaker 1: to be expanded to to get the oil out of
Speaker 1: the ground to eventually become what would what would eventually
Speaker 1: become gasoline. Um, it's really a big picture thing. And
Speaker 1: that's that's the real problem with a lot of these
Speaker 1: energy issues, is that once you start looking at the
Speaker 1: big picture, you begin to realize, oh, this is this
Speaker 1: is a buch more difficult problem than I originally imagined.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more in just a moment, to
Speaker 1: talk more about fuel cells. Now, there are many different
Speaker 1: kinds of fuel cells. Yeah, I thought I thought we
Speaker 1: were getting ready to hit that, because 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: called the polymer exchange membrane fuel cell. But same thing.
Speaker 1: Why membrane and the exchange. Okay, I got it, Yep,
Speaker 1: that's it. They're used in cars a lot, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that 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 polymer 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 degrees fahrenheit,
Speaker 1: so you could you would first have to heat your
Speaker 1: fuel cell up to this temperature for it to be
Speaker 1: a to to work properly. So there there is a
Speaker 1: warm up period. It's not like it's gonna work immediately
Speaker 1: as you get in your car. One of the things
Speaker 1: about the polymer exchange membrane fuel cell is that it
Speaker 1: has to have a hydrated membrane. The membrane must remain hydrated,
Speaker 1: which means essentially wet. Alright, So if you live in Minnesota,
Speaker 1: you know the winners in Minnesota get really cold. And
Speaker 1: when you get really cold and you got water, you
Speaker 1: know what happens. It freezes. Yeah, it doesn't happen much
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta, but up in Minnesota it could. Yes,
Speaker 1: if the temperature fell far enough the water used to
Speaker 1: hydrate that membrane. And remember the membrane is key to
Speaker 1: this uh to this exchange. If the water could freeze,
Speaker 1: that would make the membrane extremely brittle and it could
Speaker 1: break and then you've got a broken fuel cell. Right,
Speaker 1: So that here's problematic. Yeah, that's a bit of an issue.
Speaker 1: And there are other types of fuel cells. There's the
Speaker 1: solid oxide feel. So yeah, this is this is one
Speaker 1: of my favorites. This would not work well in the car. No, no,
Speaker 1: not at all. Um, simply the uh, simply because it
Speaker 1: requires so much more in the way of temperature for
Speaker 1: it to operate. Yeah, it operates best between seven D
Speaker 1: and a thousand degrees centigrade. Yes, that's a that's pretty warm. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty steamy. But but steam that you mentioned
Speaker 1: that see that that generates uh, you know steam as
Speaker 1: a resulting that can be used to create electricity as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you 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: U the facility. So let's say it's in the dead
Speaker 1: of winter. U, 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 the plant running right right now. Uh, they're not
Speaker 1: as 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 kilo. 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
Speaker 1: box Oh, the bloom Box bloom Energies. Bloom box fuel
Speaker 1: cells are solid oxide fuel cells, and I don't know
Speaker 1: that they run exactly the same way as the information
Speaker 1: in our article about that on our side, 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 used
Speaker 1: come in the form of coal, So you actually have
Speaker 1: coal running a fuel cell, which you know you first
Speaker 1: sit there and think like, WHOA, that's weird. I thought
Speaker 1: we were going trying to get away from fossil fuels.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily. In some cases we may have to use
Speaker 1: fossil fuels to create the hydrogen or whatever the compound
Speaker 1: is that we're going to use in the fuel cell,
Speaker 1: because hydrogen is not the only one, it's just the
Speaker 1: most popular one. Um. But we may have to use
Speaker 1: fossil fuels in that process to generate the fuel we
Speaker 1: need to run to to make the fuel cells go. Um.
Speaker 1: There are other types as well. There's the alkaline fuel cell.
Speaker 1: That's the kind that we're that they that uh the
Speaker 1: space race used quite a bit back in the sixties. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: not really use that much anymore. It's not it's not
Speaker 1: as it's really expensive, it's not as reliable as some
Speaker 1: of the other technologies. Plus it requires pure hydrogen and oxygen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pure hydrogen and oxygen is hard to get your hands on,
Speaker 1: or at least the pure hydrogen is. Um. There are
Speaker 1: fuel cells that can use hydrogen that's not pure, but
Speaker 1: that also tends to take its toll on the membrane.
Speaker 1: So again, the membrane is a is a fairly delicate
Speaker 1: part of a fuel cell, and uh, if you damage
Speaker 1: that that membrane, then the fuel cell is not gonna
Speaker 1: work anymore. Also, I guess we should also point out
Speaker 1: that a fuel cell, when we're talking about a fuel cell,
Speaker 1: an individual fuel cell does not generate that much power.
Speaker 1: It's when you have a bunch of fuel cells working together, uh,
Speaker 1: that you can generate enough electricity essentially in an array. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a fuel cell stack is usually what we call it.
Speaker 1: Uh we being those of us in the fuel cell industry,
Speaker 1: say and journalists, Um, yeah, So an individual fuel cell
Speaker 1: is 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 variations. Um. They all basically do the
Speaker 1: same thing, but they're doing it through different ways, and
Speaker 1: some of them have different operating temperatures, different parameters. Some
Speaker 1: of them are more reliable than others, but they require
Speaker 1: such a high operating temperature that you wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: use in a car, Like you don't want to use
Speaker 1: a solid oxide fuel cell on the car because you
Speaker 1: would die. You would have to have such sheets some
Speaker 1: sort of protective material to to shield you from the
Speaker 1: heat that your car would weighe so much that it
Speaker 1: wouldn't matter how much of the electricity you're generating, because
Speaker 1: it wouldn't move anywhere. It's gonna say you 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 a little smaller? Yeah, yeah, those
Speaker 1: aren't those aren't as huge, but they have such a
Speaker 1: long went warm up time. Yeah. So again if you've
Speaker 1: tried to if used a phosphor I guess that jewel
Speaker 1: cell in your car, you have to start warming up
Speaker 1: your car an hour before you were leaving. So that's
Speaker 1: not really practical. Yeah. And the direct methanol fuel cell, Uh,
Speaker 1: again we're talking about it's not as efficient. It can
Speaker 1: um use methanol, but since since the energy output isn't
Speaker 1: as great, it's not really seen as a viable fuel cell. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've seen I've seen some methanol fuel cells out and about.
Speaker 1: In fact, Uh, when I went to the c E
Speaker 1: s in two thousand and eight. Um, I believe it
Speaker 1: was Toshiba, if I'm not mistaken, had a methanol fuel
Speaker 1: cell powered m P three player on display, which was
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Um, you know it's not it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where you're like, really, seriously, I have to
Speaker 1: pour methanol in this thing. But yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it was so small, you know, the size of an
Speaker 1: MP th replayer that you know, I couldn't imagine empowering
Speaker 1: you know, I'm building more a car. It's much more tiny.
Speaker 1: But that's what they talk about when they talk about
Speaker 1: the possibility of using fuel cells to power or say
Speaker 1: laptop computers and things like that. Yeah, yeah, personal electronic devices,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. It's still it still seems odd
Speaker 1: to me that you would, you know, flip your laptop
Speaker 1: over and pour in some method all and I guess
Speaker 1: it would probably be an external supply of some sort.
Speaker 1: My MP three player has a drinking problem. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: talk very briefly about about the efficiency of a fuel cell.
Speaker 1: This is kind of a complicated topic, but let's uh,
Speaker 1: fuel cell efficiency depends on a lot of different factors.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you have a fuel cell that runs
Speaker 1: on pure hydrogen, and somehow you have a reliable source
Speaker 1: of pure hydrogen, so you don't you know, there's no
Speaker 1: problem with actually getting fuel for it, so eliminating that
Speaker 1: as an issue. Yeah, Uh, assuming that the pure hydrogen
Speaker 1: fuel cell has the potential to be up to eighty
Speaker 1: percent efficient in generating electricity, so you get you're getting
Speaker 1: eighty percent of the energy generated by the reaction to
Speaker 1: actually become electricity. However, now then you have to put
Speaker 1: it through an electric motor. So we're talking about this
Speaker 1: for for cars. So electric motors are not efficient. They
Speaker 1: don't they don't convert a pc of electricity into a
Speaker 1: percent 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 eighty percent efficient. You're
Speaker 1: getting down to about sixty of your of the power
Speaker 1: that's generated by the reactions within the fuel cell to
Speaker 1: actually do work. So you've got sixty four percent efficiency.
Speaker 1: Now that's amazing compared to a gas powered automobile, which
Speaker 1: has got about uh like, like Chris said, gasoline is
Speaker 1: just not that efficient, uh at generating power. Then you
Speaker 1: think about all right, Well, what about electric vehicles like
Speaker 1: you know the Prius, Well, that's a that's a hybrid.
Speaker 1: That's true if you're talking about a pure electric vehicle.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I should have said a pure electric vehicle.
Speaker 1: So it's just running on an electric battery. Electric batteries
Speaker 1: on their own can be really efficient, like nine efficient.
Speaker 1: When you get to the electric electric motor part, it
Speaker 1: eventually comes down to about efficiency. We got a little
Speaker 1: bit more to talk about with fuel cells, and we'll
Speaker 1: do that when we come back. Now, here's where you
Speaker 1: have to go into the big picture again. How was
Speaker 1: that electricity generated that that went into charging the battery.
Speaker 1: In a lot of cases, at least here in the
Speaker 1: United States, we're talking about fossil fuels again, Yeah, cold
Speaker 1: power or something like that. So once you factor into
Speaker 1: the cold power that was needed to generate the electricity
Speaker 1: that initially charged that battery, you start seeing the efficiencies drop. Now,
Speaker 1: if we assume that the electricity was generated through some
Speaker 1: sort of renewable source, like let's say hydro electric facility,
Speaker 1: so no fossil fuels went into producing this. Even then
Speaker 1: when you're looking at the efficiencies, it goes to around
Speaker 1: it's in the mid six so six six percent something
Speaker 1: like that efficiency. So it's just a little bit more
Speaker 1: efficient than a hydrogen car that's running on pure hydrogen.
Speaker 1: And again, if we look at that with the electric battery,
Speaker 1: we kind of had to look at it with the
Speaker 1: hydrogen as well, like where did we get how did
Speaker 1: we get that pure hydrogen? Once you factor that, and
Speaker 1: this is why it gets so complicated, You're like, well,
Speaker 1: in the big picture, does it make sense to move
Speaker 1: to hydrogen? So we first have to answer that question,
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense to move to hydrogen based uh? Fleet
Speaker 1: of automobiles? Um? Will that from an energy standpoint makes sense?
Speaker 1: Or will we just be switching one inefficient method for
Speaker 1: ultimately another one. That's that's one question. There's another one though,
Speaker 1: that's even bigger. All right, how do we build the
Speaker 1: infrastructure to support hydrogen powered vehicles? Yes? This is UH,
Speaker 1: this is one of the problems that organizations like better Place,
Speaker 1: which is a car manufacturer or not car manufacturer, Um,
Speaker 1: they are a systems manufacturer that's trying to work out
Speaker 1: a way to make electric vehicles possible. And um, they
Speaker 1: basically have been adapting vehicles to run on as plug
Speaker 1: ins uh, which is all well and good, but see
Speaker 1: what happens if you haven't had a chance to get
Speaker 1: your car charged up, um, you know, and you are
Speaker 1: running out of electricity. We're talking about the possibility of
Speaker 1: stations where you could go and swap out your battery
Speaker 1: for another you know, our battery array for another one.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know that would be a convenient thing
Speaker 1: if that already existed. But it's the same thing any
Speaker 1: kind of alternative fuel, uh to what we've got now,
Speaker 1: whether it's you know, needing more hydrogen for your fuel
Speaker 1: cell powered vehicle or requiring more batteries for an electric vehicle. Um,
Speaker 1: they're just simply aren't you know, power stations on every
Speaker 1: corner like there are with gasoline vehicles. You're going to
Speaker 1: have to either strike deals with those companies to do
Speaker 1: that or start your own really expensive and we're talking
Speaker 1: billions and billions of dollars, or as Carl Sagan would
Speaker 1: have you, billions and billions of dollars. You really need
Speaker 1: to jacket with the patches in the oldos. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a 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: was it lost? Um 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 incredibly ambitious, especially
Speaker 1: when you consider that their budget is pretty low. In
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of things. Now, it would be great
Speaker 1: if we could switch to a hydrogen based UH transportation system,
Speaker 1: because then you're looking at you no longer dependent upon
Speaker 1: on oil, and because so much of our oil comes
Speaker 1: from foreign nations that may or may not have very
Speaker 1: friendly relationships with US. UM, it means that we're no
Speaker 1: longer pouring money into into governments or into countries that
Speaker 1: we may think ultimately could use that money to do
Speaker 1: things that are not within our country's best interests. That's
Speaker 1: a good way of putting it. I'm trying to like
Speaker 1: dance lightly around the whole thing. But but hydrogen we
Speaker 1: could produce right here at home if we found an
Speaker 1: efficient way of doing it. So it didn't, you know,
Speaker 1: so it no longer costs more to create the fuel
Speaker 1: than the fuel itself would would benefit us. So that's
Speaker 1: how fuel cells work. That's kind of the the whole detail.
Speaker 1: Did you have anything else to add before I go
Speaker 1: into No. I mean, there's there's a lot more to
Speaker 1: it in terms of the depth of the reaction and
Speaker 1: how all of that works. But no, I think we
Speaker 1: did a pretty good job of of hitting the high
Speaker 1: points of it. Yeah, yeah, and and it is a
Speaker 1: huge challenge, and we maybe one that we overcome. It's
Speaker 1: 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, the issue
Speaker 1: is basically your I I P enabled cell phone, and
Speaker 1: your laptop and your you know, iopod, and your tablet
Speaker 1: and your three desktop computers, and your roommates gear and
Speaker 1: the people downstairs and everyone else in the building and
Speaker 1: everyone else in the city, in the county, in the state,
Speaker 1: and the country and the world. There's a lot, a
Speaker 1: lot of of of devices that everyone has now that
Speaker 1: use their own individual IP address. And as as robust
Speaker 1: as I p v four was, it just is going
Speaker 1: to run out of addresses with all these new devices
Speaker 1: coming onto the network and uh not retiring, it's enough
Speaker 1: of them to make room. Yeah. See, I p v
Speaker 1: four is a thirty two bit address system, and that
Speaker 1: when you translate three two bit into actual managers, uh
Speaker 1: and most you would have four billion, two four million,
Speaker 1: sixty seven thousand two D addresses. 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 too, sorry to interrupts that one nice
Speaker 1: thing about the switches 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 you know,
Speaker 1: put a four behind it. Then behind the four, put
Speaker 1: thirty zeros. Okay, that's how many addresses, So many that
Speaker 1: we would not run out in the foreseeable future. It
Speaker 1: 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 they're gonna flip a switch and everything switches from
Speaker 1: IP four to I P six. And there's as far
Speaker 1: as I know, no official timetable for migration, so people
Speaker 1: are sort of taking their time to do that. Although
Speaker 1: some people have already gone ahead and upgraded their systems
Speaker 1: to run on I P P six. So um, and
Speaker 1: I think pretty much all the mainstream operating systems, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Windows, Mac, and Lenox will accept either. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's it's not really an issue of of having
Speaker 1: the infrastructure in place, it's just a matter of doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: getting off your button switching over. Um. And what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: getting off your butt, I mean that as the organizations
Speaker 1: that are all running these servers that are they kind
Speaker 1: of the backbone of the internet. Um, and so we're
Speaker 1: kind of at their mercy whenever they get around to
Speaker 1: switching it over. And some organizations don't prioritize it very highly,
Speaker 1: so it may be a while before everyone's over to
Speaker 1: I P six. Now, whether we get to the point
Speaker 1: where we run out of addresses before we before that happens,
Speaker 1: that remains to be seen. That wraps up that look
Speaker 1: back at how fuel cells Work, which originally published twenty first,
Speaker 1: twenty ten. Uh, fascinating topic. I've covered it a few times,
Speaker 1: actually talked about it in a in a different podcast
Speaker 1: as well as I think I've covered it a few
Speaker 1: times on tech Stuff. I wrote about it for how
Speaker 1: stuff works back when I was still a writer for
Speaker 1: that website and uh talked about it on camera if
Speaker 1: you times. I think it's a really cool technology, one
Speaker 1: that is incredibly useful for certain, you know, applications. I
Speaker 1: am still a little skeptical about it taking a prominent
Speaker 1: place in vehicles, simply because building out the hydrogen fuel
Speaker 1: infrastructure would require an awful big investment, and I mean,
Speaker 1: there are certain dangers with hydrogen that we would need
Speaker 1: to address, Like hydrogen is hydrogen gas is incredibly flammable,
Speaker 1: so you definitely want to make certain that whatever strategy
Speaker 1: you use is safe and reliable. So also there's the
Speaker 1: whole thing about getting hydrogen in the first place. I mean,
Speaker 1: hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe, but
Speaker 1: it's almost always bonded to something else, So you've got
Speaker 1: to spend energy in order to get hold of it.
Speaker 1: And if what however you're doing that is taking up
Speaker 1: more energy than what you're getting out, then it's a
Speaker 1: losing proposition, but still pretty fascinating. I think regular old
Speaker 1: electric vehicles are probably going to dominate. Fuel cells might
Speaker 1: still have a place in the fleet, but I don't
Speaker 1: think it's going to be the dominant way that we,
Speaker 1: you know, provide power to our vehicles. However, that wraps
Speaker 1: up this episode of tech Stuff. We'll be back with
Speaker 1: some more space stations in the very near future, as
Speaker 1: well as more tech news episodes. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of things that are going on that are pretty darn
Speaker 1: fascinating and several that are infuriating, so I'm sure I'll
Speaker 1: be ranting and railing about them before too long, but
Speaker 1: for now, let's sign off. If you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for topics I should cover on this show, reach out
Speaker 1: to me on Twitter the handle is tech Stuff hs W,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H