Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and I love all
Speaker 1: things tech. Tech Stuff is several years old now. It
Speaker 1: launched in two thousand and eight, so we've been around
Speaker 1: longer than some tech has. And one of the early
Speaker 1: episodes we did was way back on June twenty first,
Speaker 1: twenty ten. How fuel cells work. This is one of
Speaker 1: those technologies that people often turn to and they look
Speaker 1: at that as a possible move forward to get away
Speaker 1: from carbon emissions with vehicles in particular, and fuel cells
Speaker 1: could do that if we met some other very tough challenge,
Speaker 1: and so I thought it would be fun to listen
Speaker 1: to this classic episode. This is from the Crispalette era
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. How fuel cells work. Enjoy. Now let's
Speaker 1: tackle our subject, which is how fuel cells work.
Speaker 2: Fuel cells the mystery, uh energy problem, savor of the future,
Speaker 2: or sort of.
Speaker 1: We would we would hope anyway. Uh 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 electro chemical energy conversion device.
Speaker 2: Yes, Actually, that's that's sort of what I meant about mystery,
Speaker 2: because everybody talks about how cool they are, but nobody
Speaker 2: really knows exactly what they do. But they convert chemicals
Speaker 2: into electricity.
Speaker 3: That's like a battery.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it is very much like a battery. Others.
Speaker 1: There are some differences, which we'll get into, but in
Speaker 1: general a fuel cell. What most people tend to know
Speaker 1: about fuel cells is one they create electricity and to
Speaker 1: their byproducts are heat and water. Yes, it tends to
Speaker 1: be what most people know about apart from the people
Speaker 1: who specifically work in the fuel cell industry. Clearly they
Speaker 1: know a lot more than that.
Speaker 2: Well, of course, we always see that mainstream media, you know,
Speaker 2: reporter going out to the back of the fuel cell
Speaker 2: vehicle and putting a cup underneath the tailpipe and drinking
Speaker 2: the water, right, Yeah, and I think that sticks with us.
Speaker 2: That's why we don't know that much more about it,
Speaker 2: because we go, huh, that's really cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you think about that, you're like, well, if
Speaker 1: we have this energy source that can create electricity and
Speaker 1: the only byproduct really is heat and water, and you know,
Speaker 1: water's 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 switch to
Speaker 1: a fuel cell economy. So let's let's kind of talk
Speaker 1: about what how a fuel cell works, what it does,
Speaker 1: where it came from. First of all, well, let's talk
Speaker 1: about Sir William Grove. Okay, 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 eighteen thirty nine.
Speaker 1: By the way, he knew that if you took some
Speaker 1: water and you ran an electric current through the water,
Speaker 1: it would produce hydrogen and oxygen.
Speaker 3: Right, So splitting the molecules of water apart, Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's called electrolysis. And actually this tends to happen with
Speaker 1: various molecules. If you add enough energy to the molecule,
Speaker 1: it tends to break the molecular bonds and it will
Speaker 1: eventually break apart into its individual elements. Most molecules will
Speaker 1: do this 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, if you then combined hydrogen and oxygen,
Speaker 1: you should get water and electricity, you know, because you
Speaker 1: know it should be the same coming out as it
Speaker 1: is going in, right, that makes sense, So if you're yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's like, well, how he ran some experiments and
Speaker 1: he created what he called a gas voltaic battery, okay,
Speaker 1: and in this gas voltaic battery, he then combined hydrogen
Speaker 1: and oxygen and he realized that he got water and
Speaker 1: he got free electrons, which you know, if you direct
Speaker 1: free electrons through a path, that's electricity.
Speaker 3: So there was a sign, a little sign on the
Speaker 3: side of the said electrons free.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. There was a protest held out of
Speaker 1: the cell. Fifty years later, you get a Ludwig Mond
Speaker 1: and Charles Langer, and they're the ones who coined the
Speaker 1: term fuel cell. Those are the guys who actually found
Speaker 1: a fairly practical way to do this. That was easy repeatable,
Speaker 1: so you could you could repeat the experiment improve. Yes,
Speaker 1: something is happening here, because, of course we know in science,
Speaker 1: just because you get a result doesn't necessarily mean that
Speaker 1: you have proven your hypothesis correct. You need to have
Speaker 1: a repeatable experiment that can be done by anyone who
Speaker 1: has the facility to do it at any rate to
Speaker 1: prove that that something really is going on. Yes, So
Speaker 1: that's where we get into the fuel cells. And unlike battery,
Speaker 1: like a battery is a self contained chemical reaction, and
Speaker 1: it can and yeah, it's a chemical reaction. It can
Speaker 1: very good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean nothing's going in, nothing's going out
Speaker 2: except electrons.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah. Yeah, the battery has chemicals inside it that
Speaker 1: react together. The reaction produces electrons, and that is where
Speaker 1: we get, you know, our little electric power from a battery. Yes,
Speaker 1: fuel cells are a little different. You can pour fuel
Speaker 1: into a fuel cell, thus the name, and it will
Speaker 1: convert that fuel into the water and the electricity. So
Speaker 1: as long as you have a supply of hydrogen and
Speaker 1: a supply of oxygen going into the fuel cell, and
Speaker 1: as long as the membrane of the fuel cell and
Speaker 1: the other components remain remain viable, and we'll get into
Speaker 1: that in a little bit. Uh, it should continue to
Speaker 1: produce electricity. It's not gonna it's not like it'll die
Speaker 1: after all the hydrogen runs out. If you add more
Speaker 1: hydrogen and more oxygen, it should continue.
Speaker 3: To work, right.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we've covered the basics there. Let's let's talk.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna shift my notes around. I actually have paper
Speaker 1: notes today. Wow, I usually don't do this. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about the various components within a fuel cell.
Speaker 3: Okay, we can do that, all right.
Speaker 1: We've got the anode. Yes, Uh, the anode. It that's
Speaker 1: the that's the negative post, not meaning that.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: I was trying to try to listeners. I apologize.
Speaker 3: I was not to finish.
Speaker 1: I mean, we all suffered for that. Besides Chris, No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's good. So that's what's conducting the electrons and that
Speaker 1: get freed from the hydrogen. So the anodes on one end.
Speaker 1: On the other end is the cathode. Yes, it's the
Speaker 1: positive post. So that's where the hydrogen. This is what's
Speaker 1: conducting the electrons back from the external circuit. So I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: We've got the anode. That's where when the electrons come
Speaker 1: out from the reaction, electrons go to the anode, go
Speaker 1: into a circuit. So whatever electric motor or a light
Speaker 1: bulb or whatever, Right, the electrons continue their path once
Speaker 1: they go through that circuit to the cathode. Then we've
Speaker 1: got the electrolyte in the center. This is a usually
Speaker 1: approach a proton exchange membrane. Thing of the membrane is
Speaker 1: kind of like a force field. Now this force field will, yeah,
Speaker 1: the force field will allow positively charged ions to pass through,
Speaker 1: but will pell negatively charged particles. So electrons have a
Speaker 1: negative charge. Yes, they cannot pass through the membrane. If
Speaker 1: they could pass through the membrane, fuel cells would not work.
Speaker 3: It is the bouncer of the fuel cell.
Speaker 2: Yes, you may not come in, but we're not cool
Speaker 2: enough because you are negative.
Speaker 1: Exactly, but the close enough. So the so the high
Speaker 1: hydrogen are the the hydrogen ions are positively charged because
Speaker 1: they have given up an electron. Right all right, So
Speaker 1: now essentially what you have a hydrogen ion is essentially
Speaker 1: a proton. So you've got a proton. Protons are positively charged.
Speaker 1: You've got this positively charged element there. It can pass
Speaker 1: through the membrane. Now, why would it pass through the membrane.
Speaker 3: To get to the other side.
Speaker 1: But what's on the other side oxygen. Oh, and oxygen
Speaker 1: has a negative charge. It so attracted exactly, the proton
Speaker 1: is attracted across the membrane to the negatively charged oxygen.
Speaker 1: If there were negative charge, that of the proton would
Speaker 1: not necessarily migrate through the membrane. So when it migrates
Speaker 1: to the membrane, it then combines with the oxygen and
Speaker 1: you get the two hydrogens, the one oxygen together and
Speaker 1: then the electron that had passed through the circuit. Remember
Speaker 1: it passed from the node through the circuit into the cathode.
Speaker 1: On that end, the two hydrogen atoms the oxygen atom
Speaker 1: have combined into a molecule. The electron joins that molecule,
Speaker 1: and that's when you get water, right, So you don't
Speaker 1: have any free electrons at the end of this process.
Speaker 1: It all recombines on the cathode end, and that's where
Speaker 1: you get the water. There's one other element that's important
Speaker 1: with this, and that's the catalyst.
Speaker 3: Yes, and this is catalysts.
Speaker 1: What they do is they help reactions.
Speaker 3: Right. Then the thing that makes it possible to react.
Speaker 1: Yeah, otherwise you would have to pour even more energy
Speaker 1: in in order for this to react, and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be viable at all. So it's a special material and
Speaker 1: it it helps this reaction of oxygen and hydrogen. And
Speaker 1: in most fuel cells that people talk about, tends to
Speaker 1: be made out of platinum nanoparticles. So a nanoparticle, of
Speaker 1: course is insanely tiny, like tinier than the microscopic scopic scale.
Speaker 2: Right, but it is on a thin sheet of materials
Speaker 2: with as much area as exposed as possible to facilitate
Speaker 2: more reaction.
Speaker 1: Right, So it's almost like you've spray painted a sheet
Speaker 1: with platinum. And because you can imagine, that's pretty expensive.
Speaker 1: Platinum is a precious that all. It's pretty rare. It's
Speaker 1: hard to get your hands on it. Even when you're
Speaker 1: talking about nanoparticles, which are really tiny. You're talking about
Speaker 1: billions of nanoparticles. Yes, Like a nanoparticles is not going
Speaker 1: to do much for you. So yeah, you definitely want
Speaker 1: to maximize that surface area in order to allow the
Speaker 1: reactions between hydrogen and oxygen to happen, or else your
Speaker 1: your fuel cell doesn't do anything all right, So you're
Speaker 1: pouring hydrogen in. You're you're pumping oxygen in. When I
Speaker 1: say pouring, I really mean pumping, because you're probably pumping
Speaker 1: hydrogen gas. You're pumping both into this fuel cell. They combine.
Speaker 1: You get the electrons, you get the water. So why
Speaker 1: don't we have lots and lots of fuel cells already
Speaker 1: running all all of our power, all of our electronics.
Speaker 2: You've already hit on it that what was that? The
Speaker 2: biggest one being the cost?
Speaker 1: That would be a huge one. Yeah, the platinum, that kind.
Speaker 3: Of that's simply not it's simply not practical, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: You get down to it, you're like, well, a, in
Speaker 1: an ideal world, we cost would not be would not
Speaker 1: even be a consideration, right, we would just be talking
Speaker 1: about the fact that this is clean energy that we
Speaker 1: have and uh, and we could run our cars or
Speaker 1: other devices, our homes, even powered plants, we could run
Speaker 1: them on hydrogen and uh and then we we'd not
Speaker 1: pollute and we'd have a nice clean energy source. But
Speaker 1: it comes down to the fact that is an element.
Speaker 1: It's not the only one either, of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The whole process of splitting the water into two pieces. Yeah,
Speaker 2: well you know that's actually I guess should be the
Speaker 2: source of hydrogen more than anything else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, source of hydrogen is a huge, huge problem. Hydrogen
Speaker 1: does not It's plentiful, but not in its elemental form
Speaker 1: on Earth. It's usually combined with something else like oxygen
Speaker 1: to make water. It's not like there's a hydrogen mine
Speaker 1: we can go to and mine hydrogen, pure hydrogen and
Speaker 1: use that when we can get hydrogen from stuff like
Speaker 1: hydrocarbon fuels or even water, as we pointed out by
Speaker 1: breaking down compounds, right, which takes energy. Right, 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: looking at a fuel like an energy deficit situation. Does
Speaker 1: it take more energy to create the fuel than the
Speaker 1: energy you will get by using that fuel to power
Speaker 1: a fuel cell? And as long as it takes more
Speaker 1: energy for you to create the fuel than it does
Speaker 1: 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. Yes, gasoline. Actually it
Speaker 1: actually takes more energy to create a gallon of gas
Speaker 1: than a gallon of gas can create through putting it
Speaker 1: through a motor or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because gasoline is a pretty inefficient fuel. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: turns out, especially compared to a fuel cell. And you
Speaker 2: 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 to the gas station. It's also
Speaker 1: how much energy did the refinery have to expend in
Speaker 1: order to produce that gasoline? How much energy had to
Speaker 1: be expended to to get the oil out of the
Speaker 1: ground to eventually become what would what would eventually become gasoline? Right,
Speaker 1: It's really a big picture thing, and that's that's the
Speaker 1: real problem with a lot of these energy issues, is
Speaker 1: that once you start looking at the big picture, you
Speaker 1: begin to realize, oh, this is this is a much
Speaker 1: more difficult problem than I originally imagined. We'll be back
Speaker 1: with more in just a moment to talk more about
Speaker 1: fuel cells. Now, there are many different kinds of fuel cells.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought I.
Speaker 2: Thought we were getting ready to hit that because the
Speaker 2: one that we've been talking about, I guess, probably without
Speaker 2: actually saying its name, is the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel
Speaker 2: cell right, also sometimes.
Speaker 1: Called the polymer exchange membrane fuel cell.
Speaker 3: But same day. Why yeah, the membrane in the exchange. Okay,
Speaker 3: I got it.
Speaker 1: Yep, that's it. They're used in cars a lot, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: 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 a power generation within a car.
Speaker 1: And one of those is that, well, I mean it's
Speaker 1: heat range is okay, because it's it works best somewhere
Speaker 1: around or one hundred and forty to one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy six degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you could.
Speaker 1: You would first have to heat your fuel cell up
Speaker 1: to this temperature for it to be able to work properly.
Speaker 1: So there is a warm up period. It's not like
Speaker 1: it's going to work immediately as you get in your car.
Speaker 1: One of the things about the polymer exchange membrane fuel
Speaker 1: cell is that it has to have a hydrated membrane.
Speaker 1: The membrane must remain hydrated, which means essentially wet. All right,
Speaker 1: So if you live in Minnesota. You know, the winters
Speaker 1: in Minnesota get really cold. And when you get really
Speaker 1: cold and you got water, you know what happens.
Speaker 3: It freezes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't happen much here in it Lanta, but
Speaker 1: up in Minnesota it could though. It could, Yes, if
Speaker 1: the temperature fell far enough the water used to hydrate
Speaker 1: that membrane, and remember the membrane is key to this,
Speaker 1: to this exchange. If the water could freeze, that would
Speaker 1: make the membrane extremely brittle and it could break, and
Speaker 1: then you've got a broken fuel cell.
Speaker 3: Right, So that seems problematic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a bit of an issue. And there are
Speaker 1: other types of fuel cells. There's the solid oxide fuel cell.
Speaker 3: Okay, this is this is one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: This would not work well in the car.
Speaker 3: No, no, not at all, simply.
Speaker 2: Simply because it requires so much more in the way
Speaker 2: of temperature for it to operate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it operates best between seven hundred and one thousand degrees.
Speaker 3: Syntegrade. Yes, that's a that's pretty warm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's pretty pretty steamy.
Speaker 2: But but steam, now that you mentioned that seed that
Speaker 2: it generates, you know, steam as a result, and that
Speaker 2: can be used to create electricity as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can use the steam to generate 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: the facility. So let's say it's in the dead of winter,
Speaker 1: the steam coming from this reaction could go back into
Speaker 1: the heating unit to try and keep the plant warm,
Speaker 1: so that you don't have to generate, you don't have
Speaker 1: to burn as much energy to keep the plant running.
Speaker 1: Right right now, they're not as efficient or it's not
Speaker 1: cost effective yet. The cost effectiveness of the solid oxide
Speaker 1: fuel cell that the target is four hundred dollars per
Speaker 1: kilo WAT. Right now, it's about ten times that it's
Speaker 1: that four thousand dollars per kilo WAT to run one
Speaker 1: of these things. That's a problem.
Speaker 2: Well, I'd also like to point out that the solid
Speaker 2: oxide fuel cells have been in the news recently in
Speaker 2: a pretty big fashion. As a matter of fact, I
Speaker 2: believe we've talked about one on this podcast not too
Speaker 2: long ago. The bloom Box, Oh, the bloombox, bloom Box
Speaker 2: bloom Energies, Bloombox fuel cells are solid oxide fuel cells,
Speaker 2: and I don't know that they run exactly the same
Speaker 2: way as the information in our article about that on
Speaker 2: our side at imagine using a slightly different process.
Speaker 1: They probably do, because the ones that we're talking about
Speaker 1: are mainly the solid oxide tends to often be used
Speaker 1: come in the form of coal. Yeah, so you actually
Speaker 1: have coal running a fuel cell, which you know, you
Speaker 1: first sit there and think like, WHOA, that's weird. I
Speaker 1: thought we were 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. But we may have to use fossil
Speaker 1: fuels in that process to generate the fuel we need
Speaker 1: to run to make the fuel cells go. There are
Speaker 1: other types as well. There's the alkaline fuel cell. That's
Speaker 1: the kind that we're that they that the Space Race
Speaker 1: used quite a bit back in the sixties. Yeah, not
Speaker 1: really use that much anymore. It's not it's not as
Speaker 1: it's really expensive, it's not as reliable as some of
Speaker 1: the other technologies.
Speaker 3: Plus it requires pure hydrogen and oxygen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pure hydrogen and oxygen is hard to get your
Speaker 1: hands on, or at least the pure hydrogen is. There
Speaker 1: are fuel cells that can use hydrogen that's not one
Speaker 1: hundred percent pure, but that also tends to take its
Speaker 1: toll on the membrane. So again, the membrane is a
Speaker 1: is a fairly delicate part of a fuel cell, and
Speaker 1: if you damage that that membrane, then the fuel cell
Speaker 1: is not going to work anymore. Also, I guess we
Speaker 1: should also point out that a fuel cell, when we're
Speaker 1: talking about a fuel cell, an individual fuel cell does
Speaker 1: not generate that much power. It's when you have a
Speaker 1: bunch of fuel cells working together that you can generate
Speaker 1: enough electricity.
Speaker 3: Essentially in an array.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a fuel cell stack is usually what we call it,
Speaker 1: being those of us in the field cell industry and journalists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so an indidvidual fuel cell is like think of it,
Speaker 1: like we talked about cell processors. A cell processor is
Speaker 1: just one part of a group of processors that all
Speaker 1: work together, same sort of thing. Fuel cell is just
Speaker 1: one little electricity generation device that works with several others
Speaker 1: to create enough electricity to actually do something. But you
Speaker 1: also have the molten carbonate fuel cell, the phosphoric acid
Speaker 1: fuel cell, the direct methanol fuel cell. These are all variations.
Speaker 1: They all basically do the same thing, but they're doing
Speaker 1: it through different ways, and some of them have different
Speaker 1: operating temperatures, different parameters. Some of them are more reliable
Speaker 1: than others, but they require such a high operating temperature
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't want to use in a car, Like
Speaker 1: you don't want to use a solid oxide fuel cell
Speaker 1: in a car because you would die. You would have
Speaker 1: to have such sheets, some sort of protective material to
Speaker 1: shield you from the heat that your car would weighe
Speaker 1: so much that it wouldn't matter how much of the
Speaker 1: electrocity you're generting, because it wouldn't move anywhere.
Speaker 3: It's gonna say, you'd have to use most of the
Speaker 3: power for your air conditioning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, either the air conditioning or just getting the
Speaker 1: wheels to have enough torque to actually push that incredibly
Speaker 1: heavy vehicle forward torque. Yum.
Speaker 2: So then we have the phosphoric acid fuel cell, and
Speaker 2: you know those those are those a little smaller.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, those aren't. Those aren't as huge.
Speaker 3: But they have such a long went warm up time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So again, if you tried to if you used
Speaker 1: a phosphoric acid jill cell in your car, you'd have
Speaker 1: to start warming up your car an hour before you
Speaker 1: were leaving, So that's.
Speaker 3: Not really sort of impractical.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the direct methanol fuel cell, again we're talking
Speaker 1: about it's not as efficient. It can use methanol, but
Speaker 1: since since the energy output isn't as great, it's not
Speaker 1: really seen as a viable fuel cell.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I've seen I've seen some methanol fuel cells out
Speaker 2: and about. In fact, it when I went to the
Speaker 2: CEES in two thousand and eight, I believe it was Toshiba,
Speaker 2: if I'm not mistaken, had a methanol fuel cell powered
Speaker 2: MP three player on display, which was pretty cool. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not it's one of those things where you're like, really, seriously,
Speaker 2: I have to pour methanol in this thing. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it's it was so small, you know, the
Speaker 2: size of an MP three player that, you know, I
Speaker 2: couldn't imagine it powering a building.
Speaker 3: Or a car. It's much more tiny.
Speaker 2: But that's what they talk about when they talk about
Speaker 2: the possibility of using fuel cells to power say, laptop
Speaker 2: computers and things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, personal electronic devices that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: It's still it still seems odd to me that you would,
Speaker 2: you know, flip your laptop over and pour in some methanol,
Speaker 2: and I guess it would probably be an external supply
Speaker 2: of some sort.
Speaker 1: My MP three player has a drinking problem. I was
Speaker 1: going to 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 h 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.
Speaker 3: So eliminating that is an issue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, assuming that a pure hydrogen fuel cell has the
Speaker 1: potential to be up to eighty percent efficient and generating electricity,
Speaker 1: so you're getting eighty percent of the energy generated by
Speaker 1: the reaction to actually become electricity. However, now then you
Speaker 1: have to put it through an electric motor. So we're
Speaker 1: talking about this for cars. So electric motors are not
Speaker 1: one hundred percent efficient. They don't they don't convert one
Speaker 1: hundred percent of electricity into one hundred percent mechanical power.
Speaker 1: You lose some in heat. Yes, So let's let's say
Speaker 1: you've got a really good electric motor, and the electric
Speaker 1: motor is also eighty p efficient. You're getting down to
Speaker 1: about sixty four percent of your of the power that's
Speaker 1: generated by the reactions within the fuel cell to actually
Speaker 1: do work. So you've got sixty four percent efficiency. Now
Speaker 1: that's amazing compared to a gas powered automobile, yes, which
Speaker 1: has got about twenty percent exactly, Like like Chris said,
Speaker 1: gasoline's just not that efficient at generating power. Then you
Speaker 1: think about, all right, well, what about electric vehicles, like
Speaker 1: you don't know, a Prius, Well.
Speaker 3: That's a that's a hybrid.
Speaker 1: That's true, you know, compared if you're talking about a
Speaker 1: pure electric vehicle. I'm sorry, I should have said a
Speaker 1: pure electric vehicle. So it's just running on an electric battery.
Speaker 1: Electric batteries on their own can be really efficient, like
Speaker 1: ninety percent efficient. When you get to the electric electric
Speaker 1: motor part, it eventually comes down to about seventy two
Speaker 1: percent efficiency. We got a little bit more to talk
Speaker 1: about with fuel cells, and we'll do that when we
Speaker 1: come back. Now here's where you have to go into
Speaker 1: the big picture again. Okay, how was that electricity generated
Speaker 1: that went into charging the battery.
Speaker 2: In a lot of cases, at least here in the
Speaker 2: United States, we're talking about fossil fuels again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, coal power or something like that. Yes, So once
Speaker 1: you factor into the coal power that was needed to
Speaker 1: generate the electricity that initially charged that battery, you start
Speaker 1: seeing the efficiencies drop. Now, if we assume that the
Speaker 1: electricity was generated through some sort of renewable source, like
Speaker 1: let's say a 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: sixty percent, so sixty five percent, sixty 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: does it make sense to move to a hydrogen based
Speaker 1: fleet of automobiles. Will that, from an energy standpoint make
Speaker 1: sense or will we just be switching one inefficient method
Speaker 1: for ultimately another one. That's that's one question. There's another
Speaker 1: one though, that's even bigger. All right, how do we
Speaker 1: build the infrastructure to support hydrogen powered vehicles?
Speaker 2: Yes, this is a This is one of the problems
Speaker 2: that organizations like Better Place, which is a car manufacturer,
Speaker 2: or not car manufacturer. They are a systems manufacturer that's
Speaker 2: trying to work out a way to make electric vehicles possible.
Speaker 2: And they basically have been adapting vehicles to run on
Speaker 2: as plug ins, which is all well and good, but
Speaker 2: say what happens if you haven't had a chance to
Speaker 2: get your car charged up, you know, and you are
Speaker 2: running out of electricity. We're talking about the possibility of
Speaker 2: stations where you could go and swap out your battery
Speaker 2: for another you know, our battery array for another one.
Speaker 2: And you know, that would be a convenient thing if
Speaker 2: that already existed. But it's the same thing any kind
Speaker 2: of alternative fuel to what we've got now, whether it's
Speaker 2: you know, needing more hydrogen for your fuel cell powered
Speaker 2: vehicle or requiring more batteries for an electric vehicle. There
Speaker 2: just simply aren't, you know, power stations on every corner
Speaker 2: like there are with gasoline vehicles. You're going to have
Speaker 2: to either strike deals with those companies to do that
Speaker 2: or start your own. That new one really expensive.
Speaker 1: We're talking billions and billions of dollars, or as Carl
Speaker 1: Sagan would have you, billions and billions of dollars.
Speaker 3: You really need to jacket with the patches in the al.
Speaker 1: Those for Yeah, it's a little too warm for that.
Speaker 1: At any rate, Yeah, it costs. It's going to cost
Speaker 1: a lot of money to build out that infrastructure, everything
Speaker 1: from the actual facilities where they sell the hydrogen, to
Speaker 1: all the vehicles that are going to be necessary to
Speaker 1: transport the hydrogen, to the facilities that are there to
Speaker 1: generate the hydrogen. It's not a small task. And the
Speaker 1: Hydrogen Fuel Initiative just founded back in two thousand and 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 twenty twenty. I think that's 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 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, it means that we're no longer
Speaker 1: pouring money into governments or into countries that we may
Speaker 1: think ultimately could use that money to do things that
Speaker 1: are not within our country's best interests. Right, that's a
Speaker 1: good way of putting it. I'm trying to like dance
Speaker 1: lightly around the whole thing. But hydrogen we could produce
Speaker 1: right here at home if we found an efficient way
Speaker 1: of doing it, so it didn't, you know, so it
Speaker 1: no longer costs more to create the fuel than the
Speaker 1: fuel itself would would benefit us. Right, So that's how
Speaker 1: fuel cells work. That's kind of the whole detail. Did
Speaker 1: you have anything else to add before I go into No.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's there's a lot more to it in
Speaker 2: terms of the depth of the reaction and how all
Speaker 2: of that works.
Speaker 3: But no, I think we did pretty good job of
Speaker 3: hitting the high points of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And it is a huge challenge, and we
Speaker 1: may be one that we overcome. It's a little early
Speaker 1: to say, but before we get there, I'm afraid we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to answer a little listener mail. This listener
Speaker 1: mail comes from Megan from Boston, Massachusetts, and Megan says,
Speaker 1: I love the podcast, keep them coming. Could you please
Speaker 1: dedicate one podcast to Internet Protocol Version six. I don't
Speaker 1: fully understand why IPv four is running out of addresses
Speaker 1: and how the switch to IPv six will be implemented.
Speaker 1: I think that would make a great and informative podcast,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure there are other listeners interested in this topic.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 1: Well, it's not really a big enough topic to do
Speaker 1: a full podcast on necessarily, but we can give you
Speaker 1: a real quick rundown on what the issue is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the issue is basically your IP enabled cell phone,
Speaker 2: and your laptop and your you know, and your tablet
Speaker 2: and your three desktop computers, and your roommates gear, and
Speaker 2: the people downstairs and everyone else in the building and
Speaker 2: everyone else in the city and the county and the
Speaker 2: state and the country and the world.
Speaker 3: There's a lot a lot of.
Speaker 2: Devices that everyone has now that use their own individual
Speaker 2: IP address, And as as robust as IPv four was,
Speaker 2: it just is going to run out of addresses with
Speaker 2: all these new devices coming onto the network and not
Speaker 2: retiring enough of them to make room.
Speaker 1: Yeah. See, IPv four is a thirty two bit address system. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that when you translate thirty two bit into actual
Speaker 1: integers and most you would have four billion, two hundred
Speaker 1: ninety four million, nine hundred and sixty seven two and
Speaker 1: ninety six addresses. Once those addresses are gone, that's that's it.
Speaker 1: If you're on an IP four system, you cannot add
Speaker 1: any more devices to the Internet because each device has
Speaker 1: to have its own unique IP address. That's the way
Speaker 1: the Internet works. If you don't have your own unique address,
Speaker 1: you cannot send and receive information because the information wouldn't
Speaker 1: know where to go.
Speaker 2: Yep, so I was going to say too, sorry to interruption,
Speaker 2: Go ahead. That one nice thing about the switch is
Speaker 2: that it's they coexist.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. The IPv six uses one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: eight bit addresses as opposed to thirty two bit, which
Speaker 1: gives you about three point four Okay, take a three,
Speaker 1: put a four behind it, then behind the four, put
Speaker 1: thirty eight 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 be Internet connected,
Speaker 1: and even then we still would have plenty of addresses
Speaker 1: left over. So and yes, like you said, the two
Speaker 1: systems can coincide. The issue about implementation is that that's
Speaker 1: a an organization by organization process. It's not like there's
Speaker 1: going to flip a switch and everything switches from IP
Speaker 1: four to IP six.
Speaker 2: And there's as far as I know, no official timetable
Speaker 2: for migration, so people are sort of taking their time
Speaker 2: to do that, although some people have already gone ahead
Speaker 2: and upgraded their systems to run on IPv six. So
Speaker 2: and I think pretty much all the mainstream operating systems,
Speaker 2: you know, Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Speaker 3: Will accept either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so's it's not really an issue of having the
Speaker 2: infrastructure in place.
Speaker 3: It's just a matter of you know, doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, getting off your button, switching over 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 the kind
Speaker 1: of the backbone of the Internet, and so we're kind
Speaker 1: of at their mercy whenever they get around to switching
Speaker 1: 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: IP six. Now, whether we get to the point where
Speaker 1: we run out of addresses before we before that happened,
Speaker 1: that remains to be seen. That wraps up that look
Speaker 1: back at How Fuel Sales Work, which originally published June
Speaker 1: twenty first, twenty ten. Fascinating topic. I've covered it a
Speaker 1: few times, actually talked about it 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 talked about it on camera a few times.
Speaker 1: I think it's a really cool technology, one that is
Speaker 1: incredibly useful for certain applications. I am still a little
Speaker 1: skeptical about it taking a prominent place in vehicles, simply
Speaker 1: because building out the hydrogen fuel infrastructure would require an
Speaker 1: awful big investment. And I mean, there are certain dangers
Speaker 1: with hydrogen that we would need to address, Like hydrogen
Speaker 1: is hydrogen gas is incredibly flammable, so you definitely want
Speaker 1: to make certain that whatever strategy you use is safe
Speaker 1: and reliable. So also there's the whole thing about getting
Speaker 1: hydrogen in the first place. I mean Hydrogen is the
Speaker 1: most plentiful element in the universe, but it's almost always
Speaker 1: bonded to something else, So you got to spend energy
Speaker 1: in order to get hold of it. And if, however
Speaker 1: you're doing that is taking up more energy than what
Speaker 1: you're getting out, then it's a losing proposition, but still
Speaker 1: pretty fascinating. I think regular, old electric vehicles are probably
Speaker 1: going to dominate. Fuel cells might still have a place
Speaker 1: in the fleet, but I don't think it's going to
Speaker 1: be the dominant way that we provide power to our vehicles.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this classic episode of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I hope you are all well, and I will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Tex Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.