Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, jumping jack Flash,
Speaker 1: it's a gas, gas gas. Jonathan Stricklings, I'm Lauren and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. So today we're gonna talk about an
Speaker 1: alternative to gas powered vehicles, or what could potentially be
Speaker 1: an alternative. We're talking about fuel cell technology, and fuel
Speaker 1: cells can be used for more than just vehicles. Obviously
Speaker 1: they can be used for energy production and other methods,
Speaker 1: but we're mostly focusing on vehicles, right. So fuel cells?
Speaker 1: What are they? How do they work? What? What's up
Speaker 1: with this crazy thing? Do they really just generate electricity
Speaker 1: and water? Why don't we have this magical technology everywhere.
Speaker 1: We're gonna answer all those questions and more. So sit
Speaker 1: back and relax. Okay, this should be fairly obvious, but
Speaker 1: maybe quick refresher. What's the problem with gas? Well, it pollutes. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's polluting both when you're trying to get at the
Speaker 1: raw materials. It pollutes when you're refining the raw materials
Speaker 1: into the fuel. It pollutes after you burn the fuel. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there's a limited amount of the stuff out there,
Speaker 1: and it's not always in places that are easy for
Speaker 1: us to get to. Also, it's relatively energy and efficient.
Speaker 1: Regular gasoline powered vehicle is only really going to operate
Speaker 1: at like efficiency. You're not going to get well. And
Speaker 1: that's the problem with internal combustion engines, right, You're you're
Speaker 1: losing a lot of that potential energy due to heat.
Speaker 1: It ends up you're losing it by by heat. So
Speaker 1: instead of being able to harness that energy, we just
Speaker 1: end up releasing it into the environment. Okay, So when
Speaker 1: we're talking about a fuel cell vehicle, correct me if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, But essentially we're talking about an electric vehicle
Speaker 1: that has its mode of electricity production coming along with it. Right.
Speaker 1: So most electric cars, you'd say, you plug it into
Speaker 1: the wall, charge up a battery, and then you drive off.
Speaker 1: A gas powered car, you take your fuel with you
Speaker 1: and it, you know, makes things explode and that gives
Speaker 1: your power. Yes, this is sort of somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1: It's an electric car, but you're taking your fuel along
Speaker 1: with you, right, And fuel cells and batteries tend to
Speaker 1: get for for people who aren't familiar with the technology.
Speaker 1: It can be a little confusing because they both rely
Speaker 1: on a similar principle. They're electrochemical energy conversion devices, right,
Speaker 1: So these are devices just rall that off. These are
Speaker 1: devices that use an electro chemical reaction to generate electricity.
Speaker 1: So it's a chemical reaction that as a result, releases electrons.
Speaker 1: That's what electricity is, you know, the flow of electrons.
Speaker 1: So we then harness this release of electrons through a circuit.
Speaker 1: We usually call this a load. We put a load
Speaker 1: on a battery and then those electrons can do work.
Speaker 1: So the classic example something that everyone does in their
Speaker 1: physics classes. They build the basic circuit with a little
Speaker 1: light bulb, and then when you close the switch, so
Speaker 1: that you've completed the circuit the electronics right, assuming you
Speaker 1: built everything correctly, which is pretty simple to do, but
Speaker 1: you know, leave it to me, I can mess it
Speaker 1: up once. Once the circuit is complete, the electrons can
Speaker 1: flow from one terminal of the battery through this circuit
Speaker 1: uh doing the work, and then into the other end
Speaker 1: of the battery. Now, with batteries, this electrochemical process results
Speaker 1: in an inert material. Once the electrons come back in
Speaker 1: and those those chemicals have finished their their chemical reaction. Uh.
Speaker 1: They usually will last you know, a good long while,
Speaker 1: depending upon how much load you're putting on the batteries.
Speaker 1: But eventually you get a dead battery, right, You've got
Speaker 1: a battery that no longer can create electricity sufficient for
Speaker 1: you to do any work. Sure, and sometimes you can
Speaker 1: recharge that battery. Sure. Yeah, And that's essentially reversing that process.
Speaker 1: That's when you're instead of harnessing the electrons coming out
Speaker 1: of the battery, you're shoving electrons back in the battery,
Speaker 1: screaming the whole time until the battery has reached some
Speaker 1: level of uh, it's it's returned to the state it
Speaker 1: was before you expended all the energy. More or less, batteries,
Speaker 1: of course, lose their potency over time that less and
Speaker 1: less of the battery will recharge, so that eventually you
Speaker 1: have to replace them anyway. You'll you'll realize that, like
Speaker 1: anyone who's owned any electronics for any length the time,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, I remember when the battery life
Speaker 1: and this thing was great, but now it doesn't last
Speaker 1: half as long as it used to. And it's not
Speaker 1: just your imagination, you know, it really does happen and
Speaker 1: there are other things that can happen that make that
Speaker 1: that process go more quickly, which is something you don't
Speaker 1: want to do well. Fuel cells are similar to batteries
Speaker 1: and that you have this electrochemical process, but they're different
Speaker 1: in that instead of having a set amount of chemicals
Speaker 1: contained within the unit, you have fuel going into the
Speaker 1: fuel cell to continuously replenish it, and that is what
Speaker 1: allows the electricity to continuously generate as long as you
Speaker 1: have fuel to put into the cell. Okay, So the
Speaker 1: chemicals we often hear about in batteries or things like
Speaker 1: maybe lithium or like say lead in old nickel, cadmium,
Speaker 1: something like that. What are the chemicals we're talking about
Speaker 1: in a fuel cell and how do they actually produce
Speaker 1: electricity on the molecular level? Excellent question. Okay, so they
Speaker 1: they are these very exotic chemicals. Okay, you've got hydrogen.
Speaker 1: Stop me if I start getting like crazy here. You've
Speaker 1: got hydrogen and you've got oxygen. Okay, so you've got
Speaker 1: what stars are made of. Yeah, and what we breathe, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: So hydrogen and oxygen. Now, there is a particular molecule
Speaker 1: that two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen
Speaker 1: will form if they all get buddy buddy with each other,
Speaker 1: they call water H two oh. So basically, what you're
Speaker 1: doing is you're creating a chamber where hydrogen and oxygen
Speaker 1: want to get together, want being anthropomorphizing obviously, but they
Speaker 1: have a tendency to get together before they want to.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like a tank with two sides, right,
Speaker 1: and you have a divider in between the two that
Speaker 1: keeps it from doing this just naturally. And what this
Speaker 1: divider has also on it, this is an electro light membrane.
Speaker 1: In the case of the fuel cells we'll be talking
Speaker 1: about today, different fuel cells use different electrolytes. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: use them in membrane forms, some use some molten material.
Speaker 1: It all depends upon the actual type of fuel cell,
Speaker 1: but for fuel cell vehicles, they tend to be this
Speaker 1: this kind of permeable semi permeable membrane. It looks like
Speaker 1: like plastic wrap. Okay, so this is the electrolyte. It
Speaker 1: allows positively charged particles to pass through, but not negatively
Speaker 1: charged particles all right. Now, coded on this electro light
Speaker 1: membrane is a catalyst. Now, a catalyst for those who
Speaker 1: don't remember. Their chemistry is something that facilitates a chemical reaction.
Speaker 1: It's sort of a third party negotiator. Yeah. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things like, hey, let me make things
Speaker 1: a little easier on you. You know. It's the travel agent,
Speaker 1: let me introduce you to my friend. Yeah. So, in
Speaker 1: this case, with a lot of the permeable membrane um
Speaker 1: uh fuel se else. It tends to be a really
Speaker 1: exotic and expensive material like platinum, but in nanoparticle forms.
Speaker 1: So you've you've crushed the stuff into particles that are
Speaker 1: a billionth of a meter in diameter. I mean tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny little particles, smaller than what a light telescope could
Speaker 1: pick up. All right, So you've coded this membrane with
Speaker 1: that stuff, and you pressurize the hydrogen, and you force
Speaker 1: the hydrogen against this membrane. The catalyst tells the hydrogen, hey,
Speaker 1: I'll let you through, but you've got to lose those
Speaker 1: those electrons you're carrying. Hydrogen carries one electron, right, So
Speaker 1: the hydrogen ditches the electrons becomes positively charged ions. Because
Speaker 1: it's a positively charged ion, it can now pass through
Speaker 1: that membrane and get over to where all the oxygen
Speaker 1: atoms are on the other side. But if it has
Speaker 1: to lose electrons to become positive, where do those electrons go.
Speaker 1: We'll see. First of all, the electrons really want to
Speaker 1: get back with those hydrogen ions right as the negative
Speaker 1: charges they tracked one another, but there's no way they
Speaker 1: can go through that membrane. However, you've been clever. You've
Speaker 1: created a back door so that the electrons can scoot
Speaker 1: through the back door, rush down the hallway, maybe pushing
Speaker 1: some buttons along the way, and then get to the
Speaker 1: other side of the chamber and then recombined with their
Speaker 1: hydrogen buddies and the oxygen new buddies and form water.
Speaker 1: So in this case, you are actually harnessing the electricity
Speaker 1: by creating this pathway for the electrons to pass through.
Speaker 1: That's the anode side of the fuel cell. They come
Speaker 1: in on the cathode side of the fuel cell. That's
Speaker 1: where the oxygen is and where the hydrogen comes into
Speaker 1: combine with the oxygen to form water. So you're end
Speaker 1: result with your basic hydrogen based fuel cell, assuming that
Speaker 1: you don't have any other funky things going on with
Speaker 1: the electrolyte. Uh is that you get electricity you get
Speaker 1: water and you get heat. Those are those are your outputs,
Speaker 1: so you don't you don't have any other I mean water,
Speaker 1: vapor is a greenhouse gas, but you don't have any other,
Speaker 1: like toxic gases that are created as result of this reaction.
Speaker 1: So basically the processes. It's kind of like you tear
Speaker 1: children away from their loving parents and force them to
Speaker 1: run through a hall in order to get back to
Speaker 1: their parents. But as they run through the hall, they've
Speaker 1: got to turn a crank. Or you want to go
Speaker 1: to a popular nightclub where all the the attractive young
Speaker 1: people are inside, but the bouncer realizes that you are
Speaker 1: not an attractive young person. I'm talking about myself here,
Speaker 1: and so you run around the back and find a
Speaker 1: back door to get in so that you can get
Speaker 1: into the nightclub exhausted. Yeah, you're on a hamster wheel
Speaker 1: generating energy for the young people to dance too. Yeah okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is which is that's how daft punk started? Cool
Speaker 1: well known story in this process? Yeah what what the
Speaker 1: running toddlers and the electrons and Jonathan going to the
Speaker 1: back door of the club all having common is they
Speaker 1: don't produce greenhouse gases like well maybe water vapor book. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but there's nothing nothing toxic. You don't have any There's
Speaker 1: no carbon dioxide in this kind of fuel cell depending
Speaker 1: I say in this kind of fuel cell, because there
Speaker 1: are other types, depending upon the electrolyte being used or
Speaker 1: the method being used, that do create some carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: as a result. We'll talk about one of those in
Speaker 1: a little bit because it's one that kind of It
Speaker 1: was one of those news stories that exploded a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago when it first hit the text circles,
Speaker 1: and then I don't know that many people are aware
Speaker 1: of what actually it does. It was this mysterious energy
Speaker 1: generating device which turned out to just be based on
Speaker 1: not I shouldn't say just be based on but turned
Speaker 1: out to be based on fuel cell technology. But mainly
Speaker 1: we're talking about hydrogen yep, yep. I mean you could
Speaker 1: talk about uh, methane based fuel cells. That's the other
Speaker 1: main type. And methane actually is more energy dense than
Speaker 1: hydrogen is, so that's one reason why you might look
Speaker 1: at methane instead of hydrogen. But that also can create
Speaker 1: some other gases as a result of putting it through
Speaker 1: the fuel cell, and the technology is a you years
Speaker 1: behind hydrogen based fuel cells, because that's where most of
Speaker 1: the research has gone into. Okay, so you've got your
Speaker 1: hydrogen fuel cell set up and this is generating water, vapor, heat,
Speaker 1: and electricity. What do you do with that stuff? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, each fuel cell is a tiny little
Speaker 1: thing on its own. Okay, So if you were to say, oh,
Speaker 1: my car has a fuel cell in it, your car
Speaker 1: would not go anywhere, like if your computer had a transistor,
Speaker 1: right exactly. That's a good example. Yes, Because you're talking
Speaker 1: about something that can put out points seven vaults of electricity.
Speaker 1: That's not enough to do very much. So what you
Speaker 1: have to do is you have to have a collection
Speaker 1: of these fuel cells. That's called a fuel cell stack,
Speaker 1: and usually you have these separated by bipolar plates, which
Speaker 1: allow these various fuel cells to work together to generate
Speaker 1: enough electricity for you to do whatever the work is
Speaker 1: that you've determined for that particular fuel cell. Right. So,
Speaker 1: once you have enough of them to generate enough electricity
Speaker 1: to do what you want to do, then that electricity
Speaker 1: obviously does whatever it's supposed to do. In the case
Speaker 1: of a fuel cell vehicle, it's providing power to an
Speaker 1: electric motor. So just as a battery would provide the
Speaker 1: electricity to an electric motor in a traditional electrical vehicle,
Speaker 1: the fuel cell would do that. For this one, the
Speaker 1: water vapor would be uh would be essentially vented. You know,
Speaker 1: it's an exhaust, so you'd lose that and the heat
Speaker 1: would just be released to the atmosphere as well. Now,
Speaker 1: I should also say that fuel cells, the different types,
Speaker 1: operate at different temperatures for uh, the optimal performance. Right,
Speaker 1: There's some fuel cells that do really well at temperatures
Speaker 1: that are pretty typical for what you would find in
Speaker 1: a car engine, so that would be okay. The membranes
Speaker 1: are a little a little tricky because some of them
Speaker 1: are very delicate, and as temperatures drop, the membranes become
Speaker 1: vulnerable to that. So that's actually a problem with some
Speaker 1: fuel cells is trying to figure out if you happen
Speaker 1: to be someone who operates the vehicle and say, our
Speaker 1: friends to the Great White North, a fuel cell vehicle
Speaker 1: might not be the best choice because that membrane could
Speaker 1: be damaged in the winter. Right. That's the problem with
Speaker 1: a lot of fuel cells actually, and the larger ones
Speaker 1: that operate at much higher temperatures. I mean, because they
Speaker 1: heat up to six hundred or eight hundred degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: That's celsius, not fahrenheit. Kids. Um, you know it's heating
Speaker 1: that much, and then cooling it back down to room
Speaker 1: temperature can create a lot of corrosion within the materials
Speaker 1: that it's made of. Right, you don't want to you
Speaker 1: don't want to have to shut it down more frequently
Speaker 1: than necessary, because when it's at the optimal temperature, it's
Speaker 1: it's performing like gangbusters. But then once you have to
Speaker 1: shut it down, then obviously you have to take in
Speaker 1: more energy just to cool it down and then heat
Speaker 1: it back up to get it to the right temperature.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like even though we've heard about fuel
Speaker 1: cells mostly being used in application with cars, they'd actually
Speaker 1: be easier to use in sort of like a stationary
Speaker 1: UH system infrastructure, maybe powering a factory or something like that. Yeah, factory.
Speaker 1: Is there even power generation plans that use fuel cells?
Speaker 1: These are ones that tend to use the ones you're
Speaker 1: talking about, Lauren, the ones that operate at really high temperatures.
Speaker 1: They're really efficient and they put out a great deal
Speaker 1: of power. But it also means that they cannot be
Speaker 1: used for applications like driving a car, because I don't
Speaker 1: know about you, but personally I start getting uncomfortable if
Speaker 1: my car gets over ninety degrees fahrenheit, and if it's
Speaker 1: operating at a hundred degrees celsius, I have a feeling
Speaker 1: I would. I mean, even Atlanta summers are not that bad, right,
Speaker 1: So you can't really have something that operates at those
Speaker 1: temperatures in a form factor as small as a car
Speaker 1: without cooking the inhabitants of that car or making the
Speaker 1: car of some sort of material that would deflect all
Speaker 1: that heat, which would make the car heavier and require
Speaker 1: you to put more energy into it to actually make
Speaker 1: it move. It would be pretty awesome for cooking soup
Speaker 1: on the go, though, know that your soup would be
Speaker 1: instantaneously cooked. Uh my intuitions as even more than a
Speaker 1: comfort problem. It just sounds sort of mechanically unstable. Oh sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: So those sort of applications would be for things like
Speaker 1: operating a big factory that requires a lot of power,
Speaker 1: or a power generation plant, or even being able to
Speaker 1: supply power to a an office building or a home.
Speaker 1: So one of the fuel cells that I kind of mentioned.
Speaker 1: This is the one I was talking about that made
Speaker 1: a big splash a few years ago and got a
Speaker 1: lot of excitement around it. But then once people started
Speaker 1: figuring out how it was that really working, it was
Speaker 1: still exciting. It just wasn't as mysterious. It's called the
Speaker 1: bloom Box now the bloom box. A few years ago
Speaker 1: it was one of these things where people were really
Speaker 1: vague about what was going on. It was a box
Speaker 1: that was generating electricity, and there wasn't a lot of actually,
Speaker 1: can't look inside it was it almost seemed like it
Speaker 1: almost seems it almost seemed like that the very early
Speaker 1: days of the the promotional material like it seemed like
Speaker 1: it could have been one of those wacky, uh, perpetual
Speaker 1: motion type devices or or free energy devices that never
Speaker 1: pan out. Because I don't know thermodynamics, it's hard to
Speaker 1: get around right, so laws, basic laws of physics are
Speaker 1: difficult to break. So once it came out about exactly
Speaker 1: how it was generating power, people like, oh no, this
Speaker 1: totally makes sense. It's a it's refining a technology that
Speaker 1: we've known about for a really long time, and there
Speaker 1: are actual improvements that make it more useful. But it's
Speaker 1: not mysterious, right, it was fuel cells. Yeah. And just
Speaker 1: to put in I mean, we've known about fuel cells
Speaker 1: since about eighteen thirty nine. One Sir William Grove invented
Speaker 1: the first one um based on his hypothesis that you know,
Speaker 1: you could reverse the whole process. Well okay, so he
Speaker 1: knew that that water can be split into hydrogen and
Speaker 1: oxygen by running electric current through it. He shot, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe we can do the opposite. Yeah, and it turns
Speaker 1: out I was right. That's electrolysis. By the way, when
Speaker 1: you use electricity to split uh water molecules into their
Speaker 1: basic units, the hydrogen and oxygen. And in fact, that's
Speaker 1: one of the ways that people have talked about generating hydrogen.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that a little bit later. So in
Speaker 1: the case of the blue box or the bloom energy boxes,
Speaker 1: they're using solid oxide fuel cells. It's a little bit
Speaker 1: different from the ones that we're talking about with the
Speaker 1: permeable membrane. So the solid oxide ones operate at a
Speaker 1: higher temperature than permeable membrane. So they work fine as
Speaker 1: a standalone unit that's connected to a building, but not
Speaker 1: necessarily a great choice for say a vehicle but they
Speaker 1: also are they also generate a little bit of carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide in the process, so it's a small amount compared
Speaker 1: to the amount of water that is given off, but
Speaker 1: it's still one of those things where you'd say, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is not it's not as desirable as say a
Speaker 1: pure hydrogen fuel cell in the sense that it's still
Speaker 1: generating c O two, you know, and we generally think
Speaker 1: that if we can cut back on producing c O two,
Speaker 1: that would be a good thing. So let's get into
Speaker 1: some of the problems with fuel cells or challenges if
Speaker 1: you prefer if you want to look at as challenges
Speaker 1: as opposed to a problem. Yeah, this sounds pretty good.
Speaker 1: So basically, no emissions and all that. Why why don't
Speaker 1: I have a fuel cell car? Okay, a few different reasons. Uh,
Speaker 1: some of them are practical, some of them are environmental,
Speaker 1: some of them are safety oriented. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: hydrogen is the main fuel we're talking about, apart from
Speaker 1: the methane ones that are still being looked at. Hydrogen
Speaker 1: is really what we're concentrating on with fuel cell. Well,
Speaker 1: that should be easy. You just go outside with the
Speaker 1: jar and swing it around to collect those clouds of
Speaker 1: hydrogen you see floating on Oh if only that were
Speaker 1: the case. Yes, it turns you get pure hydrogen. It's
Speaker 1: not easy because hydrogen in its pure form is in
Speaker 1: really short supply here on Earth. Hydrogen is one of
Speaker 1: those things that tends to bond with everybody wants to
Speaker 1: be everyone's best friend. And so that's why if you've
Speaker 1: ever heard the term hydrocarbons, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: different ones out there. Hydrogen tends to bond with lots
Speaker 1: of stuff. Uh. Yeah, My guess is that most of
Speaker 1: the I don't know this. I imagine a lot of
Speaker 1: the hydrogen on Earth is in water. A lot of
Speaker 1: it is, but it's you know, it's in a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. So get that hydrogen means that you have
Speaker 1: to expend some energy to get the actual fuel, right,
Speaker 1: So you have to start doing calculations. How much energy
Speaker 1: do you have to expend in order to get the
Speaker 1: fuel you're going to use to create energy. If it
Speaker 1: ends up being the same amount or more, then obviously
Speaker 1: you're on the losing side of that. Yeah. So if
Speaker 1: you imagine you go back and use electrolysis to get
Speaker 1: the hydrogen out of the water, you have to create
Speaker 1: electric current right to get pure hydrogen to put in
Speaker 1: your fuel cell to create electric current, So how are
Speaker 1: you getting the original and even your ideal fuel cell
Speaker 1: vehicle kind of thing would only be operating at maybe
Speaker 1: sixty six percent efficientc. So that's that's that's on the
Speaker 1: high end too. Yeah. Yeah, So you're talking about how
Speaker 1: you're going to you're still losing some of that potential energy, right,
Speaker 1: some of it's just going into heat and not driving
Speaker 1: your car, so you have to worry about that as well.
Speaker 1: So there are all these things you have to take
Speaker 1: into account. One thing you could do is if you
Speaker 1: really wanted to, you could build a solar farm to
Speaker 1: gen right the electricity to zap the water to make
Speaker 1: the hydrogen to make the cars go, and the green
Speaker 1: grass goes all around and around. So but I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there's obviously different ways, and there's some scientists are
Speaker 1: looking into new ways to harvest hydrogen that could pan
Speaker 1: out and end up being a solution to at least
Speaker 1: one part of this problem. But that's just one part. Right.
Speaker 1: Even if we did have unlimited access to unbonded hydrogen,
Speaker 1: we would have to have some kind of infrastructure in
Speaker 1: place in order to get the hydrogen to you, Joe
Speaker 1: with your fancy fuel cell vehicle. No, oh, yeah, I imagine.
Speaker 1: I see. Hydrogen is probably harder to transport than something
Speaker 1: like gasoline or oils. You have to liquid. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: end up pressurizing this gas. Also, by the way, hydrogen
Speaker 1: a little bit flammable. So I don't know if you
Speaker 1: ever watched this video that went viral a few years
Speaker 1: ago about the Hindenburg more than a few years ago. Hey,
Speaker 1: some of us are too soon the humanity. Um. So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: hydrogen is very flammable. It's very dangerous stuff, and and
Speaker 1: so there there are valid safety concerns about putting this
Speaker 1: stuff into pressurized canisters because you can't. Another problem. Part
Speaker 1: of the problem is because it's less energy dense than
Speaker 1: other fuels. In order for you to have enough of
Speaker 1: it to make your car go as far as you
Speaker 1: wanted to, you need more volume, which means you and
Speaker 1: you can't carry unlimited volume because you don't have unlimited space,
Speaker 1: So you have to cram more and more of it
Speaker 1: into a pressurized canister unless you have a tartest. Unless
Speaker 1: you have the tardest where it's larger on the inside
Speaker 1: than on the outside. But I don't think the tartest
Speaker 1: runs on hydrogen. I would also imagine the tartest would
Speaker 1: make most of this discussion opposite. Uh. Well, you know, alright,
Speaker 1: so barring any sonic screw drivers entering into the conversation,
Speaker 1: you have to have pressurized canisters to hold this stuff.
Speaker 1: And so there's a danger issue, there's a there's also
Speaker 1: the building the infrastructure so you can get the hydrogen
Speaker 1: to where it needs to be. That's obviously a multibillion
Speaker 1: dollar problem, right to build out an infrastructure. We have
Speaker 1: such an established infrastructure, particularly in the United States, for
Speaker 1: for gasoline and then also for diesel fuel as well,
Speaker 1: but mainly gasoline for most of the cars that are
Speaker 1: on the road in the US that are at least,
Speaker 1: you know, consumer cars, not necessarily municipal vehicles or whatever.
Speaker 1: So building out that infrastructure is a huge financial practical
Speaker 1: problem where you've got to figure out where does the
Speaker 1: money come from? Uh And and it's one of those
Speaker 1: kind of chicken or the egg issues where you know,
Speaker 1: until people have the vehicles, then no one wants to
Speaker 1: support the infrastructure. But you can't have the vehicle without
Speaker 1: the infrastructure to catch twenty two so a chicken or
Speaker 1: egg catch twenty two. Hey, I'm gonna just mix metaphors
Speaker 1: for the rest of this podcast. Um, why stop now?
Speaker 1: But the Yeah, so that's that's another problem. So you've
Speaker 1: got the risk, you've got the fuel supply, you've got
Speaker 1: the infrastructure. That's another issue. Um, these are all non
Speaker 1: trivial problems. It doesn't mean that we should turn away
Speaker 1: from the challenge, because this is a very promising way
Speaker 1: of delivering energy in multiple respects, not just with vehicles.
Speaker 1: But it does mean we have to keep that in
Speaker 1: mind when we look at the problem. Absolutely here in
Speaker 1: the U S. We we do have the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative,
Speaker 1: which funds research into fuel cells and all of this
Speaker 1: this infrastructure and chemistry and physics of of the entire thing,
Speaker 1: with the goal of having a cost effective method of
Speaker 1: making this go by like right right. Some people have
Speaker 1: said that they it's it's a good start, but that
Speaker 1: the the program itself is uh, possibly more modest than
Speaker 1: what the challenge requires. That's probably the best political way
Speaker 1: to say that. Um. There and there are other countries
Speaker 1: obviously that I don't know, don't mean to alarm you,
Speaker 1: but there are other countries besides the United States. I know,
Speaker 1: I've been lied to all my life. Some of them
Speaker 1: even celebrated New Years before we did. I just that's
Speaker 1: just that's just treason. Yeah, it's something the fourth of Law. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's up with that? So uh, Anyway, we do acknowledge
Speaker 1: there are other countries of the United States. Obviously, we
Speaker 1: live here in the US, so a lot of our
Speaker 1: our focus is on the US, but there are other
Speaker 1: countries that are also looking into hydrogen, some of which
Speaker 1: have employed more hydrogen vehicles than than you would see
Speaker 1: in the US. Uh percentage wise. There are hydrogen based
Speaker 1: vehicles in the US already. A lot of them are
Speaker 1: again municipal vehicles, government vehicles, or or public transportation vehicles
Speaker 1: things like that, but there aren't that many consumer ones,
Speaker 1: just because there aren't that many places where you could refuel,
Speaker 1: you know. So that's until we solve that problem, then
Speaker 1: clearly that's gonna that's gonna hold things back. So an
Speaker 1: impression I'm getting is that we have to make this
Speaker 1: great investment to get the hydrogen we need in order
Speaker 1: to power the fuel cell. So energy has to go
Speaker 1: into creating this fuel that's going to create the energy
Speaker 1: Obviously the fuel cell provides an emissions advantage, but is
Speaker 1: there any case in which it actually provides an energy
Speaker 1: efficiency advantage or is it always going to be at
Speaker 1: an energy efficiency loss to the benefit of lowering emissions. Well,
Speaker 1: this is a really tricky thing to answer because generally speaking,
Speaker 1: fuel cell vehicles tend to be more efficient than gasoline
Speaker 1: powered vehicles. However, gasoline is more energy dense than hydrogen,
Speaker 1: so you've got multiple factors here. So how do you
Speaker 1: how do you measure that? You could measure it and
Speaker 1: how far you could travel on one full tank? Right,
Speaker 1: that would be one way of saying it. So if
Speaker 1: you could have a hydrogen based vehicle and on a
Speaker 1: fuel full tank, it could travel further than your average
Speaker 1: gasoline powered vehicle, and you've got fewer emissions involved on
Speaker 1: the face of it, at least on the on just
Speaker 1: the vehicle side of this equation, the hydrogen one comes
Speaker 1: out ahead, right, literally ahead, because it can travel further.
Speaker 1: But then you have to look like you were saying
Speaker 1: at the back end, how how much energy? But see,
Speaker 1: generating gasoline also requires energy. You have to expend energy
Speaker 1: to get the petroleum. You have to expend energy to
Speaker 1: refine it. You have to spend energy to ship that
Speaker 1: gasoline to where it needs to be. It's such a
Speaker 1: huge problem that, I mean like a or a huge
Speaker 1: consideration that I don't have an answer for you, simply
Speaker 1: because I don't have enough information from all of these
Speaker 1: different aspects to boil it all down. And finally, you know,
Speaker 1: make that bar graph right of which one which one
Speaker 1: comes out on top? And and and even when you
Speaker 1: take a conventional electric batteries into the equation to um,
Speaker 1: you know you're you're charging those from a wall socket
Speaker 1: and where is that electricity? Is it coming from a
Speaker 1: coal powered plant or Yeah, we said that several times
Speaker 1: in this show because it and it bears repeating because
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that we easily take for granted.
Speaker 1: You think, oh, electricity, that's clean energy, you're not creating
Speaker 1: any emissions. Well, it all depends on how that inner
Speaker 1: electricity was generated in the first place. Sure, And the
Speaker 1: numbers that I've seen on electric car bat mattery since
Speaker 1: I've mentioned the other two range from the of gasoline
Speaker 1: powered vehicles all the way up to depending on where
Speaker 1: you're getting that energy to charge the battery. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I mean, like I said, there's a lot of different
Speaker 1: considerations here. It would also depend on how how are
Speaker 1: we creating the energy where we're getting that hydrogen? Right,
Speaker 1: what what are we using to get to the hydrogen?
Speaker 1: If we're using petroleum based products or petroleum based fuel
Speaker 1: sources for us to be able to get the hydrogen,
Speaker 1: we've really just shifted the problem to a different side. Right.
Speaker 1: It's just like just like any power generation, you have
Speaker 1: to look at where is that energy coming from? Ultimately
Speaker 1: the sun and even and even if even if you
Speaker 1: use a solar farm in order to to drive all this,
Speaker 1: then how are you creating those photovoltaics that are driving
Speaker 1: the solar farm? Yeah, well, I guess everything you'd eventually
Speaker 1: have to look at in terms of relative You know,
Speaker 1: it's going to take some energy to make this thing,
Speaker 1: but is it less than the Yeah, and are you
Speaker 1: producing fewer emissions at the end? Now, it could mean
Speaker 1: that it may be that, you know, maybe getting the
Speaker 1: hydrogen requires less energy. Let's let's just let's just say
Speaker 1: for a moment that let's say we've found a way
Speaker 1: to get hydrogen. It takes less energy than it would
Speaker 1: take for us to get petroleum and then refine that
Speaker 1: into gasoline. However, maybe there's also the possibility that by
Speaker 1: getting that hydrogen it actually creates a more environmentally damaging
Speaker 1: process than say petroleum getting petroleum would be. That's a
Speaker 1: possibility too. And then you were like, you have to
Speaker 1: sit there and say, well, from an energy perspective, now
Speaker 1: hydrogen makes sense, but from an environmental perspective it might not.
Speaker 1: You have to take all of that into consideration. I
Speaker 1: certainly accept that in the abstract, I am trying to
Speaker 1: picture what that hydrogen environmental crisis would be. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if ypathetically, if you're getting all your hydrogen from
Speaker 1: water and they're there are people who would make the
Speaker 1: argument of well, we've already got this water. This water
Speaker 1: location problem where there are places in the world that
Speaker 1: have limited to no access to clean drinking water and
Speaker 1: you're using water to create fuel. There's a perception issue there.
Speaker 1: Even if you were to argue, well, just based on
Speaker 1: on logistics, getting water from this one part of the
Speaker 1: world to take it to this other part of the
Speaker 1: world that has less access doesn't make a whole lot
Speaker 1: of sense in any other practical application. It's still a
Speaker 1: perception problem. Yeah, of course if your cars produced water.
Speaker 1: So Joe just wants to and this is not a lie.
Speaker 1: Joe just wants to see a fuel cell an operation,
Speaker 1: and I have an exhaust pipe that's dripping water into
Speaker 1: a glass, and then watch me drink it. That's what
Speaker 1: Joe wants. I mean, this is some literal conversation that
Speaker 1: we have had multiple times. And here's the thing. I
Speaker 1: do it because you're talking about hydrogen and oxygen combining
Speaker 1: to form pure water. It's probably cleaner water than I
Speaker 1: would get anywhere else. I mean, assuming that the that
Speaker 1: the exhaust pipe isn't made of pure lead or something like. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: if I drink I'm like, it's delicious, but I'm blind. Now,
Speaker 1: then obviously I've made a terrible decision. Never trust Joe.
Speaker 1: I think, well, if we wanted to talk a little bit,
Speaker 1: I actually can chat just a bit about the the
Speaker 1: Toyota vehicle. That's a concept vehicle. It's you know, it's
Speaker 1: a prototype vehicle. So we're recording this the week before
Speaker 1: Jonathan is about to head out to see s Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to get a chance to see one
Speaker 1: of these concept vehicles in person. I don't know which one,
Speaker 1: specifically I'm going to see because Toyota has actually made
Speaker 1: a few of them. And just for full disclosure, Toyota
Speaker 1: is of course the sponsor of the show YEP so
Speaker 1: uh and and Toyota is not the only auto manufacturer
Speaker 1: that's created a fuel cell vehicle. There are others as well,
Speaker 1: but it's the one that I'm familiar with because I've
Speaker 1: been doing research for my trip and so uh. The
Speaker 1: they're using again pressurized hydrogen, just like we've been talking
Speaker 1: about to generate the electricity, but it also the ones
Speaker 1: they're looking at also have a battery. So the reason
Speaker 1: why they have a battery is to augment the electricity
Speaker 1: given off by the fuel cell. So the battery helps
Speaker 1: the car start up from from going from off to on.
Speaker 1: It also helps in low energy applications, so when you're
Speaker 1: accelerating to get to cruising speed. Once you at cruising speed,
Speaker 1: it switches over the fuel cell and then if you
Speaker 1: ever hit like a really steep incline in your car
Speaker 1: needs more energy, it will tap into the battery for
Speaker 1: extra power to provide the ownth needed to to take
Speaker 1: on whatever that happens to be. That's really interesting. So
Speaker 1: this is a different kind of hybrid than we're used
Speaker 1: to hearing about. Normally, a hybrid would be combination gasoline
Speaker 1: and electric power. But like wall wall socket electric power,
Speaker 1: this is a hybrid of fuel cell fuel and electric power. Well,
Speaker 1: but it also sorry, but it also have wall socket
Speaker 1: electric power. Is the battery. It's not that the battery
Speaker 1: is also fueled by the fuel so no, No, The
Speaker 1: way it works is that you would charge your your
Speaker 1: battery just like you would with an electric vehicle. It
Speaker 1: would also have regenerative breaking, so that when you were breaking,
Speaker 1: that would would start to regenerate that into to recharge
Speaker 1: the battery. But and I assumed that the fuel cell
Speaker 1: also could provide some electricity to recharge the battery. But
Speaker 1: that just seems silly. You know. At some point you're like, well,
Speaker 1: you're losing energy on all of these these transactions, right. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering about the power output of this vehicle because
Speaker 1: if if normally we rely on a gasoline engine to
Speaker 1: back up an electric battery, then if we're relying on
Speaker 1: electric battery to back up a hydrogen fuel cell, well,
Speaker 1: I can tell you that according to Toyota, their f
Speaker 1: C h V A d V h V advanced. All right,
Speaker 1: So you've got pressurized hydrogen tanks that are essentially on
Speaker 1: the bottom of the car. This it's more like a SUV.
Speaker 1: Do they do they glow purple like you. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you could get neon highlights if you wanted to, But
Speaker 1: they don't on their own globe purple and the gurple
Speaker 1: the globe purple on their own. You may need to
Speaker 1: seek shelter. Um. No, they don't glow purple. But they
Speaker 1: have these these tanks on the bottom of the car,
Speaker 1: and it intakes oxygen just as you drive, so it's
Speaker 1: pulling oxygen in from air intake vents on the front
Speaker 1: of the vehicle on a full tank of hydrogen. Actually,
Speaker 1: technically I guess it's I think it's two tanks, because
Speaker 1: I think they have two side by side. But when
Speaker 1: it's fully fueled, this vehicle can go eight kilometers, which
Speaker 1: is about five sixteen miles, which is further than a
Speaker 1: lot of gas line powered vehicles. I think about the
Speaker 1: average for gas For a long time, the the electric
Speaker 1: car industry, they were saying, oh, we need to crack
Speaker 1: that two hundred miles on a single charge, or else
Speaker 1: no one will ever want these things, and so it
Speaker 1: shows how far we've gone because with that battery and
Speaker 1: the fuel cell combination, that allows this vehicle to have
Speaker 1: a much further range than what you would get with
Speaker 1: just one or the other. And so at five sixteen miles,
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty impressive. So I would say that I
Speaker 1: don't know how fast, I don't know what the top
Speaker 1: speed of this vehicle is, but it certainly has the
Speaker 1: change that uh someone would typically look for when looking
Speaker 1: at a vehicle h and so it's I think it's
Speaker 1: really an interesting approach. I'm really looking forward to seeing
Speaker 1: some of this stuff in person and talking. I'm going
Speaker 1: to get a chance to talk to some of the
Speaker 1: experts who developed the technology that was being used in
Speaker 1: these vehicles, and that's also really exciting. The idea that
Speaker 1: I get to talk to some of the engineers who,
Speaker 1: you know, this is what they do. They developed these
Speaker 1: and refine them so that they can become a viable
Speaker 1: technology that we could use in the future. And that
Speaker 1: to me is I that's the best part of my
Speaker 1: job is being able to talk to the folks who
Speaker 1: actually make the stuff I talk about. So I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to it. But as I said, there are other
Speaker 1: auto manufacturers that are working on fuel cell vehicles, and
Speaker 1: of course, like I said, there are also some fuel
Speaker 1: cell vehicles that are out there already. There are also
Speaker 1: some vehicles that run on hydrogen, but there are combustion engines,
Speaker 1: so it's hydrogen as combustion as a combustible fuel as
Speaker 1: opposed to a fuel cell. Huh. I wouldn't even know
Speaker 1: what are what are the what's the output, like the
Speaker 1: emissions when you burn hydrogen? Uh, you know, I'd have
Speaker 1: to look into all of that. I know that it's
Speaker 1: lower emissions than what you would get with gasoline. But
Speaker 1: I know that some some bus systems use hydrogen fuel
Speaker 1: for their buses. So instead of we're talking like large
Speaker 1: vehicles generally things that require a lot of torque, but
Speaker 1: not necessarily a lot of speed unless you're Kiana Reeves,
Speaker 1: in which case you can't get below fifty. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: know how it works, don't. We were alive in the nineties.
Speaker 1: It's just wondering. I know, if you were old enough
Speaker 1: to get into the movie theater when that came out.
Speaker 1: I think we probably both saw that on HBO, not HBO.
Speaker 1: I saw it edited for television that's the best. What
Speaker 1: all the expletives are a lot of the vulgarity turned
Speaker 1: into those are the best? All right? Anything else you
Speaker 1: guys have to say about fuel cells before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I do too, you know. And that's the thing.
Speaker 1: There are there are actually science kits out there that
Speaker 1: sell fuel cells where you can get like a little
Speaker 1: model car that runs on fuel cells. We should totally
Speaker 1: get one from the office. I would actually love a
Speaker 1: little little model like one of those table demonstrations they have,
Speaker 1: you know, like the clear ones, because a lot of
Speaker 1: people have probably done it the other way around. You've
Speaker 1: tried electrolysis, right, like you run a current through some
Speaker 1: water and make little bubbles and cute bubbles, but this
Speaker 1: would do the opposite. Yeah yeah, so uh we'll look
Speaker 1: into that. But at any rate, if you guys out
Speaker 1: there have anything you want to say, you know, you
Speaker 1: want to join in on this conversation, or you want
Speaker 1: to see all the other stuff that we create and
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, go to f W thinking dot com. That
Speaker 1: is our home site. You're gonna find all the podcasts there,
Speaker 1: the blog posts, the videos are all there. And remember
Speaker 1: you can touch based with us on Google plus on
Speaker 1: Twitter and Facebook, our handle is fw thinking. We look
Speaker 1: forward to hearing from you, and you'll hear from us
Speaker 1: again really soon. For more on this topic in the
Speaker 1: future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com, brought to
Speaker 1: you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,