Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: job in Strickland. I am an executive producer. That's what
Speaker 1: says here on this business card for let's see, I
Speaker 1: heart radio and I love all things tech. It is
Speaker 1: time for a classic episode of tech Stuff. This episode
Speaker 1: originally published on April fourteen. It is called How Hydrogen
Speaker 1: Fuel Works, Part two. So if you haven't listened to
Speaker 1: part one, go check out last week's classic episode that
Speaker 1: was part one. This is the second part of that,
Speaker 1: so let's learn more about hydrogen fuel. So we left
Speaker 1: off around the eighteen hundreds eighteen twenties specifically, and we
Speaker 1: were coming up on eighteen thirty nine, is our next
Speaker 1: day on our timeline, where in Sir William Grove invented
Speaker 1: what was essentially the first fuel cell, although he didn't
Speaker 1: call it that. It was called a gas voltaic battery.
Speaker 1: Based on what he knew about electrolysis, which is the
Speaker 1: process where you apply electricity to water and separate it
Speaker 1: into its constituent elements, being hydrogen and oxygen, he hypothesized
Speaker 1: that you could go the opposite way, that you could
Speaker 1: combine hydrogen oxygen gases to create an electric current plus water. YEP,
Speaker 1: that's which is exactly the very basis of fuel cells.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk a lot more about fuel cells as well.
Speaker 1: And then we get to the eighteen sixties and eighteen seventies,
Speaker 1: and that's when a certain in a auto O T
Speaker 1: t O. He's the guy who created the first four
Speaker 1: stroke combustion cycle. We actually call it the auto cycle.
Speaker 1: Use synthetic gas for fuel. Now, it's believed, it's not
Speaker 1: fully documented, but believed that this gas was at least hydrogen,
Speaker 1: probably more than that. Now. He reportedly also experiment with gasoline,
Speaker 1: but he dismissed it because he felt it was too
Speaker 1: dangerous to work with. This is coming from the guy
Speaker 1: who's using hydrogen. Oh I, gasoline is scary. Well, to
Speaker 1: be fair, they had not yet invented the carburetor, and
Speaker 1: the carburetor is what makes gasoline really a useful fuel
Speaker 1: for engines. I'll talk a little bit about that in
Speaker 1: a second. And it's really the only thing holding back
Speaker 1: Michael Bay. Yes, exactly. Well, if you listen to our
Speaker 1: last episode, you'll realize that Michael Bay being allowed to
Speaker 1: make cars is a terrible terrible mistake that we cannot
Speaker 1: allow half to happen. Also, movies, you shouldn't be allowed
Speaker 1: to do those either, so neither. The four stroke combustion
Speaker 1: cycle is what most cars today are based on. So
Speaker 1: if you listen to our last episode, you heard me
Speaker 1: talk about the vacuum based engine where it creates. It
Speaker 1: creates this expanding gas, and as the gas cools and
Speaker 1: is released, it creates a vacuum which pulls the piston
Speaker 1: that allows you to do work. Yeah, it's it's not
Speaker 1: that practical, but this one was very practical. And this
Speaker 1: one involves pushing rather than pulling. So for the whole thing,
Speaker 1: you have a piston that is uh inside a chamber, right,
Speaker 1: you have a combustion chamber. The piston can be all
Speaker 1: the way in the chamber, in which case it's closed off,
Speaker 1: or it could be all the way up to the
Speaker 1: very other end of the chamber where it's all open.
Speaker 1: You've got an open space there. The other end of
Speaker 1: that piston is attached to a crank that can rotate.
Speaker 1: So when the crank is in the upward position, the
Speaker 1: pistons pushed all the way in. When the crank is
Speaker 1: in the downward position, the pistons pulled all the way
Speaker 1: out and as it rotates, the piston can move in
Speaker 1: and out. So here's how this four stroke combustion cycle works.
Speaker 1: You have the four different phases. You have the intake.
Speaker 1: Now this stage, the piston, which is attached to that
Speaker 1: crank is at the top of the cylinder and intake
Speaker 1: valve opens and this inserts a mixture of fuel and
Speaker 1: air into the cylinder. That crank turns and the piston
Speaker 1: moves down, so you start getting this chamber filled with
Speaker 1: this mixture of air and fuel. Next, you have the
Speaker 1: compression stage. This is where the valve shuts off, so
Speaker 1: it can't it's not bringing in any gas, it can't
Speaker 1: let any gas out. But the crank continues to turn,
Speaker 1: pushing the piston up, and that compresses the mixture of
Speaker 1: fuel and air exactly, so you know you've got this
Speaker 1: very compact gas, this mix of fuel and air together. This,
Speaker 1: by the way, is the same for hydrogen based combustion
Speaker 1: engines as well as gasoline based, same same principle. So
Speaker 1: you've got this compressed mixture of air and gas. Then
Speaker 1: you have the combustion phase. This is where you get
Speaker 1: a spark and that ignites that fuel and air mixture,
Speaker 1: which then rapidly expands it essentially explodes. Okay, so you've
Speaker 1: got this explosion which then pushes against the piston that
Speaker 1: drives it downward turning the crank. Then you have an
Speaker 1: exhaust phase where an exhaust valve opens up and all
Speaker 1: that exhausted air and fuel mixture gets vented out while
Speaker 1: the piston starts to move back up and then you
Speaker 1: start all over. So once you get this going, it
Speaker 1: just keeps moving that crank around and that's where you
Speaker 1: get the power to do stuff like move your wheels.
Speaker 1: So you know, engines have various different numbers of cylinders.
Speaker 1: You probably heard things like V eight. That's that's the
Speaker 1: configuration of cylinders and the number of cylinders there are. Technically,
Speaker 1: the more cylinders you have, the more power you're generating.
Speaker 1: Up to about twelve cylinders. At that point you kind
Speaker 1: of start getting into a wash. You have a diminishing
Speaker 1: the law of diminishing returns, that kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: this is the basis, and this is what made internal
Speaker 1: combustion engines useful. Before that, you had external combustion engines,
Speaker 1: which you know, first you would think that makes it
Speaker 1: sound like there's gonna be all these explosions everywhere, But no,
Speaker 1: we're talking things like steam engines stuff like that. We
Speaker 1: actually had open flame boiling up steam so that you
Speaker 1: could generate this this same sort of power, because you know,
Speaker 1: the steam would push pistons too. We talked all about
Speaker 1: that in Yeah, it's pretty much that's the way of
Speaker 1: the world, speaking of steam. Our friend Jules Verne, Wow,
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy four. Yeah, Jules Verne, so the the famed writer,
Speaker 1: the one of the earliest in I don't know if
Speaker 1: you call it science fiction of that era, but it's
Speaker 1: certainly the precursor to modern science fiction and what a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff like steampunk is based upon. So Jules
Speaker 1: Verne wrote in The Mysterious Island a prediction. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: this is a prediction within the context of a work
Speaker 1: of fiction. I say that because as a Shakespearean I
Speaker 1: get really irritated people who attribute a quote to Shakespeare
Speaker 1: when really it's one of Shakespeare's characters. But anyway, so
Speaker 1: what he said in The Mysterious Island was that one
Speaker 1: day water itself would be widely used as fuel by
Speaker 1: breaking it down into hydrogen and oxygen. So it was
Speaker 1: a very you know, futuristic kind of of of vision
Speaker 1: he had, but also a realistic one. It wasn't one
Speaker 1: outside the realm of possibility. Oh yeah, Sharon, it was.
Speaker 1: It was almost thirty years after Sir William Grove had
Speaker 1: had made those those hypotheses and then proved them about
Speaker 1: the opposition of electrolysis. Yeah. Yeah, So it was an
Speaker 1: interesting science thing that he picked up, and it's now
Speaker 1: seeping into the public consciousness because now you've got it
Speaker 1: popularized by fiction as well as in the scientific literature. Uh.
Speaker 1: In the eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties, you had several
Speaker 1: engineers working independently and they all came up with this
Speaker 1: idea for the carburetor. The reason why I have it
Speaker 1: worded this way is because if you ask people who
Speaker 1: invented the carburetor, you get into a lot of flame wars,
Speaker 1: not literally, the figurative kind of flame war. That's good,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad. I would hope they don't battle it
Speaker 1: out with flamethrowers or something. I actually kind of hope that.
Speaker 1: Does that make me a bad person. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to comment one way or the other. For fear of
Speaker 1: you turning a flamethrower on me. So yeah, this, uh,
Speaker 1: this is where you Depending upon whom you ask, you
Speaker 1: get a lot of different answers about who actually invented
Speaker 1: the carburetor. But the carburetor's purpose is to mix together
Speaker 1: gasoline with air to run an engine safely and efficiently. Now,
Speaker 1: this invention made gasoline powered internal combustion engines possible. They
Speaker 1: made it made them practical. So because of this attention,
Speaker 1: starts to shift away from hydrogen and towards gasoline because
Speaker 1: gasoline was easier to come by. Uh, you could use
Speaker 1: as a fuel now with this way, instead of trying
Speaker 1: to just use pure gasoline. So uh, that's kind of
Speaker 1: why the hydrogen based car, I would say. I would argue,
Speaker 1: this is the big reason why the hydrogen based car
Speaker 1: didn't become the car like that, it didn't become the
Speaker 1: way we used vehicles and why gasoline ended up taking over.
Speaker 1: So eight nine we have Ludwig Mond and Car Longer
Speaker 1: who actually coined the term fuel cell and their version
Speaker 1: used cold gas and air as the fuel. So we've
Speaker 1: talked to a couple of times mentioned fuel cells, like
Speaker 1: twice already in this podcast. Yeah, so let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about how they work. Yeah. So, basic idea
Speaker 1: is that you've got two compartments, two chambers, and into one.
Speaker 1: This is this is for a hydrogen based fuel cell,
Speaker 1: which is what most of the fuel cells we talk
Speaker 1: about are. You put in one chamber hydrogen, pure hydrogen.
Speaker 1: You put in the other chamber pure oxygen. Between the two. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: ideally you could meddle with this, but then the byproducts
Speaker 1: you get afterward are more than what a pure hydrogen
Speaker 1: based fuel cell would do. So then you put between
Speaker 1: the two a semipermeable membrane that's coated with a catalyst.
Speaker 1: And a catalyst is essentially something that makes other stuff
Speaker 1: happen or makes it happen more easily. Now, the hydrogen
Speaker 1: cannot pass through the semipermeable membrane unaltered. The only way
Speaker 1: it's going to be allowed to get into the party
Speaker 1: with all of its oxygen buddies is to shed a
Speaker 1: pesky electron. And if you remember from our last podcast,
Speaker 1: what's the hydrogen atom. It's a proton and electron. So
Speaker 1: that's it. So you want to get hydrogen ions, they
Speaker 1: have to ditch their electron buddies and then they get
Speaker 1: on across the the semipermeable membrane. They're fine, they can
Speaker 1: go join their oxygen buddies. All those electrons start to
Speaker 1: build up. They don't like each other. Okay, they're all
Speaker 1: negatively charged, their negative nancy's. They don't want to be there.
Speaker 1: They want to get out of that and head over
Speaker 1: to the other side of the party where at least
Speaker 1: there's some tolerable elements and ions hanging out and not
Speaker 1: all these just electron jerks. So if you create a
Speaker 1: pathway from the hydrogen side to the oxygen side, then
Speaker 1: they're going to take it because now they've got a
Speaker 1: way to get away from all these other jerks. And
Speaker 1: if you force them to do a little bit of
Speaker 1: work along the way, yeah, then they're like, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't like doing this work, but I'm totally gonna
Speaker 1: do it if it means like I want to get
Speaker 1: into that party. Uh So, if this sounds like and
Speaker 1: you know what happens when you put a battery in
Speaker 1: a circuit, that's essentially what we're talking about here. We're
Speaker 1: talking about creating a circuit, a pathway for electrons to
Speaker 1: follow to go from an area of negative concentration to
Speaker 1: an area where there are positive holes, that's what we
Speaker 1: usually call them, for the electrons to fill. So we
Speaker 1: create this this pathway. The electrons from the hydrogen side
Speaker 1: will go through it do work enter in on the
Speaker 1: oxygen side where the hydrogen ions already are start to
Speaker 1: recombine with these things, which then forms water. So the
Speaker 1: output you get from your typical hydrogen oxygen fuel cell,
Speaker 1: assuming you're using pure hydrogen and pure oxygen, is electricity, water,
Speaker 1: and heat. That's it. Fantastic technology. There are some there's
Speaker 1: some drawbacks. One of the big ones is that the
Speaker 1: materials tend to be really expensive. The catalysts tend to
Speaker 1: be things like platinum, which don't know if you've priced
Speaker 1: it recently, it's it's pricey. Yeah, yeah, it's a little
Speaker 1: on the deer side. Now we're talking about nanoparticles of platinum,
Speaker 1: so a little goes a long way. But still it's
Speaker 1: really expensive and it's expensive to separate hydrogen out from
Speaker 1: anything that it is connected to. Right, you could say, well,
Speaker 1: why don't you just separate out from water, Well, you're
Speaker 1: making water too. You're actually you'd be spending more energy
Speaker 1: trying to get the hydrogen out that way. Now, if
Speaker 1: you were able to harness some other form of electricity
Speaker 1: to do the work for you, Like let's say you
Speaker 1: had a solar panel farm and that solar panel farm
Speaker 1: was generating electricity solely for the purpose to separate out
Speaker 1: hydrogen from oxygen and water, and then you harvested the
Speaker 1: hydrogen and use that in your fuel cells. That's a
Speaker 1: possible solution. It would be, you know, a complicated infrastructure,
Speaker 1: but it's workable, and in fact, that's one of the
Speaker 1: things Toyota is looking at. They're also looking at harnessing
Speaker 1: wind power to do the same sort of thing, So
Speaker 1: finding the renewable energy sourced so that you can produce
Speaker 1: this hydrogen, because otherwise you're just spending more than what
Speaker 1: you're making, and then again we're at that losing proposition.
Speaker 1: It is. It is one of the one of the
Speaker 1: several problems with fuel cells. But but we'll get a
Speaker 1: little bit more into that later on. We've got more
Speaker 1: to say about hydrogen fuel in just a minute. But
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. All right, we're back,
Speaker 1: Uh what year is it now? It is? Okay, we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about a Scott Now a Scottish chemist named
Speaker 1: James Doer, who used regenerative cooling and of vacuum flask
Speaker 1: to liquefy hydrogen at the Royal Institution of Great Britain
Speaker 1: in London. Now that next year he even managed to
Speaker 1: go a step further and reduce the temperature enough so
Speaker 1: that he could solidify hydrogen. Now you might wonder how
Speaker 1: cold are we talking about here? That happens at a
Speaker 1: temperature of negative three two degrees fahrenheit or negative two
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty nine point nine degrees celsius. And I
Speaker 1: think even our friends to the Great White North could
Speaker 1: agree that that's pretty chilly. I was out at like
Speaker 1: at like five fahrenheits yeah, I'm like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I gotta cover my tomatoes when it gets down to sixty.
Speaker 1: So we're kind of joking. But but so more about
Speaker 1: this vacuum flask. This thing is the coolest thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't didn't mean to make a pun, but it's
Speaker 1: I never believe you when you say that. I really,
Speaker 1: as I was saying it, I was judging myself. So
Speaker 1: if that makes you feel any better. It's a double
Speaker 1: walled flask, so you think of it as two flasks,
Speaker 1: one slightly smaller one and set inside the slightly larger one,
Speaker 1: and that space between the larger one the smaller one
Speaker 1: is completely evacuated of all material. So it's it's a vacuum, right,
Speaker 1: You've got a vacuum between those two sides. Now, what
Speaker 1: this does is it allows you to insulate whatever material
Speaker 1: is on the inside that flask from the outside environment.
Speaker 1: It does not conduct heat very well at all. Therefore,
Speaker 1: you can conduct experiments at particular temperatures. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: have low temperature experiments where you just keep reducing the
Speaker 1: temperature and you don't have to worry about the heat
Speaker 1: from the outside environment, because then then you would never
Speaker 1: get anything cold enough to be able to do this
Speaker 1: stuff like liquefying hydrogen. I mean, you've got to get
Speaker 1: it really cold, and any sort of environmental heat is
Speaker 1: going to immediately move from an area of high concentration
Speaker 1: to an area of low concentration. That's kind of what
Speaker 1: it does, sort of what thermodynamics do, you know. So
Speaker 1: the other thing is that it also is really good
Speaker 1: at keeping hot stuff hot, so you know, like a
Speaker 1: like a thermos. You know, it's it's because again it's
Speaker 1: not allowing the heat from the inside of the flask
Speaker 1: to leak out into the outside environment. Gradually it will
Speaker 1: still cool down or the stuff inside will gradually still
Speaker 1: get warm. Because it's not a perfect system. At the
Speaker 1: neck of this flask, that's where the weak point is
Speaker 1: because at some point those two the inner and outer flask,
Speaker 1: have to join together. You can't. You can't just magically suspended.
Speaker 1: So there are some weak points in this. It's not
Speaker 1: a perfect system, but it does work really, really well.
Speaker 1: Now let's go to one of my favorite parts of
Speaker 1: the podcast, because this is where we get to talk
Speaker 1: about some incredible music. Because in n that's when Count
Speaker 1: Ferdinand Vaughan led Zeppelin launched the first hydrogen filled rigid
Speaker 1: airship called a Ferdinand and just just just von Zeppelin.
Speaker 1: It wasn't vun lead Zeppelin. That my musical past has
Speaker 1: betrayed me once again. Well, no, of course, we don't
Speaker 1: call them the Ferdinands. We call them Zeppelin's. Yes, but
Speaker 1: they were not made out of lead. I guess maybe
Speaker 1: some of the material might have been lead. I could
Speaker 1: have been low lead, maybe spandex or hair. Okay, that's fair, yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: So but anyway, this. This was the hydrogen filled rigid airship.
Speaker 1: These are those dirigibles that you've seen in the past
Speaker 1: and were majestic vehicles. But we'll get into why we
Speaker 1: don't really see those anymore in just a couple of years. Certainly,
Speaker 1: although I believe that hydrogen was being used, I think
Speaker 1: he was German, and I think Germany was using hydrogen
Speaker 1: at the time because the United States was holding a
Speaker 1: great amount of the helium in the world at the time,
Speaker 1: and hydrogen was kind of considered the next best thing,
Speaker 1: right because you know, both hydrogen and helium have this
Speaker 1: lifting property being being lighter than air. Sure, so so
Speaker 1: these Zeppelins might have been using something slightly less combustible
Speaker 1: like helium if they had had the opportunity to helium,
Speaker 1: by the way, significantly less combustible as in not but
Speaker 1: but yes, hydrogen. Yeah, I mean, you use whatever you
Speaker 1: have available, and that's exactly what they did. Five we
Speaker 1: have Henry Garrett, who is was rather an American inventor
Speaker 1: who created an automobile that quote unquote ran on water.
Speaker 1: So this is where a lot not all of them, obviously,
Speaker 1: but a lot of conspiracy theories about uh big car
Speaker 1: companies or big oil companies pushing down all these inventions
Speaker 1: that ran quote unquote ran on water. A lot of
Speaker 1: them come from this kind of thing. There are some
Speaker 1: there's some truth to vehicles that used water as a
Speaker 1: component for fuel, but they all had their own big drawbacks.
Speaker 1: So Garrett's was one that used electrolysis, like we had said,
Speaker 1: So it's using electricity to separate water out into hydrogen
Speaker 1: and oxygen um. And then the car was really using
Speaker 1: hydrogen as a fuel, which is not the most efficient ride.
Speaker 1: You're are ay having spent so much energy just to
Speaker 1: create the fuel that then continues to move the car,
Speaker 1: and he had to refill it a lot, so not
Speaker 1: necessarily the best approach. Now this is before we really
Speaker 1: had useful ways of storing lots of pressurized hydrogen, which
Speaker 1: would allow us to have kind of a consistent fueling source. Sure,
Speaker 1: but I mean, I can I can see where the
Speaker 1: conspiracy or or fringe theorists, as I hear they prefer
Speaker 1: to be called by many angry people on the internet,
Speaker 1: the ones I keep making it mad, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I I can see I can see where perhaps um
Speaker 1: gasoline powered car companies would not have at that particular
Speaker 1: time wanted to donate funding to that kind of research,
Speaker 1: right right, Well, and you know they're definitely there's a
Speaker 1: huge investment in the gasoline automobile industry, I mean from
Speaker 1: multiple players, not just not just so. But yeah, then
Speaker 1: we have a truly terrible disaster in nineteen seven, right
Speaker 1: on May six of that year, the Hindenburg Zeppelin disaster occurred,
Speaker 1: and that has has put for the intervening time between
Speaker 1: then and now, this idea into the public's mind that
Speaker 1: hydrogen is an extremely dangerous substance, right that that to
Speaker 1: use hydrogen is to court death. Yes, although it should
Speaker 1: be noted that hydrogen was not the instigator of that disaster. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: so the blimp was coated in aluminum powder to reflect sunlight.
Speaker 1: Aluminum powder these days is a critical component of rocket fuel.
Speaker 1: Under that coat, the cotton fabric was waterproofed with a
Speaker 1: flammable acetate. There was a lot of static electricity in
Speaker 1: the air from a storm that day, so when the
Speaker 1: crew dropped the mooring ropes, it electrically grounded the blimp
Speaker 1: and set off sparks that ignited this highly flammable material,
Speaker 1: which then of course came into contact with this hydrogen
Speaker 1: that's inside of it, and the whole thing lent up
Speaker 1: proponents of hydrogen fuel, though, Actually is the Hindenberg as
Speaker 1: a as a point to hydrogen safety because the really
Speaker 1: lightweight hydrogen ascended up out of the blimp so fast
Speaker 1: that the flames went upward, not outward or downwards, So
Speaker 1: it saved the lives of everyone who actually remained on board, right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, it's it's interesting that something we
Speaker 1: look at as being an example of this stuff is
Speaker 1: going to be too dangerous for us to use actually
Speaker 1: is an example of No, you're you're looking at this
Speaker 1: the wrong way. You're not. You don't have the full picture, right, right,
Speaker 1: It's I mean, sure, it's it's dangerous. That everything is dangerous,
Speaker 1: and what's more dangerous is coding your blimp and rocket fuel. Yeah, okay, alright,
Speaker 1: not no, Lauren, I'm not going to use any more
Speaker 1: rocket fuel on my blimp. And that same year as
Speaker 1: the Hannonbury disaster, there was an experimental gaseous hydrogen fueled
Speaker 1: jet engine test and that's the first working jet engine
Speaker 1: using hydrogen. So then we move on to nineteen thirty eight.
Speaker 1: That's when Igor Sikorski, who was a Russian American aviator,
Speaker 1: proposed using liquid hydrogen as a fuel for aviation. So
Speaker 1: you know, we already still have people saying that hydrogen
Speaker 1: had its place. By ninety one, we have the first
Speaker 1: mass application of hydrogen internal combustion engines. That's when a
Speaker 1: Russian lieutenant whose name I'm not even going to attempt
Speaker 1: to pronounce, ordered the conversion of several Ford Model G
Speaker 1: A Z dash A A cars, the the Double A,
Speaker 1: the Model Double A into hydrogen internal combustion engines converted
Speaker 1: from gasoline to hydrogen as part of the war effort
Speaker 1: during World War Two. Forest think, oh, nice, I was
Speaker 1: not going to try because my Russian is worse than
Speaker 1: my Swiss, which is worse than my French. I haven't.
Speaker 1: I haven't looked that up, but but i'm that's that's
Speaker 1: my stab. Well well done, because you're braver than I am.
Speaker 1: In ninety three we have Ohio State University testing liquid
Speaker 1: hydrogen as rocket fuel, and in the nineteen fifties and
Speaker 1: sixties we see more work with these hydrogen fuel cells,
Speaker 1: this whole idea that had been opposed decades earlier, and
Speaker 1: mostly we see them in industrial applications like powering forklifts
Speaker 1: or other heavy machinery. The first commercial use of a
Speaker 1: hydrogen fuel cell is in Project Jiminy. Okay, I'm just
Speaker 1: saying it the way they old I know. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was and that particular fuel cell was developed by General Electric.
Speaker 1: There's your conspiracy theories for you, all right in the
Speaker 1: home stretch, right to finish out hydrogen fuel and just
Speaker 1: a bit. But before we can do that, let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break. One. We're skipping way ahead because generally speaking,
Speaker 1: you know, we still had advances in technology on both
Speaker 1: the combustion side and on the fuel cell side. But one,
Speaker 1: we have the Space Shuttle main engine test, which used
Speaker 1: liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as the propellants. UM. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, uh yeah, in in some cities they
Speaker 1: started rolling out buses that were powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty cool stuff. Two thousand three, we have another big
Speaker 1: moment in the United States. Yeah, that was when the
Speaker 1: Hydrogen Fuel Initiative was announced here. Um. It was a
Speaker 1: dedication of one point two billion dollars in research grants
Speaker 1: and other governmental support to projects with the lofty but
Speaker 1: very worthy goal of of making fuel cell vehicles practical
Speaker 1: and cost effective. By I mean like like from harvesting
Speaker 1: hydrogen to the infrastructure that you need to get it
Speaker 1: to cars, to the actual cars. Yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is incredibly ambitious. Not that other companies haven't taken up
Speaker 1: that mantle. But you know, we'll have a little bit
Speaker 1: of a discussion at the very end about why that's
Speaker 1: so ambitious. I think that's probably the best place to
Speaker 1: have it. But let's see then we have. Moving on
Speaker 1: to the late two thousands, several car companies began developing
Speaker 1: fuel cell concepts um, although most never made it to
Speaker 1: anything like the common market. The only one that I've
Speaker 1: heard about even being semi available is the Honda f
Speaker 1: c X Clarity UM, which for certain select Southern California
Speaker 1: residents is available for a three year, six per month lease.
Speaker 1: It's like a severe waiting list kind of kind of situation,
Speaker 1: which which might change dramatically next year, because two thousand
Speaker 1: fifteen is when Toyota plans to bring a fuel cell
Speaker 1: vehicle to market, And there are other fuel cell vehicles
Speaker 1: that are out there. Most of them are being used
Speaker 1: in commercial or industrial uses. Again, not not really talking
Speaker 1: about uh, you know, the vehicles for the average consumer.
Speaker 1: But Toyota's plans say that this is going to be
Speaker 1: a really serious effort to make fuel cell vehicles a
Speaker 1: real alternative to gasoline and electric vehicles. UH in a
Speaker 1: specific market in the US, we're talking about California. Yet again,
Speaker 1: that's really kind of the test market that Toyota is
Speaker 1: looking at. And they're looking at building out hydrogen fueling stations,
Speaker 1: right because you have to. And that's and that's where
Speaker 1: this is where we're coming up to that discussion where
Speaker 1: not only is hydrogen a a potentially dangerous substance, not
Speaker 1: only do you have to take into consideration the right
Speaker 1: way to pressurize it and store it so that people
Speaker 1: can use it safely. Not only is it difficult to
Speaker 1: get the hydrogen just all on its own, it's also
Speaker 1: expensive to build out an infrastructure that you're going from
Speaker 1: the ground up. There's nothing there really that you can
Speaker 1: already take advantage of. You have to start building in
Speaker 1: things like building in new pumps and fuel stations that
Speaker 1: are hydrogen ones. There are a few of those that
Speaker 1: are around, you know, most of those are for things
Speaker 1: like municipal use. It's not necessarily meant for again, for
Speaker 1: the average person, it's not like, Hey, I'm going to
Speaker 1: go down and fill up this pressurized clust with hydrogen.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. You know, you have to create an entire
Speaker 1: industry worth of of safety regulations and and standardizations. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: If you don't have those, then it's not going to work.
Speaker 1: So this is uh, it's a the grandiose plan in
Speaker 1: many ways, but it's one I think that's actually achievable.
Speaker 1: I got a chance to talk to a lot of
Speaker 1: folks at Toyota when I went to C E S
Speaker 1: and so I got a chance to to take a
Speaker 1: look at the fuel cell vehicle. Really, what I looked
Speaker 1: at was their test vehicle that actually had a fuel
Speaker 1: cell in it, and then I got to look at
Speaker 1: the what is the shell essentially the what what it's
Speaker 1: going to look like when it comes to market. But
Speaker 1: as I understand it, it did not actually have the
Speaker 1: full fuel cell set up inside it yet. But it's
Speaker 1: very interesting approach. It is again a subset of electric vehicles.
Speaker 1: It runs on electricity. It's generating electricity which powers the
Speaker 1: vehicle as an electric motor. There's no engine. It's driven
Speaker 1: by an electric motor. It's got a battery on board
Speaker 1: as well. Um, it's not like it's just a combustion vehicle.
Speaker 1: It's not a combustion vehicle at all. It's more like
Speaker 1: an electric vehicle than a combustion vehicle, except for the
Speaker 1: fact that you have to fuel rather than recharge. So
Speaker 1: so would you say over we We asked on Facebook
Speaker 1: if anyone had any questions about this, and don asked,
Speaker 1: will all fuel cell cars be hybrids? So technically, technically yes,
Speaker 1: because a fuel cell is, like I said, kind of
Speaker 1: an electric vehicle. So if you think of it that way,
Speaker 1: it is a hybrid. It's not going to be a
Speaker 1: hybrid as fuel cell and combustion engine. That doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. For one thing, you would have so much
Speaker 1: of your vehicle taken up by engines and motors and
Speaker 1: and fuel cells and batteries that there wouldn't be any
Speaker 1: room left for anybody else. So that's not the kind
Speaker 1: of hybrid you're going to see. But technically, if you
Speaker 1: think about it, a fuel cell vehicles already a hybrid vehicle.
Speaker 1: And you know, Daniel on Facebook had asked, is this
Speaker 1: really a viable alternative to say electric vehicles? And that's
Speaker 1: a highly contested area of debate right now, But I
Speaker 1: would say they each have their own advantages and disadvantages.
Speaker 1: The big advantage of an electric vehicle is that you
Speaker 1: can if you're just driving around, you know, going around
Speaker 1: town and then coming back home at the end of
Speaker 1: every day, you can recharge that at home and you
Speaker 1: aren't having to worry about refueling ever. Right with a
Speaker 1: hydrogen fuel cell car, it's like a gasoline car. Eventually,
Speaker 1: you're going to have to refuel. On the flip side
Speaker 1: of that, if you're going on long trips, like you're
Speaker 1: not just driving around town, but you want to take
Speaker 1: like a cross country road trip all on National Lampoon's
Speaker 1: family vacation, because that really encouraged everyone to get on
Speaker 1: a road trip immediately. Wally World's only open for so long, Lauren,
Speaker 1: So if you want to go to wally World and
Speaker 1: you have to drive through all the states to do it,
Speaker 1: I do want to go to wally World. Who doesn't?
Speaker 1: So the problem is that it was an electric vehicle.
Speaker 1: Whenever you need to recharge and you're not at a
Speaker 1: convenient stopping point, like you're not ready to stop for
Speaker 1: the day, that's gonna take you like a half hour
Speaker 1: or longer, depending upon how you're doing this, unless you're
Speaker 1: buying into Tesla's model, where you can occasionally have your
Speaker 1: better charge or swapped out. Even with a supercharger. Still
Speaker 1: it's like the teen twenty minutes or a half charge.
Speaker 1: So I know that doesn't sound like a long time,
Speaker 1: but think about how irritated you get every time you
Speaker 1: have to go and fill up your tank at a
Speaker 1: gas station. Like, if that takes me longer than than
Speaker 1: five or six minutes, I think that the world is ending. Yeah. Honestly,
Speaker 1: if I even just hit a slow pump, I'm just like,
Speaker 1: oh no, why did I pick this one? I could
Speaker 1: have gone anywhere else, and now the rest of my
Speaker 1: night is ruined. So yeah, hydrogen fuel fueling stations will
Speaker 1: fuel at essentially the same speed as a gasoline fueling station,
Speaker 1: so when it comes to refueling, hydrogen cars have have
Speaker 1: the advantage right now. Now, if we ever get into
Speaker 1: a crazy super fast method of charging batteries which people
Speaker 1: are working on, and it ends up being equivalent or
Speaker 1: even faster than fueling at a gas station, then that
Speaker 1: advantage disappears. The only other advantage you can say is
Speaker 1: that fuel cell vehicles, like electric vehicles don't put out
Speaker 1: dangerous emissions. Right. And that relates to the other question
Speaker 1: that we got in on Facebook from Ricardo. He was
Speaker 1: he was asking, is hydrogen really environmentally friendly because it
Speaker 1: also produces carbon dioxide. If you're using again pure hydrogen
Speaker 1: and pure oxygen, you're not creating carbon dioxide. Uh, you
Speaker 1: are just creating water and electricity and heat. But if
Speaker 1: you're using something besides pure hydrogen or pure oxygen, you
Speaker 1: could be creating pollutants, like we had said the beginning
Speaker 1: of the last podcast, part one. So it all depends
Speaker 1: on the implementation. Uh. And the same is true with
Speaker 1: with fuel cells or combustion engines. Either way, whether it's
Speaker 1: one or the other, that's what your output is going
Speaker 1: to be based upon the input. Sure, and it also
Speaker 1: depends on how you're creating, well, not creating, how you're
Speaker 1: getting that hydrogen to begin with, because some methods of
Speaker 1: of that hydrogen harvesting are cleaner than others. Right. If
Speaker 1: you're using fossil fuels, for example, to power your hydrogen operation,
Speaker 1: then the question is why don't you just use the
Speaker 1: fossil fuels to the car, Right, Because if you're using it.
Speaker 1: Why are you why are you have an extra step
Speaker 1: in there? The extra step you know, if it's a
Speaker 1: if it's a byproduct like methane gas out of natural
Speaker 1: gas deposits, then then that can be a relatively clean
Speaker 1: way to be using that material. Yeah, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of like the co location idea of putting uh something
Speaker 1: that can use heat as a way of uh you know,
Speaker 1: like like like the heat from say a power generator
Speaker 1: where you're using you're generating lots and lots of steam
Speaker 1: that turned turbines, and those turbines then generate electricity. You
Speaker 1: might also have a way of harnessing that heat to
Speaker 1: say heat a building, and then you are getting kind
Speaker 1: of a two for one thing out of that. It
Speaker 1: all depends on the strategy you implement to get the hydrogen,
Speaker 1: to ship the hydrogen, and to actually consume the hydrogen.
Speaker 1: So another thing we can look at two in the
Speaker 1: future is the possibility of using hydrogen to generate lots
Speaker 1: of energy through fusion, which is the same thing that
Speaker 1: our friend the sun does and my friend, Okay, that's true,
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't. I can't hang out with the
Speaker 1: sun for very long before he gets angry at me,
Speaker 1: or at least my skin gets angry at me. But
Speaker 1: at any rate, Yeah, the the Sun generates energy through
Speaker 1: that that that fusion process of hydrogen turning into helium.
Speaker 1: We might be able to harness the same thing here
Speaker 1: on Earth, and perhaps we'll do a full podcast on
Speaker 1: that in the future. There have been lots of different
Speaker 1: attempts at it, and we've seen some promising results fairly
Speaker 1: recently that suggests we might be able to finally get
Speaker 1: to a point where we can actually generate more energy
Speaker 1: than it required for us to put into it to
Speaker 1: make it happen in the first placeous and that was
Speaker 1: our classic episode on how hydrogen fuel works. Part to
Speaker 1: hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: future topics of tech Stuff, or maybe there's a topic
Speaker 1: that I should do an update for, let me know,
Speaker 1: send me a message over on Twitter. The handle I
Speaker 1: use there is tech stuff h s W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.