Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren, and we are going
Speaker 1: to continue answering Daniel by a Facebook's question about hydrogen cars.
Speaker 1: Are they a good idea? Question? Mark? I think I
Speaker 1: just paraphrased it, but we we want to continue our discussion.
Speaker 1: If you listen to our last episode, we talked all
Speaker 1: about the basic science behind hydrogen and as well as
Speaker 1: the early exploration of hydrogen by philosophers and proto scientists.
Speaker 1: Right because although it is the most abundant element in
Speaker 1: the universe, we don't find it, uh flying free very
Speaker 1: often and usually bonded up with stuff. So there was
Speaker 1: a long process of everyone trying to figure out exactly
Speaker 1: what it does and how to get it free, and yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you do with it then? Like, can do
Speaker 1: anything useful? Or does it just set your hair on fire?
Speaker 1: I'm sure there were a lot of interesting laboratory incidents.
Speaker 1: Is that what happened to your hair? Let's not go
Speaker 1: into my lex luthor like past, because then my my
Speaker 1: nemesis will learn too many of my weaknesses. So so
Speaker 1: we left off around the eighteen hundreds, eighteen twenties specifically,
Speaker 1: and we were coming up on eighteen thirty nine is
Speaker 1: our next day on our timeline, wherein Sir William Grove
Speaker 1: invented what was essentially the first fuel cell, although he
Speaker 1: didn't 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 believe 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 get gasoline is scary. Well,
Speaker 1: to be fair, they had not yet invented the carburetor,
Speaker 1: and the carburetor is what makes gasoline really a useful
Speaker 1: fuel for engines. I'll talk a little bit about that
Speaker 1: in a second. And it's really the only thing holding
Speaker 1: back Michael Bay. Yes, exactly. 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 hat to happen. Also, movies, he shouldn't be allowed
Speaker 1: to do those either, so neither prep. The four stroke
Speaker 1: combustion cycle is what most cars today are based on.
Speaker 1: So if you listen to our last episode, you heard
Speaker 1: me talk about the vacuum based engine where it creates
Speaker 1: It creates this expanding gas, and as the gas cools
Speaker 1: and is released, it creates a vacuum which pulls the
Speaker 1: piston that allows you to do work. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: not that practical, but this one was very practical. And
Speaker 1: this one involves pushing rather than pulling, So the for
Speaker 1: the whole thing. You have a piston that is uh
Speaker 1: inside a chamber. Right, you have a combustion chamber. The
Speaker 1: piston can be all the way in the chamber, in
Speaker 1: which case it's closed off, or it could be all
Speaker 1: the way up to the very other end of the
Speaker 1: chamber where it's all open, so you've got an open
Speaker 1: space there. The other end of that piston is attached
Speaker 1: to a crank that can rotate. So when the crank
Speaker 1: is in the upward position, the pistons pushed all the
Speaker 1: way in. When the crank is in the downward position,
Speaker 1: the pistons pulled all the way out, and as it rotates,
Speaker 1: the piston can move in and out. So here's how
Speaker 1: this four stroke combustion cycle works. You have four different phases.
Speaker 1: You have the intake. Now this stage, the piston, which
Speaker 1: is attached to that crank is at the top of
Speaker 1: the cylinder and intake valve opens and this inserts a
Speaker 1: mixture of fuel and air into the cylinder. That crank
Speaker 1: turns and the piston moves down, so you start getting
Speaker 1: this chamber filled with this mixture of air and fuel. Next,
Speaker 1: you have the compression stage. This is where the valve
Speaker 1: shuts off, so it can't it's not bringing in any gas,
Speaker 1: it can't let any gas out. But the crank continues
Speaker 1: to turn, pushing the piston up, and that compresses the
Speaker 1: mixture of fuel and air exactly, so you know you've
Speaker 1: got this very compact gas, this mix of fuel and
Speaker 1: air together. This, by the way, is the same for
Speaker 1: hydrogen based combustion engines as well as gasoline based, same
Speaker 1: same principle. So you've got this compressed mixture of air
Speaker 1: and gas. Then you have the combustion phase. This is
Speaker 1: where you get a spark and that ignites that fuel
Speaker 1: and air mixture, which then rapidly expands essentially explodes. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you've got this explosion which then pushes against the
Speaker 1: piston that drives it downward, turning the crank. Then you
Speaker 1: have an exhaust phase, where an exhaust valve opens up
Speaker 1: and all that exhausted air and fuel mixture gets vented
Speaker 1: out while the piston starts to move back up, and
Speaker 1: then you start all over. So once you get this going,
Speaker 1: it just keeps moving that crank around, and that's where
Speaker 1: you get the power to do stuff like move your wheels. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, engines have various different numbers of cylinders. You've
Speaker 1: probably heard things like V eight. That's that's the configuration
Speaker 1: 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 explosion is everywhere,
Speaker 1: But no, we're talking things like steam engines stuff like that,
Speaker 1: where you actually had open flame boiling up steam so
Speaker 1: that you could generate this this same sort of power
Speaker 1: because you know, the steam would push pistons too. We
Speaker 1: talked all about that. It's pretty much that's the way
Speaker 1: of 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 whyly 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, sure, and it was.
Speaker 1: It was almost thirty years after Sir William Grove had
Speaker 1: had made those those hypotheses and improved them about the
Speaker 1: opposition of electrolysis. Yeah. Yeah, So it was an interesting
Speaker 1: science thing that he picked up on, 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. Well that's good,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm glad. I would hope they don't battle it
Speaker 1: out with flamethrowers or something. I actually kind of hope
Speaker 1: that just make me a bad person. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to comment one we're or the other for fear of
Speaker 1: you turning a flamethrower on me. So yeah, this, uh,
Speaker 1: this is where you know, depending upon whom you ask,
Speaker 1: you get a lot of different answers about who actually
Speaker 1: invented the carburetor. But the carburetor's purpose is to mix
Speaker 1: together gasoline with air to run an engine safely and efficiently. Now,
Speaker 1: this invention made gasoline powered UH internal combustion engines possible,
Speaker 1: It made it made them practical. So because of this
Speaker 1: attention starts to shift away from hydrogen and towards gasoline.
Speaker 1: Because gasoline was easier to come by, UH, you could uh,
Speaker 1: use it as a fuel now with this way instead
Speaker 1: of trying to just use pure gasoline. So, uh, that's
Speaker 1: kind of why the hydrogen based car, I would say,
Speaker 1: I would argue, this is the big reason why the
Speaker 1: hydrogen based car didn't become the car like this, It
Speaker 1: didn't become the way we used vehicles and why gasoline
Speaker 1: ended up taking over. So eight nine we have Ludwig
Speaker 1: Mond and Car Longer who actually coined the term fuel cell,
Speaker 1: and their version used cold gas and air as the fuel.
Speaker 1: So we've talked to a couple of times mentioned fuel
Speaker 1: cells like twice already in this podcast. Yeah, so let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about how they work. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: basic idea is that you've got two compartments, two chambers
Speaker 1: and into one. This is this is for a hydrogen
Speaker 1: based fuel cell, which is what most of the fuel
Speaker 1: cells we talk about are. You put in one chamber
Speaker 1: hydrogen pure hydrogen. You put in the other chamber pure
Speaker 1: oxygen between the two. Yeah, yes, ideally you could meddle
Speaker 1: with this, but then the byproducts you get afterward are
Speaker 1: more than what a pure hydrogen based fuel cell would do.
Speaker 1: So then you put between the two a semi permeable
Speaker 1: membrane that's coated with a catalyst, and a catalyst is
Speaker 1: essentially something that makes other stuff happen or makes it
Speaker 1: happen more easily. Now the hydrogen uh cannot pass through
Speaker 1: the semiperbiable membrane unaltered. The only way it's going to
Speaker 1: be allowed to get into the party with all of
Speaker 1: its oxygen buddies is to shed a pesky electron. And
Speaker 1: if you remember from our last podcast, what's the hydrogen atom.
Speaker 1: It's a proton and electron, So that's it. So you
Speaker 1: want to get hydrogen ions, they have to ditch their
Speaker 1: electron buddies and then they get on across the semi
Speaker 1: permeable membrane. They're fine, they can go join their oxygen buddies.
Speaker 1: All those electrons start to build up. They don't like
Speaker 1: each other, okay, they're all negatively charged, their negative nancy's.
Speaker 1: They don't want to be there. They want to get
Speaker 1: out of that and head over to the other side
Speaker 1: of the party, where at least there's some tolerable have
Speaker 1: elements and ions hanging out and not all these just
Speaker 1: electron jerks. So if you create a pathway from the
Speaker 1: hydrogen side to the oxygen side. Then they're going to
Speaker 1: take it because now they've got a way to get
Speaker 1: away from all these other jerks. And if you force
Speaker 1: them to do a little bit of work along the way, yeah,
Speaker 1: then they're like, you know, I don't like doing this work,
Speaker 1: but I'm totally gonna do it if it means I
Speaker 1: want to get into that party. Uh So this sounds
Speaker 1: like and you know what happens when you put a
Speaker 1: battery in a circuit. That's essentially what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: We're talking about creating a circuit, a pathway for electrons
Speaker 1: to follow to go from an area of negative concentration
Speaker 1: to an area where there are positive holes that's what
Speaker 1: we usually call them, for the electrons to fill. So
Speaker 1: we create this this pathway, the electrons from the hydrogen
Speaker 1: side will go through it, do work, enter in on
Speaker 1: the oxygen side where the hydrogen ions already are start
Speaker 1: to recombine with these things, which then forms water. So
Speaker 1: the output you get from your typical hydrogen oxygen fuel cell,
Speaker 1: assuming you're using pure hydrogen and pure oxygen, is electricity,
Speaker 1: water and heat. That's it. Fantastic technology. There are some
Speaker 1: there's some drawbacks. One of the big ones is that
Speaker 1: the materials tend to be really expensive. The catalysts tend
Speaker 1: to be things like platinum, which, don't know, if you've
Speaker 1: priced it recently, it's yeah, yeah, it's a little on
Speaker 1: 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 while 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 a renewable energy source 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 else But but we'll get a
Speaker 1: little bit more into that later on. Yeah, So now
Speaker 1: we've got all of that, all the fuel cell stuff
Speaker 1: out of the way, We've got the combustion engine now
Speaker 1: the way. We got a lot of more stuff to
Speaker 1: get out of the way. But before we get that
Speaker 1: out of the way, there's something else we need to do. Lauren,
Speaker 1: and let's take a quick moment to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're back. Uh what year is it now?
Speaker 1: It is? Okay, we're gonna talk about as scott Now
Speaker 1: a Scottish chemist named James Doer who used regenerative cooling
Speaker 1: and a vacuum flask to liquefy hydrogen at the Royal
Speaker 1: Institution of Great Britain in London. Now that next year
Speaker 1: he even managed to go a step further and reduce
Speaker 1: the temperature enough so that he could solidify hydrogen. Now
Speaker 1: you might wonder how cold are we talking about here?
Speaker 1: That happens at a temperature of negative three eighty two
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit or negative two hundred and thirty nine point
Speaker 1: nine degrees celsius. And I think even our friends to
Speaker 1: the Great White North could agree that that's pretty chilly.
Speaker 1: I was out at like a like fahrenheits yeah, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I gotta cover my tomatoes when it gets
Speaker 1: down to sixty. So we're kind of joking. But but
Speaker 1: so more about this vacuum flask. This thing is the
Speaker 1: coolest thing. I mean, I don't didn't mean to make
Speaker 1: a pun, but it's I never believe you when you
Speaker 1: say that. I really, as I was saying it, I
Speaker 1: was judging myself. So if that makes you feel any better.
Speaker 1: It's a double walled flask, so you think of it
Speaker 1: as two flasks, one slightly smaller one set inside the
Speaker 1: slightly larger one, and that space between the larger one
Speaker 1: the smaller one is completely evacuated of all materials. So
Speaker 1: it's it's a vacuum, right, You've got a vacuum between
Speaker 1: those two sides. Now, what this does is it allows
Speaker 1: you to insulate whatever material is on the inside that
Speaker 1: flask from the outside environment. It does not conduct heat
Speaker 1: very well at all. Therefore, you can conduct experiments at
Speaker 1: particular temperatures. Yeah, you can have low temperature experiment. It's
Speaker 1: where you just keep reducing the temperature and you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about the heat from the outside environment
Speaker 1: because then then you would never get anything cold enough
Speaker 1: to be able to do this stuff like liquefying hydrogen.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got to get it really cold, and
Speaker 1: any sort of environmental heat is going to immediately move
Speaker 1: from an area of high concentration to an area of
Speaker 1: low concentration. That's kind of sort of what thermodynamics do,
Speaker 1: you know. So the other thing is that it also
Speaker 1: is really good at keeping hot stuff hot, so you know,
Speaker 1: like a like a thermis. You know, it's it's because
Speaker 1: again it's not allowing the heat from the inside of
Speaker 1: the flask to leak out into the outside environment. Gradually
Speaker 1: it will still cool down or the stuff inside will
Speaker 1: gradually still get warm. Because it's not a perfect system.
Speaker 1: At the neck of this flask, that's where the weak
Speaker 1: point is because at some point those two the inner
Speaker 1: and outer flask have to join together. You can't. You
Speaker 1: can't just magically suspended. So there are some weak points
Speaker 1: in this. It's not a perfect system, but it does
Speaker 1: work really, really well. Now let's go to one of
Speaker 1: my favorite parts of the podcast, because this is where
Speaker 1: we get to talk about some incredible music. Because in
Speaker 1: nine that's when Count Ferdinand Vaughan led Zeppelin launched the
Speaker 1: first hydrogen filled rigid airship called the Ferdinand. Just just
Speaker 1: just von Zeppelin. It wasn't vun lead Zeppelin that my
Speaker 1: musical past has betrayed me once again. Well no, no,
Speaker 1: of course we don't call them the Ferdinand's. We call
Speaker 1: them Zeppelin's. But they were not made out of lead.
Speaker 1: I guess maybe some of the material might have been
Speaker 1: led low lead Zeppelin, maybe spandex or 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 already having to spend 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 um fringe theorists as I hear they
Speaker 1: preferred to be called by many angry people on the internet,
Speaker 1: the ones I keep making mad uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: I can see I can see where perhaps um gasoline
Speaker 1: powered car companies would not have at that particular time
Speaker 1: wanted to donate funding to that kind of research, right right, well,
Speaker 1: and you know they're definitely there's a huge investment in
Speaker 1: the gasoline automobile industry, I mean from multiple players, not
Speaker 1: just not just the car. So but yeah, then we
Speaker 1: have a truly terrible disaster in nineteen seven, Right on
Speaker 1: 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 coded 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 let up.
Speaker 1: Proponents of hydrogen fuel, though, actually is the Hindenburg 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,
Speaker 1: right right, it's I mean, sure, it's it's dangerous, but
Speaker 1: everything is dangerous, and what's more dangerous is coating your
Speaker 1: blimp and rocket fuel. Yeah, okay, alright, got the note, Lauren,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to use any more rocket fuel on
Speaker 1: my blimp. And that same year as the Hannonbury disaster,
Speaker 1: there was an experimental gaseous hydrogen fueled jet engine test
Speaker 1: and that's the first working jet engine using hydrogen. So
Speaker 1: then we move on to nineteen thirty eight. That's when
Speaker 1: Igor Sikorski, who was a Russian American aviator, proposed using
Speaker 1: liquid hydrogen as a fuel for aviation. So you know,
Speaker 1: we already still had people saying that hydrogen had its place.
Speaker 1: By ninety one, we have the first mass application of
Speaker 1: hydrogen internal combustion engines. That's when a Russian lieutenant whose
Speaker 1: name I'm not even going to attempt to pronounce ordered
Speaker 1: the conversion of several Ford Model G A Z dash
Speaker 1: A A cars, the the Double A, the Model Double
Speaker 1: A UH into hydrogen internal combustion engines converted from gasoline
Speaker 1: to hydrogen as part of the war effort during World
Speaker 1: War to forest Sheila shit, thank 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 nineteen forty three, we have Ohio State University testing
Speaker 1: liquid hydrogen as rocket fuel, and in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties we see more work with these hydrogen fuel cells,
Speaker 1: this whole idea that had been proposed 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 Geminy Gemini Gemini. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that the way they old I know, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that was in five and that particular fuel
Speaker 1: cell was developed by a General Electric. There's your conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories for you. Night. One, we're skipping way ahead because
Speaker 1: generally speaking, you know, we still had advances in technology
Speaker 1: on both the combustion side and on the fuel cell side.
Speaker 1: But one, we have the Space Shuttle main engine test,
Speaker 1: which used liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as the propellants. UM.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen nineties, Uh, yeah, in in some cities
Speaker 1: they started rolling out buses that were powered by hydrogen
Speaker 1: fuel cells. Pretty cool stuff. Two thousand three, we have
Speaker 1: another big moment in the United States. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: when the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative was announced here. Um. It
Speaker 1: was a dedication of one point two billion dollars in
Speaker 1: research grants and other governmental support to projects with the
Speaker 1: lofty but very worthy goal of of making fuel cell
Speaker 1: vehicles practical and cost effective. By I mean like like
Speaker 1: from harvesting hydrogen to the infrastructure that you need to
Speaker 1: get it to cars, to the actual cars. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is this is incredibly ambitious. Not that other companies haven't
Speaker 1: taken up that mantle. But you know, we'll have a
Speaker 1: little bit of a dicussion at the very end about
Speaker 1: why that's so ambitious. I think that's probably the best
Speaker 1: place to have it. But let's see then we have
Speaker 1: moving onto the late two thousands, several car companies began
Speaker 1: developing fuel cell concepts UM, although most never made it
Speaker 1: to anything like the common market. That the only one
Speaker 1: that I've heard about even being semi available is the
Speaker 1: Honda f c X Clarity UM, which for certain select
Speaker 1: Southern California residents is available for a three year, six
Speaker 1: per month lease. It's like a severe waiting list kind
Speaker 1: of kind of situation, which which might change dramatically next
Speaker 1: year because two thousand fifteen is when Toyota plans to
Speaker 1: bring a fuel cell vehicle to market. And there are
Speaker 1: other fuel cell vehicles that are out there, most of
Speaker 1: them are being used in commercial or industrial uses. Again
Speaker 1: not not really talking about, uh, you know, the vehicles
Speaker 1: for the average consumer. But Toyota's plans say that this
Speaker 1: is going to be a really serious effort to make
Speaker 1: fuel cell vehicles a real alternative to gasoline and all
Speaker 1: trip vehicles, uh in a specific market in the US.
Speaker 1: We're talking about California. Yet again, that's really kind of
Speaker 1: the test market that Toyota is looking at, and they're
Speaker 1: looking at building out hydrogen fueling stations. You have to
Speaker 1: I mean that's and that's where this is where we're
Speaker 1: coming up to that discussion where not only is hydrogen
Speaker 1: a a potentially dangerous substance, not only do you have
Speaker 1: to take into consideration the right way to pressurize it
Speaker 1: and store it so that people can use it safely.
Speaker 1: Not only is it difficult to get the hydrogen just
Speaker 1: all on its own, it's also expensive to build out
Speaker 1: an infrastructure that you're going from the ground up. There's
Speaker 1: nothing there really that you can already take advantage of.
Speaker 1: You have to start building in things like building in
Speaker 1: new pumps and fuel stations that are hydrogen ones. There
Speaker 1: are a few of those that are around, you know,
Speaker 1: most of those are for things like municipal use. It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily meant for again, for the average person. It's
Speaker 1: not like, hey, I'm gonna go down and fill up
Speaker 1: this pressurized clast with hydrogen. Yeah yeah, you know. You
Speaker 1: you have to create an entire industry worth of of
Speaker 1: safety regulations and and standardizations. Yeah yeah. If you don't
Speaker 1: have those, then it's not going to work. So this is, uh,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a grandiose plan in many ways, but
Speaker 1: it's one I think that was actually achievable. I got
Speaker 1: a chance to talk to a lot of folks at
Speaker 1: Toyota when I went to C E S and so
Speaker 1: I got a chance to to take a look at
Speaker 1: the fuel cell vehicle. Really, what I looked at was
Speaker 1: their test vehicle that actually had a fuel cell in it.
Speaker 1: And then I got to look at the what is
Speaker 1: the shell essentially the what what it's going to look
Speaker 1: like when it comes to market. But as I understand it,
Speaker 1: it did not actually have the full fuel cell set
Speaker 1: up inside it yet. But it's very interesting approach. It
Speaker 1: is again a subset of electric vehicles. It runs on electricity.
Speaker 1: It's generating electricity which powers the vehicle as an electric motor.
Speaker 1: There's no engine. It's driven by an electric motor. It's
Speaker 1: got a battery on board as well. Um, it's not
Speaker 1: like it's just a combustion vehicle. It's not a combustion
Speaker 1: vehicle at all. It's more like an electric vehicle than
Speaker 1: a combustion vehicle, except for the fact that you have
Speaker 1: to fuel rather than recharge. So so would you say
Speaker 1: over we we asked on Facebook if anyone had any
Speaker 1: questions about this, and Don asked, will all fuel cell
Speaker 1: cars be hybrids. So technically, technically yes, because a fuel
Speaker 1: cell is, like I said, kind of an electric vehicle.
Speaker 1: So if you think of it that way, it is
Speaker 1: a hybrid. It's not going to be a hybrid as
Speaker 1: fuel cell and combustion engine. That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: For one thing, you would have so much of your
Speaker 1: vehicle taken up by engines and motors and and fuel
Speaker 1: cells and batteries that there wouldn't be any room left
Speaker 1: for anybody else. So that's not the kind of hybrid
Speaker 1: you're going to see. But technically, if you think about it,
Speaker 1: a fuel cell vehicles already a hybrid vehicle. And you know,
Speaker 1: Daniel on Facebook had asked, is this really a viable
Speaker 1: alternative to say electric vehicles? And then that's a highly
Speaker 1: contested area of debate right now. But I would say
Speaker 1: they each have their own advantages and disadvantages. The big
Speaker 1: advantage of an electric vehicle is that you can if
Speaker 1: you're just driving around, you know, going around town and
Speaker 1: then coming back home at the end of every day,
Speaker 1: you can recharge that at home and you aren't having
Speaker 1: to worry about refueling ever. Right with a hydrogen fuel
Speaker 1: cell car, it's like a gasoline car, eventually you're going
Speaker 1: to have to refuel. On the flip side of that,
Speaker 1: if you're going on long trips, like you're not just
Speaker 1: driving around town, but you want to take like a
Speaker 1: cross country road trip all on National Lampoon's family vacation,
Speaker 1: because that really encouraged everyone to get on a road trip.
Speaker 1: I medium, 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 with an electric vehicle, whenever
Speaker 1: you need to recharge and you're not at a convenient
Speaker 1: stopping point, like you're not ready to stop for the day,
Speaker 1: that's gonna take you like a half hour or longer,
Speaker 1: depending upon how you're doing this, unless you're buying into
Speaker 1: Tesla's model where you can occasionally have your better charge
Speaker 1: or swap. Even with a super charger. Still it's like
Speaker 1: minutes or a half charge. So I know that doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like a long time, but think about how irritated
Speaker 1: you get every time you have to go and fill
Speaker 1: up your tank at a gas station, Like if that
Speaker 1: takes me longer than than five or six minutes, I
Speaker 1: think that the world is ending. Yeah, Honestly, if I
Speaker 1: even just hit a slow pump, I'm just like, oh no,
Speaker 1: why did I pick this one? I could have gone
Speaker 1: anywhere else, and now the rest of my night is ruined.
Speaker 1: So yeah, hydrogen fuel fueling stations will fuel at essentially
Speaker 1: the same speed as a gasoline fueling station. So when
Speaker 1: it comes to refueling, hydrogen cars have have the advantage
Speaker 1: right now. Now, if we ever get into a crazy
Speaker 1: super fast method of charging batteries which people are working on,
Speaker 1: and it ends up being equivalent or even faster than
Speaker 1: fueling at a gas station, then that advantage disappears. The
Speaker 1: only other advantage you can say is that fuel cell vehicles,
Speaker 1: like electric vehicles, don't put out dangerous emissions, right, And
Speaker 1: that relates to the other question that we got in
Speaker 1: on Facebook from Ricardo he he was he was asking,
Speaker 1: is hydrogen really environmentally friendly because it also produces carbon dioxide.
Speaker 1: If you're using again pure hydrogen and pure oxygen, you're
Speaker 1: not creating carbon dioxide. Uh, you are just creating water
Speaker 1: and electricity and heat. But if you're using something besides
Speaker 1: pure hydrogen or pure oxygen. You could be creating pollutants,
Speaker 1: like we had said at the beginning of the last podcast,
Speaker 1: part one. So it all depends on the implementation. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the same is true with with fuel cells or
Speaker 1: combustion engines. Either way, whether it's one or the other,
Speaker 1: that's what your output is going to be based upon
Speaker 1: the input. Sure, and it also depends on how you're creating,
Speaker 1: well not creating, how you're getting that hydrogen to begin with,
Speaker 1: because some methods of of that hydrogen harvesting are cleaner
Speaker 1: than others. Right, if you're using fossil fuels, for example,
Speaker 1: to power your hydrogen operation, then the question is why
Speaker 1: don't you just use the fossil fuels to car the car? Right,
Speaker 1: Because if you're using it, why are you why are
Speaker 1: you have an extra step in there? The extra step?
Speaker 1: You know, if it's a if it's a byproduct like
Speaker 1: methane gas out of natural gas deposits, then then that
Speaker 1: can be a relatively clean way to be using that material. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like the co location idea of
Speaker 1: putting uh something that can use heat as a way
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, like like like the heat from
Speaker 1: say a power generator where you're using your generating lots
Speaker 1: and lots of steam that turned turbines, and those turbines
Speaker 1: then generate electricity. You might also have a way of
Speaker 1: harnessing that heat to say, heat a building, and then
Speaker 1: you are getting kind of a two for one thing
Speaker 1: out of that. It all depends on the strategy you
Speaker 1: implement to get the hydrogen, to ship the hydrogen, and
Speaker 1: to act consume the hydrogen. So another thing we can
Speaker 1: look at two in the future is the possibility of
Speaker 1: using hydrogen to generate lots of energy through fusion, which
Speaker 1: is the same thing that our friend the Sun does.
Speaker 1: And Okay, that's true. I can't. I can't. I can't
Speaker 1: hang out with the Sun for very long before he
Speaker 1: gets angry at me, or at least my skin gets
Speaker 1: angry at me. But at any rate, Yeah, the the
Speaker 1: Sun generates energy through that that that fusion process of
Speaker 1: hydrogen turning into helium. We might be able to harness
Speaker 1: the same thing here on Earth, and perhaps we'll do
Speaker 1: a full podcast on that in the future. There have
Speaker 1: been lots of different attempts at it, and we've seen
Speaker 1: some promising results fairly recently. That suggests we might be
Speaker 1: able to finally get to a point where we can
Speaker 1: actually generate more energy than it required for us to
Speaker 1: put into it to make it happen in the first place.
Speaker 1: That's ridiculous. Yeah, and I'm being a little sarcastic, but no,
Speaker 1: that's actually ridiculous. I mean that's that that would be
Speaker 1: beautiful and impressive. If it works out, then you could
Speaker 1: I would hesitate to say solve the world's energy problems,
Speaker 1: because I think it's much more complicated than just how
Speaker 1: much energy we have, but it can make things really interesting.
Speaker 1: So anyway, if you want to hear more really interesting
Speaker 1: things help us out, you let us know. Let us
Speaker 1: know what those are. Yeah, we don't know until you
Speaker 1: ask like this, Yeah, if we If we didn't mention
Speaker 1: at the top of this episode, we mentioned at the
Speaker 1: top of the last one this was a reader question
Speaker 1: from Facebook and we appreciate it very much. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: if you want to ask us a question on Facebook
Speaker 1: or maybe on Twitter or perhaps even Tumblr, you can
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Speaker 1: have you can send it to us via email. Our
Speaker 1: address is tech stuff at Discovery dot com, and Lauren
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