Why Hydrogen DOES Have a Future

Is hydrogen still worth exploring as an energy storage medium? Go to brilliant.org/Undecided/ and get 20% off your subscription and a 30 day free trial with brilliant.org/! If you liked this, check out Why This NASA Battery May Be The Future of Energy Storage https://youtu.be/2zG-ZrC4BO0?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi4dFnLD9622FK77atWtQVv7

For reference, the Netherlands hospital hydrogen/solar example is a quoted 60% self-sufficient for total energy needs. Impressive for such a large consumer of energy.

As an opponent of people touting hydrogen as the salvation I welcome these developments. I hope they will in fact be able to commercialize these products at scale and it isn't just a scam to get venture capital.

I see hydrogen as another “battery” to transport and/or store green energy. We need to keep developing different storage methods because they will fill different situational needs.

The hospital use case of an electrolyzer to get hydrogen for heat and oxygen for medical uses is cool! But the obvious question is how does that compare to using that electricity instead for a heat pump and a conventional air separation unit for oxygen. Even assuming only excess solar is used, I'd hazard a guess that adding battery storage might make more sense. This is the type of analysis that matters and I'd like to see more of.

Great video Matt. I would like to correct just a minor error in the video. As a 72 year old Australian, I can assure you that the CSIRO is never called Cisiro ! As I'm sure you know, it stands for Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation. It is ALWAYS referred to as the C S I R O, never as a single word. I've watched and enjoyed many of your videos, and I was quite confident that you would want to know what I have explained. Keep up the excellent work.

I'm a student at the University of Newcastle, one of my old professors is working on some of this tech with the CSIRO currently! Super cool to see 🙂 Also much prefer your pronunciation of "Scissiro" Matt, we usually just say each letter in CSIRO 😅

It is certainly worth exploring. H2 is very useful for many industries; in short, we need it. The key is in realizing where it fits ... and where it does not. It certainly has areas of both.

The thing I really like about the hospital example is the 'green oxygen' - brilliant! The H2 is almost just a bonus. Even better would be to use the H2 to power a fuel cell for electricity when the sun isn't shining and then use the waste heat to heat the building. Also I think the future of H2 is to produce and use it on site, as it gets around the transport issues.

Everytime new energy storage tech comes up. The number I always want is the round trip efficiency. For lithium battery it is around 90%. Pumped hydro is ~80%. What's missing from this video is exactly this, the round trip efficiency. If hydrogen battery have round trip efficiency of even 70% and cheap enough, it's usible.

Hi matt, hydrogen systems engineer here. You did a great job explaining how power efficiency for hydrogen production is indeed a big arguing point against hydrogen power. Excited to see that efficiency improving! Thanks for sharing. There is going to be a whole other energy efficiency issue, around cryogenic liquid hydrogen storage and infrastructure. Currently tackling that with an aviation client. Would love to know your thoughts on that side.

What I am missing from all these videos is actual running costs in terms of electrolyzer degradation. I've seen some very different numbers, and all were quite high.

Small correction: the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) is generally just pronounced by its letters 😉

About your question at the end of the video: My favorite tech is the boring, basic kind: Compressed Air. It requires basic materials, can directly transition kinetic forces to storage without chemicals, and is adequate for short range uses, where energy density isn't important. People have created cars out of them and they work fine, but they're outclassed by electric and gas powered machines. It has some uses for low- cost deployment that is still green, particularly for remote areas. Not everything should immediately go hydrogen right?

Can you cover Dimethyl Ether (DME) ? It stores like Propane, yet can be made from (Sustainable!) Biomass, or via Power-to-X Chemicals like Hydrogen etc Also it works well as a Diesel Fuel due to it’s high Cetane Value. Also it cannot produce Soot, thus Diesel Particulate Matter is WAY lower. I’m rambling, but this is a neat solution that needs more coverage and you could do a great job!

nice to see a hospital using h2 splitting as a byproduct of O2 generation for patients. I have had to use o2 in hospitals before. the thing most people don't think about is semi-portable local generated.. vs our current route to get anything. If you can local produce something you have an extra savings right there.

I think that adsorption based Hydrogen Storage is WAY more impressive than any advance in Hydrogen production. I would love to see some attention on your Channel about Plasma Kinetics and it's technology.

Honestly, even if production issues are panned out, I am skeptical about storage and transportation ever being anything but expensive. I am supportive of research but realistically, development likely only makes sense in niche environments like space exploration.

Great video, thanks. I'd like to see more on ammonia as a hydrogen carrier, especially in light of the recent Japanese development of perovskites for ambient pressure ammonia storage. Thanks!

I love seeing the titles of articles but good you also link to the articles please :)