September 15, 2021 • 37 mins
A fuel cell is an electrochemical energy conversion device; it turns chemical energy into electrical energy. Jonathan and Chris discuss fuel cells in detail from their origins to why they're not practical for general use yet in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Johnathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
and I love all things tech and I am currently
hard at work putting together more podcasts about space stations. Uh.
(00:27):
These take a long time because there's a lot of
stuff I have to look up, but also there's just
a lot of data, particularly about space stations that almost
happened but didn't, and I want to make sure I
cover all of them because I think it's fascinating stuff. However,
it means that I'm running a little behind. So rather
than go without an episode, I thought that we could
(00:50):
listen in on a classic one, and I thought I'd
go way way back. So Tech Stuff is several years
old now. It launched in two thousand eight, so we've
been around longer than some tech has. And one of
the early episodes we did was way back on June
twenty one, two thousand ten. How fuel cells work. This
(01:13):
is one of those technologies that people often turned to
and they look at that as a possible move forward
to get away from, uh, you know, carbon emissions with
vehicles in particular and fuel cells could do that if
we met some other very tough challenges, and so I
(01:37):
thought it would be fun to listen to this classic episode.
This is from the Crisp Palette era of tech stuff.
How fuel cells work? Enjoy. Now let's tackle our subject,
which is how fuel cells work. Fuel cells the mystery,
uh energy problem, savor of the future, or we would
(02:00):
we would hope anyway. Yeah, fuel cells are this, uh well,
it's it's kind of like a battery. You know. Let's
let's go ahead and kind of define what it does.
It's an electrochemical energy conversion device. Yes, Actually, that's that's
sort of what I meant about mystery, because everybody talks
about how cool they are, but nobody really knows exactly
what they do. But they convert chemicals into electricity. That's
(02:22):
that's like a battery. Yeah, no, it is very much
like a battery. Others there are some differences which will
get into but in general a fuel cell. What most
people tend to know about fuel cells is one they
create electricity and to their byproducts are heat and water. Yes,
that's it tends to be what most people know about
apart from the people who specifically work in the fuel
(02:42):
cell industry, clearly they know a lot more than that. Well,
of course we always see that mainstream media, you know,
reporter going out to the back of the fuel cell
vehicle and putting a cup underneath the tailpipe and drinking
the water, right, And I think that sticks with us.
That's why we we don't know that much more about it,
because we go, huh, that's really cool. Yeah, because because
(03:04):
you think about that, you're like, well, if we have
this energy source that can create electricity and the only
byproduct really is heat and water, and you know, water
is not toxic. It's not like water is going to
be throwing out greenhouse gases into the atmosphere or polluting
in some other way, why don't we have more of these?
And really the answer to that question is that the
(03:25):
technology is not sophisticated enough and reliable enough, and most importantly, really,
when you get down to it, cheap enough to do
on a widespread basis to allow us to to switch
to a fuel cell economy. So let's let's kind of
talk about what how it fuel cell works, what it does,
where it came from. Um. First of all, well, let's
talk about sir William Grove, Now, Sir William Grove, he's
(03:49):
the fellow who kind of invented fuel cells, if you will,
all right, he knew this was back in nine by
the way. He knew that if you if you uh
to some water and you ran an electric current through
the water, it would produce hydrogen and oxygen molecules of
water apart. Yeah, it's called electrolysis. And actually this this
(04:11):
tends to happen with various molecules. If you add enough
energy to the molecule, it tends to break the molecular
bonds and it will eventually break apart into its individual elements.
Most molecules will do this if you if you pour
in enough energy. That's going to be another important point
later on. So Grove he theorized, well, if you if
(04:33):
you add electricity to water and you get hydrogen and oxygen. Uh,
if you if you then combined hydrogen and oxygen, you
should get water and electricity, you know, because you know
it should be the same coming out as it is
going in. Right, So if you're yeah, So he's like, well, um,
how he ran some experiments and he created what he
(04:54):
called a gas voltaic battery and in this gas will
take battery. He then combined hydro ygen and oxygen and
he realized that he got water and he got free electrons,
which you know, if you direct free electrons through a path,
that's electricity. So he signed a little sign on the
side of the said electrons free. Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's
a protest held off the cell. Fifty years later you
(05:18):
get uh, Ludwig Mond and Charles Langer, and they're they're
the ones who coined the term fuel cell. Those are
the guys who actually found a fairly practical way to
do this, uh, that was easily repeatable, so you could
you could repeat the experiment improve Yes, something is happening here, because,
of course we know in science, just because you get
(05:40):
a result doesn't necessarily mean that you have proven your
hypothesis correct. You need to have a repeatable experiment that
can be done by anyone who has the facility to
do it at any rate um to prove that that
something really is going on. Yes, So that's where we
get into the fuel cells. And unlike battery, like a
(06:00):
battery is a self contained chemical reaction. Uh, and it
can and yeah, it's chemical reaction. It can very good. Well,
I mean nothing's going in, nothing's going out except electrons, right, yeah. Yeah.
The battery has chemicals inside it that react together. The
reaction produces electrons, and that is where we get, you know,
(06:21):
our little electric power from a battery. Fuel cells are
a little different. You can pour fuel into a fuel cell,
thus the name, and it will convert that fuel into
the water and the electricity. So as long as you
have a supply of hydrogen and a supply of oxygen
(06:41):
going into the fuel cell, and as long as the
membrane of the fuel cell and the other components remain
remain viable. We'll get into that in a little bit. Uh,
it should continue to to produce electricity. It's not gonna
It's not like it'll die after all the hydrogen runs out.
If you add more hyrogen and more oxygen, it should
continue to work, right. Okay, so we've covered the basics there. Uh,
(07:08):
let's let's talk. I'm gonna shift my notes around. I
actually have paper notes today. I usually don't do this. Uh.
Let's talk about the various components within a fuel cell. Okay,
we can do that all right. We've got the anode, yes, Uh,
the anode. It that's the that's the negative post, not
meaning that. I know, I was trying to listeners. I apologize,
(07:31):
I was finish. I mean, we all suffered for that
besides Chris. Um, no, no, no, it was good. So
that's what's conducting the electrons and that that get freed
from the hydrogen. So the anodes on one end. On
the other end is the cathode. Yes, that's the positive post.
So that's where the hydrogen. Uh. This, this is what's
(07:53):
conducting the electrons back from the external circuit. So I'm sorry,
We've got We've got the anode. That's where when the
electrons come out from the reaction, electrons go to the anode,
go into a circuit. So what electric motor or a
light bulb or whatever, right, Um, the electrons continue their
path once they go through that circuit to the cathode. Uh.
Then we've got the electrolyte uh in the center. This
(08:16):
is a usually approach a proton exchange membrane. Thing of
the membrane is kind of like a force field. Now
this force field will Yeah, the force field will allow
positively charged ions to pass through, but will repel negatively
charged particles. So electrons have a negative charge they cannot
(08:40):
pass through the membrane. If they could pass through the membrane,
fuel cells would not work. It is the bouncer of
the fuel cell. Yes, you may not come in, but
we're not cool enough because you are negative exactly, but
the close enough. So the so the high hydrogen are
the hydrogen ions are positively charged because they have given
up an electron. All right, So now now essentially what
(09:03):
you have a hydrogen ion is essentially a proton. So
you've got a proton. Protons are positively charged. You've got
this puzzlingly charged element there. It can pass through the membrane.
Now why would it pass through the membrane to get
to the other side. But what's on the other side oxygen,
and oxygen has a negative charge that it exactly, the
(09:27):
proton is attracted across the membrane to the negatively charged oxygen.
If if there were no negative charge, then the proton
would not necessarily migrate through the membrane. So, uh, when
it migrates to the membrane, it then combines with the oxygen,
and uh, you get the two hydrogens the one oxygen together,
(09:49):
and then the electron that had passed through the circuit
Remember it passed from the anode through the circuit into
the cathode. On that end, the two hydrogen atoms the
oxygen atom have combined into a molecule. The electron joins
that molecule, and that's when you get water. Right, So
you don't have any free electrons at the end of
(10:09):
this process. It all recombines on the cathode end, and
that's where you get the water. There's one other element
that's important with this, that's the catalyst, and this is catalysts.
What they do is they help reactions, right, the thing
that makes it possible to react. Yeah, Otherwise you would
have to pour even more energy and in order for
this to to react, and it wouldn't be viable at all.
(10:30):
So it's a special material and it it helps this
reaction of oxygen and hydrogen. And in most fuel cells
that you that people talk about, tends to be made
out of platinum nanoparticles. So a nanoparticle, of course is
insanely tiny, like tinier than the microscopic scopic scale, right,
but it is on a thin sheet of materials um
(10:53):
with as much area as exposed as possible to facilitate
more reaction. Right. So it's almost like you've spy a
painted a sheet with platinum. And because you can imagine,
that's pretty expensive. Platinum is a precious metal. It's pretty rare.
It's hard to get your hands on it. Even when
you're talking about nanoparticles, which are really tiny. You're talking
about billions of nanoparticles. Like a nanoparticle is not going
(11:16):
to do much for you. Um, so, yeah, you definitely
want to maximize that service area in order to allow
the reactions between hydrogen and oxygen to to happen or
else your your fuel cell doesn't do anything all right,
So you're pouring hydrogen in. You you're pumping oxygen in.
When I say pouring, I'm really mean pumping, because you're
(11:37):
probably pumping hydrogen gas. You're pumping both into this fuel cell.
They combine. You get the electrons, you get the water.
So why don't we have lots and lots of fuel
cells already running all all of our power, all of
our electronics. You've already hit on it. Why is that?
What was that? The biggest one being the cost? That
(11:59):
would be a huge one. Yeah, the platinum, that kind
of it's simply not it's simply not practical. Right, Yeah,
you get down to it, You're like, well, in a
in an ideal world, we cost would not be would
not even be a consideration, right, we would just be
talking about the fact that this is clean energy that
we have and uh, and we could run our cars
(12:20):
or other devices are homes, even powered plants, we could
run them on hydrogen and uh, and then we we
not pollute and we'd have a nice clean energy source.
But it comes down to the fact that cost is
an element. It's not the only one, of course, the Yeah,
the whole process of of splitting the water into two pieces. Yeah,
(12:43):
but you know that's actually is I guess should be
the source of hydrogen more than anything else. Yeah, source
of hydrogen is a huge, huge problem. Hydrogen does not
It's plentiful, but not in its elemental form on Earth.
It's usually combined with something else like oxygen to make water.
We we it's not like there's a hydrogen mind we
(13:03):
can go to and mind hydrogen pure hydrogen and use
that we when we we can get hydrogen from stuff
like hydrocarbon fuels or even water, as we pointed out
by breaking down compounds, right, which takes energy. So in
order to get this fuel cell fuel, you already have
to expend energy to create the fuel. So now you're
(13:26):
now you're looking at a fuel like an energy deficit situation.
Does it take more energy to create the fuel than
the energy you will get by using that fuel to
power a fuel cell? And as long as it takes
more energy for you to create the fuel than it
does to actually power whatever it is you're going to power,
it doesn't make sense. We already have a fuel that
does this, by the way, gasoline. Gasoline, Actually, it actually
(13:50):
takes more energy to create a gallon of gas than
a gallon of gas can create through putting it through
a motor or whatever. Yeah, because gasoline is a pretty
inefficient fuel, it turns out, especially compared to a fuel cell.
And you have to again look at the entire life cycle.
You're not just looking at, oh, well, how much how
much energy did it take to ship the gasoline from
(14:13):
the refinery to the uh to the gas station. It's
also how much energy did the refinery have to expand
in order to produce that gasoline. How much energy had
to be expanded to to get the oil out of
the ground to eventually become what would what would eventually
become gasoline. Um, it's really a big picture thing. And
that's that's the real problem with a lot of these
(14:34):
energy issues, is that once you start looking at the
big picture, you begin to realize, oh, this is this
is a buch more difficult problem than I originally imagined.
We'll be back with more in just a moment, to
talk more about fuel cells. Now, there are many different
(14:55):
kinds of fuel cells. Yeah, I thought I thought we
were getting ready to hit that, because one that we've
been talking about, I guess, probably without actually saying its name,
is the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell, right, also sometimes
called the polymer exchange membrane fuel cell. But same thing.
Why membrane and the exchange. Okay, I got it, Yep,
(15:18):
that's it. They're used in cars a lot, right, Yeah,
that that's kind of the stuff we're looking at cars. See. Now,
some of these fuel cells work really well at a
certain temperature range, and outside that temperature range they don't
work very well at all. Now, the polymer exchange has
a couple of different issues that make it not the
most ideal method of power generation within a car, And
(15:42):
I'll one of those is that Um, well, I mean
it's heat range is okay because it's it works best
somewhere around uh a hundred for you two degrees fahrenheit,
so you could you would first have to heat your
fuel cell up to this temperature for it to be
a to to work properly. So there there is a
(16:02):
warm up period. It's not like it's gonna work immediately
as you get in your car. One of the things
about the polymer exchange membrane fuel cell is that it
has to have a hydrated membrane. The membrane must remain hydrated,
which means essentially wet. Alright, So if you live in Minnesota,
you know the winners in Minnesota get really cold. And
(16:25):
when you get really cold and you got water, you
know what happens. It freezes. Yeah, it doesn't happen much
here in Atlanta, but up in Minnesota it could. Yes,
if the temperature fell far enough the water used to
hydrate that membrane. And remember the membrane is key to
this uh to this exchange. If the water could freeze,
(16:48):
that would make the membrane extremely brittle and it could
break and then you've got a broken fuel cell. Right,
So that here's problematic. Yeah, that's a bit of an issue.
And there are other types of fuel cells. There's the
solid oxide feel. So yeah, this is this is one
of my favorites. This would not work well in the car. No, no,
not at all. Um, simply the uh, simply because it
(17:11):
requires so much more in the way of temperature for
it to operate. Yeah, it operates best between seven D
and a thousand degrees centigrade. Yes, that's a that's pretty warm. Yeah, no,
it's pretty pretty steamy. But but steam that you mentioned
that see that that generates uh, you know steam as
(17:32):
a resulting that can be used to create electricity as well. Yeah,
you can use the steam to generate too, to push turbines,
or you could even use the steam, well not just
or and you could use the steam to help heat
U the facility. So let's say it's in the dead
of winter. U, the steam coming from this reaction could
go back into the heating unit to try and keep
(17:54):
the plant warm so that you don't have to generate,
you don't have to burn as much energy to keep
the the plant running right right now. Uh, they're not
as efficient or they're not it's it's not cost effective yet.
The cost effectiveness of the solid oxide fuel cell. Um
that the target is four dollars per kilo. What right
(18:18):
now it's about ten times that is that four thousand
dollars per kill A what to run one of these things? Um,
that's a problem. Well. UM. I'd also like to point
out that the solid oxide fuel cells have been in
the news recently in a in a pretty big fashion.
As a matter of fact, I believe we've talked about
one on this podcast not too long ago. The bloom
(18:40):
box Oh, the bloom Box bloom Energies. Bloom box fuel
cells are solid oxide fuel cells, and I don't know
that they run exactly the same way as the information
in our article about that on our side, slightly different process.
They probably do, because the ones that we're talking about
are mainly um. The solid oxide tends to often used
(19:04):
come in the form of coal, So you actually have
coal running a fuel cell, which you know you first
sit there and think like, WHOA, that's weird. I thought
we were going trying to get away from fossil fuels.
Not necessarily. In some cases we may have to use
fossil fuels to create the hydrogen or whatever the compound
is that we're going to use in the fuel cell,
because hydrogen is not the only one, it's just the
most popular one. Um. But we may have to use
(19:26):
fossil fuels in that process to generate the fuel we
need to run to to make the fuel cells go. Um.
There are other types as well. There's the alkaline fuel cell.
That's the kind that we're that they that uh the
space race used quite a bit back in the sixties. Yeah, um,
not really use that much anymore. It's not it's not
(19:47):
as it's really expensive, it's not as reliable as some
of the other technologies. Plus it requires pure hydrogen and oxygen. Yeah,
pure hydrogen and oxygen is hard to get your hands on,
or at least the pure hydrogen is. Um. There are
fuel cells that can use hydrogen that's not pure, but
that also tends to take its toll on the membrane.
(20:08):
So again, the membrane is a is a fairly delicate
part of a fuel cell, and uh, if you damage
that that membrane, then the fuel cell is not gonna
work anymore. Also, I guess we should also point out
that a fuel cell, when we're talking about a fuel cell,
an individual fuel cell does not generate that much power.
It's when you have a bunch of fuel cells working together, uh,
(20:28):
that you can generate enough electricity essentially in an array. Yeah,
a fuel cell stack is usually what we call it.
Uh we being those of us in the fuel cell industry,
say and journalists, Um, yeah, So an individual fuel cell
is like think of it. Like we talked about cell processors.
A cell processor is just one part of a group
(20:51):
of processors that all work together, same sort of thing.
Fuel cell is just one little electricity generation device that
works with several others to create enough electricity to actually
do something. But you also have the molten carbonate fuel cell,
the phosphoric acid fuel cell, the direct methanol fuel cell.
These are all variations. Um. They all basically do the
(21:14):
same thing, but they're doing it through different ways, and
some of them have different operating temperatures, different parameters. Some
of them are more reliable than others, but they require
such a high operating temperature that you wouldn't want to
use in a car, Like you don't want to use
a solid oxide fuel cell on the car because you
would die. You would have to have such sheets some
sort of protective material to to shield you from the
(21:36):
heat that your car would weighe so much that it
wouldn't matter how much of the electricity you're generating, because
it wouldn't move anywhere. It's gonna say you you'd have
to use most of the power for your air conditioning.
You know. They either the air conditioning or just getting
the wheels to have enough torque to actually push that
incredibly heavy vehicle forward torque. Um. So then we have
(21:57):
the phosphoric acid fuel cell um and uh you know
those those are those a little smaller? Yeah, yeah, those
aren't those aren't as huge, but they have such a
long went warm up time. Yeah. So again if you've
tried to if used a phosphor I guess that jewel
cell in your car, you have to start warming up
your car an hour before you were leaving. So that's
(22:18):
not really practical. Yeah. And the direct methanol fuel cell, Uh,
again we're talking about it's not as efficient. It can
um use methanol, but since since the energy output isn't
as great, it's not really seen as a viable fuel cell. Yeah.
I've seen I've seen some methanol fuel cells out and about.
In fact, Uh, when I went to the c E
(22:41):
s in two thousand and eight. Um, I believe it
was Toshiba, if I'm not mistaken, had a methanol fuel
cell powered m P three player on display, which was
pretty cool. Um, you know it's not it's one of
those things where you're like, really, seriously, I have to
pour methanol in this thing. But yeah, I mean it's
it was so small, you know, the size of an
MP th replayer that you know, I couldn't imagine empowering
(23:02):
you know, I'm building more a car. It's much more tiny.
But that's what they talk about when they talk about
the possibility of using fuel cells to power or say
laptop computers and things like that. Yeah, yeah, personal electronic devices,
that kind of stuff. It's still it still seems odd
to me that you would, you know, flip your laptop
over and pour in some method all and I guess
it would probably be an external supply of some sort.
(23:23):
My MP three player has a drinking problem. I'm gonna
talk very briefly about about the efficiency of a fuel cell.
This is kind of a complicated topic, but let's uh,
fuel cell efficiency depends on a lot of different factors.
Let's say that you have a fuel cell that runs
on pure hydrogen, and somehow you have a reliable source
(23:45):
of pure hydrogen, so you don't you know, there's no
problem with actually getting fuel for it, so eliminating that
as an issue. Yeah, Uh, assuming that the pure hydrogen
fuel cell has the potential to be up to eighty
percent efficient in generating electricity, so you get you're getting
eighty percent of the energy generated by the reaction to
(24:07):
actually become electricity. However, now then you have to put
it through an electric motor. So we're talking about this
for for cars. So electric motors are not efficient. They
don't they don't convert a pc of electricity into a
percent mechanical power. You lose some in heat. Yes, So
(24:29):
let's let's say you've got a really good electric motor
and the electric motor is also eighty percent efficient. You're
getting down to about sixty of your of the power
that's generated by the reactions within the fuel cell to
actually do work. So you've got sixty four percent efficiency.
Now that's amazing compared to a gas powered automobile, which
(24:51):
has got about uh like, like Chris said, gasoline is
just not that efficient, uh at generating power. Then you
think about all right, Well, what about electric vehicles like
you know the Prius, Well, that's a that's a hybrid.
That's true if you're talking about a pure electric vehicle.
(25:12):
I'm sorry, I should have said a pure electric vehicle.
So it's just running on an electric battery. Electric batteries
on their own can be really efficient, like nine efficient.
When you get to the electric electric motor part, it
eventually comes down to about efficiency. We got a little
bit more to talk about with fuel cells, and we'll
do that when we come back. Now, here's where you
(25:41):
have to go into the big picture again. How was
that electricity generated that that went into charging the battery.
In a lot of cases, at least here in the
United States, we're talking about fossil fuels again, Yeah, cold
power or something like that. So once you factor into
the cold power that was needed to generate the electricity
that initially charged that battery, you start seeing the efficiencies drop. Now,
(26:02):
if we assume that the electricity was generated through some
sort of renewable source, like let's say hydro electric facility,
so no fossil fuels went into producing this. Even then
when you're looking at the efficiencies, it goes to around
it's in the mid six so six six percent something
(26:22):
like that efficiency. So it's just a little bit more
efficient than a hydrogen car that's running on pure hydrogen.
And again, if we look at that with the electric battery,
we kind of had to look at it with the
hydrogen as well, like where did we get how did
we get that pure hydrogen? Once you factor that, and
this is why it gets so complicated, You're like, well,
in the big picture, does it make sense to move
(26:44):
to hydrogen? So we first have to answer that question,
doesn't make sense to move to hydrogen based uh? Fleet
of automobiles? Um? Will that from an energy standpoint makes sense?
Or will we just be switching one inefficient method for
ultimately another one. That's that's one question. There's another one though,
(27:07):
that's even bigger. All right, how do we build the
infrastructure to support hydrogen powered vehicles? Yes? This is UH,
this is one of the problems that organizations like better Place,
which is a car manufacturer or not car manufacturer, Um,
they are a systems manufacturer that's trying to work out
a way to make electric vehicles possible. And um, they
(27:33):
basically have been adapting vehicles to run on as plug
ins uh, which is all well and good, but see
what happens if you haven't had a chance to get
your car charged up, um, you know, and you are
running out of electricity. We're talking about the possibility of
stations where you could go and swap out your battery
(27:55):
for another you know, our battery array for another one.
And uh, you know that would be a convenient thing
if that already existed. But it's the same thing any
kind of alternative fuel, uh to what we've got now,
whether it's you know, needing more hydrogen for your fuel
cell powered vehicle or requiring more batteries for an electric vehicle. Um,
(28:17):
they're just simply aren't you know, power stations on every
corner like there are with gasoline vehicles. You're going to
have to either strike deals with those companies to do
that or start your own really expensive and we're talking
billions and billions of dollars, or as Carl Sagan would
have you, billions and billions of dollars. You really need
(28:40):
to jacket with the patches in the oldos. But yeah,
it's a little too warm for that at any rate. Uh, Yeah,
it costs. It's gonna cost a lot of money. To
build out that infrastructure, UM everything from the actual facilities
where they sell the hydrogen, to all the vehicles that
are going to be necessary to transport the hydrogen, to
the facilities that are there to generate the hydrogen. UM.
(29:01):
It's it's not a small task. And UH, the hydrogen
Fuel Initiative I just founded back in two thousand three
was it lost? Um it is. It's working to try
and find a way of making fuel cell vehicles practical
and cost effective. By I think that's incredibly ambitious, especially
(29:25):
when you consider that their budget is pretty low. In
the grand scheme of things. Now, it would be great
if we could switch to a hydrogen based UH transportation system,
because then you're looking at you no longer dependent upon
on oil, and because so much of our oil comes
from foreign nations that may or may not have very
(29:45):
friendly relationships with US. UM, it means that we're no
longer pouring money into into governments or into countries that
we may think ultimately could use that money to do
things that are not within our country's best interests. That's
a good way of putting it. I'm trying to like
dance lightly around the whole thing. But but hydrogen we
(30:05):
could produce right here at home if we found an
efficient way of doing it. So it didn't, you know,
so it no longer costs more to create the fuel
than the fuel itself would would benefit us. So that's
how fuel cells work. That's kind of the the whole detail.
Did you have anything else to add before I go
into No. I mean, there's there's a lot more to
(30:26):
it in terms of the depth of the reaction and
how all of that works. But no, I think we
did a pretty good job of of hitting the high
points of it. Yeah, yeah, and and it is a
huge challenge, and we maybe one that we overcome. It's
a little early to say, but before we get there,
I'm afraid we're gonna have to answer a little listener mail.
(30:52):
This listener mail comes from Megan from Boston, Massachusetts, and
Megan says, I love the podcast, keep them coming. Could
you please dedicate one podcast to Internet Protocol Version six.
I don't fully understand why i p V four is
running out of addresses and how the switch to i
p V six will be implemented. I think that would
make a great and informative podcast, and I'm sure there
are other listeners interested in this topic. Thanks. Well, it's
(31:14):
not really a big enough topic to do a full
podcast on necessarily, but we can give you a real
quick rundown on what the issue is. Yeah, the issue
is basically your I I P enabled cell phone, and
your laptop and your you know, iopod, and your tablet
(31:34):
and your three desktop computers, and your roommates gear and
the people downstairs and everyone else in the building and
everyone else in the city, in the county, in the state,
and the country and the world. There's a lot, a
lot of of of devices that everyone has now that
use their own individual IP address. And as as robust
(31:57):
as I p v four was, it just is going
to run out of addresses with all these new devices
coming onto the network and uh not retiring, it's enough
of them to make room. Yeah. See, I p v
four is a thirty two bit address system, and that
when you translate three two bit into actual managers, uh
and most you would have four billion, two four million,
(32:20):
sixty seven thousand two D addresses. Once those addresses are gone,
that's that's it. If you're on an IP four system,
you cannot add any more devices to the Internet because
each device has to have its own unique IP address.
That's the way the Internet works. If you don't have
your own unique address, you cannot send and receive information
(32:41):
because the information wouldn't know where to go. So I
was gonna say too, sorry to interrupts that one nice
thing about the switches that it's uh they coexist. Yeah. Yeah.
The IPv six uses a hundred and twenty eight bit
addresses as opposed to thirty two bit, which gives you
about three point four Okay, take a three, put you know,
(33:05):
put a four behind it. Then behind the four, put
thirty zeros. Okay, that's how many addresses, So many that
we would not run out in the foreseeable future. It
would take everyone having everything they own the Internet connected,
and even then we still would have plenty of addresses
left over. So uh and yes, like you said, the
two systems can coincide. Um. The issue about implementation is
(33:29):
that that's a an organization by organization process. It's not
like they're gonna flip a switch and everything switches from
IP four to I P six. And there's as far
as I know, no official timetable for migration, so people
are sort of taking their time to do that. Although
some people have already gone ahead and upgraded their systems
to run on I P P six. So um, and
(33:51):
I think pretty much all the mainstream operating systems, Uh,
you know, Windows, Mac, and Lenox will accept either. Yeah.
So it's it's not really an issue of of having
the infrastructure in place, it's just a matter of doing it. Yeah,
getting off your button switching over. Um. And what I'm saying,
getting off your butt, I mean that as the organizations
(34:11):
that are all running these servers that are they kind
of the backbone of the internet. Um, and so we're
kind of at their mercy whenever they get around to
switching it over. And some organizations don't prioritize it very highly,
so it may be a while before everyone's over to
I P six. Now, whether we get to the point
where we run out of addresses before we before that happens,
(34:33):
that remains to be seen. That wraps up that look
back at how fuel cells Work, which originally published twenty first,
twenty ten. Uh, fascinating topic. I've covered it a few times,
actually talked about it in a in a different podcast
as well as I think I've covered it a few
times on tech Stuff. I wrote about it for how
(34:53):
stuff works back when I was still a writer for
that website and uh talked about it on camera if
you times. I think it's a really cool technology, one
that is incredibly useful for certain, you know, applications. I
am still a little skeptical about it taking a prominent
place in vehicles, simply because building out the hydrogen fuel
(35:17):
infrastructure would require an awful big investment, and I mean,
there are certain dangers with hydrogen that we would need
to address, Like hydrogen is hydrogen gas is incredibly flammable,
so you definitely want to make certain that whatever strategy
you use is safe and reliable. So also there's the
(35:42):
whole thing about getting hydrogen in the first place. I mean,
hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe, but
it's almost always bonded to something else, So you've got
to spend energy in order to get hold of it.
And if what however you're doing that is taking up
more energy than what you're getting out, then it's a
losing proposition, but still pretty fascinating. I think regular old
(36:03):
electric vehicles are probably going to dominate. Fuel cells might
still have a place in the fleet, but I don't
think it's going to be the dominant way that we,
you know, provide power to our vehicles. However, that wraps
up this episode of tech Stuff. We'll be back with
some more space stations in the very near future, as
(36:25):
well as more tech news episodes. There are a lot
of things that are going on that are pretty darn
fascinating and several that are infuriating, so I'm sure I'll
be ranting and railing about them before too long, but
for now, let's sign off. If you have any suggestions
for topics I should cover on this show, reach out
to me on Twitter the handle is tech Stuff hs W,
(36:46):
and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Johnathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
and I love all things tech and I am currently
hard at work putting together more podcasts about space stations. Uh.
(00:27):
These take a long time because there's a lot of
stuff I have to look up, but also there's just
a lot of data, particularly about space stations that almost
happened but didn't, and I want to make sure I
cover all of them because I think it's fascinating stuff. However,
it means that I'm running a little behind. So rather
than go without an episode, I thought that we could
(00:50):
listen in on a classic one, and I thought I'd
go way way back. So Tech Stuff is several years
old now. It launched in two thousand eight, so we've
been around longer than some tech has. And one of
the early episodes we did was way back on June
twenty one, two thousand ten. How fuel cells work. This
(01:13):
is one of those technologies that people often turned to
and they look at that as a possible move forward
to get away from, uh, you know, carbon emissions with
vehicles in particular and fuel cells could do that if
we met some other very tough challenges, and so I
(01:37):
thought it would be fun to listen to this classic episode.
This is from the Crisp Palette era of tech stuff.
How fuel cells work? Enjoy. Now let's tackle our subject,
which is how fuel cells work. Fuel cells the mystery,
uh energy problem, savor of the future, or we would
(02:00):
we would hope anyway. Yeah, fuel cells are this, uh well,
it's it's kind of like a battery. You know. Let's
let's go ahead and kind of define what it does.
It's an electrochemical energy conversion device. Yes, Actually, that's that's
sort of what I meant about mystery, because everybody talks
about how cool they are, but nobody really knows exactly
what they do. But they convert chemicals into electricity. That's
(02:22):
that's like a battery. Yeah, no, it is very much
like a battery. Others there are some differences which will
get into but in general a fuel cell. What most
people tend to know about fuel cells is one they
create electricity and to their byproducts are heat and water. Yes,
that's it tends to be what most people know about
apart from the people who specifically work in the fuel
(02:42):
cell industry, clearly they know a lot more than that. Well,
of course we always see that mainstream media, you know,
reporter going out to the back of the fuel cell
vehicle and putting a cup underneath the tailpipe and drinking
the water, right, And I think that sticks with us.
That's why we we don't know that much more about it,
because we go, huh, that's really cool. Yeah, because because
(03:04):
you think about that, you're like, well, if we have
this energy source that can create electricity and the only
byproduct really is heat and water, and you know, water
is not toxic. It's not like water is going to
be throwing out greenhouse gases into the atmosphere or polluting
in some other way, why don't we have more of these?
And really the answer to that question is that the
(03:25):
technology is not sophisticated enough and reliable enough, and most importantly, really,
when you get down to it, cheap enough to do
on a widespread basis to allow us to to switch
to a fuel cell economy. So let's let's kind of
talk about what how it fuel cell works, what it does,
where it came from. Um. First of all, well, let's
talk about sir William Grove, Now, Sir William Grove, he's
(03:49):
the fellow who kind of invented fuel cells, if you will,
all right, he knew this was back in nine by
the way. He knew that if you if you uh
to some water and you ran an electric current through
the water, it would produce hydrogen and oxygen molecules of
water apart. Yeah, it's called electrolysis. And actually this this
(04:11):
tends to happen with various molecules. If you add enough
energy to the molecule, it tends to break the molecular
bonds and it will eventually break apart into its individual elements.
Most molecules will do this if you if you pour
in enough energy. That's going to be another important point
later on. So Grove he theorized, well, if you if
(04:33):
you add electricity to water and you get hydrogen and oxygen. Uh,
if you if you then combined hydrogen and oxygen, you
should get water and electricity, you know, because you know
it should be the same coming out as it is
going in. Right, So if you're yeah, So he's like, well, um,
how he ran some experiments and he created what he
(04:54):
called a gas voltaic battery and in this gas will
take battery. He then combined hydro ygen and oxygen and
he realized that he got water and he got free electrons,
which you know, if you direct free electrons through a path,
that's electricity. So he signed a little sign on the
side of the said electrons free. Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's
a protest held off the cell. Fifty years later you
(05:18):
get uh, Ludwig Mond and Charles Langer, and they're they're
the ones who coined the term fuel cell. Those are
the guys who actually found a fairly practical way to
do this, uh, that was easily repeatable, so you could
you could repeat the experiment improve Yes, something is happening here, because,
of course we know in science, just because you get
(05:40):
a result doesn't necessarily mean that you have proven your
hypothesis correct. You need to have a repeatable experiment that
can be done by anyone who has the facility to
do it at any rate um to prove that that
something really is going on. Yes, So that's where we
get into the fuel cells. And unlike battery, like a
(06:00):
battery is a self contained chemical reaction. Uh, and it
can and yeah, it's chemical reaction. It can very good. Well,
I mean nothing's going in, nothing's going out except electrons, right, yeah. Yeah.
The battery has chemicals inside it that react together. The
reaction produces electrons, and that is where we get, you know,
(06:21):
our little electric power from a battery. Fuel cells are
a little different. You can pour fuel into a fuel cell,
thus the name, and it will convert that fuel into
the water and the electricity. So as long as you
have a supply of hydrogen and a supply of oxygen
(06:41):
going into the fuel cell, and as long as the
membrane of the fuel cell and the other components remain
remain viable. We'll get into that in a little bit. Uh,
it should continue to to produce electricity. It's not gonna
It's not like it'll die after all the hydrogen runs out.
If you add more hyrogen and more oxygen, it should
continue to work, right. Okay, so we've covered the basics there. Uh,
(07:08):
let's let's talk. I'm gonna shift my notes around. I
actually have paper notes today. I usually don't do this. Uh.
Let's talk about the various components within a fuel cell. Okay,
we can do that all right. We've got the anode, yes, Uh,
the anode. It that's the that's the negative post, not
meaning that. I know, I was trying to listeners. I apologize,
(07:31):
I was finish. I mean, we all suffered for that
besides Chris. Um, no, no, no, it was good. So
that's what's conducting the electrons and that that get freed
from the hydrogen. So the anodes on one end. On
the other end is the cathode. Yes, that's the positive post.
So that's where the hydrogen. Uh. This, this is what's
(07:53):
conducting the electrons back from the external circuit. So I'm sorry,
We've got We've got the anode. That's where when the
electrons come out from the reaction, electrons go to the anode,
go into a circuit. So what electric motor or a
light bulb or whatever, right, Um, the electrons continue their
path once they go through that circuit to the cathode. Uh.
Then we've got the electrolyte uh in the center. This
(08:16):
is a usually approach a proton exchange membrane. Thing of
the membrane is kind of like a force field. Now
this force field will Yeah, the force field will allow
positively charged ions to pass through, but will repel negatively
charged particles. So electrons have a negative charge they cannot
(08:40):
pass through the membrane. If they could pass through the membrane,
fuel cells would not work. It is the bouncer of
the fuel cell. Yes, you may not come in, but
we're not cool enough because you are negative exactly, but
the close enough. So the so the high hydrogen are
the hydrogen ions are positively charged because they have given
up an electron. All right, So now now essentially what
(09:03):
you have a hydrogen ion is essentially a proton. So
you've got a proton. Protons are positively charged. You've got
this puzzlingly charged element there. It can pass through the membrane.
Now why would it pass through the membrane to get
to the other side. But what's on the other side oxygen,
and oxygen has a negative charge that it exactly, the
(09:27):
proton is attracted across the membrane to the negatively charged oxygen.
If if there were no negative charge, then the proton
would not necessarily migrate through the membrane. So, uh, when
it migrates to the membrane, it then combines with the oxygen,
and uh, you get the two hydrogens the one oxygen together,
(09:49):
and then the electron that had passed through the circuit
Remember it passed from the anode through the circuit into
the cathode. On that end, the two hydrogen atoms the
oxygen atom have combined into a molecule. The electron joins
that molecule, and that's when you get water. Right, So
you don't have any free electrons at the end of
(10:09):
this process. It all recombines on the cathode end, and
that's where you get the water. There's one other element
that's important with this, that's the catalyst, and this is catalysts.
What they do is they help reactions, right, the thing
that makes it possible to react. Yeah, Otherwise you would
have to pour even more energy and in order for
this to to react, and it wouldn't be viable at all.
(10:30):
So it's a special material and it it helps this
reaction of oxygen and hydrogen. And in most fuel cells
that you that people talk about, tends to be made
out of platinum nanoparticles. So a nanoparticle, of course is
insanely tiny, like tinier than the microscopic scopic scale, right,
but it is on a thin sheet of materials um
(10:53):
with as much area as exposed as possible to facilitate
more reaction. Right. So it's almost like you've spy a
painted a sheet with platinum. And because you can imagine,
that's pretty expensive. Platinum is a precious metal. It's pretty rare.
It's hard to get your hands on it. Even when
you're talking about nanoparticles, which are really tiny. You're talking
about billions of nanoparticles. Like a nanoparticle is not going
(11:16):
to do much for you. Um, so, yeah, you definitely
want to maximize that service area in order to allow
the reactions between hydrogen and oxygen to to happen or
else your your fuel cell doesn't do anything all right,
So you're pouring hydrogen in. You you're pumping oxygen in.
When I say pouring, I'm really mean pumping, because you're
(11:37):
probably pumping hydrogen gas. You're pumping both into this fuel cell.
They combine. You get the electrons, you get the water.
So why don't we have lots and lots of fuel
cells already running all all of our power, all of
our electronics. You've already hit on it. Why is that?
What was that? The biggest one being the cost? That
(11:59):
would be a huge one. Yeah, the platinum, that kind
of it's simply not it's simply not practical. Right, Yeah,
you get down to it, You're like, well, in a
in an ideal world, we cost would not be would
not even be a consideration, right, we would just be
talking about the fact that this is clean energy that
we have and uh, and we could run our cars
(12:20):
or other devices are homes, even powered plants, we could
run them on hydrogen and uh, and then we we
not pollute and we'd have a nice clean energy source.
But it comes down to the fact that cost is
an element. It's not the only one, of course, the Yeah,
the whole process of of splitting the water into two pieces. Yeah,
(12:43):
but you know that's actually is I guess should be
the source of hydrogen more than anything else. Yeah, source
of hydrogen is a huge, huge problem. Hydrogen does not
It's plentiful, but not in its elemental form on Earth.
It's usually combined with something else like oxygen to make water.
We we it's not like there's a hydrogen mind we
(13:03):
can go to and mind hydrogen pure hydrogen and use
that we when we we can get hydrogen from stuff
like hydrocarbon fuels or even water, as we pointed out
by breaking down compounds, right, which takes energy. So in
order to get this fuel cell fuel, you already have
to expend energy to create the fuel. So now you're
(13:26):
now you're looking at a fuel like an energy deficit situation.
Does it take more energy to create the fuel than
the energy you will get by using that fuel to
power a fuel cell? And as long as it takes
more energy for you to create the fuel than it
does to actually power whatever it is you're going to power,
it doesn't make sense. We already have a fuel that
does this, by the way, gasoline. Gasoline, Actually, it actually
(13:50):
takes more energy to create a gallon of gas than
a gallon of gas can create through putting it through
a motor or whatever. Yeah, because gasoline is a pretty
inefficient fuel, it turns out, especially compared to a fuel cell.
And you have to again look at the entire life cycle.
You're not just looking at, oh, well, how much how
much energy did it take to ship the gasoline from
(14:13):
the refinery to the uh to the gas station. It's
also how much energy did the refinery have to expand
in order to produce that gasoline. How much energy had
to be expanded to to get the oil out of
the ground to eventually become what would what would eventually
become gasoline. Um, it's really a big picture thing. And
that's that's the real problem with a lot of these
(14:34):
energy issues, is that once you start looking at the
big picture, you begin to realize, oh, this is this
is a buch more difficult problem than I originally imagined.
We'll be back with more in just a moment, to
talk more about fuel cells. Now, there are many different
(14:55):
kinds of fuel cells. Yeah, I thought I thought we
were getting ready to hit that, because one that we've
been talking about, I guess, probably without actually saying its name,
is the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell, right, also sometimes
called the polymer exchange membrane fuel cell. But same thing.
Why membrane and the exchange. Okay, I got it, Yep,
(15:18):
that's it. They're used in cars a lot, right, Yeah,
that that's kind of the stuff we're looking at cars. See. Now,
some of these fuel cells work really well at a
certain temperature range, and outside that temperature range they don't
work very well at all. Now, the polymer exchange has
a couple of different issues that make it not the
most ideal method of power generation within a car, And
(15:42):
I'll one of those is that Um, well, I mean
it's heat range is okay because it's it works best
somewhere around uh a hundred for you two degrees fahrenheit,
so you could you would first have to heat your
fuel cell up to this temperature for it to be
a to to work properly. So there there is a
(16:02):
warm up period. It's not like it's gonna work immediately
as you get in your car. One of the things
about the polymer exchange membrane fuel cell is that it
has to have a hydrated membrane. The membrane must remain hydrated,
which means essentially wet. Alright, So if you live in Minnesota,
you know the winners in Minnesota get really cold. And
(16:25):
when you get really cold and you got water, you
know what happens. It freezes. Yeah, it doesn't happen much
here in Atlanta, but up in Minnesota it could. Yes,
if the temperature fell far enough the water used to
hydrate that membrane. And remember the membrane is key to
this uh to this exchange. If the water could freeze,
(16:48):
that would make the membrane extremely brittle and it could
break and then you've got a broken fuel cell. Right,
So that here's problematic. Yeah, that's a bit of an issue.
And there are other types of fuel cells. There's the
solid oxide feel. So yeah, this is this is one
of my favorites. This would not work well in the car. No, no,
not at all. Um, simply the uh, simply because it
(17:11):
requires so much more in the way of temperature for
it to operate. Yeah, it operates best between seven D
and a thousand degrees centigrade. Yes, that's a that's pretty warm. Yeah, no,
it's pretty pretty steamy. But but steam that you mentioned
that see that that generates uh, you know steam as
(17:32):
a resulting that can be used to create electricity as well. Yeah,
you can use the steam to generate too, to push turbines,
or you could even use the steam, well not just
or and you could use the steam to help heat
U the facility. So let's say it's in the dead
of winter. U, the steam coming from this reaction could
go back into the heating unit to try and keep
(17:54):
the plant warm so that you don't have to generate,
you don't have to burn as much energy to keep
the the plant running right right now. Uh, they're not
as efficient or they're not it's it's not cost effective yet.
The cost effectiveness of the solid oxide fuel cell. Um
that the target is four dollars per kilo. What right
(18:18):
now it's about ten times that is that four thousand
dollars per kill A what to run one of these things? Um,
that's a problem. Well. UM. I'd also like to point
out that the solid oxide fuel cells have been in
the news recently in a in a pretty big fashion.
As a matter of fact, I believe we've talked about
one on this podcast not too long ago. The bloom
(18:40):
box Oh, the bloom Box bloom Energies. Bloom box fuel
cells are solid oxide fuel cells, and I don't know
that they run exactly the same way as the information
in our article about that on our side, slightly different process.
They probably do, because the ones that we're talking about
are mainly um. The solid oxide tends to often used
(19:04):
come in the form of coal, So you actually have
coal running a fuel cell, which you know you first
sit there and think like, WHOA, that's weird. I thought
we were going trying to get away from fossil fuels.
Not necessarily. In some cases we may have to use
fossil fuels to create the hydrogen or whatever the compound
is that we're going to use in the fuel cell,
because hydrogen is not the only one, it's just the
most popular one. Um. But we may have to use
(19:26):
fossil fuels in that process to generate the fuel we
need to run to to make the fuel cells go. Um.
There are other types as well. There's the alkaline fuel cell.
That's the kind that we're that they that uh the
space race used quite a bit back in the sixties. Yeah, um,
not really use that much anymore. It's not it's not
(19:47):
as it's really expensive, it's not as reliable as some
of the other technologies. Plus it requires pure hydrogen and oxygen. Yeah,
pure hydrogen and oxygen is hard to get your hands on,
or at least the pure hydrogen is. Um. There are
fuel cells that can use hydrogen that's not pure, but
that also tends to take its toll on the membrane.
(20:08):
So again, the membrane is a is a fairly delicate
part of a fuel cell, and uh, if you damage
that that membrane, then the fuel cell is not gonna
work anymore. Also, I guess we should also point out
that a fuel cell, when we're talking about a fuel cell,
an individual fuel cell does not generate that much power.
It's when you have a bunch of fuel cells working together, uh,
(20:28):
that you can generate enough electricity essentially in an array. Yeah,
a fuel cell stack is usually what we call it.
Uh we being those of us in the fuel cell industry,
say and journalists, Um, yeah, So an individual fuel cell
is like think of it. Like we talked about cell processors.
A cell processor is just one part of a group
(20:51):
of processors that all work together, same sort of thing.
Fuel cell is just one little electricity generation device that
works with several others to create enough electricity to actually
do something. But you also have the molten carbonate fuel cell,
the phosphoric acid fuel cell, the direct methanol fuel cell.
These are all variations. Um. They all basically do the
(21:14):
same thing, but they're doing it through different ways, and
some of them have different operating temperatures, different parameters. Some
of them are more reliable than others, but they require
such a high operating temperature that you wouldn't want to
use in a car, Like you don't want to use
a solid oxide fuel cell on the car because you
would die. You would have to have such sheets some
sort of protective material to to shield you from the
(21:36):
heat that your car would weighe so much that it
wouldn't matter how much of the electricity you're generating, because
it wouldn't move anywhere. It's gonna say you you'd have
to use most of the power for your air conditioning.
You know. They either the air conditioning or just getting
the wheels to have enough torque to actually push that
incredibly heavy vehicle forward torque. Um. So then we have
(21:57):
the phosphoric acid fuel cell um and uh you know
those those are those a little smaller? Yeah, yeah, those
aren't those aren't as huge, but they have such a
long went warm up time. Yeah. So again if you've
tried to if used a phosphor I guess that jewel
cell in your car, you have to start warming up
your car an hour before you were leaving. So that's
(22:18):
not really practical. Yeah. And the direct methanol fuel cell, Uh,
again we're talking about it's not as efficient. It can
um use methanol, but since since the energy output isn't
as great, it's not really seen as a viable fuel cell. Yeah.
I've seen I've seen some methanol fuel cells out and about.
In fact, Uh, when I went to the c E
(22:41):
s in two thousand and eight. Um, I believe it
was Toshiba, if I'm not mistaken, had a methanol fuel
cell powered m P three player on display, which was
pretty cool. Um, you know it's not it's one of
those things where you're like, really, seriously, I have to
pour methanol in this thing. But yeah, I mean it's
it was so small, you know, the size of an
MP th replayer that you know, I couldn't imagine empowering
(23:02):
you know, I'm building more a car. It's much more tiny.
But that's what they talk about when they talk about
the possibility of using fuel cells to power or say
laptop computers and things like that. Yeah, yeah, personal electronic devices,
that kind of stuff. It's still it still seems odd
to me that you would, you know, flip your laptop
over and pour in some method all and I guess
it would probably be an external supply of some sort.
(23:23):
My MP three player has a drinking problem. I'm gonna
talk very briefly about about the efficiency of a fuel cell.
This is kind of a complicated topic, but let's uh,
fuel cell efficiency depends on a lot of different factors.
Let's say that you have a fuel cell that runs
on pure hydrogen, and somehow you have a reliable source
(23:45):
of pure hydrogen, so you don't you know, there's no
problem with actually getting fuel for it, so eliminating that
as an issue. Yeah, Uh, assuming that the pure hydrogen
fuel cell has the potential to be up to eighty
percent efficient in generating electricity, so you get you're getting
eighty percent of the energy generated by the reaction to
(24:07):
actually become electricity. However, now then you have to put
it through an electric motor. So we're talking about this
for for cars. So electric motors are not efficient. They
don't they don't convert a pc of electricity into a
percent mechanical power. You lose some in heat. Yes, So
(24:29):
let's let's say you've got a really good electric motor
and the electric motor is also eighty percent efficient. You're
getting down to about sixty of your of the power
that's generated by the reactions within the fuel cell to
actually do work. So you've got sixty four percent efficiency.
Now that's amazing compared to a gas powered automobile, which
(24:51):
has got about uh like, like Chris said, gasoline is
just not that efficient, uh at generating power. Then you
think about all right, Well, what about electric vehicles like
you know the Prius, Well, that's a that's a hybrid.
That's true if you're talking about a pure electric vehicle.
(25:12):
I'm sorry, I should have said a pure electric vehicle.
So it's just running on an electric battery. Electric batteries
on their own can be really efficient, like nine efficient.
When you get to the electric electric motor part, it
eventually comes down to about efficiency. We got a little
bit more to talk about with fuel cells, and we'll
do that when we come back. Now, here's where you
(25:41):
have to go into the big picture again. How was
that electricity generated that that went into charging the battery.
In a lot of cases, at least here in the
United States, we're talking about fossil fuels again, Yeah, cold
power or something like that. So once you factor into
the cold power that was needed to generate the electricity
that initially charged that battery, you start seeing the efficiencies drop. Now,
(26:02):
if we assume that the electricity was generated through some
sort of renewable source, like let's say hydro electric facility,
so no fossil fuels went into producing this. Even then
when you're looking at the efficiencies, it goes to around
it's in the mid six so six six percent something
(26:22):
like that efficiency. So it's just a little bit more
efficient than a hydrogen car that's running on pure hydrogen.
And again, if we look at that with the electric battery,
we kind of had to look at it with the
hydrogen as well, like where did we get how did
we get that pure hydrogen? Once you factor that, and
this is why it gets so complicated, You're like, well,
in the big picture, does it make sense to move
(26:44):
to hydrogen? So we first have to answer that question,
doesn't make sense to move to hydrogen based uh? Fleet
of automobiles? Um? Will that from an energy standpoint makes sense?
Or will we just be switching one inefficient method for
ultimately another one. That's that's one question. There's another one though,
(27:07):
that's even bigger. All right, how do we build the
infrastructure to support hydrogen powered vehicles? Yes? This is UH,
this is one of the problems that organizations like better Place,
which is a car manufacturer or not car manufacturer, Um,
they are a systems manufacturer that's trying to work out
a way to make electric vehicles possible. And um, they
(27:33):
basically have been adapting vehicles to run on as plug
ins uh, which is all well and good, but see
what happens if you haven't had a chance to get
your car charged up, um, you know, and you are
running out of electricity. We're talking about the possibility of
stations where you could go and swap out your battery
(27:55):
for another you know, our battery array for another one.
And uh, you know that would be a convenient thing
if that already existed. But it's the same thing any
kind of alternative fuel, uh to what we've got now,
whether it's you know, needing more hydrogen for your fuel
cell powered vehicle or requiring more batteries for an electric vehicle. Um,
(28:17):
they're just simply aren't you know, power stations on every
corner like there are with gasoline vehicles. You're going to
have to either strike deals with those companies to do
that or start your own really expensive and we're talking
billions and billions of dollars, or as Carl Sagan would
have you, billions and billions of dollars. You really need
(28:40):
to jacket with the patches in the oldos. But yeah,
it's a little too warm for that at any rate. Uh, Yeah,
it costs. It's gonna cost a lot of money. To
build out that infrastructure, UM everything from the actual facilities
where they sell the hydrogen, to all the vehicles that
are going to be necessary to transport the hydrogen, to
the facilities that are there to generate the hydrogen. UM.
(29:01):
It's it's not a small task. And UH, the hydrogen
Fuel Initiative I just founded back in two thousand three
was it lost? Um it is. It's working to try
and find a way of making fuel cell vehicles practical
and cost effective. By I think that's incredibly ambitious, especially
(29:25):
when you consider that their budget is pretty low. In
the grand scheme of things. Now, it would be great
if we could switch to a hydrogen based UH transportation system,
because then you're looking at you no longer dependent upon
on oil, and because so much of our oil comes
from foreign nations that may or may not have very
(29:45):
friendly relationships with US. UM, it means that we're no
longer pouring money into into governments or into countries that
we may think ultimately could use that money to do
things that are not within our country's best interests. That's
a good way of putting it. I'm trying to like
dance lightly around the whole thing. But but hydrogen we
(30:05):
could produce right here at home if we found an
efficient way of doing it. So it didn't, you know,
so it no longer costs more to create the fuel
than the fuel itself would would benefit us. So that's
how fuel cells work. That's kind of the the whole detail.
Did you have anything else to add before I go
into No. I mean, there's there's a lot more to
(30:26):
it in terms of the depth of the reaction and
how all of that works. But no, I think we
did a pretty good job of of hitting the high
points of it. Yeah, yeah, and and it is a
huge challenge, and we maybe one that we overcome. It's
a little early to say, but before we get there,
I'm afraid we're gonna have to answer a little listener mail.
(30:52):
This listener mail comes from Megan from Boston, Massachusetts, and
Megan says, I love the podcast, keep them coming. Could
you please dedicate one podcast to Internet Protocol Version six.
I don't fully understand why i p V four is
running out of addresses and how the switch to i
p V six will be implemented. I think that would
make a great and informative podcast, and I'm sure there
are other listeners interested in this topic. Thanks. Well, it's
(31:14):
not really a big enough topic to do a full
podcast on necessarily, but we can give you a real
quick rundown on what the issue is. Yeah, the issue
is basically your I I P enabled cell phone, and
your laptop and your you know, iopod, and your tablet
(31:34):
and your three desktop computers, and your roommates gear and
the people downstairs and everyone else in the building and
everyone else in the city, in the county, in the state,
and the country and the world. There's a lot, a
lot of of of devices that everyone has now that
use their own individual IP address. And as as robust
(31:57):
as I p v four was, it just is going
to run out of addresses with all these new devices
coming onto the network and uh not retiring, it's enough
of them to make room. Yeah. See, I p v
four is a thirty two bit address system, and that
when you translate three two bit into actual managers, uh
and most you would have four billion, two four million,
(32:20):
sixty seven thousand two D addresses. Once those addresses are gone,
that's that's it. If you're on an IP four system,
you cannot add any more devices to the Internet because
each device has to have its own unique IP address.
That's the way the Internet works. If you don't have
your own unique address, you cannot send and receive information
(32:41):
because the information wouldn't know where to go. So I
was gonna say too, sorry to interrupts that one nice
thing about the switches that it's uh they coexist. Yeah. Yeah.
The IPv six uses a hundred and twenty eight bit
addresses as opposed to thirty two bit, which gives you
about three point four Okay, take a three, put you know,
(33:05):
put a four behind it. Then behind the four, put
thirty zeros. Okay, that's how many addresses, So many that
we would not run out in the foreseeable future. It
would take everyone having everything they own the Internet connected,
and even then we still would have plenty of addresses
left over. So uh and yes, like you said, the
two systems can coincide. Um. The issue about implementation is
(33:29):
that that's a an organization by organization process. It's not
like they're gonna flip a switch and everything switches from
IP four to I P six. And there's as far
as I know, no official timetable for migration, so people
are sort of taking their time to do that. Although
some people have already gone ahead and upgraded their systems
to run on I P P six. So um, and
(33:51):
I think pretty much all the mainstream operating systems, Uh,
you know, Windows, Mac, and Lenox will accept either. Yeah.
So it's it's not really an issue of of having
the infrastructure in place, it's just a matter of doing it. Yeah,
getting off your button switching over. Um. And what I'm saying,
getting off your butt, I mean that as the organizations
(34:11):
that are all running these servers that are they kind
of the backbone of the internet. Um, and so we're
kind of at their mercy whenever they get around to
switching it over. And some organizations don't prioritize it very highly,
so it may be a while before everyone's over to
I P six. Now, whether we get to the point
where we run out of addresses before we before that happens,
(34:33):
that remains to be seen. That wraps up that look
back at how fuel cells Work, which originally published twenty first,
twenty ten. Uh, fascinating topic. I've covered it a few times,
actually talked about it in a in a different podcast
as well as I think I've covered it a few
times on tech Stuff. I wrote about it for how
(34:53):
stuff works back when I was still a writer for
that website and uh talked about it on camera if
you times. I think it's a really cool technology, one
that is incredibly useful for certain, you know, applications. I
am still a little skeptical about it taking a prominent
place in vehicles, simply because building out the hydrogen fuel
(35:17):
infrastructure would require an awful big investment, and I mean,
there are certain dangers with hydrogen that we would need
to address, Like hydrogen is hydrogen gas is incredibly flammable,
so you definitely want to make certain that whatever strategy
you use is safe and reliable. So also there's the
(35:42):
whole thing about getting hydrogen in the first place. I mean,
hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe, but
it's almost always bonded to something else, So you've got
to spend energy in order to get hold of it.
And if what however you're doing that is taking up
more energy than what you're getting out, then it's a
losing proposition, but still pretty fascinating. I think regular old
(36:03):
electric vehicles are probably going to dominate. Fuel cells might
still have a place in the fleet, but I don't
think it's going to be the dominant way that we,
you know, provide power to our vehicles. However, that wraps
up this episode of tech Stuff. We'll be back with
some more space stations in the very near future, as
(36:25):
well as more tech news episodes. There are a lot
of things that are going on that are pretty darn
fascinating and several that are infuriating, so I'm sure I'll
be ranting and railing about them before too long, but
for now, let's sign off. If you have any suggestions
for topics I should cover on this show, reach out
to me on Twitter the handle is tech Stuff hs W,
(36:46):
and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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