As climate change accelerates, finding clean alternatives to fossil fuels is more urgent than ever. Social entrepreneur Vaitea Cowan believes green hydrogen is the answer. Watch as she shares her team’s work mass producing electrolyzers — devices that separate water into its molecular components: hydrogen and oxygen — and shows how they could help make green, carbon-free fuel affordable and accessible for everyone. “This is how we end the fossil fuel era,” Cowan says.
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27 Comments
Well Hydrogen is not efficient as fossil fuel. You need high amount of energy to split water molecules. More work need to be done by the hydrogen industry
Omg the arrogance of this! Like what about all the energy it takes to separate the hydrogen? Also what about the huge amount of energy it takes to compress and store it? Like if you are claiming the revolution those issues should be addressed!
Has some Theranos vibes for sure!
Is there a difference between hydrogen and “green hydrogen” or is it just a buzz word?
Quite Insightful
You are talking about the least important things, it is a very very PC and trying-to-be-spectacular talk which does not reflect on the main issues. Planes and steel producing? Kind of irrelevant. Heating homes and creating electricity for the private and community consumption and also land traffic (cars,trucks) are the very vast majority of the problem, creating energy for them via fossils (oil, gas, coal) and nuclear (which is even more dangerous as there is no solution for the expired fuels taken out from the plants – not to mention the disasters in Chernobil, Fukushima and now Zaporizhzhia plant in Ukraine, nuclear plants should be stopped immediately) is the thing to solve. And no, it is not only global warming, mainly on the short term – finally we should emphasise very loud, mainly after the war in Ukraine that buying fossil fuels from not democratic countries like Russia, Saudi-Arabia, Qatar etc. is a very important security risk, giving money to these insane dictators will maybe destroy our life on the planet faster than global warming. It is not the question that how cheap to produce green hydrogen, the question is that when fossils and nuclear will be prohibited and terminated forever? I think it is terrible how many people cannot see that both of them can kill us instantly – Russia started the war from the money it has collected through the years from selling fossils to Western Europe and who knows when they start to throw nukes on us? Maybe it happens today??? And as I write this, there are battles around the Zaporizhzhia plant, they are literally shooting rockets onto the largest nuclear power plant in Europe… Unfkinbelieveable.
And worst. Hydrogen Would made a true green-house efect much more than CO2, on the atmosphere of this planet.
Let us look why.
¿How do you get Hydrogen?, from water, H2O molecules on liquid phase.
¿What is getting out of the factory when you make Hydrogen Gas?, Oxygen, in Gas Form (O2 molecules). They go to atmosphere.
¿And what happens in the continental conductions of Hydrogen, where this gas would scape?, H2 molecules go to atmosphere, and there, link to O2 oxygen, and make H2O molecules, and one Oxygen gets free, increasing the O2 on our atmosphere, but, the worst, increasing the H2O Gas on our atmosphere,,,,,,,,, And H2O is a BIG green-house efect gas, not like CO2, H2O really send Infrareed photons to surface.
¿And what gets out of engines (whether thermal engines, or fuel-cell engines) to atmosphere?,,,,,H2O molecules on Gas phase.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
In the end, all over the planet, thousands of tons of water in liquid state, will end up as thousands of tons in gaseous state (Energy that is taken from the electric grid, which should give that phase change energy, plus the generated electric energy, plus the transport losses, plus ,,,,), ,,,,,,,
And we will have thousands, hundreds of thousands, of tons of HIGH greenhouse gas, H2O, which before was in liquid form in the sea, and now will be in gaseous form in the atmosphere.
And this would increase each year, more and more full of H2O -Gas. A nice Green-house planet,,,,,,,,
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A gas, which DOES bend the infrared photons towards the surface of our planet, because it weight less (18 au) than others on atmosphere (N2, 28 au of mass, or O2, 32 au). ( 'au ' is atomic unity of mass, the mass of Hydrogen Atom).
A Gas (H2O) who DOES bend the infrared photons towards the surface of our planet, not like the CO2 does, because it weight more (44 au of mass) than others on atmosphere (N2, or O2). So, CO2 never increase its density with altitude, so, never made a layer of decreasing refraction index, so,,,,, CO2 , on this kind of atmosphere, send infrared photons, to space.
H2O, send, on this atmosphere, infrared photons,,,, to surface, a true green-house efect.
The only way to get not this damage, is using the Hydrogen of the atmosphere, from H2O on gas-phase on atmosphere.
I do not know the economy of this, but I guest take H2O from atmosphere, condense it, electrolisis it,,,,, should be more expensive.
As a Spanish saying goes, we didn't need those saddlebags to make this trip with this donkey.
,,,,,,, Does Ursula von der leyen know what a thing called an atom is? ,,,,,,,
I do not know who the donkey is 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣,,,,
Uplifting presentation! A lot of comments correctly pointed out the problems with hydrogen transport & storage: (1) embrittlement from small hydrogen atom (2) extreme 700-bar pressure to keep hydrogen liquid. As well as energy loss from conversion.
But what about the hydrogen derivatives she mentioned? Specifically ammonia (NH₃). Nitrogen is readily available from the atmosphere (78% of atmosphere) and so can be combined with hydrogen (H₂) using the Haber Process. Ammonia has much lower liquid pressure ~10bar and does not suffer from embrittlement.
One problem is ammonia has a much high ignition temperature than gasoline so may be less energetic when used directly in an combustion-style engine. But, alternatively, there could be on-board equipment that converts NH₃ to back to H₂ so hydrogen can be re-used on-the-fly as needed while retaining the benefits of ammonia storage & transport.
Sure, there are energy losses with all this (H₂ → NH₃ then NH₃ → H₂). But mostly just need to beat the efficiency of gasoline and diesel. Gasoline engines are terribly inefficient at 20% and that doesn't even include the huge amounts processing it took to explore, drill, refine and distribute the stuff. Lets not forget the existential crisis of continued fossil fuel use too.
So she sells a device for regular individuals that produces hydrogen from water?? 🤔 If yes, one would still need another device (in other words: engine) to take in that hydrogen and "burn" it to produce electricity, correct?? 🤓
This technology is from 1926 😂😂😂
bunu sadece proje için izlemek acı veriooo
yes hydrogen is future
You missed the chance to show the upside of it.
There is no such thing as’Green Hydrogen’. Even hydrogen split with the use of hydro power, wind, or solar—steals clean energy that could replace fossil fuels— our electric grid and the natural gas, oil and coal — to power it — cannot be ignored to produce this energy gobbling gas. And how, might I ask, do you get hydrogen to the market? Hydrogen, like hydrocarbons, has to be transported in tankers, pipe lines for hydrogen do not exist. Green hydrogen promotion is a delaying tactic put forth by GM, Toyota, and Honda… so that they can remain competitive against electric cars.
Great presentation, & good luck with your business' mission! Something that's key to making it really work (IMO) is for it to be easily serviceable by the operator &/or literally require zero external services to maintain, at least as much as a computer
Really good presentation and I have very high hopes for Hydrogen.
Something I was wondering though, if we use electricity to split hydrogen and oxygen in water, can the resulting components provide more energy than the electricity that was used? Is the ongoing refinement of the technology focusing on improving the splitting of H2O, on the combustion of hydrogen/oxygen energy, or in new compounds based on hydrogen/oxygen? I suppose, pre-treatment of the water could have an effect too. I'm just wondering where the research is heading.
The fuel cell technology is one of the least efficient of all energy generation options out there, the current fuel cell tech is heavily dependent on platinum n one more rare earth element, we don't have enough of them that can meet our ever growing energy demand. I have no clue how come all of sudden so many countries are dancing on the tunes of green hydrogen, something is fishy.
people are just ignoring the cons there is always down to emerging or current technology. Nobody addresses the main issues and problems with hydrogen.
All talk and little to no action. American society has known about other lower carbon-based sources of energy for a century. Early on the necessary technology may not have been available but they have been for at least 50 yrs. Wind energy for example has been used for centuries as has been building river dams and geothermal. In the mid-20th century along came nuclear but the development of that (like everything else) was designed and built “on the cheap” such that containment of accidents and failure was largely ignored to save money. Along came the “space race” during which NASA developed compact hydrogen fuel cells to serve as electrical sources in orbital vehicles. That technology in and of itself could’ve been exploited for use in private homes such that utilizers wouldn’t be dependent upon utility companies. But those companies kept the technology off the market because people generating their own electricity would undermine established carbon-based fuel supply. So green technologies have been around for decades. Here we all are still discussing them while many communities complain or protest whenever some proposes a wind farm near them with bogus excuses of noise, harming a few birds, etc. All propaganda from established energy companies. If little to nothing has been done in the last 50+ yrs, don’t expect any change in the next 50.
Maby explaining how Mutch energy is needed to create the hydrogen would have been a point to make..
Not happening.
Building compact electrolysers adjacent to every fossil fuels powered plants can take ages to achieve.
my family owns a few of these plants in the US. we're staunch republicans. stop politicizing efficient energy, something we are ALL for.
There is 1 Hydrogen atom and 2 Oxygen atoms in a molecule of water always has been and always will be there is no such thing as green Hydrogen and no such thing as H2 if you want to have two atoms of Hydrogen it is 2 H in scientific notation and 2 O for two Oxygen atoms regards Graham Flowers MEng
How beautiful is the lady dressed in green!
Where can you store hydrogen? Compress it, condense into a storage media? And burn it to produce water vapor… SO, How can you produce hydrogen? Electrolysis, that takes electricity, force the oxygen from water, leaving H2, that will still take energy. Maybe CO2 is part of the solution?
I really wonder where would you get the hydrogen When water shortage is still a problem