Hydrogen for heating our homes

hello and welcome to just ever think so last week we had a look at hydrogen storage and I think it's fair to say it's been a pretty interesting week since then more than 80,000 people watched that video and 6,000 new subscribers have joined the channel just in the last seven days which is absolutely phenomenal and a massive thank you to all of you there's obviously some strength of feeling out there on both sides of the hydrogen debate and that came through loud and clear in your comments last week there was quite a bit of feedback suggesting that there wasn't enough emphasis in last week's program on the inherent inefficiencies of the hydrogen conversion process and that's a perfectly reasonable observation in fact it's something we looked at in the video that we did last September which you can click and have a look at up there but in the meantime here is a quick summary water electrolysis loses about 30% of the energy that's put into the reaction there's a slightly more efficient version called proton exchange membrane electrolysis which improves the output from 70 to 80 percent but this is still a lot less efficient than the 99 percent charging efficiency of a lithium-ion battery freezing hydrogen to about 20 degrees above absolute zero loses around 40 percent of the available energy whereas pressurization loses about 13% so pressurization tends to be the more common option transporting the fuel can cost anything between 10% and 40% of the energy depending on the transport method and the distance of travel and then you've got energy losses inside the fuel cell modern hydrogen fuel cells are about 60 percent efficient the other 40 percent is mostly heat loss taking everything into account you get an overall efficiency for lithium-ion vehicle batteries of about 75 percent compared to 35% for hydrogen fuel cells which equates to a cost per mile for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that's about eight times higher than the cost of lithium-ion battery powered vehicles so for small personal vehicles it's fair to say the hydrogen has got an uphill battle in the marketplace but by the way let's not forget that internal combustion engines can only operate at about 20 to 30% efficiency because the majority of their energy is lost to heat so in any comparison ice engines come out as the poor relation some of you also felt that hydrogen was just a backdoor way of allowing the fossil fuel producers to continue producing fossil fuels after all as we mentioned last week the industrial process of steam reforming produces hydrogen by splitting natural gas otherwise known as methane or methane in the United States a process which releases co2 and the concept of adding hydrogen to existing methane natural gas pipelines as a kind of bridging fuel to ease down natural gas production will some say also allow the fossil fuel companies to fudge their figures and make it look like they're doing a much better job than they really are and one or two of you over there in the United States also suggested that any grid level implementation of hydrogen is just shifting the emphasis from one monopolistic power producer to another allowing the shadowy Monument to maintain their grip on power and still control the prices that you and I pay for our energy there are all valid points that deserve the benefit of full debate which is probably something that's outside the scope of a single program but as with every single other disruptive technology that human beings have ever invented from The Telegraph and the internal combustion engine in the 19th century to renewable energies and the Internet today there will always be a body of opinion that extinct for reasons not to continue with its development and that's no bad thing in a way it keeps the developers on their toes and it probably does occasionally weed out the really wacky ideas from the mix in one sense here in Europe and particularly in continental Europe that fear of monopolistic centralized control that I spoke about a moment ago is just as prevalent as it is over there in the United States over here though the anxiety is all about Europe's heavy reliance on Russian methane gas European governments feel an acute sense of vulnerability to the vagaries of mr. Putin's regime as was so graphically demonstrated when Russia's gas giant Gazprom turned off Ukraine's gas supply in the middle of the harsh 2018 winter here in the UK our government policy is guided by our very own climate change Committee or CCC they're the people who earlier this year recommended a pathway by which the UK could reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 part of that pathway would see the UK government pushing ahead with the development of hydrogen the committee's report made these summary observations hydrogen is a credible option to help decarbonize the UK energy system but its role depends on early government commitment and improved support to develop the UK's industrial capability hydrogen can make an important contribution to long-term decarbonisation if combined with greater energy efficiency cheap low carbon power generation electrified transport and new hybrid heat pump systems which have been successfully trialed in the UK hydrogen could replace natural gas in parts of the energy system where electrification is not feasible or is prohibitively expensive for example in providing heat on cold winter days industrial heat processes and backup power generation but they also point out hydrogen is not a silver bullet solution there's clearly a great many potential opportunities being pursued and developed with hydrogen and again far too many for a single program so in today's video we're just going to focus on the part of that climate change committee report that talked about using hydrogen as part of a hybrid system to heat our homes heating homes businesses and industry accounts for nearly half of all the energy use in the UK and a third of UK carbon emissions so reductions in this sector will have a big influence on the UK's chances of hitting the 2050 target the CCC reckoned the cheapest scenario for the UK's national heating in a low-carbon world will be achieved by installing hydrogen boilers in conjunction with the electrification of heating by which they mean a hybrid heating system so what exactly is a hybrid heating system well it's a system that combines a heat pump outside the house with some sort of boiler inside the house there's two types of heat pump air source heat pumps ground-source heat pumps according to this very useful report at possibly one of the world's most geekly title websites Euler guide co uk a ground source heat pump extracts heat from underground pipes are buried in your garden either horizontally in loops or vertically downwards a fluid passes through these pipes which extracts heat from the ground and transfers it to a heat exchanger this heat exchanger heats water via taps and central heating an air-source heat pump is a fan unit which has installed outside your home where it extracts heat from the air outside even in temperatures as low as minus 15 and again this heat is used to heat water via taps in your central heating the other half of the hybrid system is the kind of boiler that most of us are already used to the boiler is at its most effective and cheapest to run in the cold winter months a hybrid heating system will monitor the temperature outside and automatically choose the most energy-efficient option for example when the temperature outside is 2 degrees Celsius or higher the heat pump will heat your home and hot water using renewable energy so your boiler doesn't need to run when the temperature drops the system will intelligently switch to your boiler so as to maintain efficiency and keep energy costs to a minimum in fact the boiler could just use natural gas like the ball is that most of us have got in our homes now but of course that wouldn't really contribute to our net carbon zero targets would it it could instead be an all-electric model electric combi boilers already exist and if they get their powerful renewable energy either because you get your electricity from a green energy provider or you've got solar panels on your roof or perhaps even a combination of both then an electric boiler is a very good low carbon alternative to our traditional gas boilers in fact so far in this scenario we haven't mentioned hydrogen at all so where does that fit in well as a result of those climate change committee recommendations that we looked at earlier back in 2018 the UK government department of business energy and industrial strategy or ba is headed by Claire parry commissioned frays and Nash consultants to produce a full report on the potential for domestic hydrogen boilers as well as Hobbs ovens and fires while the climate change committee does accept the production and use of hydrogen is generally less efficient than electrification they also point out the hydrogen is more readily storable than electricity a very large scale which is why the UK and other European governments are quite keen to use it to replace natural gas and potentially oil in parts of the energy system we're full electrification is very difficult or disruptive or very expensive so how do hydrogen boilers work then well that's a very good question because they're not actually commercially available just yet that's where the report from the Fraser Nash consultancy comes in they looked at three likely options for development number one was new appliances developed specifically to run on hydrogen number two was the adaptation of existing natural gas appliances in situ to run on hydrogen and number three was new dual fuel appliances that can switch from natural gas to hydrogen and they've actually identified some fairly significant technical challenges that we'll need quite a lot of research and development to overcome in very very brief summary of their very large report they made these final conclusions hydrogen has a significantly higher flame speed greater flammability range and is likely to burn as a higher temperature than natural gas these characteristics present significant engineering challenges that particularly affect the burners in appliances specifically there are concerns with light back which is propagation of flames back through burners higher NOx emissions and the potential explosion of unburned gas yeah they need to sort that one out the report also talked about flame failure devices and these things detect the presence of a flame and automatically switch the gas off if the flame goes out natural gas boilers use ionization sensors to detect combustion gases from the flames the ionization sensors don't work with a hydrogen flame so you need something else industrial processes use ultraviolet and infrared sensors they're a good option but they'll have to be redeveloped to reduce their size and cost other components like pipelines gas valves and heat exchangers we'll need a certain amount of redevelopment to cope with the different combustion characteristics of hydrogen but essentially the fundamental operating principles won't fundamentally change perhaps their most important piece of advice though is this development of a hundred percent hydrogen domestic appliances will require government intervention initially this requires target funding to close the innovation gap and develop the first generation of appliances in other words some central government finance paid for out of our taxes will have to be diverted from other funding programs into the research and development and quite possibly subsidization of these new technologies the climate change committee themselves even went as far as saying this depending on the development of hydrogen ready appliances and the cost premium over natural gas boilers but government should consider mandating hydrogen ready heating appliances by the mid-2020s similar to the successful manned ation of condensing boilers 20 years earlier and that's a concept that might be more readily acceptable over here in Europe than it would be in some other societies around the world not least in the United States and then there's still the issue of how the hydrogen is produced in the first place as this CCC infographic shows it won't just be via a water electrolysis the intention is still to use steam reforming as well but with the important addition of carbon capture and storage and that's a whole separate technology and debate that we've looked at a couple of times in previous programs so I won't dwell on it here suffice to say that for various reasons the jury is very much still out on whether carbon capture and storage is a viable option within the carbon reduction project no doubt many of you will have a view on this subject and have been some great debates in the discussion threads on the previous video so please do feel free to dive in and leave your thoughts in the comment section below we could go into loads more really technical detail on this one but in the interest of brevity and sanity I'll leave it there for this week I have they left links to all the articles and technical papers that I used to research this program so if you want to delve into the subject a bit more then scroll down past the description in the comment section and they'll all be there for you to click on please do give us a like on a show if you found the program useful and informative and most important of all if you haven't already done so please do subscribe to the channel to support the work that we do 6000 people in a week can't be wrong after all and if you hit the little notification bell when you subscribe then you'll be kept up to date whenever a new episode comes out it is of course completely free to do that and all you need to do is click on that link there as always thank you very much for watching have a great week and remember to just ever think see you next week

Channel: undefined

Views: 41,106

Rating: 4.9492636 out of 5

Keywords: Hybrid Heating Systems, Commitee on Climate Change, Climate Crisis, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Energy, Hydrogen Economy, The Third Industrial Revolution

Id: IEdPp7_lJes

Length: 14min 3sec (843 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 09 2019