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For the last 50 years every crewed mission to space launched by the US has been powered by fuel cells, these directly convert the fuel’s chemical energy into electrical power without an intermediate mechanical step. So, let’s try and explain how they work, and how there are many types of fuel cell technology which have their own advantages and disadvantages.
Fuel cells are also used to power and heat homes using natural gas. At least in Europe and especially Asia they’re commercially available. There are several types in use, like solid oxide fuel cells and proton-exchange membrane fuel cells.
Oh I just see that Wikipedia has an article about that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_combined_heat_and_power
So thats why shutting off the fuel cells was a big deal in apollo 13! I always wondered why on earth you would install one shot valves on something so critical ; shutting the valves means the cell cools down and cant be heated up to operating temp again. TIL.
Annies Node and Kathies Node.
OK what now?
Unfortunately hydrogen fuel cells are expensive due to the materials they are made from, they are fussy in their operation cycle and most of all, hydrogen takes up a lot of volume and it evaporates over time. Too bad for Lockheed Martin’s Venture Star really…
This is a very good summary of fuel cells. I think the methanol-water fuel cell and the solid oxide natural gas fuel cell both convert the fuels to hydrogen then the hydrogen does the work.
Didn’t Elon state that the energy density of current state batteries is already higher than fuel cells?
So the main challenges are to ionise hydrogen at low temp and the proton exchanger ?
Am I the only one who uses fuel cells to power my KSP spacecraft?
Mmmm… Bacon fuel cell…
Hi x 8
G’day
Sweet
Electrical videos
Epic tales to be told.
Fuel cell tech for cars is dead tech. There is no way Hydrogen can be stored and supplied in a city or urban areas where the words Blast Radius need adding to the planning application!
For ships, trains and possibly Trucks and Buses where refueling can be done safely I can see few problems so long as regular inspections (daily) can be undertaken by qualified staff.
5:45 in the chart why would solar be separated from photovoltaic? Are they not the same?
Scott you need to make a video about the new ULA upperstage fuel cell. I think its ACES.
No surprise that Dragon lacks Fuel-cells, Musk calls them Fool-cells after all.
Nice👍
That controller was a hero
One of the earliest vehicles developed to run on fuel cells was a tractor. Allis-Chalmers built 10 fuel cell powered tractors in 1959. I haven’t been able to find specifics on the type of cell, but it seems to use atmospheric air and hydrogen.
6:18 Interesting that they used 31 cells in series at a nominal potential of 1V each. I believe the power supply was nominally 28V. Maybe the extra 10% was to cater for quality variation and degradation over time.
Nice.!
Magic. Got it.
And we all know Power for Battery powerd cars comes just magically to the plug.
And massive batteries are brought by the battery fairy at night with no environmental issues whatsoever.
Wereas nasty Hydrogen has to be produced.
And run them in reverse and you get a nice dehumidifier.
How close are we to methane-air / oxygen ones at lower temperature and pressure?
as an added bonus to the mechanism for a photoelectric chemical battery one can use Kelvin generator cross circuits to increase ionic voltages across the bridge as a kelvin generator liquid coil. to compound what was said below.
🙂
Where are the camper’s fuel cells available?
One week after the scheduled launch of Crew DM2 will be the 55th anniversary of the last launch of American astronauts from US soil in a spacecraft not powered by fuel cells.
Scott Manley as consultant for Kerbal Space Program 2.
I like my methanol with water too.
If this pans out, there might be some justification to look into methane or hydrogen storage that would work well for vehicle applications, which really is the limitation on why hydrogen fuel cells never caught on – the volume and weight of an adequate pressure vessel is the real limit, and this might surpass that to the point where this can become viable.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6488/297
Fourteen minutes on why fuel cells are interesting! Thirty seconds on why SpaceX won’t be using them…
Why can’t Scott be my Online School Teacher , he explained a full chapter of chemistry in 15 mins while it took my teachers 3 weeks.
1:13 you forgot the l in sulphate
God you are just brilliant you constantly provide genuinely useful and fact packed universally brilliant content. Thanks Man,ley
Hey Scott, there are bloom fuel cells behind the parking structure at the Ikea in Emeryville. I was really surprised when I discovered them. Not sure why Ikea needs them but hey still pretty cool.
This is a fine topic!
SpaceX 😍
I saw a fueling station for fuel cell cars. That can’t be efficient. There seemed to be a huge power consumption to fuel the cars
Interesting, thanks
11:15 Not sure what you mean by “pure-electrical”. Do you mean ones using rechargeable batteries?
Just when you mentioned the fuel cell that was leaking hydrogen across the barrier, to the oxygen bit… I had a motorcycle, that because of my ignorance, the electrolyte had dropped, and it exposed the plates, and a tiny crumb of metalic oxide had bridged the plates in one of the cells…. and that detonated some 500cc’s of the hydrogen and oxygen mixture in the top of the battery and blew out the top of the side of the battery… I was trying to start the bike, and I jumped with fright, as it sounded exactly like some one with a sawn off shot gun had pointed it about a foot to one side of my head and fired it, from a bush 10 feet away….
I contemplated why no one had ever made a cryogenic bomb – being a mixture of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, in the absolutely ideal stroichimetric ratio for the optimum bang, and keeping it at super duper low temperatures until dropped….
In terms of “the primary” explosive – this is the “go to” fundamental horror.
The drawback is that liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen react at cryogenic temperatures and explode anyway….
But if you could mix it and prevent it from exploding and then suddenly raise the mixture to say 1200*C through out… Whammo! Mega Double Plus extra Good Good. The issues of ENERGY from detonating at say minus 250*C, to detonating at 1200*C – Whooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Mega Bang.
Point of note here. Initially, I would only experiment with detonating hydrogen and oxygen in at least small amounts, and in a fairly safe kind of a way…. Building a scale model F1 Apollo Engine in the back yard… first I would gain LOTS of experience, and then gradually work my way towards an engine test stand, and a concrete bunker a long way away from the test stand…..
Thanks Scott…!
Love this stuff
I didnt understand a thing but good video as usual
well, Dragon v2 will be the first new human-rated spacecraft in 39 years anyway
Scott you sexy beast! Back at it again answering questions nobody knew they wanted to know.
A video on examples of astronaut badassery would be awesome!
if one alternates the 589nm & 425+nm photo cylinders the ionic water charges will behave as an alternating AC ion wave. instead of DC.
A bit over 15 years ago, i worked on a research project that was run by Reliant Resources, (and of course funded by the DOE) that was intended to be distributed power generation fuelled by natural gas that was steam cracked and fed to a PEM fuel cell array. Thisxwas intended to be a device aboutvthe size of a large outdoor AC condensing unit consisting of a cracking unit, PEM array, and inverters. Each subsystem was contracted out to different suppliers, our group was in charge of the PEM array, as well as final integration. The cracker was a majorcstumbling block, i do not believe the contractor had any intention of delivering a functional product, mercaptans were a problem as the sulphur poisoned the Nafion PEM membranes. Water was necessary to keep the Nafion membranes moist at all times and water purity was an issue. The cells had a limited lifetime (but we were working on that, it was a materials issue that i was working with the metallurgists to help solve due to my background with high performance ceramics and plastic seals) we were able to generate 21KW out of 6 PEM cells, and that was with 30% inverter losses. But the cracker delays as well as the political issues of the time ended up killing the project.
This was brilliant.
OK, aide from your pronunciation of “Gemini”.
When I was in school we were taught one of the main problems with hydrogen fuel cells was storage — namely embrittlement of the containment vessel which can lead to catastrophic failure under pressure. Is this no longer a valid concern?
How are they related to the creation of bacon. I need to know
Hey Scott Manley, could you make a million more videos on rocket engines plz
? I’m helping run a liquid bipropellant rocket engineering club and your vids are perfect for member education, which is a big hurdle.
Can you do a video on all the things invented for space flight that we use in our every day lives?
Wow! I now know what fuel cell are and how they work!
Thank you so much!
Hello! Great video about fuel cells on spacecraft.
About fuel cells on vehicles another issue, aside refueling stations, is fuel cost. FCH2 is more expensive than electricity even when produced from cheap natural gas. To be competitive you would need almost free electricity from off-peak nuclear or wind or so much solar than middle day becomes off-peak. We are still many years to that situation I’m afraid.
10:50 You mean ground vehicles? Spacecraft are vehicles, too.
before I forget. the pure water will become conductive as the IONS become more common in parts per billion.
Electric Videos are dominating my screen! thanks for the great video MR. Manley!
Thanks for bringing these concepts down to a level most anyone can understand. Nice Job Scott!
I use fuel cells a lot in my Kerbal Skylab Workshop Station
I very much appreciate you rigorously going through the details of technology. Thank you!
6:55 No, you mean 3 batteries. You already said each one was made of 31 cells.
I love the insight this video brought to fuel cells, at least for this guy.
Thanks man!
Wait so the hydrocarbon fuel cells release CO2? Why not just run an engine at that point.
Love how scott slipped and fell back into the queens English and said Gemini (Gem-in-eye) btw its the right way.
Seriously, the quality on these Scott… Can we like a video more than once?
11:40 why hello there, I see my city
smack in the middle of SF and sac
Thank you for this video! I love it when you explain stuff, and this is a really interesting subject that I don’t know much about. So your video was awesome.
Always a pleasure to learn new things with you, Scott. Thanks! I didn’t realize there were so many planned applications for fuel cells outside of aerospace!
Excellent video. I have worked on solid oxide fuel cells when I was doing by bachelors degree. The most common problem with the SOFC is the adherence of carbon on the anode surface.
I understood 0% of this video yet still enjoyed it.
Using Bacon’s Law, how many degrees of separation are there between Tom Bacon and Kevin Bacon?
10:01 Ah, you forgot to say “jemmin-ee” and went “jemmin-eye” instead. Which I think I prefer anyway.
7:00 chef boyardee cooking up a spicy fuel cell
“Where’s the kaboom? There was supposed to be a shuttle shattering kaboom!”
7:45 Hehe, “kiliwatts”
Huh?
You lost me in the first minute. But I haven’t gone to high school yet so I think I’m fine
I’ve got a kind of Pavlov response with automatic “it’s gonna be a good video” when I hear “Hullo”
Always fun to log in to youtube and find a new Scott Manly Video Fresh off the Press!
I worked for the company that made the Apollo and Shuttle fuel cells
You did an excellent job describing them
Sadly this small division was spun off after the grounding of the Shuttle and soon thereafter the new company went bankrupt
A foreign company now make stationary fuel cells at the factory
I lost you at the first second.
“Astronaut badassery” must be a thick book.
Very interresting, could you explain again…please. 🤔 i lost you after “hello, scot manley here…..”
The lack of fuel cells on the Dragon isn’t that surprising given that battery power density has increased dramatically in fifty years, that Elon Musk runs a company that makes batteries, and that the spacecraft doesn’t use hydrogen for other purposes so incorporating it is not incremental in nature.
I have a 1.4kw hydrogen fuel cell I plan to use at ChickenHole Base. 😊
We covered fuel cells and batteries in last year’s chemistry lesson on reduction/oxidation. Thank you for reminding me that I’ve already forgotten about its contents.
THIS IS THE KABOOM CASE
How many beers would Scott need to accurately recreate the landing of the “KABOOM CASE” in KSP?
11:01 – “In the 2010s, the Bush administration spent…”
The Bush administration ended in January 2009. I assume this was the Obama administration?
I’m very interested in this chart 5:44 anywhere I can get a better breakdown/ higher res image?
A battery is basically a fuel cell and a fuel tank sealed up together and intermingled. This is handy, concise, and pretty accurate. All the mechanical shenanigans, temperature optimization, fuel-purity requirements – all of it – is the effort to “grow” the fuel tank aspect *without* growing the (complex, expensive, heavy) electrode/electrolyte interface part. (Which is often amazing looking at how much extra gear that’s taking!) The fussing with “what is the electrolyte” and “what is the anode/cathode” are all the precise same problems of batteries (although fuel cells often involve more dinking with gases).
Just did my Bachelor’s thesis on Fuel Cells; I gotta say that you’re spot on with your vid!
10:08
I work on KC-135 jet engines for a living.
Occassionally I see something that shocks me… In this case, all the hardware in this photo, such as the style of canon plugs, excessive amounts of safety wire, etc, looks insanely familiar… Because it’s exactly the sort of stuff my jet’s made out of. I occassionally get these sobering reminders just how OLD my jet it.
Similarly, I once saw videos of the interiors of B-17s and DC-4s… I swear to god, we use identical light fixtures and seat racks as these WW2 planes.
And in 15 minutes, Scott summarizes the thesis chapter that took me six months to write. :p
1:48 – Note that this happens even without a load connected, because even dilute sulphuric acid corrodes lead and lead dioxide (albeit slowly), evolving hydrogen and oxygen in the process; this is why lead-acid batteries have such a short storage life.