 Hello, this is Richard Ha. I'm going to be your host today on inventing our future. The subject is hydrogen, and our guest is Dr. Michael Gainsberg. Michael, and then just talk about who you are, and then we'll get right into it, talk about the hydrogen the way you feel comfortable, and then we go from there. Great. Yeah, thanks Richard. Nice to be with you again. And my name is Michael Gainsberg. I have been working in the renewable energy industry for about 15 years, and I did my PhD in green hydrogen. And then for the last couple of years have worked in developing green hydrogen plants around the US. So happy to talk to you about the production of hydrogen and also the use of hydrogen. Okay. You know what, a lot of people are curious about is there's all these different colors of hydrogen. Green, blue, polka dot. Maybe you can help us with that. Yeah, there's this like a hydrogen color wheel, but they're not actually colored. The hydrogen itself, the colors refer to how much carbon is associated with that hydrogen. So what is the carbon footprint of that hydrogen? And when you call, when you probably heard of gray hydrogen, that's when you make it from natural gas, you take a methane molecule and you burn it basically and produce CO2 and H2, and that's the hydrogen. So when we say green hydrogen, we make it by splitting water in a process called electrolysis, and then we have as low as a zero carbon intensity. There's also pink. Pink is referring to the production of hydrogen from nuclear energy. And then you also have blue. So blue is the same thing as gray, but you capture the carbon. So they, I don't really know why they call it blue, but it's considered to have a similarly low carbon intensity as green hydrogen. Oh yeah, that's, that's really interesting. You know, another thing that's on people's minds is the safety of hydrogen. The first thing they think is just going to blow up. And Inderberg comes to mind. And I don't really think it was the hydrogen, but maybe you can explain about the safety and how fast it moves and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, of course. So I think that that definitely always comes to mind for folks and I talked to everyone from the fire departments and local local communities as a developer these days to, you know, to really to really anyone and so the hydrogen itself is certainly a flammable, flammable gas. It has a, it's called the flammability range between four and 75% in air. That's pretty wide compared to other fuels. So under sort of an optimal combustion condition, the energy that's required to initiate hydrogen combustion is much lower than that required for other fuels. So, for example, a smart, a small all spark will ignite it. So we have what's called the lower explosive limit. So the amount of hydrogen that's in the air and needs to be below a certain amount so that it's they know that it doesn't ignite. But in, you know, in, in the, in the practice of using the hydrogen engineering systems are designed to prevent, you know, a lot, a lot of hydrogen from being released. The other thing that's, that's different is that it, you know, burns with a pale blue flame. That's, that's difficult to see in the daylight. So it's very, it's pretty impossible to detect by human, by human eyes. So it needs to be, you know, sense, it needs to be a sense and then add, we need to add to that, we need to add odorants to do that, to that fuel, which is similar to what we all already do with natural gas. We add odorants. So we need, we need hydrogen and flame detectors. Whenever you have hydrogen systems. The other thing that I'd mentioned is that, you know, when, when we use hydrogen in vehicles, which will probably be the, you know, the most common use for, for everyday folks is it's compressed to a very high level, very high pressure. So, so when it's compressed, you know, there's, there's more flammability concern, there's more safety concern there at, at high pressure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, I was over at Hank Rogers place, and they were demonstrating the use of hydrogen like in a hydrogen burner, you know, and it looks like a regular stove, you know, a propane stove. But you know, when you put your hand up close to the flame from the side, you don't feel it until you're kind of almost on top of it. Why, why is that? Yeah. So it's, it's really about the, the temperature of the flame, but, but more so that the fact that hydrogen is, is, is the very light molecule. So it goes, it goes actually vertically up, the propagation is vertical, rather than, than lateral, we call it. So you're not going to feel it more from the side, but you'll feel it more from directly above that hydrogen gas goes straight up. Man. So, so what, what, what is the practical indication of that? Because propane, you can feel the heat from, from the sides everywhere. Yeah. So, and so you can imagine that that's what we're used to. But now when the, which treat up, is there anything that the average person would kind of need to kind of get in their minds about how this thing works? Yeah, I mean, because hydrogen, you know, in addition to being vertically propagating is also emitting very little infrared heat, which you can sense it's more, more in the ultraviolet range. Again, the, there's, there's a need for there to be sensors in any, in any hydrogen, you know, systems, as, as well as like, like I mentioned, this odor, and so it does, it does represent a different kind of, you know, different kind of risks for folks. So, you know, flames, flames are a little harder to sense for that reason, like you, like you noticed. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and, and you mentioned that it, it rises quite fast compared to, so it doesn't sink down to the ground and then starts building up and then get to the flame, right? Exactly. And yeah, what do people do to, to, to make sure it's safer, knowing that that's the characteristic. Yeah. So in, in a facility where you either produce the hydrogen or use it, you know, fill where you're using it to fill a vehicle, for instance, which I think is going to be the most common use for everyday, everyday people is, you'll often have, I noticed this working on a project in California, you'll have a, a blast, a blast, a wall, essentially that's rated for any kind of incident that could happen with the, with the hydrogen in terms of any kind of explosion or flame. You have to separate, you know, people from, from, from that potential, from occurring. And so those controls have to be in place. And I think in addition to that, you know, you have to have minimum safety distances between, you know, people and, and, and, and hydrogen. In addition, you know, when you, if you're using hydrogen, you know, for your car, for instance, it's going to be, it's going to be stored in, you know, tanks, and it's going to be, you know, there's going to, you're not going to have any direct exposure to it. You know, and then if there is potentially, then there's going to be some sort of sensor or alert that comes on, that's going to shut down the system. So we really do have to rely on these, you know, on these engineer, engineering, you know, basically engineering and, you know, mechanisms to prevent, to prevent folks from being exposed. Yeah. Yeah. You know, in talking about vehicles, if you can figure out a way for it to escape, then you don't have much of a problem. Yeah, this could be compared to gasoline or stuff like that. Is that fair to say? Yeah. I mean, like in, in, in hydrogen systems, they're regulated in such a way that you have to have, you know, hydrogen gas leak detectors, you know, in any, in either in a pipe, that's, that's, that's, you know, where the hydrogen is being transferred to your vehicle or the vehicle itself. And, and ensuring that whatever quantity that you have is lower again than that, than that lower explosive, that's lower explosive limit. But, but yeah, I mean, that's why there's, there's still a good deal of, you know, change that has to happen with understanding how, how hydrogen works as a molecule. And, you know, dealing with, you know, different communities, we, we, we have a responsibility to develop what's called a safety plan, or both the fire department and for, and for people that are, that are using it. But I, you know, I want to say that it's, you know, hydrogen has been around for quite a long, a long time, you know, as a commercial fuel. And so, you know, it's not that it is anything really new, it's just, it's just now we're talking about getting it more, you know, out there a little bit more into, to local communities that are not as used to it. Yeah, I mean, natural gas, propane, still, of course, also have, have their, their own risk as, as well. It's just that, that, that flammability range is much more wider. Yeah. You were saying you were working with people were doing green hydrogen. What, what are the different ways people make green hydrogen? What, what, what different processes are there? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, when, so when we talk about green hydrogen, we primarily are talking about water splitting. And that's the, the electrolysis process of, you know, just taking that H2O and putting in an electric, electric current and in a membrane splitting the hydrogen from the oxygen. We call it a electro catalytic process, because of the, we use certain metals that, that separate those, those molecules. So it's, it's called green because there's no carbon dioxide emitted. There's no, there's no emissions. Only, only thing that's generated is, is oxygen, aside from, from the hydrogen and oxygen could also be valuable. You know, it could be, it could be sold. It could be used for a number of things. So yeah, I mean, aside from, from electrolysis, there are some, some other technologies that I could be considered green. There's something called methane pyrolysis, where instead of burning natural gas, what we call steam methane reformation, we end up with a solid carbon, as well as, as well as the, as well as the hydrogen. So, so instead of the sort of gaseous carbon that's problematic for our, for our, for our atmosphere, you end up with a solid carbon that could be useful, you know, in other products. Yeah. And so that you ended up taking the carbon out of the carbon dioxide out of the here. That's basically, is that what you just said? So actually, in the methane pyrolysis, you never go into that gaseous state, but you end up with a, with a solid, a solid carbon, not a, not a carbon dioxide. I got you. So something like biochar or something like that? Is that what? Biochar. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And there are other, other, other products that come out of that using pyrolysis? No, you still, you know, you still end up with the, with hydrogen and then, and then carbon there. Yeah. Okay. And in some instances, they try to sequester the carbon on the ground. Is that part of the? Yeah. So that's more in the, you know, the steam methane reformation process, typical, typical process where you'll just capture the carbon. So we call that about, we call that the blue, the blue hydrogen. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, yeah, direct air capture and, and sequestration. And you've been working with, is this a lot of, a lot of folks doing green hydrogen? A lot of spreadsheets around the world. Yeah. We're, we're definitely seeing a big, a big surge. So, you know, there's probably a five times increase that that's occurring right now over the next couple of years. Right now there's very little install green hydrogen. Right, right now it's primarily from that burning of natural gas, but we're trying to replace all of that existing hydrogen that's currently used. And most of it's just used for things that most people don't really see, like, you know, it's used actually in refining of petroleum. Hydrogen is also used in chemical, you know, chemical production. It's used for ammonia. So fertilizer. So yeah, I mean, most folks don't really see hydrogen and how it's used, but, but it actually is a big part of our society today. What we're talking about, I think going into the future is using the hydrogen for transportation and, and increasingly using it for what's called sustainable aviation fuel. So, you know, instead of using the traditional jet fuel, which is very carbon intensive, we're replacing that with either some sort of ethanol based or, you know, some sort of hydrogen input into a process that may be used. That makes, that makes the same quality jet fuel, but it doesn't have as much carbon associated. So that's a really promising area for hydrogen as well. And on how far out into the future are they looking at actually getting this into part of commercial aviation? Yeah, so we've been working pretty, pretty heavily on this over the last year. If you look today actually on your phone, if you book a flight, you know, it'll say, if you want to, you could pay a little bit to offset your flight. What that means is the airline, let's say American or United, whomever is actually buying more sustainable aviation fuel. So there's a market there and it currently exists. Primarily it's all ethanol based, so corn based. But yeah, there's other forms of a sustainable aviation fuel that are coming online. Oh, you know, it just occurred to me, but what if we could make green hydrogen here in Hawaii? Would we be able to, we probably could use it yet to refuel those. Oh yeah. And what about ocean transportation? Yeah, I mean, that's another one. Using the hydrogen as a fuel for tankers. There's some projects that are starting in California that are actually hydrogen powered cruise ships and hydrogen powered tankers. So that's definitely coming out. There's some small modifications that have to be made to the engines and, you know, the tanks on board the ships. But there's something that the international maritime organization is actually going to start requiring that ships have to use some sort of green fuel over the next five years. So you're going to see that for sure. And I think in addition to the maritime, you'll, I think, you know, in Hawaii, the fertilizer industry would be another big one. Yeah, I got carried away with listening to you. Oh, is there anything, well, tell me, what you into this field, how did you get involved? What made you want to do what you're doing? Yeah, so, you know, I worked for, I worked in renewable energy and basically solar and wind for a long time. And then I actually started my PhD research in what's called perovskite solar cells, which are more sort of more efficient, lower cost solar. But what I realized was the more solar wind that we get, the more that we have to solve for the problem of the variability or intermittency. So I see hydrogen as well as a way of storing that renewable power and then using it when we need it. So you could take the renewables, you know, through electrolysis, convert it into hydrogen and then use the hydrogen and either directly or convert it back to electricity through a fuel cell. So it's basically another form of a battery and it lasts for months versus hours like electrochemical batteries. So that's what I got into it and my research was all about modeling of the, you know, simulating basically, you know, how do we take advantage of that solar and wind power? How young were you when you kind of had this idea of getting into science the way you ended up in? Yeah, well, I've always loved science and I grew up watching Star Trek, you know, and so it piqued my interest from a young age. But I think maybe in my early 20s, I started to realize that there were a lot of problems, you know, in our world and I really got very passionate about figuring out ways for us to live more sustainably on the planet, which is, you know, why I was working with Yamai and Brittany, but basically, you know, the very driven and I felt like doing the PhD would get me to a place where I could make a meaningful contribution to knowledge and to helping our society. So, yeah, I kind of dabbled in a lot of different areas within energy, trying to figure out how do we get to a good place on the planet and also advance ourselves. You know, we shouldn't be in a place where we're in need of energy or where we're burning fossil fuels. Burning fossil fuels is actually a pretty inefficient process. If you think about it, you're taking the sun's energy from millions of years ago and there's very little energy within that, within those fossils, so let's try to just harness the sun's power directly. Oh, interesting. Recently, I've noticed Toyota talking about hydrogen, but not so much the fuel cell as much as an internal combustion engine and that really got my attention. Have you worked anywhere in that space or what can you say about that? Yeah, so primarily we've been working with companies like Toyota, but around the fuel cell vehicles. I have heard about this interest in the ICE or the internal combustion engine with hydrogen. The only thing about that is you're still going to have some oxide emissions because, you know, it knocks specifically nitrogen oxide. You get some of that warming, which is considered a pollutant, so I don't really love that. But yeah, I know there's a benefit to the direct combustion of hydrogen because when you convert from a lot of hydrogen to electrical power in a fuel cell, you do lose a good amount of that energy. So, you know, and then you could use potentially existing trucks and retrofit them with the hydrogen, right, with the ICE engine. I had no idea that it ends up with nitrogen oxide in the ICE engines. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, just because of the way that, you know, there's the nitrogen in the air reacting with the oxygen, that's, you know, yeah. Yeah. What would you like to tell the audience about hydrogen? What is the most important thing on your mind to get people to understand that they might not understand or have a different conception of hydrogen? Yeah, I think that there is definitely a role for hydrogen in the we call the energy transition. I think hydrogen, but we talked about early, people are a little bit concerned about the safety. And I think that people should know that there's quite a bit of regulation and design to make sure that hydrogen handling and transportation transportation is very well regulated. There's something like 30 different, you know, regulations around how hydrogen is allowed to be used. And there's a long history of its use, everything from within NASA, with rockets to ammonia to, you know, petrochemical industry. So, as a society, we've used hydrogen for quite a long time. I think that the opportunity now is, you know, for us to use it in the new sectors like transportation. You know, and if you're listening to this and, you know, you're either in local government or perhaps you're just thinking about buying a fuel cell car. I just encourage you to think about how can we help support this important industry, whether that be making it easier to permit the fueling stations. How do we incentivize more of these vehicles in our communities? So, especially I suppose for local governments, it's important to think that this is a big shift. And if we don't do something, you know, if we don't express the interest, it's going to be hard to get, you know, the private sector dollars. And so, as a developer and having worked as a developer, I think there's a lot of value in having a community that's supportive of, you know, of these kinds of projects. You know, we've got five volcanoes on this island, you know, and we're sitting on this hot spot that's going to last for a million years. And because we're sitting on an island, there's water with heat underneath because of the volcano. And the heat rises, has steamed and can spin a turbine. And it can last for a million years. And then, of course, you've got to change the plates and stuff like that. But the energy is going to last for a million years, which basically tells me that we're going to have a competitive advantage to the rest of the world because we have them. We don't have to do anything except spin the turbine. Now, because of, you know, where we are in the energy space where we have this conflict, you know, in Ukraine and we're fighting over energy, essentially that's what we're doing. So, what I'm thinking is there's not the direct connection in most people's minds that we have geothermal and we can make green hydrogen. Because we could be talking about geothermal, that's what they, but if we can make green hydrogen with geothermal in less than a million years, how urgently would you encourage us to move forward with making this green hydrogen? What is your thoughts about that? Yeah. Well, the thing about it is, you know, electric energy can only go so far. I mean, geothermal is great if you're, you know, if you're spinning a turbine, making electricity that way, you can't, it's not, everybody knows it's not so easy to electrify heating, right? And whether that be, you know, residential or commercial or industrial, the first step is, you know, industrial heating, but you're going to need both. You're going to need fuel in my opinion, a molecule and you need electrical energy. So having those two together would be a big asset to Hawaii and I think it would make Hawaii increasingly sustainable as well as self-sufficient for all its energy needs. Yeah, because we're sitting out here in the middle of the Pacific. Yeah, we have to get it. But, you know, so the fact that we have the geothermal spins and we make electricity, the electricity is going to be competitive to other places that make electricity. And that's where our advantage comes over time. Yeah, so if we're looking for future generations, this is a good time to get started. Because we could do it on every island at least test to see if, you know, how much heat out there can we do because that's, it's not intermittent like wind and solar. It's a steady state. Anyway, I don't know. I'd love to hear more about your ideas there. Yeah, because there's a two-step, you know, you talk about geothermal, you don't get the connection between geothermal and geothermal. And hydrogen, but it's the electricity. It's the cheap electricity over time that's the deciding factor. And that's the most important factor in the cost of hydrogen is the cost of electricity. Yeah. Oh, terrific. Was there anything you wanted to see? You know, we got a few more minutes and yeah, if you wanted to see. Yeah, no, I'm just, I think I think it's great that we talk, we talk about, you know, hydrogen and would be, you know, would, I think it's important for, you know, folks to just consider the ways that we're working to do this energy transition. It's not one tool. It's not just solar. It's not just geothermal. And so, you know, there's a lot of resources online if people want to learn more about creating hydrogen. Actually, the U.S. Department of Energy has some great tools for folks who work in energy. You can check them out. And yeah, I mean, there's so many industries that hydrogen can be used in, aside from we talked about, you know, there's also think about data centers. I'm not sure how big of a demand there is in Hawaii, but, you know, working with companies like Microsoft or, you know, those are huge, huge consumers of power and, you know, we could use hydrogen there as well. So, yeah, I just encourage folks to think about how do we create the conditions necessary for a new sort of hydrogen economy. Think about, you know, moving from the traditional gas station to sort of like the hydrogen fueling station. And they're similar, but from my experience, it definitely takes some time to, you know, to get people comfortable with it. And hydrogen is either a gas or a liquid. And so we could transport it in a couple of ways. Yeah. Yeah. This is so valuable to hear you describe this and, you know, somebody who actually knows the subject. So thanks a lot, Dr. Michael Innsberg. Yeah. Thanks, Roger. Always pleasure. Okay. So in two weeks, we'll be back up with, let's say we're at hydrogen age. So we'll be talking about I, not sure what that I will be deciding. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. See you.