Can hydrogen energy change the world? UCI Clean Energy Institute Director Jack Brouwer thinks so. His institute is creating sustainable hydrocarbon fuels for aviation and shipping. Listen as he shares his vision for how hydrogen energy can bring more equity and peace to the world.
Transcript:
[sci fi music]
[Sound of electrolzyer spurting out oxygen]
NATALIE TSO, HOST: That’s the electrolyzer at UC Irvine spurting out oxygen. The UCI Clean Energy Institute is using hydrogen to create sustainable aviation and shipping fuels. The Institute’s director Jack Brouwer explains why he believes hydrogen could change the world:
JACK BROUWER: It's more equitably available. It's available everywhere around the world. You don't have to find only where oil is and you don't have to have the geopolitical challenges and everything else that comes with oil and the wars that we fight over energy. Why do we fight wars over energy? Because some people have it and some people don't. If we create a means by which energy conversion, energy storage and delivering energy to people can be made everywhere, we won't have as many wars.
TSO: That vision is driving their hydrogen research. Brouwer is a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. He explains why hydrogen is the ultimate solution for energy.
BROUWER: It has the features that allow us to carry it around. It's lightweight. You can actually store it for a long time and use it later. You know you could use it in aircraft and engines and heavy duty things. And those kinds of things made me very interested in hydrogen as a solution to more and more renewable and sustainable energy use. You also can convert it, make it in the first place, and convert it back to electricity with zero emissions.
TSO: Brouwer showed me the powerful electrolysis system that’s creating the sustainable aviation fuel.
[Sound of electrolysis system]
BROUWER This is taking in electricity and water, and it's converting the electricity and water to hydrogen and oxygen and then separating out the hydrogen into one stream that goes into this compressor. That's the main thing that you hear.
It compresses hydrogen all the way up to 350 times atmospheric pressure, 350 bar. And then we store it in hydrogen tanks that are over here. So what this is doing is this is making renewable hydrogen in the same way. And we're using this in that co-electrolysis system for making the synthesis gas for synthetic aviation fuels.
TSO: He explains the science behind this fuel and their partnership with industry.
BROUWER: We're working with Chevron to actually use solid oxide electrolysis to actually co-electrolyze CO2 and water streams to make a synthesis gas, meaning a type of gas that has carbon monoxide and hydrogen in it that is the prerequisite for making a liquid fuel. You can make a synthetic liquid fuel from renewable hydrogen and CO2. The CO2 can come from bio sources or even captured from the air or come from another power plant or something like that.
So you can take the CO2 and steam, make this synthesis gas, and then subsequently make the sustainable aviation fuel. And that's going to be the main way that we make air travel sustainable in the future
TSO: UCI has always paved the way for sustainable fuels. UCI built America’s first hydrogen fueling station which enabled companies to test and deploy their hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
BROUWER: We were able to install a prototype fueling station before the Mirai was even invented to actually test prototype Toyota vehicles. We started with Toyota and the Highlander fuel cell electric vehicle. And then we also tested the General Motors vehicles and the Honda vehicles and Hyundai vehicles and we were able to actually deploy them here at UCI and all throughout Orange County because of our development of infrastructure to support them.
We did the same thing with battery electric vehicles. It's one of the reasons why the state of California is really leading in deploying fuel cell and battery electric vehicles. We contributed to that introduction.
TSO: Now Brouwer is working on the technology to enable hydrogen to power ships and airplanes
We are working with the University of Naples, Parctenopei, as a collaborator to evaluate thermodynamically and dynamically how we might be able to make ship fuel for the future. And that includes not just hydrogen, which could be used directly as a liquid and we've evaluated that, but we're also looking at how to make synthetic ammonia or synthetic methanol as a ship fuel. And then we’re evaluating the characteristics of converting it onboard using a diesel cycle or using a fuel cell of various types. So we’re trying to figure out how you might be able to make shipping zero emissions with hydrogen and its deritative fuels methanol and ammonia.
TSO: His vision is that the world’s major oil companies would convert their factories to produce renewable energy.
BROUWER: The major oil companies, Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, these companies can be those that eventually make sustainable aviation fuels. This is one of the reasons why I'm excited to work with Chevron on this, because I do think that they can eventually transform all of their fossil-based technology into a renewable, sustainable aviation fuel technology.
TSO: That transformation from oil to renewable energy would change the world. Brouwer has a visionary zeal for his work that’s contagious, perhaps because he also moonlights as a Christian pastor and preacher.
BROUWER: Many people say that faith and science are incompatible or that there are challenges between them. But I think that they are complementary. As a matter of fact, if you’re open to spiritual insights and scientific insights, I think you have a better perspective on all things that happen in life. If you think about it, meaning in life is something that is not easy to justify on a scientific basis. Our consciousness and our care and concern for the planet or other people, how does that actually manifest itself if we have only a naturalistic understanding of human life?
TSO: How does his Christian faith inspire his work?
BROUWER: We are actually asked by God to serve on His behalf to protect and to preserve and to be good stewards of the world. This is why I think you can have a very strong motivation to care for the environment, to care for other people, to care for animals, to care to preserve the world that God created. Now you have both a naturalistic reason and a spiritual reason to actually want to do something to be a good steward.
[sci fi music]
TSO: What is Brouwer’s ultimate aim in his clean energy research?
BROUWER: Well my ultimate vision is that we humans would have more love for one another, that there would be much less division amongst us, that we would enable a sustainable future and that sustainable future, I can only contribute to the electrochemical energy conversion. That’s the only science I know. However I do think it’s one of the parts that can contribute to sustainability not only for energy but sustainability as nations and sutainability as competing nations, right and so that we eventually don’t have the geopolitical challenges, the wars. So my vision is to enable energy conversion to be something that brings us together rather than separates us and leads to war.
TSO: That’s the vision driving Jack Brouwer, director of the UCI Clean Energy. Thanks for listening to The Lab Beat. I’m Natalie Tso. If you like our podcast, please share it with your friends. Thanks and see you at the next lab.
(Season 1, Episode 8)
