Hello, welcome and thanks for listening to Carbon Climates, an energy podcast dedicated
to discussing all things energy, carbon and sustainability. We also like to point out
what's getting hot, aside from our planet. I'm your host Enya and today I'm joined with a familiar
face, my Carbon Climate and co-host Ralph, who has been on the podcast before discussing his job as
a Net Zero engineer and his company, Catagen. Shout out to Catagen. So before we get onto today's
topic, Ralph, how's your week been and what have you been up to since you've last been on the podcast?
Yeah, it's good to be back Enya. It's a really enjoyable first conversation,
glad to get into a second one, hopefully with as many puns as the last time too.
Since we last talked, my role at Catagen has changed slightly. So I was a Net Zero applications
engineer, working across kind of all of our R&D. This year I'm more focused on one sector that our
technologies can be used in and that sector is cement. So I'm now our cement lead for Climate Tech,
which is our brand for our technologies. This week has been a bit mental for people who work with
funding bodies. March, April is crunch time for applications. So we've been working on a few
non-delutive grants, but also kind of applications for business model projects and subsidy support
for a few things that we're developing in our project pipeline. And that's really to
carry on from our R&D and pilot technology demonstrations. So it's to give you end to end
solutions for our technology, operating in real projects in the real world, which is really
exciting. And this week has been mostly focused around setting up action plans and kind of
action logs for a lot of that stuff. And we've also just finished a piece of work for the
Department for the Economy here on sustainable aviation fuel. And we're going to be presenting
the findings of that six month project to them this week. So I've just been prepping the
slideshow and making sure the written reports are all prepped and stuff for that. So it's been
a bit of a fun week. Yeah. So you haven't been busy at all now like that.
That's a pretty normal week for Catagen. We were 34 people the last time we talked. We're 67 now.
So yeah, the trajectory of growth that we're on is really, really exciting. But it does mean that
like we've run out of desks for people currently. So we're expanding into new semi-permanent
sustainable office space and stuff. So yeah, I think a lot of people are quite surprised by how
fast we move, but innovation by its nature is very rapid. So it's a great kind of rollercoaster to be
on. But yeah, definitely moving at pace. Wow. Okay. Well, I hope next time I speak,
like it's also like doubled in growth as well. You're like, we're at 200. Like it's gone out of
control. So yeah. No, brilliant. Thanks, Ralph. Thanks for updating us. And listeners, you've
probably guessed since Ralph's back on the podcast, today's topic is going to revisit hydrogen and all
its wonders. Okay. Before we begin, Ralph, have you got any good hydrogen jokes or are they too basic?
Well, hydrogen is actually acidic, not basic. But that's the first one. I need to leave now.
No, we tend to steer clear of puns like blow up and the bomb and stuff in work
because of hydrogen's past. But most of our puns now are based around things like our cement projects
being set in stone, our aviation projects being pilots and getting off the ground,
or our maritime projects sailing away off into the sunset. So it's more application specific
rather than hydrogen specific. I was actually going to use a different intro as well. I was
going to be like, okay, we're here today to talk more in depth about hydrogen and make light of
the fact it's not actually really a heavy subject. Yeah, it's good. It's not a very dense subject.
Just keep on. I actually am not going to lie. Google is my ultimate source of all the puns I find.
I think I am our ultimate source of puns in hydrogen, much to our head of commercialization,
Chagrin. She's not a big fan of puns and I make them constantly.
I actually, okay, I'm related to energy and hopefully everyone likes this as well
and you guys can use this as many times as you want. But why did the farmer call the horse
Mayo? I don't know. Because mayonnaise.
Okay, that one was terrible. Hey, hey, you can keep it, tell your friends.
Hey's probably involved too. Did the thing.
Okay, that's okay. Enough fun. Enough fun. Right. Right. Well, thank you to Wikipedia,
the most credible reference and source ever for letting me know that there are colors I talked
about last time to describe the different hydrogen types and sources. There's actually more.
Yeah. So I talked about three or four main types, but there's actually 12 colors in total.
So we talked about green last time and green hydrogen is the most energy,
at the energy friendly form of hydrogen. Yeah. So hydrogen is a rainbow was a really
catchy title for kind of conferences and marketing events kind of over the last 18 months. Because
like we're visual creatures, a lot of us, and we'd like to be able to categorize things with color.
I'm a big fan of color coding. Love a red amber green system. But generally we talk about gray,
hydrogen, blue hydrogen and green hydrogen. And respectively gray is hydrogen that's
sourced from natural gas through a process called steam methane reforming, which is a chemical
reaction that breaks the carbon and the hydrogen and methane apart. But obviously that produces
a lot of carbon dioxide, so not as sustainable as it can be. Blue hydrogen, on the other hand,
is a production of hydrogen from carbon containing materials like natural gas.
But you capture the CO2 using carbon capture technology. So that can be aiming scrubbing or
passive capture technologies that use different absorbance. And that's something that the UK
government's investing heavily in as part of the hydrogen strategy for the UK to complement the
carbon capture capacity that's being developed in parts of England and Scotland. And then green
hydrogen, as you said, is probably the holy grail of hydrogen for energy because it doesn't have
any carbon associated with it. So you're taking water, which is H2O, so two hydrogen atoms and
one oxygen atom, and you're using energy to pull them apart, make a hydrogen gas and make oxygen.
And that's really where a lot of hydrogen technology is aiming to get to. So it's the
one that we hear a lot about, but it's really hard. Waters are really slow, so we're not
talking about water. Waters are really stable molecule. That's why kettles take so much
electricity to heat it up. That's why we use it to store energy or in the form of heat and why we
use it for a lot of things, because it doesn't really like to react with a lot of stuff.
Okay. That's very informative, Ralph. Thank you very much. I thought of the pun while you were
talking. So you could say blue hydrogen, they use carbon capture technology. So you could say
UK is capturing their moment or? Yeah. Okay. It wasn't my strongest pun. I'll take it back.
I'll work on it. I'll get it back to you. Some of the other colours that are really interesting at
the minute and are being more focused on, there's an increasing movement to differentiate the
renewable energy sources. So green hydrogen is any renewable electricity and that can be wind or solar
PV. Even things like hydro, though some people query how environmentally friendly hydroelectric
power is because of its impact for damming and use of land and things like that. But increasingly
we're seeing things like yellow hydrogen, which is production from solar thermal or solar PV being
split off into a separate category from wind, for instance. I like the sound of yellow because
I just gave a lecture on PV. So yeah, I'm all about PV. But really interestingly, in this space at the
minute, there's a lot of exploration using the knowledge that the oil and gas sector has to
find naturally occurring pockets of hydrogen gas and hydrogen containing geology in the ground.
And that's white hydrogen. So that's naturally occurring hydrogen. It was thought for a long
time that because it's so light, the hydrogen basically accelerates at the speed of gravity
out of our atmosphere. So we don't find it in the air we breathe, really. But there's actually
more hydrogen being found than we thought there would have been in the ground. So it's being
looked at as an interesting way to increase the uptake of hydrogen in places where there is
geological stores of hydrogen. And that complements some of the activities looking at storing hydrogen
in geological features such as salt caverns, which if anybody is from kind of the Green
Island area, yeah, near Larn, there is a couple of plans at the minute to look at using the salt
caverns there for storage of gases. A little bit contentious and a spicy issue. A lot of people
don't want to be living on top of large volumes of hydrogen, understandably. So we need to,
there needs to be a little bit of policy and social involvement there. But it's fitting that
hydrogen has lots of different colours, because it's going to take lots of different solutions
to solve and unpick carbon from our energy system. So having lots of different ways to
generate it and use it is an important part of resilience in any energy system. So it's great
that they're being looked at and investigated. One of the other ones of interest for the UK
and Europe is pink hydrogen, particularly in France, which is generated from nuclear energy.
And that can be quite complimentary with nuclear power because it uses the heat that's rejected
from that system to generate hydrogen. And because you're already heating water anyway,
that water is already at a temperature that makes it more energy favourable to turn it
into hydrogen through a process called thermochemical splitting, which is where you use heat to
break apart hydrogen and oxygen bonds rather than electricity, which is what electrolysis is.
Okay, so it's kind of doing two processes with one.
Yeah, yeah. And I think as we've seen over the last three to four years, that technology has
developed at a pace that is creating the complex interconnections that we see in things like
combined heat and power and cogeneration and tri-generation systems that we already have for
established fossil fuel based energy systems. And we're starting to see those same complex
synergistic energy setups and new technology that's emerging. I think that's where it needs
to get to to be competitive. If you think about oil and gas as a sector, there aren't companies
that just make one oil and gas product. They make a whole range of them. And that economy of scale
is really important for any kind of commercial offering. And there's been a movement and a
maturity of thought that if we're going to replace these products, we can't have one technology that
makes pharmaceutical oil based products and we can't have one technology that makes fuels and
we can't have another technology that makes resins and glues. There has to be a technology
that benefits from doing very similar stuff to make different products all at the same time.
And that's something that we've been developing for a while.
Oh, okay. Very good. Can you tell me a bit more about Katagen? So all the use... because funny
story. You were there, so it's not really funny. But that sounded like a burn. It really didn't mean
to. Okay. What I mean is you work for Katagen. I myself have been to Katagen before on an energy
institute site tour. Shout out to Energy Institute. And yeah, like we're able to see all around the
plants. You're able to show us how your technology works. And then you also give a very interesting
talk about transport of hydrogen as well. And just like what you guys are focusing on.
Yeah. So the facility in Belfast is where we do our R&D work. Currently there is five of our
Climatech pieces of technology in there. There's also our green emissions testing machines as well,
which is how we test catalysts for industrial uses and things like the automotive sector,
which is a whole different topic. So we'll cover that maybe in another episode someday.
But we went around the facility, I think this time last year, roughly. And we really like to
engage with people like the EIC and other bodies like that because it's Energy Institute. Sorry,
you're not the council. It's really important to us to show people what we can do. Because the way
that we think about energy systems is more aligned to somebody like yourself, who's looking at a full
system assessment. A lot of technology developers are looking at single technological solutions to
a very specific problem, or they're not worried about application or problems at all in some cases.
And we've identified that to unpick and unravel an existing incumbent energy system, you have to
consider all of those different variables and create a system that's able to deal with that.
And that's why we've developed two technologies that generate hydrogen. One of them is a
thermochemical water splitting process. That's kind of what we talked about with green hydrogen.
And the other uses organic waste streams. And so that's sustainable sources of waste that are
overlooked and underutilized to free hydrogen from those and generate biogenic CO2. So those
are really, really interesting technologies. And there's lots of uses for them and lots of benefits
to using them. But generating hydrogen is only part of the problem for energy systems. And you
have to be able to compress it and store it. So we've developed our own compression technology
as well, which allows you to compress and dispense hydrogen more efficiently than current
technologies. And there's lots of interest in that tech at the minute. And there'll probably be a
wee bit more information about it by the time this goes live. And hydrogen is great for
lots of applications. So we're looking at things like heavy industry, where you have really high
temperatures and really large energy consumption. So cement sector, steel, glass, those really
important building materials that we are going to need in a net zero world and have to be made in a
decarbonized fashion. But things like mobility have hydrogen uses. We don't have many hydrogen
vehicles in Europe as of yet. Japan is probably the leading place in the world for that. They
do a lot of hydrogen work for hydrogen fuel cell cars. So some people may have seen the Toyota
Miura, which is a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. And if you're ever in London, in the city of London,
the city of London police have their full fleet is hydrogen powered. So keep an eye out for that if
you happen to be in and around there. But really, if you're thinking Northern Ireland, the right bus
is probably the people think of for hydrogen buses. So TransLink have 12 hydrogen buses currently
on the market. And they're designed to reduce emissions, but also to reduce pollutant emissions.
So you're not just looking at CO2.
I think I've seen on LinkedIn, you guys went down to visit right bus recently, didn't you?
So we have a project at the minute called High Density, HY Density. So another pun there for you.
We're working with right bus and quarrying and mining technologies company called Terex,
who have a base in the west of Northern Ireland, near Duncannon, to develop a dual fuel system that
runs on hydrogen with E diesel as a backup. And E diesel, for those of you that are not familiar
with that term is a type of E fuel or electro fuel or synthetic fuel, depending on your flavor of
the month, which is a liquid hydrocarbon. So hydrogen carbon chains, same as you get from
oil and gas. But it's produced by combining hydrogen gases, preferably from something like
a green hydrogen generator and CO2 captured from what's called the fast carbon cycle,
which is available carbon in the atmosphere in the soil in plants on the earth surface,
rather than geologically stored in the form of oil and gas and coal. And combining that with
that hydrogen and that carbon to make those hydrocarbons using renewable electricity to
stitch them together. And that means that you can create diesels and petrols and kerosene molecules
that are not originating from a fossil carbon source. So they don't contribute CO2 emissions.
So they don't, they don't unlock carbon from the ground and put it into the atmosphere.
They use carbon that's already in the atmosphere, ultimately, as the source of that carbon. And
that's really critical in differentiating between those two types of fuel. Because there are things
like air travel that are very difficult to electrify. Because the energy density you get from
something like a lithium ion battery currently is not sufficient to allow you to transport
people through the air. And the kind of energy density journey that people go on is they go,
can we electrify it because we are lucky to have lots of renewable electricity in this part of the
world. And so that's usually the best and most efficient use of energy. Because if we generate
electricity at source, we want to use it as electricity. And if that's not suitable,
hydrogen is probably the next best thing to look at. It's a very simple molecule. You can make it
from breaking apart other things. So generally destroying things takes less energy than creating
them. So you can look at hydrogen for things that are needed a little bit more oomph. So like buses
or trains, you can supply them with compressed hydrogen. And that allows you to get a higher
level of energy density. So you're not having to give up as much volume on say a bus for battery
banks because you've got a smaller tank of hydrogen that stores that energy. And then if that's not
suitable, which it isn't for things like very large aircraft that are flying maybe across the
Atlantic or between the Middle East and Southeast Asia or Australia, you're really topping out what
you can do with hydrogen at that point. Currently, Airbus and Boeing and others are developing
technologies that are lighter aircraft that have more space to store hydrogen and things like that.
But currently, if you buy an Airbus commercial airliner right now, and you want to fuel that
for the next 30 or 40 years, because that's how long the lifetime of that asset is, you need a
solution that's compatible with a 2050 net zero world and e-fields are the only way you can do
that. So they are really important part of that kind of final unlocking of fully decarbonized
energy. And I don't think anybody wants a world where we're not able to fly to see loved ones and
experience different cultures and things like that. So we have to find a way to do that that's
economical, but also doesn't result in us not being able to fly because it is an important part of
kind of the global ecosystem. Okay, brilliant. Very informative. Very informative. But the thing
I was going to say about Rightbus, when I seen the photo of Katajam and then Rightbus, the Rightbus
representative was someone I went to secondary school with. Fantastic. He's a lovely lad, Ryan.
Shout out, Ryan. Ireland and Northern Ireland specifically are a very small place. And I think
as a region, we undersell our capabilities. We have a lot of very well-educated and very driven
young people and engineers and scientists and artists. I think we have our resilience and
stubbornness here to do things. And that's why you see companies like Rightbus leading the way
kind of in the world in this space. And we have a very well developed aerospace industry, cyber
security industry, software industry. So I'm not surprised that you've come across other people
from your previous life. You're now working at the kind of the cutting edge of technology, because
you know, we see that all the time. And we're really lucky to have a company that is able to
benefit from that culture of real innovation and expertise and want to do things differently.
Because looking at problems from different angles is really important in the engineering world,
because a lot of the solutions that we've come up with are really elegant solutions to problems
that other people haven't thought about. And it's one of those things where we kind of sit down and
brainstormed a couple of these technologies. And when we actually looked at what we've done,
we went, oh, well, of course you'd do it that way. And then we went, why did nobody think of
this before? And that's when you know you have a really good innovative idea, because you would
never, having seen it, the solution to the problem, you would never do it any other way. And that's
how you know you're on to a winning technology. Well, thanks very much, Ralph, for giving us that
insight that we wouldn't have known. So yeah, it's like the inside scoop and everything you've given.
So I've talked before about energy strategies on this podcast. I say that the episode itself
has been released, but it has been recorded. And then by the time this comes out, it'll have been
released by weeks. So energy strategies and how they're all over the UK. Northern Ireland has its
first one. So did you know the UK has its own hydrogen strategy, which I'm sure you didn't,
the fact that you're in the hydrogen industry, but that was published in 2021?
Yes. So Quasie Quartine, who was the head of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial
Strategy, which it was known as at the time, and quite like Prince, it is now known as the
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and has had a rebrand. But he released a document
in 2021, which outlined a very ambitious strategy for the UK in terms of hydrogen.
Part of that was 10 gigawatts of hydrogen generation capacity. So GW, not MW, which is
what we hear a lot of for wind. For reference, the four largest offshore wind farms in the world
are in the UK and they collectively produce two gigawatts of electricity. So this was a really
important signal to companies like ourselves that the UK was going to be the place to develop
hydrogen technology in Europe and in the world for the next five years. And that strategy has
been updated in the last couple of years. Obviously, we've had a couple of personnel
changes in UK government and that always comes with rewording and amendments and things like
that. And that strategy has actually been amended and added to and now not just subsidy support is
being provided through grant funding for technology development like ourselves. And we've been very
fortunate and very lucky to be supported by the UK government with some of our project development.
But the strategy has developed to the point now where they are doing competitive allocation
rounds for hydrogen delivery and for uses. So that's things like Steelworks and power generation
facilities are now actively pitching projects based on a price of hydrogen that they can generate
those at using renewable electricity. And that's a really important commercial metric to enable
an industry to grow. And it results in really positive results, particularly in the renewable
sector, where this was how the offshore wind sector in the UK first started. So the UK
government is trying to replicate a lot of the good from the offshore wind and onshore wind policies
over the last decade and replicate that with hydrogen. It's been very successful in a lot of ways.
I wonder, does the strategy, because it was a 90 page document, I wonder if it has your
saying there about the gigawatts of energy it is able to, like, you know, it has potential to unlock.
But I wonder if there's like a diagram or a visual equivalent being like this is so and so many
wind turbines or this is so and so many solar panels or this is like so and so many biomass boilers.
Yeah, so that's a lot of what my job at Caledget is. So I do a lot of work with our
stakeholders, potential project partners and collaborators, and I have to help them try and
visualize their own energy consumption a lot of the time. So if we take Heathrow Airport as an example,
and let's say we decide to go to 100% sustainable E jet fuel, like as I think fuel that we talked
about earlier, the amount of energy that the systems to generate that fuel would require is
the amount of offshore wind that the UK will have by 2025, all of the offshore wind capacity
in the UK to decarbonize one airport. And that's probably pushing it in terms of its capability.
So we don't really appreciate how much energy stored in things like petrol, home heating, oil,
home heating, oil, diesel. And there's a reason why we use them for fuels because they're really
energy dense. And trying to decarbonize that's a really big challenge. And that's why it's really
important that we deal with a couple of issues with particularly wind and solar, which is
intermittency of power supply. And obviously, if the sun's not out, your solar panels are not going
to be generating electricity. And if there's no wind, your wind turbines aren't going to be
generating electricity. So we need to have technologies that can work with that problem
to maximize their energy production. I think one of the energy, like one of the energy government,
like, you know, head department and people, this back in 2017. But then when they were talking
about renewables and solar panels and wind turbines, they said, they actually said,
I'm sure the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. But that was someone in the
Department of Energy or in the energy department in the government. UK. Now, I will say this,
having previously worked in the solar panel industry, like, like solar panels are still,
they're not able to generate the full energy that they can get from the sun shining, but they're
able to pick up some reflection from the likes of the clouds. And so they still degenerate some,
but maybe not as much. But the issue with current technology, everything that we use to generate
chemicals relies on steady state power. So I know I'm going to get X amount of electrons coming in
my front end that I'll gobble up and turn into chemicals. That's not what happens with modern
renewable electricity. Unless you've something like a hydro dam, or you've got tidal or wave
generation devices, but even they have fluctuations in power output. And one of the things that we're
doing at Catagen is we're making systems that are much more tolerable of that power fluctuation,
because our technology originally was designed to replicate engine outputs. So it inherently has a
level of variability that it tolerates. And that means that as wind picks up, we're able to ramp
our production of hydrogen and E fuels up to fully utilize all that energy. And as it starts to calm
down, or we get towards kind of evening, if we're using solar power, it can ramp the system right
back down. And what that means is you get what's called a higher utilization factor of your
renewable energy. Essentially, you're able to lock up more useful outputs from those systems. And
that means one, they're more efficient, which is always going to be more sustainable. And to the
commercial offering that they represent is better, because you're not wasting any of that electricity
that you generate. So you're getting a better return on investment of your machine. And that's
a really important aspect for commercial deployment of these technologies, because we have to create a
business model that pays for itself. You know, and we are a company whose mission is to clean and
decarbonize the air. And there's lots of other energy companies that are out there to make as
much money as possible. But we are a commercial company. So at the end of the day, we have to sell
stuff that makes money. So that we have to be cognizant of that. And that's one of the really
exciting things about our tech is it aligns those two things that quite often divert in modern life,
where we're creating a more efficient energy system by increasing our utilization factor of
intermittent wind and solar, which is giving you a better commercial offering. So you're actually
getting the best of both worlds out of it. That means that, you know, the UK's investment in wind
is better used, which means that for all of us that pay tax or live in the UK, we're getting a better
value out of that system. Okay, very well. Ralph, like, you know, honestly, just like, come on,
spit out what you know. And then we're all we're all the wiser like from it. So what I'd say from
the hydrogen strategy, the energy security secretary, well, at the time of the order,
Claire Coutinho, I have butchered her last name, I apologize for someone whose name is continually
mispronounced. And I'm so sorry, I can't believe I did that. And I will find out that correct
spelling and I will make I'll make a reference to it in the bio. And but she said hydrogen presents
a massive economic opportunity for the UK, unlocking over 12,000 jobs and up to 11 billion
off investment by 2030. Now, she said this in 2021. So it is definitely updated since that
it's probably more honestly, the the rate of interest in aggressive decarbonization has
increased, if anything, since this document came out. And hydrogen is a really important part of
energy security for the UK and Northern Ireland specifically, because we're really fortunate to
have lots of renewable energy potential. And so as a region, both the UK and Northern Ireland in
particular import a lot of our energy. So two thirds of our energy demand in Northern Ireland
is liquid fuel based. And we don't have any natural oil and gas in large amounts. So we import that
from places like Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and some of that oil comes from as far away as
the Middle East. And some of it comes from the USA. And if we can develop indigenous technologies
like we're doing that can capture that electricity and turn it into hydrogen, which can then be used
to as an alternative to things like high heat applications where you've got coal or or natural
gas like cement manufacture, which is a really important export for the island of Ireland,
which a lot of people don't know. Or we can turn that hydrogen with carbon from the air into
diesel and kerosene, which are the main hydrocarbons you use for things like home heating oil and
driving vehicles. We can become much more energy independent. And that means that we're essentially
turning our natural resources into sustainable and useful products for our local use. And that
insulates us from things like price fluctuations in the global oil and gas markets and supply issues,
which can be a real problem for particularly carbon dioxide into Northern Ireland. There are lots of
industries like the food industry, the agricultural industry and the packaging industry that use
carbon dioxide as a chemical. So if you ever open any packed meat, if you have eaten any vertically
farmed food, which is becoming more and more common, if you've ever drank a beer, if you've ever
drank a bottle of well known soft drink that's bottled in the spring from a very large
beverage manufacturer, all that CO2 has been imported into Northern Ireland and it's ultimately
come from natural gas. So there are lots of things that we can do with that energy and technology
like ours and climate tech allows you to turn it into the energy vectors that can't be electrified.
And that's a really important part of energy network resilience. And that's why hydrogen is
a really important part of the energy security strategy for the UK as a whole. Wow. Okay. Yeah,
I think that's a good sentence to wrap up the knowledge base part of the podcast. Like,
okay, guys, like, you know, better just digest that. Because, yeah, that was a lot even like,
what is it? I like I had a script, of course, but like the mind have just learned like, no, I'm still
practicing. I find this a lot whenever we whenever we start talking about what we're doing climate
tech. And it covers so many different aspects of modern life. And that's indicative of the fact
that we have such a complex and diverse energy system that exists. The problem with that system
is it's currently underpinned by fossil carbon that's damaging the planet. And that energy system,
in large part, can maintain and exist the way it is, it's just that the carbon that's in that system
needs to be sourced more sustainably. And that's what we're really interested in keen to do is
create an equally diverse, equally resilient and more sustainable energy system. And that's not
dependent on oil and gas products. And I think that's a, it's going to be a much more successful
way to look at energy than we need to make lots of hydrogen, because it's good. Which is where
whenever this strategy document first came out, a lot of thinking was the conversation in the spaces
moved on and has become much more mature. And I think it's leading to better results. And I'm
biased because we're developing the technology, but it's going to be better for consumers long term.
And that's what you want. Okay, yeah. Okay. Well, thank you very much. You've been really great to
have on. But you're not done just yet. Because what is it time for people? It is time for the
hydrogen. Also known as the question round. So I've got some questions I'm going to ask you about
hydrogen. Yeah. Some of them are hard. Some of them we're probably going to know. And then the
last one I'm going to ask you. It is quite tricky. I've got to fill you might get it right away.
Okay, so could you tell me the date of which hydrogen production was first recorded?
I can't tell you the date. It was in the 19th century and it was called Inflammable Gas.
And it was developed by an English chemist who was called Charles.
No, that's as far as I'm going to get. So yes, you'd be correct in like, what is it? They're
the ones who said about it being a gas. However, in 1783, 1783, wow. 1783, Antoine Lavioser and
Pierre Laplace. Laplace. Yeah, my engineering background, I should have got that. But they
measure, they've measured the heat of combustion of hydrogen using an ice calorimeter, calorimeter.
Mm hmm. Because everyone, ice calorimeter, there we go. I just did it. Ice calorimeter,
because everyone has one of those. Yeah. Yeah. So the gas battery is what I was thinking of,
which was the first use of the first generation of hydrogen using an electrochemical cell. And
that was in 1848. See, I was going back to the first one. So actually the first, like apparently
the first recorded observation was in 1520. Oh yeah, there's lots of contention around who
discovered gases. Yeah. Chemists are very territorial. Flip, I didn't realize it was such a,
nope, I'm trying to think of a pun or a pandemic and they are- Such a volatile subject.
So dammit, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna move on. Okay, I've got this question for you. And
listeners stick with me. I'm gonna explain that if you watch it, you probably get it.
Can you tell me the cat's owner who solved the equation for hydrogen for him?
No. To think cats in science immediately by Schrodinger, but he's a physicist.
Okay. Well, like, what is it? No, no cats in science, but like, what did you say? What was
the name you just said? Schrodinger. It's pretty interesting to say that because yeah, the Schrodinger
equation is exactly what I'm talking about, but it's a mathematical formula that describes
the quantum state of a system and how it changes over time. And it's used to calculate possible
energy levels and it works on the wave functions of an atom. And apparently, so apparently dancer,
like, you know, just continually changes because the waves moves at the, the waves move, but for
hydrogen, it's perfect. Yes. Because there's, like, there's a proton and electron, like, you
know, and you can tell exactly where they are. Yeah. So in hydrogen, there's only one valence
state, which is the term that Schrodinger was describing. And that means that it's a really
useful gas for things like calibrating and measuring other things, which is what we,
it was traditionally used for a lot in science. I did realise it was Schrodinger who developed
that though. That's a good one for me. That's a, that's a new one. I told you I wouldn't know the
one. So apparently, yeah, because apparently he developed this equation and then it, like,
you know, there's no correct answer apart from hydrogen. Like hydrogen is the only correct,
like, you know, it's the high, called the hydrogen problem or something. Oh, I'd have to bring that
back to, to Caligene. Oh, don't. It's the perfect solution. They will absolutely wreck you. And like,
ah, you got it from her. Okay, sure. But yeah, okay. So you know what? I'm pretty proud I
explained that in this podcast. Not explained that, but was able to converse with you about it in this
podcast because it's quantum mechanics and yeah, I don't mess with that. Yeah, I don't mess with
that either. My brother's a computer scientist and he does a lot of qubit processing and things like
that. And that's well beyond the realms of my brain. Is this the brother I met at your party?
Yes. Yes. How's he doing? He's doing well. Yeah. Excellent. He's currently looking for a job in
AI. So he helps develop language scripts for AI. And that's his kind of day job. And so he does,
he teaches machine learning essentially how to translate to base languages, either human
languages or coding languages. So anytime you talk to like Google Assistant or your Amazon Alexa,
he helps develop those scripts that if you say speak in French, allow it to figure out what you've
said, translate it into both English and then it's base coding language, and then do that in reverse
to talk to you in your native language. I'm always amazed at people who can do that, the
likes of scripts, because I almost had an argument with Excel today trying to create one of those,
the Visual Basic VBA scripts. I pretty much wanted to, I had like 300 rows and I wanted to
create a script that I'm able to put all these rows into a single PDF. Each row had its own page
and I just, you know, I couldn't do it, Captain. I couldn't do it. Okay. So any move on to something
else, that's enough about me. Okay. Brilliant. Okay. Well, that's the end of question round.
I did have more, but like, I feel like two is enough. Let's go for another one. Let's see.
Okay. I'm bluffing. I didn't have like, you know, any more. I'll ask you a question. Okay.
Okay. So hydrogen as a gas is probably one of the simplest molecules you can make.
Where is the most hydrogen found in the universe? Oh, it's on a planet, isn't it?
Hold on. Is it not everywhere? Yes. So hydrogen is actually the most abundant
state of matter in the universe. Because it's so light, we don't find it on planets,
because the gravitational pull of them pulls it away. But actually hydrogen is the most abundant
substance in the known universe, which is really interesting because it's very volatile. It blows
up very easily, but it shows how it kind of, it underpins everything in modern life. So we
often think about carbon being the basis for organic life, which is a fair assumption, but
actually hydrogen is nearly ubiquitous in everything we do, which is the cruel irony of
why it's so difficult to generate sustainably. So we're all hydrogen? In some ways we're all
hydrogen. Yeah. That's pretty cool. I didn't know that. So thank you. I'm going to take that bit of
information and tell someone else about it tomorrow. I'll just be sitting there and say,
hey, do you know we're all hydrogen? And they'll be like, get back to work, Ben. I'm like, yep,
no, that's fair. That's fair. Okay. Well, brilliant. Okay. That is the official end of the question
round now. Okay. But yeah, thanks for answering my questions. Okay. Well, Ralph, you've been
brilliant to have on. Before I let you go, I just want one final question I'm going to ask you.
Do you have any advice for future graduates looking to get into the energy hydrogen industry?
And yes, I did ask you this last time on your first podcast, but that was eight months ago.
I want to know if your advice has changed. We're still hiring. So if you have experience or you
want to come and work for a really cool company that's making really cool tech, please get in
contact with us. It's Ralph at Caledon. Very easy to remember. The advice I would have is
this space is becoming so big and so heavily invested in. There's lots of opportunities,
but the important thing is to find out in this space what interests you. There's lots of things
you can do. Some people will say be a renewables engineer and put up big wind turbines, develop
projects. Some people want to make really cool electrolyzers or fuel cell stacks. This is going,
this area is going to permeate through all aspects of modern life because everything that we do from
clothing and fashion to food to transport is going to be decarbonized over the next 30 years.
So even if you are passionate about fashion design, there is a space for you and your skill
set in hydrogen and renewables in general. Really what's more important is awareness and
understanding of how you fit into that solution because we need lots and lots of different
skill sets to solve this problem and they're not all engineers. A lot of the work I do is with
people who have software backgrounds, marketing backgrounds, accountancy backgrounds, because
we have to completely change the entire societal perspective on energy and that requires everybody
from the people who know how to make the generation equipment to people who know how to market
energy and policy. So it's really more about being a motivated and actively enthusiastic
participant than any specific skill set and listening to things like this podcast are a good
way to start that. You said that last time as well, I remember that. Like gateway to
gateway. Thanks for saying that. Like that's good. And speaking of marketing, I know the
date this is filmed, it's coming up to like International Women's Day. Yeah. And I've already
got the tagline. I'm going to put out. I actually, you know what, I'll say this and I probably won't
put it out because it is a bit cheesy. Okay. But I'm like putting the energy and energy.
Yeah. Energy and energy. Like it's, it's, it's one of those. We're really fortunate at the
Kavagen to have an unusually high proportion of female employees. And that's right through up to
C level in the company. We think it's one of our real key strengths because the more people you
bring from diverse backgrounds, different experiences and different perspectives, the faster you get to
the best answer. And I'm really fortunate to work with and, and for some really, really cool people
who happen to be women. And I think that's a really important opportunity and it's important to
publicize it and make it visual and make it observable. There's a lot of our best engineers
and some of our other aspects, marketing, accountancy, and logistics are female engineers
or female scientists. And it's really important that they have space to talk about that and be
visible for women who might consider roles in that area. And it's something I'm very passionate
about. And I actually work with a women's sports team. So it's something I've always tried to do
in my personal life. And it's a really important thing for everybody to be involved in.
Yes. You work for Harlequins, don't you?
Yeah. So I'm the head coach for the women's rugby team at Harlequins here in Belfast. And
it's a great responsibility and a great honor to work with such a great big family of female
sports people. But it's really hammered home to me. The seeing is believing and having to talk your
talk because I've seen lots of companies that do hire lots of female employees, but there's a
glass ceiling and I'm sure there's many more educated people to talk about it than me.
But at Catagen, we're really fortunate to have a really diverse and well-mixed balance. And it's
something that we're working really hard on to keep going in the right direction because
unfortunately the engineering space as a whole is very bad at equal representation, particularly
for female engineers. And it's something that we all benefit from having more of.
So it's great to be part of that and to help contribute positively to that. But
it's always great to have International Women's Day on Mother's Day as well.
This is a double the excuse to spoil your mum.
Yeah, I've actually already got a present. So my mum is, I'm not going to say her age,
I'll keep her dignity, but she has just taken to the time where she is in her life that she
only drinks champagne. Like only drinks champagne. So I've got her some champagne.
I've got her some champagne slits for Mother's Day. Hopefully they won't end up smashed,
but we'll see. That's about how much fun you have.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
No, it is. It's a good place to work. And I think what I really enjoy about International Women's
Day and as a supporter of it for a long time, even though my past roles is it's a great opportunity
to just talk about how great everybody is. And I think that's generally what happens is it's a very
safe space for people to talk about what they love to do. It's never a negative event,
which is always good. Yeah. No, that's brilliant.
Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast again. You have been very informative and yeah,
we all look forward to hearing you. You'll be back all in the future, I'm sure.
Oh, I hope so. Yeah. Yeah.
Hopefully I'll know more of the hydrogen questions next time.
Oh, yeah. No, next time they'll be harder. Okay. So up your game. But no, looking forward to
hearing in the future what else hydrogen has been up to. And I'm sure also in the next eight months
there will be further developments with hydrogen. Yeah, hopefully. Our mission is to take clean and
decarbonize the air and that's an infinite goal. So we're definitely on a trajectory.
Yeah. Brilliant. Thank you. Great. Thanks for listening to Carbon Climates. If you follow us
on Instagram at carbon underscore climates, you can keep up with all our latest news and our
newest posts. But yeah, thanks for listening. Bye.