Is Liquid Nitrogen the Future of Clean Energy?

Liquid nitrogen (LN2) might slow down a T1000 for a bit, and it definitely helps make yummy ice cream during a classroom demo, but it has a lot of applications you may have never considered. Maybe one day it'll help astronauts stay clean, or even power your car!
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Sources:
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www.linde-gas.com/industries/...
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abcnews.go.com/Technology/jap...
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• The Leidenfrost Effect...
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[@Kwauhn.]

It's kind of annoying that you cover the environmental impact of generating electricity for EVs and creating their batteries, but then don't mention the environmental impact of creating/cooling, storing, and shipping liquid nitrogen fuels. _Surely_ there is _some_ comparable environmental impact. I'm not saying LN is impossible, but the lack of comparison/objectivity is weird for this channel.

[@tim57243]

The claim is that you use power cables to ship the electricity to the battery, and the battery generates the LN2 and runs it through turbines when you want the power later, tben you use the same power cables to ship the electricity out at the desired time. So you don't have to ship the LN2 anywhere. I would like to know the efficiency of the battery. If it is power from solar that would otherwise go unused, and other types of battery are deemed too environmentally harmful to use, it might be a win.

[@Diamonddrake]

They didn’t mention environmental impact of generating electricity. Just of making batteries.

[@DANGJOS]

​@@Diamonddrake -Yeah, they made it sound like electricity produces no emissions.- Sure electric cars don't directly produce emissions, but they do indirectly. EDIT: I listened to that section again. My statement was incorrect and a gross misinterpretation of what they were saying in the video, so I've crossed that part out. She literally admits that the electricity that electric cars use doesn't always come from renewable sources.

[@Diamonddrake]

@@DANGJOS I didn't hear that. Just heard them say batteries are bad for the environment. (lithium mining particularly though there's barely any lithium in batters)

[@pg2826]

​@@Diamonddrakethe cobolt in the batteries is also a conflict mineral.

[@lindaseel9986]

Liquid Nitrogen is used to freeze off warts, moles, skin tags. Also to freeze off pre-cancerous celks from the cervix.

[@Aeturnalis]

One of the jet engine parts we make at my work has three brass bushings fitted into holes that are 0.025mm smaller diameter. Forcing them in would damage the brass, so they use liquid nitrogen to shrink them before putting them in, then they expand and fill the space.

[@robertb6889]

That is a super interesting idea!

[@JoelFeila]

I had a problem in phyics class about doing that to get a rod in place.

[@zacrintoul]

We laser weld a part that is fitted that way and then welded. Specifications on it are less than a thou. Super interesting process.

[@SquallHart05]

That's so cool

[@Misstborn]

I think it's important to note that liquid nitrogen just stores energy (and not very efficiently, at that) so actually getting the liquid nitrogen to be... well. liquid, uses the same electrical grid that powers EVs. And because liquid nitrogen is less efficient as energy storage than modern batteries, it actually uses more of that "dirty" electricity.

[@robertb6889]

Large amounts of nitrogen are also an asphyxiation risk if it leaks all at once or over time in a closed space.

[@jonathanmelhuish4530]

Yeah, this was a really lazy dig at "Teslas", they didn't even bother to say how nitrogen is produced. Same old trick that people play when trying to promote hydrogen vehicles.

[@thagingerninjer5391]

Now talk about the mines used to gain those precious metals used in the batteries, and how devastating they are to the environment and the people forced to work there.

[@katarh]

Revolutions in battery tech are also coming - sodium ion batteries may help make long term storage of electricity cleaner than the current lead acid solution (bulky, not environmentally great, too bulky for applications like cell phones) as well as the lithium ion solution (lightweight, but environmentally awful and tends to kaboom in too many conditions.) So even liquid nitrogen energy storage may be obsolete before it really takes off.

[@ronblack7870]

@@thagingerninjer5391 no talk about the mines that are not like that. and lifepo batteries use no cobalt or precious metals.

[@MarzzRover]

It might be a lesser use, but I think making ice cream with liquid nitrogen is just delightful. It's a fun way to learn about the substance and you get a tasty treat out of it! There is an entire ice cream chain where I grew up that's dedicated to it.

[@poetryflynn3712]

Dipping Dots is similar. Dipping Dots isn't icecream, but it's made with Liquid Nitrogen

[@MarzzRover]

@@poetryflynn3712 no wonder they taste so good! They're made with science!

[@poetryflynn3712]

@@MarzzRover Originally dipping dots was supposed to be cow feed. Now it's human feed.

[@MarzzRover]

@@poetryflynn3712 moooooooo! Haha!

[@oliviervancantfort5327]

Liquid nitrogen entails significant safety concerns regarding asphyxiation risks that are not enough underlined in this video. During my time at university, there was an incident with a leak on a large liquid nitrogen tank that resulted in five deaths! This tank was located outside, so this was not even a confined space. Pure inert gases can create very fast asphyxiation. The reason is twofold: 1) as the exchange of gases in your lungs is an equilbrium phenomenum, breathing a gas that does not containa any oxygen not only does not supply your body with oxygen, but oxygen in your blood will actually be transferred to that gas. Oxygen is being pumped out of your body! 3-4 deep breaths of a pure inert gas are enough to make you collapse. 2) the asphyxiation feeling that you get when you hold your breath does not come from lack of oxygen. Your brain reacts to the buildup of CO2 in your blood. If you breathe pure nitrogen, CO2 is evacuated from your blood just fine and you get zero warning that something is wrong before you lose consciousness. These inert gas asphyxiation accidents often cause chain deaths. A first person collapses then other want to help him, not knowing what was wrong and collapse in turn. In my university accident, the two technicians trying to fix the leak collapsed first, the three other deaths were passer-bys who tried to help them. Freezing the soil with liquid nitrogen to build a tunnel is therefore very dangerous in case of leak. I would also not want any nitrogen car driving in tunnels or in underground garages.

[@robertb6889]

It was big enough to asphyxiate people out doors. Wow.

[@sjsomething4936]

Thank you for this, I was wondering exactly how dangerous a significant nitrogen leak would be, and now I have an answer. Doesn’t mean that there aren’t some specific ways to use nitrogen, but it does mean that there would have to be really well thought out safety protocols to prevent catastrophes. First off possibly everyone having a miniaturized nitrogen detector.

[@deucebigs9860]

wow. what incredible fear mongering. LN2 in a vehicle outdoors isn't going to hurt anybody. Do you think they're route lines through the interior of the car just for funsies or something? Every. Dang. Time. "Hey all there's a possible advancement in technology" and someone has to come in "Well ACKSHUALLY it will kill us all even though I don't have any of the details about this implementation. PROGRESS BAD!!! I know better than everyone else!!!" SMDH

[@countk1]

Yes and no. It all depends on quantities and if oxygen get's pushed out. I'm not talking about heavy gasses like SF6, but nitrogen is not unsafe unless treated poorly. I mean, we're developing hydrogen based energy sources at the same time, and that is a whole different level. The true danger is indeed the fact that it not detected in any way, which makes people unaware of a situation as you stated. I work regularly with liquid nitrogen and can hardly believe that a simple leak can cause this, even inside, unless it has been piling up for a long time. Tunnels normally have very efficient ventilation as they also extract the exhaust fumes. Not sure about a privately owned parking garage though...

[@Ingcivilcarlos]

Sounds like a painless way to go at least. It is terrifying though, thanks for educating us!

[@cachecow]

We use nitrogen to freeze the water when a subterranean electrical vault floods, so we can work on it and not have to do it in water. Electricity and water don't mix.

[@kraneiathedancingdryad6333]

That's a really good idea!

[@cherriberri8373]

They do the same technique for oil filled transmission cables! Freeze the oil using nitrogen, then cut and repair.

[@drflash36]

F.y.i. It's the salt(s) that are dissolved in the water that transmit the electricity, and not the water itself. Pure, deionized or distilled water actually acts as an insulator!

[@rajaspoorna6405]

That's such a cool job

[@cachecow]

@@rajaspoorna6405 I see what you did there!

[@BartAnderson_writer]

Important to note that liquid nitrogen is NOT an energy source. It requires energy from somewhere else to create it. So it can be an energy carrier or energy storage, but not a source. Also A major problem with using it as a fuel is that it would require an entirely new infrastructure to create, store and distribute.

[@rolfs2165]

Well, you could probably make use of what (little) infrastructure already exists for H2, LNG, and CNG cars. But yeah, liquid nitrogen has more or less the same problem as electric cars: it's only "green" when you're using electricity from renewable sources for it.

[@ColumbiaB]

@@rolfs2165 - The concern about how electricity for electric vehicles is generated is a valid point. But we should note that even if the electricity to charge an electric vehicle comes from a power plant that burns fossil fuels, it may still be more energy efficient, and arguably “greener”, than a car powered by an internal combustion engine. In general, larger power plants are more efficient than smaller ones. Thus, a big power plant burning fossil fuel converts a higher portion of the potential energy of the fuel into usable energy than does a smaller power plant - like the internal combustion engine of any road vehicle. So a power plant that burns some fuel to generate the electricity to charge up a thousand electric vehicles, probably burns less fuel, and creates less pollution, than the internal combustion engines of a thousand gas or diesel vehicles.

[@porcorosso4330]

​@@ColumbiaB To add to that, it is also easier to do air quality/pollution control from power plants rather than millions of cars on the street. Just to add a little more. There is also regenerative breaking. Not much, but something. Less moving parts for the power train. Also same or less idle energy consumption.

[@mzp75]

And to add to all the comparisons between electric and fossil fueled cars: to refine oil into petrol or diesel, you also need a lot of electric power that could be saved to directly charge the car... And about the liquid nitrogen engine: wouldn't it become a bit of a problem if all of the cars in a big city constantly expelled nitrogen gas? I would assume that this could displace a lot of the oxygen in the air. Or drive them into a not-so-well ventilated underground parking and see for how long you can breathe there. These problems would need some consideration I think.

[@cmilkau]

@@rolfs2165 I assume storing LN2 is much easier (albeit still not easy) to store than electricity, else the whole concept would be utterly stupid. So going this way is reducing the intermittency problem of renewables.

[@nickhudson9166]

You could say it solves... cold cases.

[@shanegauthier2114]

Queue The Who/ CSI Miami scream 😂😂while taking off/putting on sun glasses

[@robinchristiansen9826]

YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHH

[@sweatyeti]

😎

[@weareone8599]

YOU ARE LUCKY THERES NO DISLIKE

[@NOLNV1]

Freezing the ground to dig tunnels is so cool and once you know this kind of stuff it seems so obvious!

[@cherriberri8373]

They do the same technique for water lines, and even oil filled transmission cables! Freeze the oil using nitrogen, then cut and repair.

[@mr.cauliflower3536]

You are not allowed to use this pun!!!

[@andrebartels1690]

I work at a coal fired power plant. We clean our fire chamber with water cannons, using the Leidenfrost effect. And we have plumbing in our coal bunkers, to extinguish large fires with liquid nitrogen. Edit: typo

[@gptiede]

There are some mistakes in point #5. Firstly, it takes about 1 kilowatt hour of electricity to make 4 kg of liquid nitrogen. I have no idea how efficient a liquid nitrogen engine is, but this is a lot of electricity so this is the same limitation as electric cars. Secondly, I work with liquid nitrogen in my job, and a dewar of liquid nitrogen "goes dry" relatively quickly. In other words, the liquid nitrogen in a dewar "gas tank" would evaporate in a matter of a day or two assuming it is about the same size as a regular gas tank. This would be greatly inefficient in that you would have to refuel your nitrogen powered car first thing every day, and the fueling station would have to be where the car is parked. Finally, the evaporated nitrogen would of course vent into the surroundings of the vehicle. This is not a pollution issue as you say, but it would mean you could not keep your car in an enclosed space, no garages, because it would asphyxiate anyone who entered the garage. SciShow usually does pretty good research, but you dropped the ball on this one.

[@crackedemerald4930]

yeah feels like the researchers took a day off

[@paperburn]

Using liquid air solves those problems, I think they did "Drop the ball" by interchanging the two materials definitions, and predicted round trip efficiency would be about 60 to70 percent.most batteries are higher than that number. I have not seen any numbers on ROI and life cycle or LCOE

[@tHebUm18]

@@paperburn Using liquid air does not solve the problem that your car can't possibly keep it liquid so it will boil off when just parked. No consumer would want a vehicle that empties of fuel even when they haven't driven it.

[@paperburn]

@@tHebUm18 what is your basis for that suspicion ? liquid air products are used world wide. while I am sure that your correct about boil off but, how much is boiled away. Like with rechargeable battery they will self discharge over time.only primary batteries hold charge long term. I guess the real question would be is there a case use where it makes sense to use or not use liquid air.

[@dorianthegrey2685]

​@@tHebUm18Once it's liquefied, it would obviously be poured into a pressurized container, which would keep it liquid until it's being used. We do this all the time.

[@LFTRnow]

LN2 vehicles make no sense. Three large problems with LN2 vehicles will be getting the LN2 to evaporate fast enough, storing it for driving around and its low energy density. For the evaporation, imagine just pouring it into what basically amounts to a steam engine. The engine will spin up quickly as it is hot and boils the LN2 rapidly and creates pressure. Then the LN2 will cool it, and thanks to thermodynamics, it will move with less and less power, slower and slower until the heat it loses to the atmosphere balances out. If you cover it in heat sinks, you need a way to reject that cold into the air, and those heatsinks are heavy. As for storing LN2, you can't keep it sealed, it will always boil away a little at a time. The energy stored in LN2 though is also quite low, compared to say gasoline. LN2 takes about 0.4 kWh to produce 1 kg and getting roughly the same energy out from boiling it (an approximation) means that 100 kg of LN2 (what 35 USgal/130L of gas would weigh) has about 40 kWh in it at best, which is less than most electric cars now. A gal of gas is 33 kWh so roughly 100 kg of LN2 would be about 1 gal of gasoline. Even considering 70% of an ICE engine is waste heat, that is still 10x worse fuel density.

[@LFTRnow]

There's also a 4th problem - inefficiency. When you look up the energy in vs energy out on making LN2 and then recapturing mechanical energy from it boiling off, it becomes obvious why we don't do this. Batteries are FAR better at storing energy, as is pumped storage, basically almost anything else works better - this is also a major problem for trying to use this for grid storage. Nothing wrong with making LN2 for people who need LN2 with extra power lying around, but it is a process (like most industrial processes) that needs continuous power input to work or to be remotely economically viable.

[@DANGJOS]

Surrounding air is so poor at keeping liquid nitrogen cooled metal containers warm that I have a video on my channel that uses a metal can with liquid nitrogen to drip liquid air onto a magnet.

[@hobojoe9717]

What do you mean you can’t keep it sealed? Do pressurized tanks of LN2 still leak some of it?

[@DANGJOS]

@@hobojoe9717 Yes, because if I recall correctly, the critical point of nitrogen is colder than dry ice! You would need a terrifyingly thick and strong vessel to hold the supercritical fluid, and I imagine that would be dangerous and inefficient.

[@GerbenWulff]

Maybe you can make a hybrid with a gas engine. The gas engine produces heat and if you have a better way of cooling the engine than a radiator, you can improve the gas engine's efficiency (and make the radiator redundant) and probably lower emissions. You might even be able to inject nitrogen directly into the engine when running on partial loads similar to EGR. It's like water injection on steroids.

[@LectionARICCLARK]

Savannah is the sci-show host with the best comedic delivery.

[@A3Kr0n]

More please!

[@TheLemonKidd]

Yea I love them!!

[@rolfs2165]

Near where I grew up, there was a company building fire fighting _tanks_ from old Leo 1 chassis. Unfortunately, they were forced out of the former barracks and had to shut down then the city wanted to use the place for something else. I imagine a tank carrying … well, a tank of liquid nitrogen would be able to make it quite far into a forest fire, too.

[@spindash64]

You know, other than the armor plating serving no practical use in that role, it doesn't sound like a half bad idea

[@05Matz]

@@spindash64 Huh, that sounds like a clever idea. A lot of tanks (especially Cold War era ones) are sealed and have air tanks for operating in contaminated environments. Some of the ones intended to operate during nuclear war probably have very heat resistant seals. I imagine they'd tear most of the easily removable armour plating (whatever's removable without breaking the environmental sealing) off and replace it with lighter fiberglass/rockwool/etc. insulating blankets as part of the process, What little armour remains would probably be helpful against stuff like trees falling on it, cars exploding next to it, etc.. I'd worry a little bit about heat transfer through the hull making the cabin heat up over time to dangerous levels if dwell time is too long though, if you intend for the vehicles to hang out in the middle of a roaring forest fire for extended periods you'd ideally want some kind of powerful heat pump acting as 'air conditioning' for the cabin, optimized for the temperatures expected inside and out. And/or rig them for drone control, I suppose. Not sure they'd NEED to sit in the fire for long periods anyways, though? Actually, maybe you could use the liquid N2 tank as an emergency cooler. Just have a second valve set to expand the nitrogen in pipes INSIDE the cabin before venting it across the outside of the hull, and both the cabin and the vehicle in general should get much colder every time you spend some that way. Once they're out of nitrogen, you can presume they're already heading back to a safe location and don't need active cooling.

[@francislutz8027]

That armor plating is a wonderful surface to ensure even temperature distribution to occupants inside the tank. Yes it will hold heat, but large flat metal surfaces are easily cooled with the same liquid nitrogen it would carry

[@GamerbyDesign]

LOL Imagine an underground parking garage full of nitrogen cars idling.

[@robertb6889]

Imagine a traffic jam or accident in a tunnel. Especially if the accident involves a liquid N2 hauler

[@falconerd343]

Or even just parked, since it evaporates slowly on its own.

[@triviszla1536]

@@robertb6889 Fun fact: In America, trucks cannot haul liquid nitrogen through tunnels because it is classified as a hazardous material. Any hazmat in enclosed spaces is a big no no from the department of transportation.

[@amosbackstrom5366]

11:37 I assume you mean a vacuum insulated chamber, not a vacuum chamber. It'd be pretty difficult to store liquid nitrogen in a vacuum chamber😂

[@4124V4TA-SNPCA-x]

Exactly! You beat me to it. I was annoyed by it too. And from a channel this big, with a large team backing...

[@General12th]

@@4124V4TA-SNPCA-x Have you ever known a science channel that's never made a mistake?

[@whisper3856]

Okay, I’m stupid, what do those two even mean? 😂

[@isaiahschmitt8680]

@@whisper3856 Vacuum insulated chamber is a container surrounded by a vacuum. Vacuums are a great insulator. Storing liquid nitrogen in a vacuum chamber(a chamber with a vacuum in it) would be hard as the liquid nitrogen would evaporate.

[@whisper3856]

@@isaiahschmitt8680 Makes sense, ty!

[@iwontliveinfear]

Calling the ComutaCar an "Early Electric Vehicle" is extremely misleading. There have been electric cars since 1888. In fact EVs outsold ICEV's until about 1904.

[@LateForDinner-mn1hn]

Do you mean EVs since 1888? That would make more sense if EVs out sold ICE cars until the battery starter replaced the hand crank.

[@dorianthegrey2685]

As a meaningfully useful technology under modern usage demand, it's still in very early stages. Especially in the affordability area.

[@iwontliveinfear]

@@LateForDinner-mn1hn yes, typo, I will fix now.

[@avanm420]

Love your zoological top! 😊

[@mikeyallen6758]

The battery replacement for large scale energy storage and quick release is imo the most promising. The only other alternative to batteries I've heard of is building small on demand dams but that obviously has a larger footprint. They would look nicer than a air liquification factory but i think this liquid air approach is probably cheaper and easier to scale to the needs of an area

[@trevinbeattie4888]

Aside from any efficiency or safety questions, an issue I see with LN-powered cars is that it uses a mechanical engine which means the maintenance costs would be comparable to ICE vehicles which is much greater than EV’s which have no engine.

[@joshbobst1629]

I think costs would be significantly less than a gas engine, but still probably more than an EV. No multispeed transmission would be necessary, and since it doesn't have to withstand the heat and stress of combustion, material and maintenance costs would be much lower.

[@octosquatch.]

Except a piston engine wouldn't work in any practical sense. How would you put enough heat into the system to keep it functioning? You would be driving a giant heat exchanger. What are the maintenance costs for that?

[@terrysincheff6682]

My Dermatologist used liquid nitrogen to freeze some spots on my head today. These will not develop into cancer.

[@nariu7times328]

I am really enjoying the changes the Sci Show team has been making; while also being thrilled that some things stayed the same. Thanks so much. I love Science on Sci show.

[@jpdemer5]

A solid like dry ice would be most effective at smothering a fire: the solid pellets or slabs would drop directly onto the ground, and since CO2 is considerably more dense than air it would be less prone to drifting up and away. But the problem of cooling down the fuel to below it's combustion temperature is solved only by water, with its considerable heat of vaporization (540 cal/g, vs. 84 cal/g for CO2.) You'd need about 6 times more dry ice than water to get the same effect.

[@marcopohl4875]

This is pretty chill

[@dirtbones3694]

This is cool, i handle liquid nitrogen every day at work. it’s pretty trippy stuff.

[@mellissadalby1402]

A shower in Liquid Nitrogen? Geez, talk about a COLD shower!

[@4124V4TA-SNPCA-x]

I think that liquid nitrogen dropping device could have a future. By covering it with a thin, inflammable, preferably not toxic or damaging membrane could held the liquid back for most of the way. Dispersal would start only at 10 or 20 meters high, whatever research will show optimal, by adjusting size and shape of bullet and the covering film.

[@jpdemer5]

I think you mean non-flammable. "Inflammable" doesn't mean what you think it means.

[@4124V4TA-SNPCA-x]

@@jpdemer5 oops slip of the tongue, so to speak, in writing. Didn't even notice I wrote just the opposite. Thanks.

[@realFoxBox]

That comment about BEV batteries catching fire. BEV are a magnitude less likely to catch fire than ICE cars. Even the NTSB has come out with data to show how less likely they are. For every 100k EVs sold, 25 will experience a fire. Compared to ICE which is for every 100k sold, 1,530 have caught fire. And just because my mom has brought this up when I bought my EV, Hybrid vehicles are for every 100k sold, 3,475 have caught fire (she drives a hybrid).

[@rolfs2165]

Yup, remember that car carrier that caught on fire in the Northern Sea near the Netherlands? While early reports claimed the fire broke out among the BEV, when they finally got it to harbour it turned out that they were mostly left unharmed, it had been the ICE section that had burned out completely.

[@hWat-Ever]

A single fire truck can often put out an ICE fire. Looking at frequency without also looking at severity is dumb.

[@TheDannyHamilton]

Sure, but I suspect a liquid nitrogen vehicle would be an order of magnitude less likely to catch fire than that.

[@dcmeserve]

Yup, and I’d go farther to say that the whole latter half of this video is so ignorant on so many fronts that it’s shameful for it to be associated with SciShow.

[@cherriberri8373]

​@@hWat-Ever just as dumb as ignoring frequency. Both matter, nuance exists.

[@KevinHarper3DArtist]

The amount of electric car hate this episode had was overwhelming.

[@ireneparrish3070]

LN2 has also been used as termite eradication, by freezing the wood in a house. Or so i heard years ago.

[@glacierwulf26]

Whom ever said less puns needs to hear more puns ::)

[@ProfessorBeautiful]

Very well done! I learned a lot.

[@alexhurst3986]

I had an LN tank in the lab I worked in for my Grad Thesis. We store cells in there. I was removing a rack of containers and some LN spilled on the ground and splashed on my shoe and sock. I panicked but no harm was done. My PhD adviser said that the ambient heat vaporizes the LN long before it gives you a freezer burn.

[@existenceisillusion6528]

"I'm already getting chilly just thinking about it" I'm getting chili for dinner.

[@CedroCron]

This was really cool, thanks!

[@ruck-a-tron]

Some aircraft use liquid nitrogen. I used to work on C-5s and they used it as a fire suppressant. They also pump converted gaseous nitrogen into the fuel tanks to make them inert. We'd have to drive trucks with a huge tank of liquid nitrogen for servicing them. I think that using it as a fuel source would be difficult though. It's difficult to make, store, and to perform the servicing. Rather than just the low temperature, the expansion ratio is really high so I could foresee explosion potential. We used to put some in a plastic bottle and throw it. It makes a pretty loud boom 😆

[@jeffdeupree7232]

I would think transporting LN2, or the equipment to make it, would be prohibitively expensive on a spacecraft.

[@Oomzilla]

Such fun news. N2 is cool as thank you for that one. Super chill😂

[@cmilkau]

What does "storing enough energy to power 480K homes" mean? Is this actually about power capacity, rather than energy? Or does this implicitly assume the typical midday-solar-peak to evening-consumption-peak storage period commonly assumed for Lithium-Ion batteries?

[@patrickkayser]

Its not just proposed, LAES storage has been build and is in operation in the UK since 2018.

[@danser_theplayer01]

I heard Nasa inventred a force field shield (electromagnetic lining) for their suits.

[@m3taljel]

I heard nasa is using water as fuel for their rockets on the moon, and yeah the moon got water too

[@markshireman3306]

I say we combine concepts - use excess renewables to liquify air, then use that liquified air to power a tiny turbine inside an EV to passively recharge it over time.

[@futureproof.health]

What a snappy intro!!!! 00:05 seconds in. Pause. Gonna say.. NO. betting the thermodynamics and chemistry make nitrogen a poor store of energy. lets see..

[@Derekzparty]

Reminds me of The Day After Tomorrow quote. "Several hours ago, three helicopters went down over Scotland. They crashed because the fuel in their lines froze."

[@rox4884]

So. I saw an article a few weeks ago about maybe Italy. They want to try and use concrete to redirect lava flow. I don't think that it would last long, but they don't really need it to. They just need to redirect and hope that the direction changes exponentially. After watching this, it seems like berms with liquid nitrogen containers would be more effective. They would just have to have them ready before and set to explode at a certain temperature. It might not stop the flow, but it will slow the flow near the berm, causing a little bit of resistance, and we all know...the path of least resistance. I'm sure there's a computer model that could figure it out, with.maybe a second, higher canister.

[@jpdemer5]

Iceland is presently using earthwork berms, with good results. No need for cooling: gravity takes care of the flow direction. The lava isn't hot enough to affect the soil. (As it loses heat to the berm, it thickens and then solidifies, and actually adds mass and volume to the berm.)

[@Biophile23]

Whups nobody told me about not riding the elevator with liquid nitrogen in grad school. Glad our elevator never got stuck ... at least we had a dewar that was almost unspillable.

[@colinfew6570]

Love Savannah's sweater

[@shanehebert3237]

I don't know who was in your earpiece, but they need to chill.

[@chadjones1266]

Thanks again

[@lilatarnowski]

6 cool **hypothetical** uses for liquid nitrogen.

[@SocialDownclimber]

So how would you make the liquid nitrogen for the LN2 cars? Electri... oh.

[@cgautz]

Thanks!

[@General12th]

Hi Savannah!

[@ZackRToler]

My middle school science teacher would do that trick where they quickly dunk their hand in and out. Of course, he'd never let the students try, for good reason. You don't want to risk someone being stupid and NOT going fast

[@arnbrandy]

Ah, liquid nitrogen, the too often forgotten obsession of nerdish kids alongside dinosaurs and spaceships.

[@ngocthamhuynh9966]

Cảm ơn cô giáo! Vì những thông tin cô cung cấp thú vị về nitơ lỏng. Một phần của khoa học thú vị.

[@joesantos2455]

Dude: I've defeated SO many terminators with NITROGEN! I would say 72%...and 18% with hadukens and 10% with miscellaneous b@d@$$ery. As it were!

[@shalenmullane685]

"But maybe we can use this suffocation power for good!" *ad break* That was a concerning 5 seconds before the 'Skip' button popped up 😂

[@BuildinWings]

I like Fermilab's use - PARTICLE ACCELERATION

[@luisostasuc8135]

I swear with the firefighting portion that if the scientists hadn't thought of a cryo grenade I would have lost the rest of my faith in humanity

[@chrismuir8403]

There are also medical uses for liquid nitrogen for freezing tumors, and, with use of cryoprotectants, freezing cells to preserve them for later use.

[@chefdean7257]

That thumbnail pun was so cool, it was practically a Bose Einstein Condensate. 😎

[@doms9471]

have you ever tried solid nitrogen

[@ancientswordrage]

I was definitely hoping for a 13 minute video deep-dive on liquid nitrogen cars...

[@Meower68]

Y'all are missing something potentially huge. Stirling engines are heat engines which simply need a temperature differential between two parts. The greater the Δt, the greater the efficiency. Vaporizing something as cold as liquid air, on the "cold" side, while exposing the "hot" side to ambient temperatures, would likely be > 50% efficient, while Rankine (steam) engines tend to max out in the 30 - 35% range. As a side effect, the air you would be pulling the heat from (on the "hot" side) would be cooled down enough that it could be used as air conditioning. They have made Stirling Engines which were driven by focused solar energy. The combination of solar collectors and Stirling engine was more efficient than PV cells but more complex. They are used in some places but not widely enough. Imagine a car which uses cryogenic LN₂ on the "cold" side of a Stirling to create mechanical power or electricity. People have used electric-driven Stirling engines to cryogenically liquify gases (liquid helium comes to mind). So you could have a vehicle which takes electric power and cryogenically liquefies air, then uses the liquid air to run the exact same Stirling engine (in reverse) to produce electrical / mechanical power to propel the vehicle. Or you could hook the vehicle up to some system which supplied LN₂ to refuel very quickly; slow-charge at home or fast-charge at some kind of filling station. Kockums SAAB, in Sweden, developed a propulsion system for submarines known as Air Independent Propulsion. It uses a Stirling engine. They vaporize liquid oxygen on one side and use the gaseous oxygen which results to burn diesel fuel on the other side of the engine (maximizing the Δt between the two sides). The resulting submarine can stay submerged much longer than a traditional diesel-electric sub because it has significantly-better thermal efficiency than any diesel engine. Naturally, if you could use cryogenic Liquid Natural Gas with a Stirling ... vaporize the LNG on the cold side and burn the gaseous fuel on the hot side ... I'm still kinda puzzled why no one is doing that. Liquid Hydrogen is even colder so ... even more efficiency to be had in that arrangement.

[@Patiboke]

The energy needed to make liquid nitrogen is not more likely to come from renewable sources than the one that charges batteries. Also the exhaust could expell oxygen from tunnels or recessed highways, although that is probably negligible. And when you fill your car up and park it for a while, a pressure valve will have to let the nitrogen escape as it warms up. The BMW hydrogen car does this.

[@tarot1136]

Damn.... I would be so excited for nitrogen car...

[@MABfan11]

a little bit disappointed you didn't compare liquid nitrogen fuel to liquid hydrogen fuel

[@joefekete4384]

Moon Beach. I see you scishow. I see you.

[@AirsoftTipsandReviews]

very interesting. Didn't know about the nitrogen engine

[@rareroe305]

I know you've been a host for a while, and I know this is like 2 weeks after this video was released, but I just wanted to say: You do a good job!

[@DrToddles]

Use Meisner effect with HT superconductors, vary the temp, above and below superconductivity, tahdah, a very efficient engine ;)

[@jakubznojemsky4936]

I am afraid there might be issues with keeping the stuff around in its liquid state since it won't stay at -200C and compressed state willingly which reminds me there's also risk personel exposed to very cold temperatures. Hydrogen seems like better fuel option to me as long as you dont turn it into fireball.

[@sicfxmusic]

7. Puns

[@cvp5882]

Did you happen to mention how much energy it takes to compress nitrogen and radiate enough energy for it to condense? Its called refrigeration and its incredibly energy intensive.

[@cvp5882]

Air liquifaction is certainly useful, but it's not a miracle solution. Efficient systems still require an essential element: a wide temperature differential. The hotter the environment, the more energy required to radiate the latent heat of vaporization. It's the same problem with all refrigeration cycles.

[@jpdemer5]

@@cvp5882 You'd want to store the heat, since you'll need it later to vaporize the LN2. This can be as cheap as a large insulated tank full of rocks or gravel. There's a related, much simpler technology that compresses air but doesn't liquefy it. (You need a much larger storage container, but underground caverns can do the job.)

[@katbryers667]

Ice cream!!!!!

[@NotSoMuchFrankly]

Human heads!!!!!

[@4124V4TA-SNPCA-x]

Whatever the plot demands! The audience is stoopiddd (according to Hollywood)!

[@jonatanromanowski9519]

Go Go Sci Show!

[@czarcoma]

Wait. Astronauts dont freeze under the LN shower? Insulation's that good? How bout the helmet glass? Won't it crack? Also, LN for rorest fires? Why not dry ice? Isn't it easier to handle? No special containers. And you can drop it in blocks so they don't get blown by updrafts.

[@pigcatapult]

Used to go to an ice cream store that used liquid nitrogen to make your ice cream to order

[@azharmukhi5894]

The last one was the coolest.

[@haddow777]

The biggest problem about Nitrogen cars not mentioned is that over time, the liquid nitrogen in the tank will warm up. As such, it will boil in the tank, and build pressure. The tank cools itself and alleviates rhe pressure buildup by leaking the gas generated. Most of the heat leaves with the gas, but the main problem is that if you don't use the fuel, you lose the fuel. If you don't drive your car quite regularly, you will waste most of the fuel you buy wirh boil off. Not only is this terrible for you as the person wasting your money on fuel you can't use, it also adds to the inefficiency of the fuel. How much of the energy out into making liquid nitrogen is wasted because it has no benefit? A lot compared to electricity in a battery which has a lot less loss. Also, making liquid nitroten requires a lot of power. Not just the power od the plant, but for use in cars, it would require transportation to fueling stations. The longer it takes to get from the plant to the car, the more loss from boil off. Even for the energy storage system, I would have to imagine there wpuld be less loss from battery storage than from running a turbine from warming gas. True, if the grid battery is lithium, it wouldn't be great. Still, there are a number of different battery mixtures that are being tested for viability at grid scale right now that use very common material that alleviate the issues with lithium batteries. One of the benefits of grid batteries over car batteries is the size and weight aren't a hinderance. As long as the cost to energy storage capacity as well as endurance is good, then the tech will work. Most such batteries would be in more remote areas where land avalability wouldn't be a huge issue.

[@radiobabylon]

"enough energy to power 480,000 homes" is... a bit incomplete. the duration needs to be included for this to have any meaning. 480k homes for a minute? and hour? a week? it matters... a lot...

[@bawahakim]

Could be wrong, but assuming a continuous output, I think it can make sense without specifying the unit of time. For example, say a wind turbine produces 5MWh continously (the wind always blows for simplicity), and each home consumes 1KWh continously, then couldn't I say the wind turbine powers 5000 homes continuously? It wouldn't really make sense to talk about powering the homes for 1 minute or 1 year in this case.

[@steubens7]

that's not how plants are rated, they're not talking about work, but capacity

[@radiobabylon]

@@bawahakim well sure. in which case what is said in the video is still meaningless without that context.

[@radiobabylon]

@@steubens7 peachy, but still meaningless. 480k homes translates to... what kind of capacity? there is insufficient context for any kind of meaning to be ascribed. powering 480k homes might be amazing, it might also be worthless, there simply *is not enough information* to say either way.

[@user-th1hu6hg9s]

@@radiobabylon for the near future.

[@nunofoo8620]

Betteridge's law of headlines

[@fishyerik]

Liquid nitrogen or liquid air has a theoretical gravimetric energy density comparable to modern LFP batteries, in the same way a combustion engine could theoretically be 90% efficient if the combustion temperature was 10 times higher than ambient. By volume though, liquid nitrogen and air, even the theoretical energy density is just a fraction of that of LFP batteries. And it still difficult to reach even half of that, without applying heat well above ambient temperature. It's not a huge problem to store heat of compression and cooling from expansion to increase efficiency in stationary energy storage, but that doesn't work very well unless the system is cycled more or less constantly. Anyhow, it would be interesting if someone thoroughly explored the possibility to utilize liquid air for some range extension on perhaps electric buses in hot and humid climates. It would probably be very complicated and expensive to develop, but the "byproduct" would be fantastic air conditioning potential. Besides soaking up more heat energy from ambient air than is extracted in form of power, the "exhaust" could be very clean and very dry cool air. If liquid air range extenders to get conditioning on electric buses seems stupid, it's at least not as stupid as using liquid air or nitrogen as the only energy carrier on vehicles. Anyhow, why would anyone want to use liquid nitrogen for aerial firefighting? Water removes much more heat by vaporizing, than liquid nitrogen does in both vaporizing and reaching "normal water temperatures" combined, water vapor also displace more oxygen per kilogram than nitrogen does, per kilogram and all else equal. The advantages I can see are that liquid nitrogen would still boil away quickly even if so much of it was applied that it passed the fire and drained down into the ground as liquid, but is seemed from the description that they were trying amounts that would be more of "mild suggestions" to the wild fire to stop burning.

[@Roanoke117]

all these puns remind me of watching matpat on game theory

[@kreynolds1123]

Making Liquid air for air-conditioning in cars (gas and electric) could reduce the amount of fuel or battery used to turn the AC compressors.

[@kitrana]

you know instead of liquid nitrogen to fight forest fires you should just use dry ice, it freezes at a higher temp but would smother fires more effectively. you don't even need special finned packages just a container ready to pop open as the gas pressure rises.

[@wgrandbois]

Guessing the video title got changed?

[@alalessia]

Not me remembering I forgot to refill our cryo freezing container at the lab today because of this video

[@michaelernst3731]

That Commuter Car is in CyberPunk 2077

[@robertunderwood1011]

The idea is to stop a forest fire before it gets big Drones could haul containers of LM2 ahead of a fire or above it. Might suppress the flames enough

[@jimmurphy5355]

For fire supression, anything liquid nitrogen can do, liquid CO2 can do better.

[@tomkelly8827]

I had warts for many years as a kid until my doctor told me they could be frozen with liquid nitrogen. I had tried many other methods that did not work but this worked like a charm. 30 years later and no return of my warts! Also I know the Artificial Insemination guys have jugs of it to keep their special cow sperms cold and viable. Certainly a very useful thing to keep an eye on!

[@FunDownSouth]

I’d like to see what the current cost of 300 miles worth of liquid N2 would be!

[@robertt9342]

You may not need to worry about batteries being damaged and catching fire, just pressure explosions and asphyxiation.

[@GabrielPettier]

8:51 ok, design is not great, but that's exactly the kind of cars you want (if any) to have in a city though, and i see many like these (though with a nicer shape) in Amsterdam, usually for people who can't bike or easily take transports though.

[@chadjones1266]

The energy to liquefy the nitrogen could come from dirty sources too.

[@frogz]

so heres an idea.... a plug in electric nitrogen hybrid, you plug it in to recharge it with an internal gasifier

[@nitzanshu4695]

No matter how unoriginal the joke is, this video is a very cool one!😉

[@PaceyPimp]

They should make the cars if it is really as good as they sound as EV's were not really what we expected.