HIGH SUCCESS
Hydrogen Is Green Headway to SUstainability, Carbon Capture, Energy-transition, and SuStainizability®
Instructors
Vasilios Manousiouthakis (Distinguished Professor, UCLA Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department)
Ioannis Manousiouthakis (CEO, Hydrogen Engineering Research Company,
H-E-R-C, LLC)
Prerequisites
Calculus
Typical Field Trips
Hydrogen Home, Hydrogen Fueling Stations
Cluster Description
HIGH SUCCESS is a cluster that focuses on issues that stand at the top of societal agendas and particularly concerns of teens. These include, Education, Environment, Economy, and Climate Change, https://ed.stanford.edu/news/what-do-teens-care-about-stanford-education-researchers-uncover-top-concerns-voiced-letters, which as will be shown in this cluster are related to science and engineering concepts focused on Hydrogen, Sustainability, Carbon Capture, and the Energy transition.
The HIGH SUCCESS cluster’s instruction will first focus on sustainabilityand sustainizability®. Since 1987, when the United Nations’ report “Our Common Future” characterized development as sustainable if it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, there has been a dramatic increase in sustainability research aiming to define and assess whether a system is sustainable. More recently, sustainizability® has been put forward as a concept aiming to assess whether an unsustainable system can be made sustainable using allowable actions, https://trademarks.justia.com/885/21/sustainizability-88521471.html.
The second focal point of HIGH SUCCESS will be related to Carbon Capture efforts being pursued worldwide, to address the global climate change concerns whose origins date back even before 1896, when Arrhenius in his publication “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground” in the Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, stated: “The selective absorption of the atmosphere is … in a high degree by aqueous vapour and carbonic acid, which are present in the air in small quantities”. The Science and Engineering behind all these efforts will be discussed in detail, including the detailed description of engineering solutions on how to capture carbon dioxide either directly from air or from point sources, how to sequester it, or alternatively how to redirect its carbon content into other chemical forms that are economically beneficial and eliminate carbon dioxide atmospheric emissions. The students will engage in software use that will enable simulations and technoeconomic analysis of these Carbon Capture systems.
The final focal point of HIGH SUCCESS is Hydrogen, which of course is closely related to the Energy transition that is being pursued throughout the globe, and the aforementioned sustainability, sustainizability® and carbon capture concepts. The students will be provided with hydrogen relevant academic background, so they develop an improved understanding of the marketing colors of the naturally colorless hydrogen, that are often referenced in social media and fora in which they frequent. Hydrogen’s physical and chemical properties, production methods, and uses will be discussed, hydrogen related experimental demonstrations will be carried out, and hydrogen fuel cells will be used by the students themselves in experimental projects.
Course Content
Starting with a brief summation of hydrogen technology throughout history, the HIGH SUCCESS cluster’s instruction will first focus on an overview of several sustainability analysis concepts from the literature. These will include the concepts of “Ecological Footprint”, “Life Cycle Analysis (LCA)”, “Sustainability Assessment by Fuzzy Evaluation (SAFE)”, “Sustainability Interval Index (SII)”, “Sustainability Assessment through Fisher Information Stability”, “Gauging Reaction Effectiveness for the ENvironmental Sustainability of Chemistries with a multi-Objective Process Evaluator (GREENSCOPE)”, and “Sustainability Over Sets (SOS)”. Subsequently, the concepts of “Sustainizability® (SIZ)” and “Sustainizability® Over Sets (SIZOS)” will be focused on, for the synthesis of sustainable systems. The students will carry out two software based projects related to some of the above topics, whose results will be submitted for publication in refereed journals.
HIGH SUCCESS instruction will next focus on Carbon Capture systems. First, CO2 capture will be discussed theoretically and experimentally demonstrated. The students will then learn how to use software to develop simulations of these Carbon Capture systems, whose results can then be used to carry out their technoeconomic analysis.
Finally, HIGH SUCCESS will focus on Hydrogen, which is being seriously considered as one of the major energy carriers for vehicular transportation. Its properties (electronic, physical, chemical) will be discussed, as well as those of its isomers (protium, deuterium), and spin isomers (para, ortho). The Bohr model of the Hydrogen atom will then be discussed, and the differential equations governing the associated electron orbit will be rigorously derived using Newton’s law, and analytically solved through a series of transformations, thus generalizing the hydrogen atom model’s validity to a model describing the earth’s elliptic motion around the sun. Hydrogen combustion, and electrochemical oxidation in fuel cells and their kinetics will then be discussed. Hydrogen related experimental demonstrations will be carried out, and the students themselves will build a small hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle in their experimental project.
Next, HIGH SUCCESS will focus on hydrogen production methods (e.g. Electrolysis, Steam Methane Reforming with Carbon Capture, etc.) and their associated marketing colors (green, blue, etc.). Hydrogen separation/purification, storage, safety (e.g. Hindenburg), and delivery through Hydrogen Fueling Stations will be discussed, and the latter will be the focus of at least one field trip.
Faculty
Dr. Vasilios I. Manousiouthakis
Distinguished Professor
UCLA Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department
Director, Hydrogen Engineering Research Consortium (HERC)
5549 Boelter Hall, Box 951592
Los Angeles, California 90095-1592
Phone: (310) 206-0300
Nonconfidential Fax: (310) 206-4107
E-mail: vasilios@ucla.edu
Mr. Ioannis Manousiouthakis
Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Hydrogen Engineering Research Company, LLC (H-E-R-C, LLC)
2878 Nicada Drive
Los Angeles, California 90077
Phone: (310-739-8563)
E-mail: ioannismano@h-e-r-c.com
Final Project
The students will carry out two software based projects, and an experimental project. The two software projects will focus on Sustainability and “Sustainizability® studies, whose results will be formalized in manuscripts that will be submitted for publication in refereed journals. The experimental project will focus on building small hydrogen powered vehicles.
Possible Field Trips
The students will take several field trips as part of this cluster. They will visit:
- Hydrogen Home built by Southern California Gas in Downey (https://www.socalgas.com/sustainability/h2home)
- Hydrogen Fueling Stations in Southern California (https://h2fcp.org/stationmap).