If someday we were able to extract the hydrogen from water?

Question

If in the future we were able to extract the hydrogen & oxygen from water and use it to power and operate things all over the earth, would we in time run out of water on this planet?

Answer 1

Obviously not.  You put the energy in to electrolyze the water to get your hydrogen and oxygen, and then you get the energy out again by burning (chemically combining) the hydrogen and oxygen.  You also get your water back!

Answer 2

yup by electrolysis. As water is a compound it must be broken down by chemical means

Answer 3

We CAN and DO currently separate hydrogen & oxygen from water.  In fact, that is the most common way we get hydrogen and oxygen for industrial purposes.

Perhaps you have heard that hydrogen burning automobiles emit only water vapor from their tail pipes.  This is because the hydrogen recombines with oxygen from the air when it burns.

So the bottom line is this: We make hydrogen by separating it from the oxygen in water molecules.  When we burn the hydrogen, it recombines with oxygen to, once again, become water.

Hydrogen from water is not a "source" of energy.  The source is from the electricity that is required to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen in water molecules.  You can't get more energy from burning the hydrogen than you put into the electro-chemical reaction that produced the hydrogen.  So a car that burns hydrogen is sort of like a car that runs on a spring.  You put energy into the spring when you wind it up and you get the energy back when it unwinds.

So the bottom line of my previous paragraph is this: Hydrogen is just a way of storing energy.  The hydrogen comes from energy that is put into an electro-chemical reaction.  So the energy to operate a hydrogen burning automobile usually comes from burning coal in an electrical power plant.