Is hydrogen as an alternative energy feasible?

Question

Is hydrogen as an alternative energy feasible (in Singapore preferrably, but in general will do)? It's part of my school work, and MY STAND IS, IT IS FEASIBLE. Can someone give me some pointers? What should I state?

Answer 1

it will work one day as more "gas stations" come on line with the hydrogen to refuel the cars with

Answer 2

You have many answers here... I think that Hydrogen as a fuel source is impractical... takes too much energy to isolate it and it is SO reactive -- that it will constantly seek to bond and achieve a more stable state.  Won't really work.

Answer 3

Hydrogen as a alternative energy is feasible. But treat hydrogen as the ideal battery, not as a power source. Hydrogen (H2) doesn't exists in nature in quantity. It is too reactive with everything else, which is the only reason we have water.

Hydrogen needs power sources to generate it. Once generated, hydrogen is the most ideal battery. Unlike power lines that lose half of the energy they carry on average, hydrogen will have the same amount on both the producing and using sides. That is why hydrogen, not lithium batteries are predicted to be the next power source for cars.

Answer 4

Yes, it is, just not right now.  Once they go in to mass production, the price will drop.  Same thing with the Hydrogen.

Answer 5

There are two ways to use hydrogen as a fuel.

#1:  burn it.  Combining hydrogen molecules (2 H2 + O2 -> 2 H2O)  creates energy, but the problem is you need to get the free hydrogen molecules.  The most obvious source of hydrogen is water, but to make hydrogen from water, you need to put the energy into it (i.e. the reverse of the process that generates energy.)  This makes hydrogen a good storer of energy (a battery), but not a source of energy.

#2:  fusion.  Combine 4 hydrogen atoms to make a helium atom.  This is what powers the sun, and it creates a lot of energy.  First you need to isolate hydrogen (see above), and then force the hydrogen into a very small space whose temperature is a couple of million degrees Celsius.  Theoretically it can be done, but no one has achieved that yet.

Other ways of getting hydrogen:  squeeze it out of fossil fuels such as methane, but this does put carbon into the air, or out of sugars or alcohols, but if you're doing that, why not just burn the sugar or alcohol?

It's a good topic to write about, but there are complications.

Answer 6

Some facts

1.Hydrogen is made from water.

Do you truly want Water to be use as fuel?

2. It cost more energy to make the hydrogen than it will have.

3. Hydrogen does not have any energy in it`s natural state. It must be compressed. This also cost energy.

4. The tank on your car would need to be almost the size of the car. Why? Be cause hydrogen has so little energy out put.

Answer 7

It is currently not feasable there are numerous problems mainly due to the storage of it and the highly pressurised tanks need to be used to keep it as a liquid...

They still are say about 10-20 years off...

There is a lot less in the news and media as the hysteria for hydrogen has dropped down and funding for the projects have dropped.

Largly as car manufacturers are looking back to fuel efficency and electric vehicles as this technology is more immediate and hydrogen is still al long way off...

The expense of putting in the infrastructure is too expensive and will take a long time, especially as all the current infrastructure is based on oil,

Also they have shown some prototype cars,

however more oil and petrol have gone into building these cars particuarly in the storage tanks,

than could ever be paid off during the life of the car....

It MAY be feasible in the future maybe 20 years from now before it gets introduced, but it certainly is not going to replace oil anywhere in next 20 years......

It will definatly need a lot more funding and Research and Development until then.

I also must mention hydrogen is only a way to store the energy not neccessarily any easier to create it....

Answer 8

You know it is totally feasible. The governments argument about not pursuing it is the overall cost of creation. Supposedly they would use more oil and electric to create these cars than they do making combustion autos. Personally I think its c**p, too many government officials stand to lose money if we go green. Like our fearless leader for example. They could do something about the cost of gasoline but they will not. When hydrogen is used as fuel the only emissions is water. There is no pollution nor any chemicals of any kind. Doing this would be a giant leap for mankind, why not they make laws against everything else that's bad for us.

Answer 9

The main problem is getting everyone on board to make the transition from Oil to Hydrogen. Yes, Initially, it WILL cost more to do this...but in the long term, it will cost much less.

No matter what the technology, it has ALWAYS cost way more at first than it does later on. the reason for this is that every technology when first introduced, is crude and takes time to perfect. Well, if we don't get started, how will we ever get it perfected and make it cheaper to use?

People end up fearing what they don't know or understand. Gas is potentially explosive ins't it? And yet, we think nothing of pumping it into our cars every day. Same deal with Hydrogen, it just takes time for people to be able to make the transition and the mind-set that we use every day for regular old gas..which is going to run out.

Hydrogen is a renewable resource and once we are able to create artificial gravity, and utilize that in our space industry, we will be able to farm hydrogen and other gases from the gas giants (planets) in our solar system and then people will stop being melodramatic about using up all our life-giving water for our need to speed use of cars.

People tend to get used to a certain way (we easily get into a "rut" and tend to want to stay there), and then become resitant to "change"...despite some "changes" being better for us. It just takes a certain amount of will-power and common sense to accept change and get the insentive to help out.

Answer 10

well lets see...

since conductors of energy are atoms that have less than 4 electrons, semi conductors have 4 valence electrons, and atoms with more than 4 valence electrons are insultaors, it would seem hydrogen would tranfer electrons/energy easily, considering the low amount of valence electrons.

coupled with the fact that hydrogen atoms aborb energy easily and also reasleases quite easily, i would say the answer to your question is ...YES!

and since the military is experimenting with hydrogen fuel cells as energy and fuel sources, i think that supports my premise.

if you are looking at it from a view point of BIG OIL, then no nothing else is a feasible alternative fuel.

Answer 11

The most likely source of hydrogen is water.  It takes energy to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen in water.  In fact, it takes more energy to do the separation than you gain by burning the hydrogen later.

If you could get more energy from burning hydrogen than in separating it, you'd have a perpetual motion engine.  Sorry, the laws of thermodynamics says that this is impossible.

As so well stated by Michael Jackson [the Scarecrow] in the movie 'The Wiz'  "You can't win.  You can't break even.  You can't get out of the game."

Answer 12

Is hydrogen as an alternative energy feasible?  

Yes, but it is not economical with today's technology.

What is lacking in today's technology?

(1) Ways of generating the hydrogen so that it is efficient.  Many techniques of hydrogen generation actually use more energy than they generate.  We need an efficient means of hydrogen generation, and it has to generate lots of hydrogent.

(2) Ways of storing the hydrogen and making it available when you need it.  This is like a battery.  Do we use hydrogen like a battery or like a gas cylinder.  If it is stored in a gas cylinder it has a nasty propensity to leak.. whoa, an explosion hazard.

(3) Infrastructure... Are we going to need to establish hydrogen stations like we have for gasoline stations?  Or are we going to need to pipe the gas to our homes?  Are all homes going to need fancy hydrogen storage systems?

Perhaps the answer will be more simple.  Every school child knows what happens when you drop a pellet of sodium metal into a glass of water..  Hydrogen bubbles out..  Now we just a cheap metal like aluminum to react with water and a means of making it available simply and cheaply... whoa.. here it is:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18700750/

We're not there yet, but maybe the future is closer than we think..

Answer 13

In 100 year's, society will be astounded to think that we didn't transfer to hydrogen when it was possibloe close to a hundred year's, ago.  It is easy to make it, although there is theory mixed with reality, conversion to a pure fuel source, would enable motor car's with caruburretur's, to function, and emit water vapor and fuel cell's could buy hydrogen from cheap maker's.  Russia and other country's have offered to sell it, but big oil in USA EU have bought out much of Russia's cheap coal and oil, so our great leader's in america want you to burn oil in big SUV's.

Answer 14

My only argument would be how safe would it be to use hydrogen. As we all know hydrogen may be the most abundant element in the universe, but a drawback is hydrogen is very flammable and combustable. I know with the use of heat engines combustion is good, but also heat engines waste alot of energy. This wouldn't be a good idea if we are still trying to "save" the ozone layer. Would the burn-off do anything to help the deterioration of the ozone or make things worst. I would think it would be better if we figured out a way to not have to burn any type of fuels.

Answer 15

Hydrogen has enormous potential as an energy source. The issue is storage. There was an excellent article in Scientific American recently regarding this issue. I don't recall the particulars, but it seems it is an issue of compression, so as to store the relatively large amounts in a safe manner.

Contrary to a common belief, the use of hydrogen is not as a means of combustion, but rather to use if fuel cells (look it up) to generate electricity.