What is the hypothesis about hydrogen being the fuel of future?

Question

What is the hypothesis about hydrogen being the fuel of future?

Answer 1

Abundantly available and eco friendly fuel of the future.

Bruning hydrogen in presence of oxygen convertes it to heat energy that can be used in production of motion, industryies etc, and resultant byproduct is water.

Answer 2

First of all, these are not "water-powered" cars... hear that all the time, *sigh*.

Hydrogen, produced by the electrolysis of water can be recombined with oxygen from the air releasing energy at the same time - i.e. hydrogen is "burnt" to release energy in the same way as petrol is.

Main difference is the by-product is water rather than CO, CO2 and a bunch of nasty hydrocarbons.

The trick is that hydrogen is not so simple to store and move around as petrol: It's very flammable and takes up a lot of space as a gas, is very difficult to liquify (very cold/lots of pressure). However there are ways of storing it safely, mainly in "fuel cells".

BUT - and it's a big but - where did the energy to electrolyse the water come from in the first place? If solar power, great - this is green. If it comes from plugging into the main electricity grid that is powered by coal or oil power stations, then we haven't really saved anything!

(Well, it moves the pollution from the roads to wherever the power station is and does give the possibility of cleaning the 'exhaust' of the power station which is not as easy to do to every car. But we're not cleaning the exhaust, so: no benefit so far!)

Edit:

Re the 'WES' system that runs on H2 from water without remote electrolysis: Yes, it solves the H2 storage and transport issue which is great but exactly how it works is still secret... obviously, it involves some form of catalyst that presumably (to avoid breaking the 1st law of thermodynamics) gets used up in the process. What this catalyst is, how much it costs, is there enough to be a commercially viable alternative (e.g. if it is a rare element then only a few cars could run this way) and what the energy consumption is in manufacturing the catalyst are all unknowns.

In other words, it's a bit early to discuss WES as a real alternative and note that it is a claim rather than proper peer-reviewed science (any one remember "cold fusion"?):

"Genepax claims to have invented a fuel cell system that uses water", "Unfortunately, there is a good chance Genepax has committed some sort of mistake" (http://www.worldcarfans.com/9080617.002/...

It uses "a proprietary technology... [that] Genenpax has kept ... under wraps" (http://gizmodo.com/5016343/genepax-unvei...

"Genepax’s car for sure looks like it will be too expensive for a while. And it doesn’t have a mass-manufacturer yet."

(http://www.getmoneyenergy.com/2008/06/ge...

Still, it's worth keeping an eye on this - they say that "the whole process produces no carbon emissions and it uses no fossil fuels" which would be great news (if true, etc)!

Answer 3

it's no more a hypothesis...

some models of cars are on the way to the test tracks...

Answer 4

If we can just eliminate those Oil company cover ups water fueled car should be here a century ago

Answer 5

I have written about WES a couple of times. It was on TV. This technology generates electricity by corroding metal with water. It delivers enough energy fast enough to run a small car at 50 miles/hour for 1 hour. Only used 1 liter of water. You need to replace the WES unit every 5 years according to the manufacturer. I think similar approaches will pop up soon. It is matter of economics. This manufacturer is projecting the cost of WES to be somewhere around $5000.  It is about $83/month. It can be a good oil alternative. Good thing about this is hydrogen does not need to be stored. It generates electricity and when electrons come back, it get recombined with oxygen and returns to water. We somehow need to produce hydrogen. This technology produces hydrogen as you drive your car. You don't need a hydrogen delivery infrastructure (hydrogen stations). If this metal is too precious, then the price may not hold for longtime. It all depends on economics and resources, I guess.

Answer 6

Fuel cells are great for electric cars. But to use the vehicle that you have know you need a HHO booster to add on demand hydrogen to you gas. It works I have done it and I am developing my own fuel cell. It use the dc voltage from you alternator in your car not the electric from the power plant. Look up HHO, Browns gas on google. You can find e-books or buy e-books on how to build your own if you want or just buy a unit.

W2G

www.water2gas.com

Answer 7

Eventually it will be but not until we can put it into a fusion reactor and use it the way our sun does. Producing hydrogen thru electrolysis or from natural gas (as the Honda FCX will do) will never return as much energy as you put into it. In the case of a fuel cell, if you produce enough electricity to power the electrolysis, why not just use less of that energy to drive the car and not bother with the fuel cell? The only way this will make sense is to use solar energy (photovoltaic or solar thermal) to power the electrolysis and then store the hydrogen for use during peak hours and when the sun isn't up.

As for a water-powered car, how exactly would that work? There is no energy magically stored in water, the hydrogen and oxygen bond freely but separating them again takes a lot of energy. Is there some unknown material that makes this feasible or is it just a pipe dream? My vote is pipe dream, I'm afraid, due to those stubborn laws of thermodynamics.

Answer 8

I too would like to know about the mechanism of this. How to control the energy released is the main question.

Answer 9

2 major hypothesis:

- Large sources of cheap and clean energy to produce hydrogen in the first place (VERY unlikely)

- Efficient and inexpensive conversion of hydrogen to mechanical energy and/or electricity. (Also unlikely to be at the same time inexpensive and efficient)

Answer 10

Hydrogen would be a great fuel,

It burns easily and cleanly, with water vapor as the by product.

If you're getting the hydrogen from splitting water molecules, this is a complete cycle, however it will always cost energy to do this (the cycle can't power itself completely), so it's important to know where the energy for getting the hydrogen comes from. As someone mentioned you don't want to be using coal-burned electricity to do this, because then you're basically using coal as a fuel. A green energy source like wind, hydroelectric, or nuclear would be better.

There are other downsides right now, like

where/how do you store the hydrogen safely? By the way, fuel cells do not store hydrogen, they are used to combine hydrogen and oxygen to make water and create electricity. You still need a place to store the hydrogen that you're pumping into the fuel cell. So if you have an electric fuel cell vehicle, you still need to compress the hydrogen into a few cylinders to power your car for a few hundred miles, you're lugging around a few hundred pounds of compressed hydrogen (extra weight), but in theory, you wouldn't need a huge bank of batteries like in a Prius. Right now fuel cells are only about 50% efficient and have short lifetimes. A lot of research is going into fuel cell technology and it's not obvious whether it will be viable, however it is progress and our eventual fuel source of choice may stem from this research.

So is Hydrogen the fuel of the future? Maybe, but first we need to get away from burning coal, because that is essentially where all the energy will be coming from.

Answer 11

Hydrogen can be used to generate electricity in a fuel cell which would be used to run an electric motor that  powers the car.  Both of these run very efficiently and create water as a byproduct which is much better for the environment that the current internal combustion engine which creates CO and CO2 among other pollutants.  Hydrogen can be derived from water using our current power plants when they are not being used for other things such as overnight when air conditioners tend to run less.  There are however several obstacles that need to be overcome in order to make hydrogen competitive with gasoline.  Fuel cells are very expensive so the cost needs to come down.  The storage tank for hydrogen in a car needs to get smaller and needs to be safe in a crash.  Once a practical reasonably priced car is available, the infrastructure to generate and deliver hydrogen would need to be built which could be very expensive.  So that's the case for hydrogen.  Will it be build?  That all depends on technology developments in the hydrogen fuel cell and the electric battery which are going head to head to replace the gasoline car.