What's Going On With Hydrogen?

The idea of using hydrogen for fuel is not new. Mini submarines called Swimmer DElivery Vehicles are using hydrogen for their propulsion. The concept of H2 cars have been around for several decade. The issue is in the storage tank. If liquid hydrogen is used, it would require a cryogenic system to maintain the very low temperature needed to keep the hydrogen in liquid form.

Compressed hydrogen on the other hand will require very heavy storage tanks because the gas is very light and that it has to be compressed to a very high pressure in order to store an appreciable volume.

One possibility that is been looked at is to use metal hydride tanks which absorb the hydrogen like a sponge and release it when needed.

A massive Manhattan Project to develop a workable metal hydride storage system for hydrogen in no longer necessary. TOYOTA Corporation has been working on this at SAVANNAH RIVER since 2005.

I dount we use pure hydrogen gas since it's exremetly reactive and highly explosive. There might be pressures at which hydrogen is not so reactive, but to achieve that state would cost more than it would be worth. Beside if something fail we are back to driving little Hindenburgs on the road.

there really isn't much to using hydrogen as a source of energy, just set a spark to the gas in a chamber and the rapid expanding gases could be harnessed to move pistions. trouble is that there is little way of control the rate of explosion, and it does mighty damage.

A hydrogen manhattan project would probably be a waste since we want this for general public use and hydrogen is already a dangerous checimal to begin with. It should only be handeled by competent hands. So yeah it would be a waste of money.