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Whatever happened to hydrogen power?
Ok, so when I was at school ten years ago we were being told how hydrogen power was going to revolutionise energy production. It would be a solution both to global warming, and our increasing reliance on places like Russia and the Middle East for fossil fuels. I studied A level chemistry, and the way it was explained to us made it sound like we would be powering our homes with hydrogen in a few years, but nothing close to that has happened - indeed, the media haven't mentioned it for a long while, going on about wind power and nuclear instead. Why is this? Are there problems with hydrogen power that we just haven't solved yet, like safely creating energy in a controlled environment, or storage, or is it more a matter of a lack of will/funding from energy companies?
2 Answers
- Frank NLv 71 decade agoFavorite Answer
It was never viewed as an energy source, but as an energy transportation medium. It hasn't seen widespread adoption because:
1. It's extremely volatile, thus very dangerous to handle, transport, and store.
2. We already have extensive infrastructure in place to transport natural gas, crude oil, gasoline, and even propane. Hydrogen would require new infrastructure. It also requires specific equipment to make efficient use of it.
3. It doesn't offer enough added benefit to justify the costs and investment.
4. It still requires an energy source to generate it.
- A.MercerLv 71 decade ago
It is the cost and energy involved to get the hydrogen that has held things back. There are a couple of methods of producing hydrogen. One is a chemical reaction such as adding certain metals to acids. This is not that great of a method because you need to continually supply the metal and acid. Some of these need to have electricity in order to make them so you end up with a diminishing circular effect. Each loop around the circle produces less and less energy.
The other method is using electrolysis to separate hydrogen and oxygen from water. Water is common enough but once again we run into a method where we need electricity to get the hydrogen which will then be used to produce electricity. Since you will never get a 100% efficient use of electricity in the separation and you will never get a 100% efficient creation of electricity from the hydrogen you will once again end up a little bit poorer electricity wise in this method.
Toss on to that the cost to transport the hydrogen over distances and the cost to store it until it is needed. Hydrogen is also dangerous. Very flammable and breathing it can lead to suffocation. You need to be very careful with the stuff. In the end, with current technologies, hydrogen is not that great of a choice for a full scale production of electricity. Maybe one day when we perfect fusion it will be a better choice.
Something you may want to look into is the production of different fuel cells that operate on natural gas. There are people working to make efficient fuel cells that can power homes. I have heard of one company doing this. I have not researched them so they make have nothing more than a box of dreams but 60 Minutes had a segment about them.
