Chemical Reactions: Hydrogen Fuel

The Hydrogen Fuel Cell could revolutionize the world. This ingenious technology, which creates electricity from the chemical reactions of hydrogen and oxygen has, in its 150-year history, passed many of the critical tests along the path from invention to innovation. Recent developments in fuel cell technology and concurrent developments within the energy and automotive industries have brought the world to brink of the fuel cell age and the hydrogen economy.

Solar energy can be turned into electricity through solar cells 15%=cheap, 40% efficiency=expensive. Caloric theory of heat=caloric fluid flows from hot object to cold. Heat engine=

First, the article claims that the fuel cell engines utilize easily available , renewable resources. However, the professor refutes that by saying that the resources are not easily available. Although, hydrogen is available in water, but it's not usable. She said it must be in apurified liquid state and it's highly artificial, so the process of produce and stor the liquid hydrogen is not easy because

However, some pundits are concerned that adopting hydrogen energy as the sole strategy for the issues facing the automobile’s future is problematic because of the lengthy time frame in which they are projected to become ubiquitous. Furthermore, the present infrastructure for the distribution of hydrogen fuel sources or the production of hydrogen fuel cells is not only insufficient, but slow to develop. As such, fossil fuels are presently the main source for hydrogen production, which means that hydrogen vehicles do not successfully decouple the automobile from a fossil fuel economy. This is also widely inefficient because it will generate four times the carbon dioxide emissions generated by gasoline efficient automobiles. Furthermore, compressing hydrogen for the purposes of

Hydrogen can easily combine with other elements making numbers of compounds. Such as ones as water, ammonia, methane, and table sugar. Hydrogen is produced by heating natural gas with steam to form a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. There are multiple uses for Hydrogen. Hydrogen is used to convert oil into margarine.

Instead, if you use that electricity to split water, separate the hydrogen with extreme purity, pressurize it to crazy levels (or, even worse, liquefy), transfer it to a giant (even in liquid form) hydrogen storage tank in the car and then recombine it with oxygen to generate electricity, you would be lucky to get ~20% efficiency. Expensive, complex, bulky and super inefficient. It loses on every dimension.” Musk said in an email exchange with Tim Urban (Urban). Now on to gas engines they have over 200 parts to an electric engine’s 10.

The use of a hydrogen fleet, would solve many of the existing emissions issues associated with diesel fuel usage. ”Vision Motor calls their hydrogen tractor a Zero Emissions Terminal Tractor, or ZETA. It's the right thing for southern California because of its benefits to people's health, says LaRosa, citing lung and respiratory diseases blamed on exhaust smoke from internal combustion engines.” (http://www.truckinginfo.com/article/story/2012/04/hydrogen-fuel-cells-could-be-socal-fleets-future.aspx) Hydrogen offers no emissions in the air other than vapor, and fuel economy is better than most gasoline powered vehicles, roughly in the 30-50% range. Currently hydrogen is very costly to produce, and there isn’t enough infrastructure to support a full fleet of

Hydrogen has already been under the micro scope for many years as an alternative fuel source to us because of its abundance and power. We have simply been lacking the

Fuel availability is an everyday thing. You just go to the service station down the road and fill up for a decent price. However to produce fuels it is a bit more complicated. Fuel is made by the fossil fuels that are deep in the ground formed thousands and thousands years ago. It was made by dead organism. However, fuel is reliable but it is running out fast, so we need another energy source for our everyday needs. Hydrogen powered cars are very environmentally friendly, they do not admit any sort of harmful fumes into the air. It produces steam instead of exhaust gases. The things that makes this car able to drive is a fuel cell. It converts the hydrogen into electricity producing heat and water as by products. We collect Hydrogen from water,

Using hydrogen fuel is another way to increase power of engines. Compared to other fuels, hydrogen combustion is powerful. It can easily take off hundreds of tonnes and reach a speed of more than the sound (for examples, rocket use hydrogen combustion to take off) As the rockets use it, they reach a speed more than sound few minutes and just imagine what a speed cars will have by using hydrogen.

Scientists have also figured out how to harness solar energy, using electricity from photovoltaic cells to yield hydrogen that can be later used in fuel cells. But hydrogen has failed to catch on as a practical fuel for cars or for power generation in a world designed around liquid fuels.

Recent years have shown an increasingly large need for a practical renewable energy source for such reasons as diminishing fossil fuels and increases in greenhouse gasses. Hydrogen appears to be a way out of this gasoline-dug hole, or at least, a way out in the future. Hydrogen fuel cell cars are being engineered as we speak as the technologies to refuel them cleanly are being proposed. Unfortunately, most of the technologies associated with hydrogen are still in the prototype/pre-production stages and require better enhancements before becoming mainstream. This paper assesses the practicality of hydrogen power in cars both now and in the future while explicating the actual process of how a

For the past three decades Oil dominates the agenda of political discussion. With scares over price volatility, sizes of reserves, international imports and least of which are the environmental impacts due to carbon dioxide and other emissions. Various speculations and educated guesses place our total depletion of crude oil within the next 50 years and there is a general consensus between environmentalists that we steer toward a hydrogen transportation system given the projected work and nonexistent carbon dioxide emissions (Environmental Technologies class lecture, Santa Clara University). However many barriers stand in the way of attaining such a goal, most of which pertaining

An alternative form of energy source is using a fuel cell. A fuel cell is a device that generates electricity by a chemical reaction by converting chemical energy stored in hydrogen fuel into electricity. A PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) cell uses hydrogen gas and oxygen gas as fuel. The products of the reaction in the cell are water, electricity, and heat (Hydrogen + Oxygen = Electricity + Water Vapour) The advantages of using hydrogen fuel cells is that one, the amounts of pollution being produced will significantly drop as there are no harmful by-products being released, which means this type of fuel would contribute to global warming as it does not release any greenhouse gases. Secondly, hydrogen fuel cells are renewable sources, therefore it can be constantly reused unlike fossil fuels and thirdly since it requires hydrogen, which is extracted from water there will be no shortage. Also, it’s far more efficient than other sources of energy as Hydrogen is an efficient energy type since it has the ability to convey a lot of energy for every pound of fuel. This means that an automobile that utilizes hydrogen energy will travel more miles than one with an equal amount of gasoline. However the disadvantages are Hydrogen energy is expensive as a result, it is not heavily used by people around the world and currently today, hydrogen energy is only used to power most hybrid vehicles. Another disadvantage is that hydrogen gas is highly flammable making it very dangerous and not a

In order to understand the why behind the need to change from fossil fuels to hydrogen power, it is necessary to understand what that power is and how it works. Hydrogen is the most abundant and simplest element on earth. It is most commonly found as part of water. In its pure gaseous form it is extremely light, but when ignited in this state releases a large amount of energy in an explosion. In this violent reaction the hydrogen combines with free oxygen molecules in the atmosphere and creates water vapor. This is similar to the way gasoline is combined with air and ignited in an internal combustion engine in the cars used today and like with gasoline, the combustion of hydrogen has risks. In addition to the risk, some of the energy released in the reaction is lost in the form of sound and heat. As an alternative to burning, these same gases can be combined with the use of catalysts to extract the free electrons produced as liquid water is formed(Popovici and Hoble Dorel). Using cables connected to a fuel cell such as this, those electrons go through a circuit, generating electricity. This is more efficient than combustion because less energy is wasted in the form of sound and heat. Going further, greater efficiency for this reaction can be had the lower the temperature it is allowed to take place at, with 83% power at 25◦C(77◦ F)(Popovici and Hoble Dorel). As fuel cells are created with better heat management and