Hydrogen Fuel or Others Essay

Many people buy hybrid cars because they have been told that hybrids are much more eco-friendly than any other vehicles out on the market and they feel proud for supporting the Mother Nature. Surprisingly, it is a fact that a recent report announced that the Toyota Prius has a higher life time energy cost than Hummer H1 SUV (kentlaw.edu). It also states, “There are, however, environmental costs to mining and smelting (in Canada) 1,000 tons a year of zinc for the battery-powered second motor, and the shipping of the zinc 10,000 miles - trailing a cloud of carbon - to Wales for refining and then to China for turning it into the component that goes to a battery factory in Japan” (kentlaw.edu). In other words, the hybrids emit less carbon dioxide and other gases but it releases far more energies and toxic gases into atmosphere at production and disposal stage.

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.

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

As you go throughout your day, you use energy many times. Turning on the lights, using the toaster, taking the bus to school, all examples of using energy. Slowly, the fossil fuels that we are burning to get this energy are harming the environment. Hydrogen energy and biofuels would bring many benefits to Long Beach,

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

A second major problem with the plan is not easy to see at first. You must look much closer at what types of research is being done. There are two ways that hydrogen fuel cells can be made. One is by a reaction with oxygen. These cells are about 70% efficient and the only emissions are water vapor. The second way it by using oil or coal to make the cells. These cells are about 33% efficient and release harmful emissions into the atmosphere (Abelson 1469). I feel that we should fund research into using oxygen as opposed to fossil fuels when making hydrogen

Scion xB. The Scion only costs a paltry $0.48 per mile to put on the

The automotive industry is one of the largest industries in the entire world. As the world’s population grows and economic development occurs, the auto industry also expands. Unfortunately the growth in car numbers has had a negative environmenta, impact due to carbon dioxide and particulate emissions generated and released from the combustion process. Technology has developed a solution by utilizing the concept of hydrogen fuel cells. As the years have passed, there has been continuous development on automotive fuel cells and now it has come close to mass production of these vehicles. The main problem is the continued development of hydrogen fuel cells and their infrastructure may not be worth the cost.

Some of the concerns regarding hydrogen that are currently limiting its widespread throughout the world is hydrogen gas is very time consumer which requires a lot of time to free up from its elements even though it is less expensive than regular gas. Hydrogen gas cannot be moved through pipelines like oil due to it is a very light gas. Hydrogen gas require energy such as oil, coal, and natural gas to separate it from oxygen which will not just have logistical issues but also environmental issues.

Even Stanley Meyer, the most renowned innovator of hydrogen technology, failed to penetrate the market with his revolutionary work. Perhaps Joseph Romm’s prediction that hydrogen energy will still have little place in the market by the year 2030 is accurate. Perhaps, in spite of its potential benefits to society, this technology simply faces too much opposition to be made publicly known and utilized. Perhaps my grandfather was a wiser man to keep his findings to himself. Perhaps, however, hydrogen still has a chance. In spite of Stanley Meyer’s tragic death, and the discontinuation of his plans, his work and findings were most definitely not in vain. Roughly ten years after Meyer’s death, all of the patents and property rights to his work had

Honda has already produced a hydrogen fuel cell concept car they claim is “overall 64% energy efficient”. To put this into perspective in the average gasoline combustion engine “only about 20 percent of the thermal-energy content of the gasoline is converted into mechanical work”, making it 20% energy efficient [5]. This new line of cars could bring about jobs in the automotive industry and all industries that branch from it. As of right now the commercial market for hydrogen gas produced from the use of fossil fuels is at about $100 billion. A majority of this hydrogen goes into producing fertilizers and petrochemicals [1]. All it would take is an inexpensive source of green hydrogen, such as the one recently discovered, to completely change this industry.Overall hydrogen has the ability to bring about jobs and continued advancements in every market and industry touched by it. This could be just about every industry when considering how important transportation and shipping are to the economy; hydrogen would give them an inexpensive fuel for transport. Hydrogen fuel could do this all the while solving our most important problem of finding a renewable energy source.

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

Another problem is the emissions of harmful substances besides just exhaust. “Nickel-hydride batteries are responsible for higher sulfur oxide emissions, roughly 22 pounds (10 kilograms) per hybrid compared with 2.2 pounds (about 1 kilogram) for a conventional vehicle” (HowStuffWorks:

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

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