Hydrogen: The Fuel of Tomorrow Essay

America's dependency on foreign oil is slowly crippling the average citizen's hard-earned income with outrageous fluctuation in gas prices. The American government seriously needs to step it in gear and start taking action on possible supplemental energy sources to replace foreign oil and actually begin providing those sources to the public without overpricing. Today's foreign oil is polluting our air and crushing we as American's pockets. "Rising U.S. demand for imported oil accounts for more than a third of the U.S.

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.

Experiments 2-1 and 2-2 study the production of hydrogen gas by different chemical reactions. By using a hydrogen gas collection apparatus and the principles of chemistry, we were able to evaluate the data and reach our goal. Experiment 2-1 uses zinc, magnesium and aluminum and how much hydrogen gas they produce to predict the volume of hydrogen gas produced for different masses of each metal. In this experiment we see that each metal has an increasing amount of hydrogen gas as mass goes up, however each metal had different amount of hydrogen gas for the same mass. Zinc produced the least amount of hydrogen gas, then increasing with magnesium, and aluminum produced the highest amount. The

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

Another use for Hydrogen was

Drivers realize that the price of gas is tied to the market value of crude oil, and has a direct impact to their daily commutes, errands, and vacations. However the reality is that the price of fuel has implications much grater than most consumers realize. Fuel prices affect nearly everything we purchase. For example, the price of farm commodities and food increase because farmers pay more for the fuel for their farm equipment and trucking firms pay more for fuel to get the commodities to market. These shipping “fuel surcharges” impact all goods

That is because there are not many chemistries can be done with Hydrogen which is not an extremely reactive functional group. The hydrogen is generally mentioned in terms of proton and acid-base chemistry. However, there actually is a reaction can be done with Hydrogen, a free radical substitution which is performed with halogen. The general reaction is like R-H +X2  R-H +HX,

Hydrogen was first found in later 16th century but it was not confirmed as a kind of chemical element by Henry Cavendish before 1766. It is a chemical element with symbol H and atomic number 1. That means it is the first one on the periodic table and each atom just has one proton and one electron.And with a standard atomic weight of 1.008, hydrogen is the lightest element on the periodic table. In addition ,it is the most abundant chemical substance in the Universe, constituting roughly 75% of all baryonic mass. On Earth,most of hydrogen exists in molecular forms such as water or organic compounds

One of the leading causes of lung cancer is believed to be air pollution. With nearly all automobiles running on gasoline, there is a much higher chance of obtaining a life threatening disease. There are many different solutions that attempted to fix the problem of automobile pollution but only one has come close. The hydrogen fuel cell consists of two electrodes, a positively charged cathode, and a negatively charged anode. The fuel cell has an electrolyte that sends electrically charged particles from one electrode to the other. The hydrogen fuel cell is able to produce energy as long as oxygen and hydrogen are available. Hydrogen fuel cells don’t produce emissions and are also able to power all motor vehicles. These special fuel cells do not cause pollution or create dangerous byproducts, their only byproducts are water and heat. In addition, a hydrogen fuel cell is way more efficient than gasoline powered engines. Most forms of transportation emit harmful emissions and cause pollution. The hydrogen fuel cell is an environmentally friendly alternative to

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

Even though hydrogen as a fuel seems to answer every problem we want it to; it also has setbacks. Although we have the technology now to bring us an endless supply of hydrogen fuel we do not have the storage or infrastructure capabilities for it. “Hydrogen

When most people think of Hydrogen they think of the Hindenburg. The Hindenburg was initially supposed to be lifted by Helium. However, because Helium was so rare and expensive at the time, Hydrogen was used instead. Hydrogen was very cheap, it could be manufactured in industrious amounts and it is lighter than Helium; Hydrogen is also the most substance to date where Helium is not flammable at all. When the Hindenburg was launched it only took it about 32 seconds for the entire ship to fall and burn completely due to the 7,000,000 cubic feet of Hydrogen being used to get off the ground. Out of the 97 passengers only 62 survived this tragic event. Welcome to Hydrogen.

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

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