Hydrogen Power Essay

Submitted By marstar800
Words: 452
Pages: 2

FACT SHEET
Hydrogen power can mostly be used for automobile applications, but can also be used as a source of heat and electricity for buildings, fertilizer, and refining petroleum.
Hydrogen fuel cells were used to fill space shuttles
Although hydrogen is the *most abundant element on earth*, it is hard to obtain to use for energy. 95% of the hydrogen extracted comes from natural gas. Water is the remaining.
There are different processes that separate the element:
Electrolysis : splits oxygen and hydrogen from water
Steam Methane Reformation : breaks it down into hydrogen & carbon oxides (including carbon dioxide)
Nuclear Power : adds steam or heat to electrolysis or other chemical reactions to split the element, but the power plants do not exist yet.
The advantages to using hydrogen is that when used, it cleans the air as it passes through, its waste is only pure water, and it contains 3X the amount of energy than natural gas.
Many upsides are present when using hydrogen that include the production, storage, transportation, and distribution.
PRODUCTION: for electrolysis you need electricity to run the machine, and that uses fossil fuels, which could defeat the purpose unless they use other renewable energy sources (solar or wind) to run the electrolyzer. STORAGE: hydrogen is extremely light and needs to be in different forms to store.
Liquefaction : chilling it to absolute zero ; storage tanks are heavy and expensive
Compression : squeezing the gas ; when used for vehicles it can take up 5X more than a gas tank would
Solid-state : different compounds trap the hydrogen into metal hydrides, they are extremely heavy TRANSPORTATION & DISTRIBUTION : when moved, it can weaken the metals used store it including steel. Trucking has to carry huge tanks of compressed air and drive over long distances, which could use more gas than