Sourcebook on Hydrogen Applications

Why Hydrogen?

Hydrogen is the simplest, naturally occurring atom. The most abundant of all the elements, it accounts for three-fourths of the mass of the universe. On Earth, it is mostly found chemically bound to other elements. Hydrogen can be extracted from many materials – natural gas, methanol, coal, biomass and water. Over the next 20 years, the impact of global climate change on our society, energy scarcity and the improved efficiency of hydrogen-based technologies will create new opportunities for hydrogen. The idea of something so ubiquitous as hydrogen replacing diminishing fossil fuels has been a subject of interest and intrigue for social visionaries from Jules Verne to an army of modern day technical and environmental proponents.

Science Fiction?

In 1870, Jules Verne’s “Mysterious Island” described a world that would one day derive “an inexhaustible source of heat and light” from water’s component parts. Back then, Verne did not realize that this source was also virtually pollution-free. The cycle is so elegant it seems nearly miraculous: separate water into its two constituent gases: hydrogen and oxygen. Burn the hydrogen for fuel, and it re-couples with oxygen to form water again. No nasty particulates, no insidious carbon monoxide, no eye-stinging ozone or sulfur dioxide, the only possible pollutant being small, controllable amounts of nitrous oxides produced at high temperature when hydrogen is burned in the presence of air. And even this can disappear if fuel cells are used instead of internal combustion engines as energy conversion devices. Hydrogen’s exhaust is mainly plain water vapor that can be recaptured and converted again to hydrogen.

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