Hydrogen Cars: A Near Future

Hydrogen cars: A near future

Hydrogen is the simplest and most abundant chemical element of the universe. It is mainly in the form of hydrogen gas in the stars and in the gaseous planets. Appears together with other elements forming chemical compounds such as water and most organic compounds.

Hydrogen gas can react with oxygen detaching energy and forming water.

A hydrogen vehicle is a vehicle that uses hydrogen as its primary energy source to propel.

The director of the Hydrogen Research Institute of the University of Quebec, Richard Chahine says that hydrogen is an energy vector that does not contain carbon so when you burn it, you only produce water.

This fact makes hydrogen a clean fuel that does not produce emissions.

But like everything, it has its bad part and it is more expensive than gasoline, it is said that a tank full of hydrogen could cost about fifty euros. According to Chahine, costs with hydrogen fuel technology are a complicated barrier to overcome because, at the moment, people would prefer to have better technologies with the usual prices. He also explains that today the majority of the hydrogen produced comes from natural gas, through a process that generates carbon dioxide (CO2).

Many researchers have been looking for more ecological alternatives to produce hydrogen and eliminate the emissions of the CO2 of the process. However, different ways have been found to obtain hydrogen without producing CO2.

According to researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the United States, a way to produce uncommission hydrogen is using a method called "biological decomposition of water" in which it consists of producing it from water.

Certain photosynthetic microbes are used and use the energy of light to produce it from water. Although from this same laboratory another way has been found, which is the fermentation of renewable biomass materials. It consists of converting consumer waste such as plastics and agricultural waste such as peanuts of peanuts into a liquid product called Bio-Aceite. The components of this oil can be separated into fuels and one of them is hydrogen.

However, in these two ways that this laboratory has raised, they say that the most effective is the first, that is, the decomposition of water in hydrogen and oxygen using sunlight.

Scientists from the National Argonne Laboratory of the United States Department of Energy created a “hydrogen nano-generator” which produces hydrogen using light and graphene without burning fossil fuels so that it does not emit CO2. This generator is made on a small scale since it was only to verify that it worked, but if it was successful, it could be larger and allow the production of hydrogen provided enough to reach the fuel of the cars.