With the price of gasoline increasing at the pump, the cry for an alternative fuel continues to increase. Is there such a fuel on the horizon and could it possibly be hydrogen? The answers lie in a look at the hydrogen fuel cell.

A fuel cell, like a storage battery, generates a flow of electricity. Unlike a storage battery, the fuel cell continues to generate electricity as long as it has fuel. The concept is simple. An anode, or negative electrode, and a cathode, or positive electrode, fit around an electrolyte. The anode is supplied with hydrogen and the cathode with oxygen. A catalyst separates the hydrogen atoms into protons and electrons. These follow different paths to the cathode, the electrons through an external circuit resulting in a flow of electricity. The protons travel through the electrolyte to the cathode. There, they reunite with oxygen and electrons producing water and heat.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element on earth. Water and heat are the only by-products, so, unlike burning hydrocarbons, the process is clean and forms no greenhouse gases. At first blush, the hydrogen fuel cell sounds like the panacea we seek to combat global warming and rising gasoline prices. Although the concept is simple, there are problems.

1). Hydrogen is abundant, but almost always found in molecules with other elements, and not in its elemental stage. Presently, the cheapest way to produce hydrogen is by burning natural gas and this provides no answer to global warming or the Nation’s energy problem. Other methods for producing hydrogen exist but are far more expensive than simply burning gasoline.

2). Hydrogen is a gas, a highly explosive gas (remember the Hindenburg?). How do we store it safely in a vehicle without producing a freeway filled with potential Molotov cocktails?

3). No container yet developed can fully contain hydrogen, nor totally prevent it from leaking.

4). Fuel tanks would have to be enormous to provide fuel for even short distances.

There are no easy answers to any of the problems facing the development of the hydrogen fuel cell. At the cost of well over a million dollars per copy, hydrogen powered vehicles already exist. Hydrogen, while abundant, would cost more to convert to its elemental form than simply using gasoline. Hydrogen is dangerous and all but impossible to store, safely or otherwise.

We don’t at this time have the technology to produce a hydrogen-powered vehicle that could compete economically with a gasoline-powered vehicle. Some predict this technology is still decades in the future. While promising, the hydrogen fuel cell isn’t the answer to our present energy situation.

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