Introduction
Hydrogen is an explosive chemical element that is first on the periodic table. In the past years there has been talk of using hydrogen to power America's cars in an effort to reduce our dependency on foreign oil. This form of alternative energy sounds good, but will it work? There are huge problems with hydrogen from production to transportation to storage to consumption.
Why Hydrogen Won't Work?
Hydrogen is explosive, expensive and probably won't work in our cars. Now as said above there are problems in four areas production, transportation, storage, and consumption. The first, production, has huge problems concerning the energy input and output. One myth about hydrogen is that it is an energy producer. That is incorrect, it is an energy carrier. What this means is that it will take far more energy to produce than it will ever create. Hydrogen is produced via electrolysis, which uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. This means that we will be using energy from a power plant to conduct electrolysis and create hydrogen. Retrofitting or manufacturing all of America's future cars to run on hydrogen will cause an increase in electricity demand; many more power plants will need to be built, and more fuel to run those plants will need to be produced.
Transporting hydrogen is also not very efficient and is extremely dangerous. For the hydrogen to be transported it will be liquefied so it does not leak as much as it would in a gaseous form, and so it will not need to be liquefied at the fuel station. The liquefying point of hydrogen is -423 degrees Fahrenheit or -253 degrees Celsius, to keep it that cold would take a tremendous amount of energy. Also hydrogen is explosive if the truck carrying it crashed and one spark hit the hydrogen everything in the vicinity of the truck would be obliterated. This makes hydrogen hazardous to human life, when being transported.
Storing hydrogen is not cost effective, inefficient, and very dangerous. Like transporting it, storing hydrogen costs a lot because you need to use lots of energy to keep it cold. Hydrogen is also a very small atom, it is the first on the periodic table, therefore it leaks, and because it leaks it is not only inefficient, but also dangerous. Hydrogen is explosive, if a small spark found its way to a leak or the source of the hydrogen the entire storage area or fuel station and everything around it would be destroyed. Imagine if this happened in a heavily populated area like New York City.
Lastly usage of hydrogen also has problems. For one the car will need an energy source to keep the hydrogen cold, and the gas tank or hydrogen tank that it is used in will need to be sealed tight. Hydrogen that is not properly stored can leak, because it is a small molecule. The other main problem with hydrogen is, if it is used in a car and the car crashes, just one spark could cause the vehicle and all of the other vehicles around it to explode. If the surrounding vehicles are powered by hydrogen they will explode too, possibly causing a chain reaction down a freeway or road.