Hydrogen Power Blog

Abhishek Agarwal


A lot of talk has been going around in this country about use of alternative fuels and particularly a lot has been said about the hydrogen fuel that runs on hydrogen fuel cells. But do we have a clear understanding of how the hydrogen fuel cell works? Definition can be made very simple or on other hand it can be explained in a very complicated terminology .In the cell the conversion of chemicals namely oxygen and hydrogen into water happens in the fuel cell and in this process electricity is produced. A battery is a similar device that works on the electrochemical principle. A battery stores all its chemical inside its compartment and conversion of these chemicals happens inside resulting in the production of electricity. After the chemical inside finishes the battery stops producing electricity and is considered “dead”. Eventually it is either thrown or recharged.

Fuel Cell: Does it “die”

Unlike the battery, in case of fuel cell the cell never dies – as long as the flow of chemical is maintained in the cell, the fuel cell continues producing electricity .Oxygen and hydrogen are the most commonly used chemicals in the fuel cell. The end product of hydrogen fuel cell is water vapor and that is a big advantage. There are many types of fuel cell which has been produced; main among them is the polymer exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). The department of energy is concentration on this type as it has the potential of being used for vehicle applications

The positive thing about PEMFC is that it has a high power density with relatively lower operating temperature (ranging from sixty to eighty degrees Celsius or 140-176 degrees Fahrenheit) .Due to its low operating temperature it doesn’t take much time for the fuel cell to warm up and start producing electricity. That is big plus point for PEMFC.

Direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) is another promising prospect that can be used for powering the vehicles. This is another type of fuel cell that has similar feature with regard to operating temperature. But they are relatively less efficient and are more expensive. This is due to the fact that DMFC requires a good quantity of platinum to act as a catalyst

Hydrogen Fuel Cell: An Emerging Technology

Hydrogen fuel is the new generation of alternative energy. This is due to the fact that hydrogen fuel cell burns cleanly and also runs efficiently .Thus the dreams and hopes of supporters of alternative fuel energy seems to be coming alive They can see a clean and an efficient vehicle that runs fantastic and has very low and safe emission .

Abhishek Agarwal


The need of having alternative energy sources was felt by us decades ago. University of Florida Statue and Shell Energy have jointly conducted research on trees and biomass by planting Energy Crop Plantation which is the largest in the United States. Over 250,000 native Cottonwoods and the non-invasive eucalyptus together with different row crops like soybeans sprawl over 130 acres of the Energy Crop Plantation area. The University undertook research in collaboration with some agencies and some local groups who are striving to develop future alternative energy sources independent of fossil fuels. These include The Common Purpose Institute, Shell, Department of Energy of US and various individual groups. As an outcome of their ceaseless efforts, this group of super trees got created.

These energy crops which are also called closed loop biomass are fast-growing crops and are good biomass energy supply sources. This research based project is committed to growing crops and biomass energy supplies processing from fast-growing energy crops or closed loop biomass. The research is primarily on the planting of energy crops which are fast-growing crops called closed loop biomass and processing of resultant supplies of biomass energy. The project aims at developing power wood-pulp plants which provide wood-fiber; providing clean biogas to the industries; ethanol development from plants such as sugarcane; and biodiesel fuel production from crops like soybeans.

The petroleum over-dependence of our nation for power has given rise to an urgent need for an alternative energy source to be developed. Penn State University has undertaken special research to develop anl alternative energy source which is practical and which will not cause an increase in the pollution like petroleum products. Such focused research is taking us to a hydrogen-fuelled economy, when the hydrogen power would be a sustainable and clean and endlessly renewable energy resource. This Hydrogen energy can be obtained from crop plants and water and can be continuously renewed. The Penn University seeks to build this sustainable energy resource within the US’ own infrastructure. This assumes great importance in a situation where the world’s supply of oil peaks and ultimately begins to decline. Fuel cells powered by Hydrogen need to be developed commercially to be used as substitutes or together with conventional combustion engines for motor vehicles.

President Bush recently envisaged the concentrated research and development of fivecenters of Sun Grant for this alternative energy initiative. One such center is Oregon State University with government grants of $80 million to be spread over four years span for this special mission. Thus OSU will be the leader in the research for alternate energy sources since it represents Pacific Islands, the US’ Pacific Territories, and the nine Western states. Various teams of leading scientists are doing specific research on alternative energy. One of the projects which deserves a mention here is how to convert straw-like products into an efficient and renewable source of biomass fuel and yet another project is conversion of wood fibers into efficient liquid fuel. According to Edward Ray, OSU President, this pioneering work being done by the their Sun Grant Center is the direct answer to the challenge given by President Bush for achieving energy independence.

James Nash


There are several ways of making hydrogen in the UK. The cheapest way is to convert natural gas into hydrogen by a process called reformation. Reforming natural gas into hydrogen produces CO2 but no more than burning it. However, using the hydrogen in a hydrogen fuelcell or using the natural gas itself in a natural gas fuelcell produces at least twice as much useful energy for a given amount of natural gas than burning it (in a natural gas fuelcell the natural gas is ‘reformed’ inside the fuelcell).

Therefore to get the best use from natural gas we should endeavour to use it in fuelcells, either directly or after reforming it into hydrogen. Natural gas fuelcells will be a good bridge technology to a hydrogen-powered world.

Natural gas, i.e. methane, is a powerful greenhouse gas, 10 times more effective than CO2, so we should use up all the natural gas on Earth by burning it or using it in fuelcells before it escapes and adds to global warming. Commercial pressures are achieving this anyway and in due course natural gas will become scarce so we need to develop alternative ways to make hydrogen.

We should not rely on converting coal into hydrogen because obviously coal is not a greenhouse gas so to create CO2 as a by-product of converting coal into hydrogen is not justifiable on greenhouse gas priorities. However to convert coal into a gas suitable for use in fuelcells is better from a minimising the production of atmospheric CO2 point of view than simply burning coal as we used to. This technology may be a good way ahead for India and China to use some of their vast coal deposits.

But the UK and Europe cannot go back to increasing our reliance on coal because most of the CO2 emissions savings to date have been achieved by switching from coal to natural gas! If we did go back to coal we would be back to where we started in 1990. Nuclear power is not acceptable. So we do need to get on with developing alternative ways of making hydrogen. In the UK and Europe we are becoming dependent on natural gas which because of increasing use is going to become progressively more expensive and will eventually run out.

There are four main alternative methods available at present for producing hydrogen without producing CO2 or adding more CO2 to the atmosphere:

1) The electrolysis of water using electricity from renewable resources such as wind power, hydro-power and solar photo-voltaic cells. This method produces no carbon dioxide.

2) The chemical or thermal reformation of biomass feedstocks such as SRC (short rotation coppice) wood chips or methanol manufactured from biomass. This method releases carbon dioxide but it is all recycled by the growth of more biomass.

3) The biological reformation of biomass using micro-organisms. This method releases carbon dioxide but it is all recycled by the growth of more biomass.

4) The direct splitting of water using light with special catalysts or extreme heat, this method produces no carbon dioxide.

Of these four processes only the production of hydrogen by the electrolysis of water using electricity generated by offshore wind power is viable on a large multigigawatt scale in the UK.

Offshore wind power is the only large (ie multigigawatts) UK resource of clean renewable electricity that is likely to be available in the near future. Sufficient onshore wind power capacity is unlikely to get planning permission and the other renewables do not have sufficient capacity. The hydrogen will be manufactured in factories at the coast.

The hydrogen produced will be used for road transport applications, initially urban buses and, later on, cars.

In due course if solar-photo-voltaic (PV) electricity generation in North Africa becomes established, hydrogen, manufactured by the electrolysis of water, using the solar-PV electricity in North Africa, could be transmitted by gas pipelines across the Mediterranean Sea and throughout Europe and north into the UK. The hydrogen could then be used as a transport fuel or it could be converted into electricity and heat in fuelcell based cogeneration systems. Production could start in S. E. Spain and then expand into North Africa.

Assuming these developments take place then as a first step, the hydrogen from North Africa could be injected into the existing natural gas pipelines supplying the existing UK natural gas grid to enhance the energy value of the natural gas. This already occurs in the USA. Before we changed over to North Sea natural gas, we used town gas made from coal which was over 50% hydrogen.

The enriched natural gas will continue to be burned in existing central heating systems and cookers but new domestic systems will be based on fuelcells for the cogeneration of electricity and heat.

If hydrogen injection into existing natural gas pipelines is adopted, then only a small proportion of hydrogen can be injected because all of the gas appliances running on natural gas are sensitive to the proportions of different gasses in the gas mixture supplied. However, the volume of hydrogen to be delivered using this technique will be quite small relative to the volume of natural gas being delivered and so the gas mixture would be acceptable. It would not be possible however to keep increasing the proportion of hydrogen injected as hydrogen production increases.

What gas injection offers is an early route to market for the initial small scale production of hydrogen before separate hydrogen pipelines are built. When hydrogen becomes the main energy carrier, then sections of the natural gas grid will be changed to 100% hydrogen and the existing gas appliances in the area served will have to be adjusted to burn hydrogen. This is what happened when we changed from town gas – which was over 50% hydrogen – to North Sea gas.

Hydrogen injection is a way of integrating hydrogen into the existing natural gas system. It enables existing appliances to be used to burn the hydrogen and so provide a market for early production. The enriched natural gas can also be used to run natural gas fuelcells or can be reformed at the point of use to give hydrogen for use in hydrogen fuelcells. This enables fuelcells to be introduced alongside existing appliances all using the same fuel supply system.

Eventually the whole country will go over to 100% hydrogen, the gas grid will be increased in capacity and it is possible that the national electricity grid will no longer be required as the generation of electricity becomes locally based, using hydrogen fuelcell cogeneration systems.

The hydrogen-powered cogeneration systems will range in size from less than 1 kW up to 100s of MW. These systems will be located in single homes, large buildings or serve whole communities from a cogeneration centre.

Another likely route of hydrogen supply to the UK will be as liquid hydrogen delivered by ocean tanker from Canada, where hydroelectricity will be used to electrolyse water, or from Iceland where electricity from geothermal power may be used to electrolyse water.

In the early 1990s the EEC developed at the Joint Research Centre at Ispra in Italy the concept of the Euro-Quebec Hydro-Hydrogen Project for transporting liquid hydrogen across the Atlantic in special ship mounted barges. And in Iceland there is now an Icelandic government project to change the whole country over to a hydrogen-based energy system.

In due course there will be a world-wide trade in liquid hydrogen that will underpin each individual country’s pipeline based systems. Liquid hydrogen supplies will provide security of supply and boost availability in winter by moving surplus summer production of hydrogen around the world. If there is an accident with a hydrogen tanker the hydrogen will boil away with no pollution. The process of liquefaction dissipates about 30% of the energy in the hydrogen, so pipeline distribution of hydrogen as a gas will always be the preferred option for bulk distribution.

Levi Quinn


With the introduction of such things as the air car or biodiesel, it should not be all that surprising that hydrogen is also something that many believe to be a viable fuel source. Hydrogen is familiar to many people as one of the periodic table elements. It is also a natural resource that is a positive alternative to fossil fuel combustion for energy production. Though hydrogen is still not a main source of fuel currently, there is promising study and results proving its efficiency. With further investigation, perhaps hydrogen will be a means of living greener in the future.

There are actually two different ways that hydrogen can be used as fuel. One of these methods involves combining the hydrogen with oxygen in order to create water. Water cars are a whole field of promising study all on their own. Water cars are emission free and fully functional, though not without their drawbacks. The other method of using hydrogen is by combustion. This means that it is combusted within the engine much the same as the combustion that currently takes place with fossil fuels inside an engine. Of course because hydrogen is not a toxic fossil fuel, the emissions are not at all the same.

For awhile the Ford Motor Company had been debating on whether or not to launch a car that ran on hydrogen. They had planned to do so but that plan was later dropped. They decided that it wasn’t a risk worth taking at this time. Hydrogen may not be quite ready for the mass market. However, Ford did go on to develop their own hybrid and flex fuel vehicles which have been rather successful. Like many other auto makers, those currently remain the two leading fossil fuel alternatives when it comes to green cars.

At this time it would cost too much to mass produce hydrogen fueled cars. It is unlikely that it would be a worthy investment for either manufacturers or consumers, especially when other options are available at a lower cost. Perhaps some of the problem is that there are so many fuel alternatives being tossed around that it can be difficult to isolate which is truly the best. The fact that hydrogen has to be made also makes it more difficult to obtain. Fossil fuels come straight out of the earth. There is also plenty more research that still needs to be done on hydrogen before we can take full advantage of it globally.

Some experts believe that it will take up to 40 years before hydrogen is ready for the public. Hydrogen is very hard to store in its natural form and instead has to be converted to a liquid form which requires a lot of energy. Also, making it accessible to the public everywhere is a real challenge that will not be overcome in the near future. Hydrogen certainly has its advantages which should be explored further. However, for now it seems that hybrids and flex fuel are the best earth friendly options that are readily available.

Abhishek Agarwal


The branches under the military know that they have to seek new ideas, in the new, post-Cold War world of the 21st century, about how to tackle “the theatre of war”. What are the major interests of the US military? The forces in the battlefield, which are used in the theater, to be more energy-independent is what is desired the most. The forces of the military require proper energy and clean water when they battle it out in foreign military campaigns. The US military, currently, has its own policies and procedures intact to communicate with allies or sympathetic general public in such a case. But however this alone is not reliable when the US military have to carry on their military actions successfully as there can be a situation when its allies cannot help with its resources it needs or when they face unilateral military activities.

The keen interest of the military in the US is to make certain alternative sources of energy energy-independent sources on the battle field with the help of research and development technologies. Portable nuclear reactors can make such a thing happen. Development of portable small nuclear reactors for delivering theater-local electricity is of great interest to the military. The clean-burning nuclear reactors, which are energy efficient, have captivated the military to a large extent. Perhaps, making such reactors portable for the intense warfare of today’s well mobile and miniature military operations is something they are researching. Perhaps, these nuclear reactors are capable of removing hydrogen from seawater and obtaining hydrogen fuel from seawater can in a way have less effect on our environment than it does during current practices. This in-turn makes it less susceptible to pollution.

Seawater can be an answer to all the problems of the US military. Seawater being available in plenty can be a potential alternative source of energy. The military’s utmost interest is on seawater in the arena of alternative sources of energy supply. Seawater can be relentlessly excavated for hydrogen, which can in turn power advanced fuel cells. Desalinated and portable water can also be generated endlessly from seawater with the help of OTEC. Resources such as portable water and hydrogen will be needed, by the anticipated military force, to generate power. Hence such resources should be utilized to maximum effect.

Temperatures inside the cores of the portable nuclear reactors, those which interested the military, run over a 1000 degree Celsius. At such high temperatures water can be broken down to its component parts of molecular oxygen and hydrogen. The former happens when high temperatures get combined with the thermo-chemical water-splitting procedure. This is the most efficient way of breaking water to its component parts. Extraction of minerals and salts, from seawater through the desalination process, is needed to clear the way for this process. Such salts can be either recycled by draining it to the ocean or utilized using vitamin or salt shakers. The power of the nuclear reactors is needed to extract hydrogen from the seas. The US’s top-most priority in the R&D is to use them as fuel cells which power high-level tanks, airplanes and ground vehicles.

James Nash


f you’re one of those people who every winter puts out 10,000 holiday lights or every summer keeps the air conditioning cold enough to make frozen treats on the kitchen counter – or whether you’re like everyone else who simply likes the modern convenience of electrical – then you should care about how we will generate electricity in the future.

We are in no danger of running out of coal, the primary fuel source for electricity generation in the US and many other parts of the world. And we could have as many new glowing nuclear power plants as we want. But the reality is that the pollution and safety impacts of these electricity-generating technologies forecast their necessary demise:

1) The problems with coal-fired power plants include sulfur (acid rain) and mercury pollution; coal-fired power plants are the biggest source of greenhouse gases in the world; and coal mining scars land and people alike.

2) Nuclear power plants are very clean in terms of emissions of typical pollutants, including carbon dioxide (the principal greenhouse gas), but the potential for accidents and terrorist strikes has most people doubting the wisdom of more nuclear power. And let’s not forget that we still don’t know what to do with the tons of long-term radioactive waste nuclear power plants produce.

So what does the future look like for electricity generation? We must start making major strides towards cleaner technologies like wind, solar, wave, and biomass. Today we talk about wind energy in an article that was adapted from materials made available by Lester Brown and the Earth Policy Institute.

People have been harnessing the power of the wind for centuries. The concept of wind energy is simple: the wind pushes against angled blades, causing them to move (much like the sail on a boat); the blades are attached to a hub and cause it to turn, which in turn can drive other components.

In olden days – back when wind-powered devices were called windmills – the turning motion of the hub was transferred to mechanical devices such as grist mills or groundwater pumps. graphic of wind turbines In a modern wind turbine, the hub drives an electrical generator and the output is electricity.

The modern wind turbine has come a long way in terms of sophistication, and the designs of today’s wind turbines are elegant and very efficient compared to wind turbines from even a decade or two ago. Designers have also solved some problems associated with early wind turbines, such as birds dying by flying into them. Additional advancements have been made in siting technology – wind turbines can also be sited off-shore now.

With wind-generated electricity, the principal production cost is the capital outlay for initial construction. Since wind is a free fuel, the only ongoing cost is for maintenance. Given the recent volatility of natural gas prices, the stability graph of wind power cost; shows cost has come down from 38 cents per kilowatt hour in 1982 to 4 cents per kilowatt hour in 2002 of wind power prices is particularly appealing. With the possibility of even higher costs of natural gas in the future, natural gas-fired plants may be used increasingly as backup for wind-generated electricity.

When the wind industry first began to develop in California in the early 1980s, wind-generated electricity cost 38 cents per kilowatt-hour. Since then it has dropped to 4 cents or less in prime wind sites. And some long-term supply contracts have been signed for 3 cents per kilowatt-hour. By 2020, many European wind farms will be generating electricity at 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, making it cheaper than all other sources of electricity.

Wind-generating capacity worldwide is growing at over 30% per year and has jumped from less than 5,000 megawatts in 1995 to 39,000 megawatts in 2003 – an increase of nearly eight-fold. The fossil fuel with the highest growth rate – natural gas – grew at just over 2% annually during the same period. Oil grew at less than 2% annually, and coal at less than 1%. Nuclear generating capacity expanded by 2% annually.

Wind is appealing for several reasons. It is abundant, cheap, inexhaustible, widely distributed, clean, and climate-benign – a set of attributes that no other energy source can match. When the US Department of Energy (DOE) released its first wind resource inventory in 1991, it pointed out that three wind-rich states – North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas – had enough harnessable wind energy to satisfy all of the nation’s electricity needs. Those who had previously thought of wind as a marginal potential source of energy obviously were surprised by this finding.

In retrospect, we now know that the 1991 data was a gross underestimate of the potential of this renewable energy source, because it was based on the technologies available in 1991. Advances in wind turbine design since then have enabled turbines to operate at lower wind speeds, to convert wind into electricity more efficiently, and to harness a much larger wind regime. Such advancement have perhaps tripled the amount of harvestable wind. Thus, while the DOE could say in 1991 that North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas had enough wind-energy potential to supply all national ELECTRICITY needs, we may now be able to say that they have enough harnessable wind energy to supply all national ENERGY needs. (See sidebar for more information.)

Once we get cheap electricity from wind, we have the option of electrolyzing water to produce hydrogen, which provides a way of both storing and efficiently transporting wind energy. At night, when the demand for electricity drops, the hydrogen generators can be turned on to build up reserves.

Once in storage, hydrogen can be used to fuel power plants, in much the same way that natural gas is used. This hydrogen can be used either as a backup for wind power or as an alternative to natural gas, especially if rising prices make natural gas prohibitively costly for electricity generation.

Hydrogen is also the fuel of choice for the fuel-cell engines that automakers worldwide are working on for our everyday vehicles. While hydrogen-powered vehicles may still seem far off in the future, if push comes to shove on the climate front – i.e. once it becomes more obvious that we must stop burning so much oil and pumping so much CO2 into the atmosphere – cars with gasoline-burning internal combustion engines could be converted to hydrogen.

Europe is leading the world into the age of wind energy, spurred in part by concerns about global warming. The record heat wave in Europe in August 2003 that scorched crops and claimed 35,000 lives has accelerated the replacement of climate-disrupting coal with clean energy sources.

The European Wind Energy Association projects that Europe’s wind-based electricity-generating capacity will nearly triple from 2003 to 2010. By 2020, wind-generated electricity is projected to satisfy graph of wind power capacity by country; shows a steady upward trend for all countries, with Germany leading, followed by Spain and the U S, then Denmark and India the residential needs of 195 million Europeans – half of the region’s population.

After developing most of its existing 28,400 megawatts of capacity on land, Europe is now tapping offshore wind resources as well. A 2004 assessment of Europe’s offshore wind-energy potential concluded that if Europe moves more aggressively to develop its vast offshore resources, wind could be supplying all of the region’s residential electricity by 2020.

Many countries in Europe are pushing hard to bring in more wind power. Here are a few examples.

1) The United Kingdom is requiring an investment of over $12 billion in off-shore wind farms that should satisfy the residential electricity needs of 10 million of the country’s 60 million people.

2) Tiny Denmark, which led Europe into the wind era with the development of its own wind resources, now gets an impressive 20 percent of its electricity from wind.

3) Germany overtook the United States in terms of wind-based generating capacity in 1997. Now Spain is close to overtaking the United States as well.

Europe’s leadership on wind energy has given it a major economic bonus: nine of the world’s ten leading wind turbine manufacturers are in three countries – enmark, Germany, and Spain. These happen to be the three countries that have had the strongest and most stable market incentives for developing wind energy.

In the US, wind power has grown 26% per year on average over the last 5 years, but the United States is lagging in the development of wind energy. This is not because we can’t compete technologically with Europe in manufacturing wind turbines, but because of a lack of leadership in Washington. The wind production tax credit of 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, which was adopted in 1992 to establish parity with fossil-fuel subsidies, has been permitted to lapse three times in the last five years, most recently at the end of 2003 when Congress failed to pass a new energy bill. Such uncertainties disrupt planning throughout the wind power industry.

The United States, with its advanced technology and wealth of wind resources, should be a leader in this field, but unfortunately it continues picture of wind farm to rely heavily on coal – a nineteenth century energy source – for much of its electricity at a time when European countries are replacing coal power with wind power.

Europe is not only leading the world into the wind age, it is also leading the world into the post-fossil fuel age – the age of renewable energy and climate stabilization. By demonstrating the potential for harnessing the energy in wind, Europe is unveiling the new energy economy for the rest of the world.

Lester Brown is founder and president of Earth Policy Institute. He has been described by the Washington Post as “one of the world’s most influential thinkers” and as “the guru of the global environmental movement” by The Telegraph of Calcutta. His most recent book is Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble.

One final note about wind power. There are naysayers out there who claim that we would have to blanket the country with “wind-meels” to replace all our coal and nuclear plants. Don’t believe it. Remember that on a wind farm, the “footprint” of the operation – the turbine base plus the service roads – occupies only 5% of the land area. That makes wind power a perfect partner with open-space operations like farming and ranching.

And oh, by the way, our current electricity-generating technologies are blanketing the country with pollution!

Abhishek Agarwal


The microfuel cell could solve many of the problems relating to the transportation energy crisis. Everyone is excited about fuel cells, but most of the discussion is about when they will appear in the cars we drive. What most people don’t realize is that the first uses for fuel cells of any size will not be in vehicles, but will be in the small hand held devices used around the world: cell phones, digital cameras, laptop computers and other small portable devices. Conventional batteries are rapidly becoming inadequate to meet the power demands of portable electronic devices. To address this growing problem, researchers are focusing on developing microfuel cells.

What Are Fuel Cells?

Larger fuel cells have traditionally been developed for powering vehicles as an alternative to gas propulsion. As was briefly discussed above, our energy needs are not limited to vehicles only. Smaller, battery operated items need effective, clean alternatives to batteries, which allow them to run longer and better without sacrificing performance. Microfuels cells are ideal as power components for electronic devices.

A fuel cell is a device in which hydrogen and oxygen are converted into water, producing electricity and heat in the process. It is similar to a battery in that can be recharged while drawing power from it. Whereas batteries use electricity to recharge, fuel cells use hydrogen and oxygen. An important difference is that batteries store energy, while fuel cells produce energy. In a fuel cell, hydrogen and oxygen are electrochemically combined rather than consumed as in a battery. Methanol is the most commonly used fuel to produce hydrogen inside a fuel cell because it produces a lot of power at low cost, and is easy to handle and distribute.

About 400 million portable devices such as cellphones, laptops, and digital cameras are sold each year to a growing market of consumers. The first micro fuel cells were developed as replacements for conventional cell phone battery packs. The trend is toward adding more energy thirsty features to these devices, from color screens to more memory, and toward multi-purpose devices like cell phones that double as digital cameras. Current battery technologies can’t satisfy this energy demand. Devices are also getting smaller, making it doubly challenging to find room for a battery. In addition, there is a problem of landfill issues for degrading batteries, such as toxic residues.

Looking Toward The Future

Eventually, microfuel cells could replace the standard car battery. Although developers are concerned at this time that the costs of microfuel cells in automobiles may be prohibitive. However, as the technology is refined, replacing the battery could eventually be made more economical. Microfuel cells, as with larger fuel cells, are created to burn hydrogen rather than gasoline which is more environmentally friendly. Currently, the microfuel cell industry is working toward developing technologies that will permit the microfuel cell to replace internal combustion engines. The makes microfuel cells a good, but future, alternative energy source.

Abhishek Agarwal


In a bid to reduce the United States’ growing dependence on Middle East oil for the country’s petroleum needs, President George Bush declared a $1.2 billion hydrogen fuel program in his 2003 State of the Union speech. This substantial budget allocation for the advancement of technological studies for hydrogen-driven fuel cells also sought the significant, if not the total, reduction of pollutants like greenhouse gases emitted by vehicles, homes and business establishments dependent on foreign petroleum.

Today, more and more vehicles are being powered by hydrogen fuel. Automobile giant General Motors has been producing a one hundred per cent hydrogen-powered vehicle prototype, something which augurs well for the country since President Bush’ 2003 announcement of the hydrogen fuel project. To date, fresh funding continues to pour in for hydrogen fuel development as an alternative fuel. The current technology requires fuel cells for storage and for processing of gas that in turn powers the vehicle or other fuel-dependent machinery and equipment.

But while hydrogen certainly makes a good fuel alternative, it too has its downside. Even if generated from natural gas, considered today as the cheapest energy source ever, hydrogen fuel is still four times more expensive to manufacture than gasoline. The Bush administration’s initiative has considered reducing this cost to the level of gasoline-generated power by year 2010, as well as to seek ways of deriving hydrogen power from renewable sources of energy, nuclear power, or possibly coal.

Turning to hydrogen fuel instead of using gasoline can eliminate the country’s dependence on other countries for energy. Hydrogen is readily available and even abundant domestically. It can be found along with natural gas, coal, biomass and even water. The hydrogen fuel project, according to the Department of Energy, can help lessen our country’s import demands by more than 11 million barrels a day–the estimated amount of oil the US buys from abroad today–by 2040.

Taking significant steps to making our air free from pollution caused by gasoline-powered vehicles is another agenda spoused by the country’s hydrogen fuel program. Hydrogen fuel cells produce electricity instead of gasoline to power vehicles. This will eliminate pollution and lessen the country’s greenhouse gas discharges caused by gasoline-guzzling vehicles by over 500 million metric tons of carbon emissions every year by 2040.

The high efficiency ratio of hydrogen as energy source limits the emission of compounds that harm the environment. When burned to generate electricity and power an engine, hydrogen emits nothing but water vapor. Hydrogen-powered machines and equipment can therefore help us achieve a cleaner and healthier environment.

Hydrogen fuel looms as the newest and most exciting discovery of this decade. Owning a car because of the fuel cell technology has never become more gratifying than today. We might as well enjoy our road trips more often.

James Nash


This article illustrates the potential of hydrogen based energy systems. We want to show you that if the world chooses to follow the hydrogen road then all the basic technology is available now, we are not waiting for research breakthroughs.

The cost of changing to a hydrogen-powered world will not be excessive, especially if the external costs of pollution and ill health associated with fossil fuels are taken into account as credits towards the cost of using hydrogen as a clean fuel with no external costs. Only when hydrogen enters a market at small volumes is there going to be a cost problem and we will just have to find ways around these temporary obstacles.

The following sections will show you how to calculate the cost of changing to hydrogen. See for yourself, if you think our input figures are wrong then you can substitute your own and see if a hydrogen powered world is feasible. We would be very pleased to have some feedback on this because it is difficult to get well documented information on costs.

If global warming is partly or wholly due to atmospheric CO2 produced by the use of fossil fuels, then the hydrogen energy system described here is one way of producing more energy for the world without adding more CO2 to the atmosphere that would make global warming worse.

Global warming will have adverse effects on climate and will lead to rising sea levels flooding towns, cities and farmland.

We cannot realistically expect to reduce the total world use of energy because only a quarter of the world’s population are using approximately three quarters of the world’s current energy production. This a quarter of the world’s population are unlikely to make the reductions in use required to accommodate increases in energy use by the three quarters of the world’s population currently needing more energy supplies.

Some people advocate cutting back the consumption of resources and energy generally as the way to a sustainable future. But the dynamics (i.e. increasingly capitalist ) and realities of the world’s population and economies are such that a peaceful global reduction in consumption is not possible. What is needed is environmentally sustainable growth of world production to meet human needs. This will require an increasing supply of clean pollution-free energy and the recycling of the Earth’s material resources which will also involve using more energy.

A hydrogen based system offers totally clean energy supplies with no pollution. The system is based on renewable sources of electricity and uses hydrogen as an energy carrier/fuel that is able to replace all existing uses of fossil fuels. The hydrogen energy system could meet all the world’s energy needs forever.

It is more likely that the argument over what to do about global warming is going to be won by people who say what can be done and not by people who say what cannot be done. The hydrogen energy system offers a way out of our energy supply impasse.

The hydrogen energy system is a simple concept, it is based on current technology and would not be particularly expensive. Water, which comes from the atmosphere as rain, is converted into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis using clean renewable electricity. The hydrogen, which is an energy carrier and fuel, is then transported to where energy is needed and at the point of use the hydrogen combines with atmospheric oxygen to form water which returns to the atmosphere as water vapour. The exchange of water and oxygen via the atmosphere is always in balance and there is no pollution.

Chris A Watkins asked:


The Fossil Fuel Crisis – Hydrogen as an Alternative.

Thirty years ago, hydrogen fuel appeared to have a massive future as a direct replacement for petrol/diesel. In those days the main threat was the expiry of fossil fuel reserves. More modern times bring us other concerns, with global warming currently topping most agendas.

Hydrogen’s star has waned a little in the current environment as it requires lots of energy to produce a useable hydrogen fuel. That energy in turn needs to be produced in an environmentally sympathetic manner.

We also have to bear in mind that the nations who hold the current fossil fuel reserves are dependant on the sale of their oil/coal field produce to maintain internal development.

We appear to have reached a stage where, instead of standing back in horror, uttering the words – “…there are only fossil fuel reserves for two more generations…” we can now stand back and say – “…okay, we have two generations before fossil fuels are gone, that’s time enough to develop the alternatives…”

The big concern is, of course, managing fuel production in such a fashion that environmental damage is held or, better yet, reduced.

Hydrogen can be produced from natural gas or from water. The extraction of hydrogen from water requires the use of an electrolytic process. This requires an electricity consumption of around 50kw hours per 1kg of hydrogen produced. Global scale hydrogen production would require vast amounts of electricity and that in its turn would need to be generated.

Taken to the logical conclusion, this would require the electricity production to be nuclear based as, currently, that is the only means available to produce the bulk required in an environmentally neutral fashion.

To commit fully to hydrogen would also mean committing irrevocably to a nuclear power society complete with all its waste management problems.

This scenario would only apply for so long as the hydrogen fuel cell remains a better means of energy transportation than the battery. As the years go by it is certain that battery technology will also undergo a few major developments.



While it looks unlikely that the world will stop for want of fuel or power, do we wish to continue down the spiral path of consume (and waste) because the resource is cheap? This always leads to an increase in production and supply simply to satisfy demand.

We need a strategy of gradually increasing the cost of power to the consumer, while slowly bringing on line alternative power production methods. Nuclear, hydrogen, bio-mass, bio-diesel, wind, and water power will all be exploited, but non will be the ’silver bullet’. Placing restrictions on the ways in which currently available fuels are burned will certainly increase the price of power and make the alternatives gradually more attractive.

Of course, we also have to keep in mind that increasing affluence in countries with emerging economies will play a major role. More comfortable home environments, more cars, more manufacture, more transportation will all carry a price, but nothing affects a market like cost and the only way to get the consumer to care about power wastage is to make energy more expensive.

If we can eventually attain a culture of less waste we may yet achieve a sustainable existence.

© Copyright 2007