There are a number of methods used to produce hydrogen fuel. Some of these include incinerating garbage in order to heat water or natural gas to the degree necessary to release the hydrogen which is present. Of course we can't just put our old banana peels in the tank and drive off, but those banana peels can be part of fuel production in a hydrogen production facility. Hydrogen powered cars that benefit directly from the work that your banana peels are doing now are on the horizon.
Hydrogen powered cars can utilize hydrogen through several different methods. A hydrogen internal combustion engine powered vehicle utilizes the same engine used in the gasoline-powered production models with the exception of being modified to burn hydrogen fuel.
An existing auto can be modified to use only hydrogen fuel, completely eliminating the need for gasoline as the fuel source. You can also buy a kit or instructions to make a kit for your car that will add hydrogen to your car's current gasoline-air mixture. Installing such a kit will reduce your vehicle's pollution output and greatly improve its gas mileage.
Hydrogen powered cars leave no carbon footprint, thanks to being approximately 300% more efficient with fuel than vehicles using traditional gasoline fuels. Electric vehicles can also be made to use hydrogen fuel for on-board power generation. Built-in holding tanks can feed the hydrogen into fuel cells which in turn convert it into electricity and supply power to all vehicle systems.
Hydrogen fuel is an efficiently produced energy source. While gasoline production in the United States currently requires about three hundred billion gallons of water, the production of the same amount of hydrogen fuel takes about one hundred billion gallons. What this translates to is that hydrogen fuel production only costs roughly half of what it costs to produce the equivalent amount of gasoline.
Every major automobile manufacturer is engineering its own hydrogen powered cars. Several of these hydrogen-powered models will be available in limited production in 2008. As availability of hydrogen fueling stations grows you can expect to see a steady increase in the number of hydrogen-powered vehicles in your neighborhood. Several of the automobile manufacturers are also working on home systems for hydrogen production that can not only serve as a gas pump in your driveway for your hydrogen power cars, but can also supply hydrogen fuel to generate the electricity to power your home.
While you might think that safety could be an issue, a hydrogen-powered car is at least as safe as a regular car. High-stress testing has been done to insure that the tanks used for storing the hydrogen fuel can survive even the most serious accidents.
In many ways, hydrogen is the ideal fuel. It can deliver lots of energy when it burns, and its clean. Burn hydrogen and you get water instead of the gunk that comes out of a car's tailpipe. It would be great to run cars on hydrogen. But there are problems. Storing large quantities of hydrogen can be hard, and the stuff can be volatile in an accident - remember the Hindenberg? Even so, there is a safe way to use hydrogen to power cars today. And it works with most of the cars on the road right now.
The key to building a hydrogen powered car today is to create a hydrogen-gasoline hybrid. Instead of getting all the car's power from hydrogen, you burn a bit of hydrogen with the gasoline to increase the car's fuel efficiency and reduce the amount of pollution created. It isn't a completely hydrogen powered car, but a system like this is surely a great first step toward increasing your gas mileage (thereby reducing the use of fossil fuels), protecting the environment, and saving some serious money on gasoline costs. We'll talk more about these benefits in a minute, but first, let's talk about where we're going to get the hydrogen to do all this.
Where Does the Hydrogen Come From?
We already talked about how hydrogen can be difficult to store and explosive under the wrong circumstances. So to make hydrogen powered cars practical, we need a way to store hydrogen that's safe and efficient for use in cars. Scientists are working on various proposals like hydrogen fuel cells and special tanks made with nanotech materials that can safely and compactly store masses of hydrogen. But there is another way.
Hydrogen is stored all around us in vast quantities. There is even a mass of it inside our bodies. It's locked up in water. Every molecule of water consists of one atom of oxygen and two atoms of hydrogen. In the form of water, hydrogen is easy to store and certainly won't explode in an accident. All we need is a way to get the hydrogen out of the water when we need it. To do that, we use electrolysis.
Electrolysis uses electricity to break down water into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms. It's a common, well-understood process that you probably experimented with in high school science class. Now using electrolysis to generate enough hydrogen to provide all the power for a car as it is needed isn't practical. But generating a smaller amount of hydrogen that can be mixed with the gasoline to improve a car's performance is possible. As a matter of fact, you can buy a kit to convert your own family sedan into a hydrogen powered car today.
Now that we know how this is possible, let's get back to the benefits of actually making this modification.
The Benefits of A Hydrogen Powered Car
There are three main benefits to a hydrogen powered car (aside from the coolness of it all). Once again, they are:
Greater fuel efficiency comes from burning the hydrogen along with the gasoline. Reports claim as much as a 40% increase. Imagine getting 40% more miles per gallon from your car!
Because the hydrogen burns so cleanly while increasing the car's mileage, a hydrogen powered car pollutes less. While this issue isn't in the front of everyone's minds in this time of high gas prices, less pollution is always a good idea.
Finally, with gas prices hitting record highs and predictions of new records to come, the significantly increased mileage of a hydrogen powered car means big savings on fuel costs.
With gas prices skyrocketing and thousands of hydrogen-gasoline conversions on the worlds roads, isn't it time for you to start thinking about turning your automobile into a hydrogen powered car?
Both Adrian Fletcher & Bill Mann are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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Bill Mann has sinced written about articles on various topics from Fitness, Fitness and Family. Bill Mann is a freelance technology writer who helps people benefit from the technology all around us. He is a big fan of alternative fuel systems and strongly recommends that you go to. Bill Mann's top article generates over 49500 views. to your Favourites.