Quote:
Originally Posted by st06nc2
Down here in Sheffield there is quiete a few petrol stations with hydrogen fuel pumps
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To clarify, there are no natural sources of Hydrogen on the planet so you have to extract it from something that contains it.
1) You could do on an industrial scale what you may have done at school, namely pass electricity through water. From one electrode you get Oxygen from the other you get Hydrogen but there are a couple of snags. Firstly its inefficient most of what you get is hot water so I suppose you could try to offset the cost by running a district heating business but to be non-seasonal it will have to be pretty far north. Secondly you have to use nearly clean water, completely clean is no good, its not conductive, cannot use sea water because the salt will break down into sulphuric acid and Chlorine, so another expense.
2) You could do what the only big Hydrogen plant in Europe does. First get a source of natural gas, either Methane and/or Ethane, use some of the gas to heat steam to 900 centigrade and mix it with some more of the natural gas in a retort at 900 C with some catalysts and pipe the output into a separation plant. In the separation plant you use more energy to seperate the hydrogen from the carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, water and a few other things that the process produced. Naturally you then have to find a use for the carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide you were trying to avoid in the first place.
So I ask again where are you going to get the Hydrogen? The engine is great but the fuel (production of) is about as bad as you can get, not really a surprise the original suggestion came from the Texas oil industry as a way of staying in business with petrol and diesel becoming ‘un-friendly’.