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Hydrogen Cars: One Giant Step or Not in this Lifetime

By Ed Pisacreta

We all know Bush said it. He promised hydrogen powered cars would decrease our dependence on foreign oil, making everyone who buys one an environmentalist and a patriot. His move has been compared to John F. Kennedy’s beginning of the space program. And with his few choice words on the subject, suddenly hydrogen has become the center of a new, revived energy debate. All of this hydrogen hubbub is occurring even after Congress struggled for two years to enact a broad energy agenda for the nation, which in the end failed, and which barely mentioned hydrogen as an alternative energy source.

After drawing attention to the potentials of hydrogen, which can power everything from cars to cell phones, in his State of the Union address, Bush said he considered his $1.5 billion hydrogen development plan a legacy for future generations and key to the nation's energy security. But let’s get real. Are hydrogen-powered automobiles ever going to take the place of the old-fashioned internal combustion engine? The science behind hydrogen-powered automobiles proves that the hope of electric cars might be further away then the Bush administration anticipates.

Electric cars are hardly a new idea, but the need to recharge heavy stacks of batteries after relatively short journeys has stopped them from becoming popular. Now newer inventions, such as fuel cells, have made electric cars practical.

Unlike batteries, which store electricity, fuel cells make electricity as they go. Recent developments in technology have greatly increased the amount of power that a stack of cells - small enough to fit under a car's hood - can provide. This has opened up the prospect of non-polluting electric cars with the levels of performance we expect from normal gasoline combustion engines.

The big advantage of a fuel cell engine over an internal combustion engine running on hydrogen is its greater efficiency. The same amount of hydrogen will take a fuel cell car at least twice as far as one with a converted internal combustion engine.

Fuel cell technology sounds simple. The hydrogen fuel reacts with oxygen from the air to produce water and electricity - the reverse of the electrolysis process that releases oxygen and hydrogen from water. However, in reality it's much more complicated.

One major obstacle that scientists need to solve is distribution of this new fuel. If people are going to realistically buy these cars they will need a place to fill up when the hydrogen runs out.

Unfortunately, no sort of infrastructure is in place, or even on the drawing board, to convert modern day gas stations into hydrogen stations. There are no plans on how to transport hydrogen from refinery to gas station. There are no plans deciding what form of hydrogen is safest and most efficient to store. Hydrogen, at normal temperatures is a gas, and scientists have proven that the hydrogen must be packed tightly into a car's tank or otherwise a filling stop will be needed every few miles.

The solution is to strongly compress the hydrogen, or liquefy it. However, large amounts of energy are needed for this -- an estimated 20-40 percent of the energy content of the fuel. Also, tanks designed to hold hydrogen at extremely high pressures, or at temperatures approaching absolute zero, are heavy and expensive. However, expense is not the only problem with hydrogen technology, actually getting the hydrogen to use for energy is another obstacle.

There's no risk that we'll ever run out of hydrogen, it's by far the most plentiful element in the universe. On Earth, however, it exists naturally only in chemical compounds, not as hydrogen gas. Water and the main components of coal, oil and natural gas are prime sources of hydrogen.

Natural gas currently provides most of the hydrogen used in industry. The relatively simple technology employed, called steam reforming, could also produce hydrogen gas for cars at central plants or filling stations. In steam reforming the hydrocarbon fuel reacts with water at high temperatures to produce hydrogen gas. A major drawback is that carbon dioxide and smog-causing gases such as nitrogen oxides are given off too, although emissions per mile of car travel would be less than from gasoline-burning vehicles.

The only potentially pollution-free source of hydrogen is water. However, researchers are looking at new ways of producing hydrogen - using algae, bacteria or photovoltaic cells, which convert light energy to electrical energy, to absorb sunlight and split water into hydrogen and oxygen. But the technology most likely to be adopted on a large scale is electrolysis, which uses an electric current to split water into oxygen and hydrogen.
However, despite all the scientific progression, the best ways to produce, distribute and store the hydrogen still has to be sorted out. In the short term, fossil fuels may remain in demand as a hydrogen source therefore not relieving us from the burden of foreign oil like the Bush administration would like us to believe.

Bush's pledge of $1.5 billion to the hydrogen cause is admirable, but not even close to enough to be constituted as a "first step" in the process of converting the U.S. from a gas-guzzling nation. The science behind hydrogen power is still in its infancy. Bush may think his administration is starting something that will be beneficial to future generations, but in reality his promises are fickle and hollow.

Ed is a senior journalism major. Email him at joevile2@hotmail.com