The Sustainable Planet

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In the last couple posts we’ve been talking about using hydrogen as an alternative method of storing energy – that we can take with us in our vehicles as opposed to gasoline electric cars.

After all hydrogen burns cleanly – and as I pointed out in the last post hydrogen is a lot safer than we tend to think about.

But there is another problem with hydrogen, and that is distribution. After all we would need gas stations or hydrogen stations to refuel our vehicles. But again if you stop and think about it, with the electric car what we are going to need is charging stations. People are not going to be able to drive their car or 300 miles and immediately charge it and start driving again in five minutes like they’re able to do with gasoline. Batteries take time to charge so we’re already looking at a different distribution model for fuel with batteries.

What we need to start taking about is a possible to have a different fuel distribute method with hydrogen. I suggest there is and I’m going to discuss a few of those in my next post.

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Batteries usually are hard in the environment when we’re building them and hard on the environment when we’re disposing them. Hydrogen on the other hand, is a fuel that burns cleanly. It’s only exhaust is clean water.

So hydrogen would be an ideal storage mechanism for a car because its got a lot of energy in it or its high density energy. The only problem is we tend to think of it as being unsafe. After all, it’s explosive, it’s combustible. But then again isn’t gasoline?

See, we have history with hydrogen. A disaster that occurred with the Hindenburg. But the Hindenburg was not a gas tank, it was an airship built almost 100 years ago. They coated canvas with aluminum and iron oxide, essentially thermite, which burns incredibly. They weren’t trying to build a safe gas tank or hydrogen tank.

So if we look at the current technology with regards to storing hydrogen it’s extremely safe. In fact, the tanks are virtually bullet proof. It’s time for us to address our fears and consider hydrogen as a storage of fuel and energy for the sake of our environment.

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The recent Enbridge oil spill in Michigan proves one thing – that our society is too dependant on oil.Now everybody is saying that, but what are we going to do in order to change it.

I would suggest, that one change that we can make is to start using hydrogen as a fuel. Now most people say, “hydrogen, it’s not ready. It’s not technology that’s viable yet. After all, fuel cells are still being developed.”

But I didn’t say, “using fuel cells”, I simplay said, “we need to use hydrogen”. We can use hydrogen to power internal combustion engines. In fact it’s a very small modification that’s required in order to power a standard engine with hydrogen.

So what if we were to start using hydrogen to power our cars. How much cleaner would our air be when the only thing that’s coming of the exhaust pipe is water? How much less carbon emissions would we be producing when the only exhaust is water? Now hydrogen is not something that we find in the ground; it is something that we can produce using electricity and water.

So why would we want to use this? Well it’s a lot cleaner than producing batteries for say electric cars – which are all the rage right now, but they’re not as environmentally friendly as just and producing hydrogen and then burning it in our vehicles. So one step to reducing our dependency on oil is to start using hydrogen