Hydrogen Fuel Cells Are Becoming Too Big to Ignore

[jmowreader]

3. Very little of the hydrogen used in the US comes from water

It is FAR more likely to come from one of two other sources:

Most common: steam reformation of methane. This produces more carbon dioxide than you can sell.

The other: as a byproduct of another chemical reaction. The process that gives us chlorine gas and caustic soda also gives hydrogen:

2NaCl + 2H₂O (brine) + electricity -> 2NaOH + H₂ + Cl₂

It should be apparent they're not running this process mainly for the hydrogen, but if it's right there and hydrogen is worth money, why not?

One way to kill a few birds with one stone, would be to install a load-balancing device on wind farms. These days, if a wind farm is producing more power than they need, they feather the blades on some, or all, of the turbines and cut the amount of power the farm generates. Which is all well and good...but if we had a lot of hydrogen vehicles on the road, why couldn't the excess power from these farms be used to make hydrogen?