compared to the energy released by the hydrogen pill?
If it takes more energy to produce than it releases when utilized, it will still make an impractical substitute for gasoline and diesel.
The Hydrogen Hallucination
Mark Sardella, PE
It’s being called the 'freedom fuel', capable of releasing us at last from the grip of the oil barons. The 'hydrogen economy' is even the buzz of the bestseller list. But don't break out the party balloons yet, because hydrogen hasn't even the slightest chance of solving our energy problems. A bold assertion, perhaps, but the proof is contained in the simplest of facts: Hydrogen is not a source of energy.
It is true that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but here on Earth all of the hydrogen is combined with other elements. The best example has two hydrogen atoms bonded to an oxygen atom, forming the familiar H2O water molecule. Four hydrogen atoms bonded to a carbon atom makes methane, which we know as 'natural gas'. But if what you need is pure hydrogen - the stuff fuel cells run on - you have to manufacture it. Doing so requires tearing hydrogen loose from whatever it's bonded to, which requires an input of energy. The energy you invest in breaking the bonds is essentially "stored" in the hydrogen, and you can get it back by allowing the hydrogen to bond to something again, as a fuel-cell does. So hydrogen is simply a storage medium - you have to put energy in before you get any back. It could thus be considered a carrier of energy, by it is by no means a source of energy.
This notion of hydrogen as a storage device is vastly different from petroleum, which is clearly a source of energy. As with hydrogen, petroleum requires an energy investment before it is a usable fuel. You have to drill for it, then pump, transport, refine, and transport it again before it can be used as an automobile fuel. But in the case of petroleum, the fuel you end up with contains about five times the energy needed to produce it. That's why it’s called a source of energy - the energy returned is greater than the energy invested.
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Some enthusiasts acknowledge that hydrogen is not a source, but that coupled with renewable sources, it's the perfect fuel. Unfortunately, that's just not the case. Hydrogen's low energy density makes it exceedingly inefficient to transport. To illustrate this, consider that a 40-ton tanker truck loaded with gasoline contains nearly 20 times the energy of a 40-ton truck loaded with compressed hydrogen. If both trucks deliver fuel to a filling station 800 miles away, the gasoline truck consumes about three percent of the energy in its payload to make the roundtrip. But the hydrogen truck traveling the same route would consume all of the energy in its payload. Put another way, if you tried to run the hydrogen delivery truck on hydrogen, it would consume its entire payload making the trip, and have no fuel to deliver.(1)
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