People have been talking about replacing petrol (gasoline) and diesel by an alternative fuel to have a cleaner tomorrow. Also the fossil fuels which we are using today for automobiles will run out before our grand children could get their driver's license. In the expedition to find an alternative power source for the beast under the hood of our car, mankind has come across few milestones.
A nitrogen car has been prototyped by the University of North Texas known as CooLN2Car. Nitrogen cars are still under development. But if I take a look on the recent developments the most promising option seems to be the Hydrogen Car. Honda has already launched the hydrogen car which is called Honda FCX.
No doubt all our efforts are to make our environment cleaner. Using hydrogen as the fuel would reduce the pollution to a great extent caused by automobiles as the by product of hydrogen vehicles is pure water.
But I have a question which has been troubling me since long. Are we going in right direction?
The estimated cost of the hydrogen car is way beyond the reach of a common man. The technology of producing the hydrogen cars has to be worked upon so that we can buy the hydrogen cars.
After buying the hydrogen car, we would be going on drive, obviously. So there should be some gas stations to keep us going. As of now we don’t have the infrastructure for distribution of hydrogen. The age of fossil fuel reserves is not more than 80 years or 100 years, so the distribution system has to be developed quickly.
The infrastructure also becomes important because hydrogen is more flammable than the gasoline or diesel. Now after riding the hydrogen car for some months we would need the service stations to keep it fit and functioning. This also has to be addressed by the manufacturers and service providers along with the developments of the hydrogen car.
If all the above things are in place, we would be cherishing a new experience with our very own car, acknowledging an element of satisfaction that our cars are no more polluting the milieu.
But will that hydrogen, which we would be using, be CLEAN....in real sense? There are two commonly used methods for production of hydrogen.
1. Electrolysis of Water
2. Reforming of fossil
The first method uses electricity to produce hydrogen. Now, we should keep a fact in mind that 68% of electricity in USA is produced by coal or natural gas. The second method uses the fossil fuel to obtain hydrogen and leaves carbon dioxide as the by-product which is a greenhouse gas.
The second method would be ruled out as it can not solve our problem of dependency on the fossil fuels. And to incorporate first method to produce hydrogen to fuel all the cars on road, we need huge amount of electricity. So we need to develop an alternative generation method for electricity as the hydrogen cars would increase the demand for electricity to a great extent.
One more issue also needs to be discussed, that is how the “pure water” (by-product of hydrogen car) would be disposed off. The water so obtained from hydrogen car can not be consumed as it is the pure water without essential salts and minerals. The water thus obtained can not be drained to the commonly used city drainage system, because there are enough cars on Earth to create floods by doing so. Therefore, a reverse supply chain of the by-product (pure water) has to be put in place to use the water again before transforming our cars from conventional fuels to the hydrogen. Using the water obtained from the car will save the purification costs also.
So for making hydrogen car run without polluting the environment seems difficult at the current pace of development. The car manufacturers should not only concentrate on development of the hydrogen car to show their expertise in the field but they should also come forward to develop the whole chain so that the mankind could really breathe easy in future.
A nitrogen car has been prototyped by the University of North Texas known as CooLN2Car. Nitrogen cars are still under development. But if I take a look on the recent developments the most promising option seems to be the Hydrogen Car. Honda has already launched the hydrogen car which is called Honda FCX.
No doubt all our efforts are to make our environment cleaner. Using hydrogen as the fuel would reduce the pollution to a great extent caused by automobiles as the by product of hydrogen vehicles is pure water.
But I have a question which has been troubling me since long. Are we going in right direction?
The estimated cost of the hydrogen car is way beyond the reach of a common man. The technology of producing the hydrogen cars has to be worked upon so that we can buy the hydrogen cars.
After buying the hydrogen car, we would be going on drive, obviously. So there should be some gas stations to keep us going. As of now we don’t have the infrastructure for distribution of hydrogen. The age of fossil fuel reserves is not more than 80 years or 100 years, so the distribution system has to be developed quickly.
The infrastructure also becomes important because hydrogen is more flammable than the gasoline or diesel. Now after riding the hydrogen car for some months we would need the service stations to keep it fit and functioning. This also has to be addressed by the manufacturers and service providers along with the developments of the hydrogen car.
If all the above things are in place, we would be cherishing a new experience with our very own car, acknowledging an element of satisfaction that our cars are no more polluting the milieu.
But will that hydrogen, which we would be using, be CLEAN....in real sense? There are two commonly used methods for production of hydrogen.
1. Electrolysis of Water
2. Reforming of fossil
The first method uses electricity to produce hydrogen. Now, we should keep a fact in mind that 68% of electricity in USA is produced by coal or natural gas. The second method uses the fossil fuel to obtain hydrogen and leaves carbon dioxide as the by-product which is a greenhouse gas.
The second method would be ruled out as it can not solve our problem of dependency on the fossil fuels. And to incorporate first method to produce hydrogen to fuel all the cars on road, we need huge amount of electricity. So we need to develop an alternative generation method for electricity as the hydrogen cars would increase the demand for electricity to a great extent.
One more issue also needs to be discussed, that is how the “pure water” (by-product of hydrogen car) would be disposed off. The water so obtained from hydrogen car can not be consumed as it is the pure water without essential salts and minerals. The water thus obtained can not be drained to the commonly used city drainage system, because there are enough cars on Earth to create floods by doing so. Therefore, a reverse supply chain of the by-product (pure water) has to be put in place to use the water again before transforming our cars from conventional fuels to the hydrogen. Using the water obtained from the car will save the purification costs also.
So for making hydrogen car run without polluting the environment seems difficult at the current pace of development. The car manufacturers should not only concentrate on development of the hydrogen car to show their expertise in the field but they should also come forward to develop the whole chain so that the mankind could really breathe easy in future.
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