With fusion in the news often, I was wondering what makes it special as opposed to simply burning hydrogen with oxygen like a fuel cell does?
Doesn’t both require the uneconomical electrolysis to source the hydrogen in the first place?
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Hydrogen is typically sourced from steam cracking of methane or electric decomposition of water.
Just *burning* hydrogen reacts it with oxygen gas to turn it back into water, releasing the same amount of energy originally required to separate the water.
Fusion is a completely different process, putting the hydrogen atoms under so much heat and pressure that a nuclear reaction occurs. Two hydrogen nuclei are converted into neutrons in the reaction, releasing energetic photons and positrons that annihilate an electron, converting their mass directly into energy.
This is a proportionally massive release of energy compared to the chemical burning process, but it’s incredibly difficult to start and sustain – you need more heat and pressure than the core of the sun to make it happen.
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