I’ve been looking into renewable energy and other options relative to nuclear (not a big fan because of the waste), solar, wind, and thermal. Hydrogen fuel cell technology has popped up a bit and I’m wondering how this works. With my basic understanding, hydrogen is used as input and water (two hydrogens and an oxygen) are the output.
How does this reaction happen?
Is it not widespread because it’s energy intensive? If not, why haven’t more industries adopted this technology?
If so, why is so energy intensive and how much energy does it produce?
What’s holding us back from going balls deep into hydrogen fuel cell technology when the by products are clean (even usable) and the input is so abundant in the universe and on earth?
With the abundance of input material, It seems like this technology could be useful once we get to Mars as well.
Disclaimer: This isn’t for a class or anything. I’m a 31 year old bioinformatician just looking into a new interesting topic and wanted some context from someone with more knowledge.
In: Technology
TLDR: We can’t yet produce Hydrogen quickly or efficiently enough to use Hydrogen as a fuel source for cars.
>I’ve been looking into renewable energy and other options relative to nuclear (not a big fan because of the waste), solar, wind, and thermal. Hydrogen fuel cell technology has popped up a bit and I’m wondering how this works. With my basic understanding, hydrogen is used as input and water (two hydrogens and an oxygen) are the output.
Hydrogen fuel cells have existed for decades and were in fact used as power generators on the Apollo missions. Hydrogen and Oxygen are pass through the fuel cell where the combine to form water. This process releases an electron which creates an electrical current.
>Is it not widespread because it’s energy intensive? If not, why haven’t more industries adopted this technology?
It’s not widespread because free Hydrogen is difficult to manufacture. Current processes either decompose fossil fuels (which doesn’t eliminate our dependence on them) or use electrolysis to break apart water molecules. We don’t have the infrastructure or technology yet to make hydrogen on any kind of practical scale.
>What’s holding us back from going balls deep into hydrogen fuel cell technology when the by products are clean (even usable) and the input is so abundant in the universe and on earth?
We need to find an environmentally friendly and efficient means of produce vast quantities of Hydrogen.
Other problems like safe storage and transport are fairly straight forward to resolve by comparison.
>With the abundance of input material, It seems like this technology could be useful once we get to Mars as well.
Yes, fuel cell technology is very relevant in terms of space travel. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe and Oxygen is also abundant. It just happens that we don’t have access to large quantities of raw Hydrogen on Earth, almost all of it exists as water.
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