I have basic idea of working of hydrogen fuel cell but why just hydrogen? Isn’t there any better or maybe cheaper alternative?
(I know it’s bit complex for but I would appreciate your answers)
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Out of the renewable-electricity-to-chemical-fuel options, hydrogen is generally seen as the least bad. It is the easiest and least energy inefficient to produce, requiring just electrolysis of water, while other “green fuel” options generally start with hydrogen and combine it with carbon dioxide (or nitrogen, in the case of ammonia), which causes some further efficiency losses as well.
Using hydrogen to produce electricity in a fuel cell is also fairly efficient compared to using an internal combustion engine to drive a generator (or just a mechanical load directly), and unlike combustion, produces no toxic or environmentally harmful byproducts.
Hydrogen of course also has downsides compared to the other options: For useful storage, it needs to be either chilled to extremely cold temperatures or compressed to extremely high pressure, which takes a lot of energy and compensates for the efficiency loss of other hydrogen-derived fuels somewhat. Also, hydrogen itself has a fairly high short-term global warming potential, about a third as large as that of methane, so the (inevitable, especially with how hydrogen can diffused through a solid metal container) leaks in hydrogen infrastructure could contribute significantly to global warming – though that is an issue that it shares with synthetic methane as well.
Also, if you want to be a bit cynical about it, since most hydrogen currently is produced by reacting natural gas with steam, one could argue that fossil fuel companies are pushing hydrogen (as an alternative to direct electrification) in order to be able to keep running their infrastructure and make mooney from it for longer.
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