Hydrogen Electrolysis: Energy
Out Of Almost Nothing?
Hydrogen electrolysis is the division of water into its two
molecular components, hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen electrolysis
a process that has often been demonstrated in high school science
laboratories, but today interest is growing in using this chemical
process to provide fuel for clean-burning cars. In theory, a car
running on hydrogen would have no by-products except for heat
and pure water.
In most hydrogen electrolysis processes, the energy to split
water is provided by a battery or another electrical current.
In chemical terms, the electrolysis of a mole of water produces
a mole of hydrogen and a half-mole of oxygen gas, a mole being
a measurement related to the number of molecules of a substance.
In real terms, a quart of water under normal pressure creates
a much larger volume of hydrogen, requiring the resulting gas
to be under pressure or risk its escaping.
But, the more important measurement of hydrogen electrolysis
is how efficiently it creates energy. Water electrolysis in which
the hydrogen is subsequently burned is measured at anywhere from
50-94% (though the energy required to create the electricity is
not included in this measurement).
The ideal situation for hydrogen electrolysis is to have it replace
ordinary gasoline and diesel engines. There are some problems
with this, however. For one, hydrogen is highly combustible and
highly unstable when stored. Remember the Hindenburg, the hydrogen
blimp that burned to the ground due to one spark? Recent studies
indicate that the hydrogen in the Hindenburg wasn't the first
to burn as the outer skin caught fire and burned first and much
more quickly than the hydrogen, but the perception of driving
a "hydrogen bomb" on wheels continues.
There have been experiments with putting hydrogen under high
pressure to stabilize it and, incidentally, eliminate its other
problem in application. Gaseous hydrogen takes up a lot of space,
to the point that it takes five times the same volume of hydrogen
to provide as much energy as a gallon of gas. Liquid hydrogen,
on the other hand, is 14 times as dense as gasoline.
Once the kinks of using liquid hydrogen have been worked out,
we may see more cars on the road using it. Or new hydrogen-burning
cars may start using the Hydrogen-On-Demand process designed by
Steven Amendola. Instead of gas, cars would fill up on a fuel
blend of water, sodium borohydride and sodium hydroxide and drive
off, and the electrolysis would happen as you drove with a much
more stable fuel system.
Besides the problem of storage, hydrogen-based cars using the
Hydrogen-On-Demand process will have a problem with the electrolysis
process. Where does the electricity come from? It must come from
clean-burning coal, wind or solar power or even from nuclear power,
which brings forth its own problems. There are thousands of engineers
working on this solution. There's no doubt that eventually the
stuff coming out of our tailpipes will be water or nothing at
all as the water gets recycled back into the process.
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