Hydrogen has been touted as the saviour of the world’s modern way of life.
Even so, there are some major shortcomings to this source of energy.
Because it is the lightest element in the universe, containment for large-scale use presents some interesting and complex problems.
By weight, hydrogen has the highest energy density of all the fuels available, but by volume it does not compare to the fuel sources we are most familiar with.
The problem stems from hydrogen’s physical characteristics.
At standard temperature and pressure, hydrogen is a gas. Gases need to be compressed to provide large volumes of supply.
A standard size oxygen tank, used in welding, contains approximately nine to 12 cubic metres of gas.
In liquid form, hydrogen has a weight of 71 kg/m³ compared to water, which has a weight of 1,000 kg/m³.
Water is liquid at 0C; hydrogen, however, is liquid only between -259 and -252C. These properties are not really conducive to handling with the means we are accustomed to.
Initial testing of hydrogen vehicles using 70 Mpa (10,000 psi) storage tanks give the vehicle a range of approximately 320 km.
Not bad, but when a normal vehicle has a approximate range of 600 to 800 km or higher, it is easy to see that we will need a lot of fuelling stations.
British Columbia has seven hydrogen refuelling stations on its hydrogen highway, which runs from Victoria to Whistler.
Italy had the first hydrogen highway in Europe, Norway has seven hydrogen filling stations, Denmark 15, and the U.S. has some 65, with California reporting 27 at the first of this year.
Don’t have the wherewithal to produce your own hydrogen for that hydrogen vehicle that is not available in our province?
Maybe you’re interested in increasing your vehicle mileage with a hydrogen injection system. When water is degraded by an electric current, it produces oxyhydrogen.
Oxyhydrogen systems inject hydrogen into the intake of the vehicle from an onboard system that produces the oxyhydrogen as you drive.
Once it enters the combustion chamber of your engine, the oxyhydrogen increases the speed of the burn of the petroleum that has been injected.
This burns more of the available fuel, generating more power, with the result that you use less fuel.
It is important to note you cannot run a vehicle on oxyhydrogen as it takes more energy to produce it than what you engine can provide and still power the vehicle. As a fuel supplement, it is purported to decrease fuel consumption approximately 25 to 50 per cent.
Injecting natural gas or propane into a conventional gas or diesel engine will also decrease your fuel consumption but you have to continually buy these products as opposed to the one-time installation of the oxyhydrogen system.
These systems are commercially available and becoming more widespread as the price of fuel rises at the pump.
Necessity drives invention and humans will find alternatives dictated by that necessity.
Lorne Oja is an energy consultant, power engineer and a partner in a company that installs solar panels, wind turbines and energy control products in Central Alberta. He built his first off-grid home in 2003 and is in the planning stage for his second. His column appears every second Friday in the Advocate. Contact him at: lorne@solartechnical.ca