The Next Step.... The Fuel of the Future!!!!

• Each year around 77 million cars are produced worldwide whit china taking the lead with 18 million units a year.
•  By the year 2007 there were around 806 million cars & light trucks on the road on the road (If kept bumper to bumper this is enough to circle the globe a 100 times) 
• These 806 million cars consume around 260 billion gallons of petrol and diesel yearly.

This in turn would mean that a quarter of the oil ever consumed on earth was done so in the last 15 -20 years. All these facts can’t help but beg one question….


How long do you think it will all last??

For many years now the debate has been ongoing as to what the future will hold for us. And in terms of automotive industry what will we be using to power our cars. I made it a personal goal to explore the options open to us. Now these alternatives may be either low emission or emission free. But one type of fuel stands a good chance to fight for prestigious award of 0% pollution…….





The Fuel of the Future….


The answer is...

HYDROGEN..

I mean think about it. Hydrogen is the single most abundant type of resource (if you are willing to go that extra mile to call it a resource) not in the world, in the whole UNIVERSE!!!. Our biggest star the Sun uses hydrogen in nuclear fusion to produce massive amounts of energy and helium as a byproduct. Here on earth hydrogen can react with oxygen to give out the same amount of energy as petrol with the only waste being water. I mean it’s the best possible thing right…


However hydrogen does have one drawback. Although hydrogen is a renewable resource it is not available in its pure form. In other words hydrogen is always available combined with other elements which would mean that to get to hydrogen you actually have to spend energy on retrieving pure hydrogen.




OK since we got that cleared currently there are 2 ways in which hydrogen can be used to power cars. One would be to use the normal petrol engines with a few changes (YES…we can do that…..YAY…this would mean that we can preserve most of the experience of a hunky petrol engine) and also fuel cell driven cars, which are basically electric cars (BORING!!!!!!.... seriously guys there is a bigger problem at hand, so bear with me). But you see although hydrogen can be used in cars very effectively to power them, there are 2 problems with it.


 

1. Manufacturing
2. Storage & Distribution

Manufacturing.

In terms of manufacturing the usual process for hydrogen manufacturing would be electrolysis. This involves the passing of an electric current through water. This process produces hydrogen at one end and oxygen at the other. However there is a drawback with this process as well. The process of electrolysis uses electricity. Which has to be taken off the electricity grids. As of today most of the power generated is through the use of fossil fuels. So in using hydrogen there is still ascertain amount of green house gas emissions taking place. The ideal solution for this would be to switch to renewable sources for power generation such as Geo Thermal, hydro electric, solar or wind as quickly as possible. Or even switch to hydrogen power plants ( I’m not very sure about the possibilities of this)


Storage & Distribution

Hydrogen unlike petrol is a gas. (DUHH!!!.. yeah I know.. I said that to make a point so listen up) so you can’t use pump to move the hydrogen from one place to another you actually need a pressure difference (a high pressure to low pressure scenario). Therefore hydrogen has to be stored under pressure.

It terms of transport for a few kilos of hydrogen it can be transported in gas tanks. But for commercial volumes hydrogen has to be converted to its liquid form which means it has to be maintained at a very very very low temperature…. And that is a hard thing to do. So the only available solution is to produce the hydrogen on site on demand. Eg: When you pull up into a fuelling station to fuel your car you usually ask for a certain amount of fuel right. So the hydrogen actually has to be produced by the dispenser at that moment itself, thereby eliminating many of the costs involved in it.



So if the technology is readily available to use and produce hydrogen why isn’t it being used already??


For the answer we have to move back to the 1940’s



 

Fueling Stations and mass car production both evolved together. So over decades the safety the procedures the infrastructure etc has evolved solely to support the distribution of petrol & diesel. So obviously the change to hydrogen cannot happen overnight. Petrol cars and Fueling Stations both evolved together.




In the case of Hydrogen. It’s like a chicken and egg scenario, both have to evolve together. So car manufacturers have to start producing hydrogen driven cars as well as Fueling Stations should start selling hydrogen.




All that is fine. But there is a bigger question bothering me.

What does the Future hold for the Fuel of the Future??

The BMW Hydrogen Engine

Note: Feel free to leave comments on what you think might happen in the future.