Hydrogen Powered Cars
A hydrogen-powered car refers to a vehicle that uses hydrogen as a fuel rather than petrol. Hydrogen can be converted to mechanical energy either by combustion or electrochemical conversion in a fuel cell. With combustion the hydrogen is burned in engines in almost the same way as petrol is in traditional cars. In fuel cell conversion the hydrogen is combined with oxygen to produce electricity. The electricity generated is used to drive a motor and the only waste product is water.
In 2008 the Japanese car manufacturer Honda became the first car company to produce commercial zero-emission hydrogen fuel-cell powered cars. The FCX Clarity is powered by electricity that is produced when hydrogen is combined with water. The only emission is water vapour. According to the company the car is 3 times more efficient than petrol-powered cars. The main obstacle to getting hydrogen-powered cars accepted is the lack of stations for re-fuelling.
Critics of the car have pointed out that not only is hydrogen costly to produce but it is still most commonly produced from fossil fuels. Hydrogen can thus hardly be considered as a truly green energy source. Research on the different fuel technologies has revealed that the environmental impact of hydrogen-powered cars in terms of the overall carbon dioxide emissions may actually be higher than that for petrol or diesel cars. Other technological problems that still have to be overcome are the problems of storing hydrogen. Hydrogen has to be compressed and liquefied and this requires on-board cryogenic systems or high pressures. Hydrogen can be stored as a solid, but so far this has only been achieved in the laboratory. Given these problems it might seem surprising that hydrogen has not been written off as an alternative power source. However, hydrogen’s big advantage is that it is possible to travel great distances on a single tank of hydrogen.
In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is aiming to build a string of 200 hydrogen-filling stations that will stretch from Vancouver, British Columbia to Baja, California by 2010. However, as it will take some time to get the infrastructure in place it is likely that in the near future cars will be able to run on both petrol and hydrogen.
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