Hydrogen

Hydrogen is the simplest and most abundant resource in the universe and at the moment has no commercial use. But the future of hydrogen looks to have a future in the automotive business with the development of two possible uses for hydrogen as a power source. Hydrogen burns cleanly emitting no nasty chemicals or greenhouse gases but only produces water vapour which makes a very good clean alternative to petrol in today’s internal combustion engines that which need to only very minor modifications to run on liquid hydrogen while still maintaining the internal working of a regular internal combustion engine. However manufacturers are looking towards fuel cell technology over internal combustion due to its much greater efficiency.

The hydrogen fuel cell produces electricity to power and electric motor. Electric cars have been around for a while but have always had problems with distance and recharge time making them very impractical. As well as having to carry stacks of batteries that made them heavy and took up space. All these problems seem to be answered with the hydrogen fuel cells which produce electricity on the go hence removing the need for stacks of batteries and with the greater efficiency over the internal combustion engine have a large range. As well the hydrogen fuel cells need no recharge just a refill of hydrogen which will only take a few minutes over then conventional electric cars several hours. There is however a fault with hydrogen as a fuel sauce. Although it is clean burning and almost unlimited resource it is much harder to store then regular petrol because of its gas state at room temperature. Meaning the gas has to be liquefied for storage in fuel tanks which takes a lot of energy an estimated 20-40per cent of the fuels energy and at a brisk -252 c it needs special designed tanks to hold it.

Although hydrogen cars have a bright future there is still a long way to go before they are available for practical use but is one of the only...