Hydrogen as a Fuel

The hydrogen element has multiple similarities with both alkali metals and halogens. Hydrogen is one of the most important fuels and is becoming popular each day as the amount of heat it produces during combustion. This hydrogen as a fuel study material will talk about hydrogen fuel, its uses, advantages, applications, and other comparisons for better understanding.

What is Hydrogen Fuel?

Hydrogen fuel is a no-emission fuel that is produced when oxygen and hydrogen are burned together. Also, this might seem intimidating to a lot of students, but surprisingly, this alternative fuel produces a larger amount of energy as compared to diesel and petrol. Moreover, when hydrogen is burned, it produces lesser pollutants as compared to diesel or petrol.

Using processes like water electrolysis and coal gasification, hydrogen can be produced without any carbon emissions. There are several other fuels that are naturally produced by organic compounds, especially hydrocarbons such as gasoline,  natural gas, methanol, and propane.

What is a Hydrogen Fuel Cell?

Before understanding the hydrogen fuel cell, it is important to read about fuel cells in general. A fuel cell is a kind of mechanical device that has the ability to convert the captured energy within chemical potential energy or molecular bonds into electrical energy.

Here, the hydrogen fuel cells proton exchange membrane, also known as PEM, uses oxygen and hydrogen as fuels. In order to develop heat, electricity, and water, it combines hydrogen and oxygen.

The anode and the cathode of a hydrogen fuel cell carry hydrogen and oxygen, respectively. At the anode part of the cell, the hydrogen molecules are divided into electrons and protons. Because of the hydrogen fuel applications, both of these elements react with each other and produce a large amount of energy.

Production of Hydrogen Fuel

As mentioned in the introduction, hydrogen is present in a higher percentage, 75%, in the atmosphere; it is not found in its purest form. For industrial uses, hydrogen is one of the primary energies out of all. Here are some of the conventional methods of producing hydrogen. Let’s have a look-

Uses of Hydrogen Fuel

One of the major uses of hydrogen fuel is that hydrogen fuel cells act as an alternative option for providing power to an array of vehicles, including aeroplanes, boats, cars, and others that have electric motors. Although, storing hydrogen fuel is yet another dynamic as it is not the easiest to store hydrogen as a fuel in cryogenic or high-pressure tanks.

Hydrogen Economy

• The term economy of hydrogen or the hydrogen economy implies a vision of making use of hydrogen as an alternative low-carbon emission power generator
• One of the major benefits of it is that here instead of electricity, hydrogen transmits the energy
• Although it is not widely used at the moment but shortly, there are chances of its widespread usage

Advantages of Hydrogen Fuel

The following are the advantages of hydrogen fuel. Let’s have a look-

• When hydrogen is burned, it only produces water vapour
• On burning hydrogen, it does not produce carbon dioxide
• As compared to other gases, hydrogen is termed as less of a pollutant
• When compared, the fuel cell engines are way more efficient than the other combustion engines

Conclusion

While this was everything about hydrogen as a fuel and other important topics related to the same. Hydrogen as a fuel is one of the basic and most important concepts while studying chemistry. Today, in this article, we discussed hydrogen as a fuel in detail along with the production and uses of hydrogen fuel. In the end, we also discussed the advantages of hydrogen fuel. We hope this hydrogen as a fuel study material has helped you understand the topic well.