Hydrogen as a Fuel

The popularity of hydrogen as a fuel is increasing because of the amount of heat it produces during combustion. Understand the basics of hydrogen as a fuel, its production, uses, advantages, and other related topics in detail.

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-

Process

Mechanism

Gasification or Steam Reforming

In the process of gasification, natural gases such as methane are reacted with steam at a high temperature. Due to this, synthesis gas is released, a combination of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen.

Every time carbon monoxide is reacted with water, it produces a huge amount of hydrogen.

This method is one of the common, efficient, and cheapest methods for the production of hydrogen.

Electrolysis

Another method to produce hydrogen is electrolysis. In this process, an electric current moves through the water, which splits it into hydrogen and oxygen.

When electricity is produced through solar or wind, known as renewable resources, the hydrogen generated is also regarded as renewable. This process can have several emission benefits, and it is cost-effective as well.

Reformation of Renewable Liquid

The other method is the reformation of renewable liquid. According to this method, renewable liquid fuels such as ethanol are reacted with high-temperature steam for the production of hydrogen fuel cells.

Fermentation

The last and the most common method for producing hydrogen cell fuel is fermentation. In this process, the feedstock is produced by transforming biomass, which contains high sugar. Later, these sugar-rich feedstocks are fermented to produce hydrogen.

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.