[TommyDale]

"96 % of the hydrogen produced today is created from fossil fuels, natural gas, oil and coal."

The idea is to invest in NEW WAYS to extract hydrogen, from such sources as water. Remember, water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. By removing the two parts of hydrogen, the leftover product would be pure oxygen, right? In a closed environment, this should pose no hazard to our atmosphere or forests, should it?

[Free the USA]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[kwyjibo]

So, how are you going to do it? If you are going to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen in molecules of water, you're going to have to use a lot of energy. Unless you're using solar or nuclear power, you're likely going to be burning fossil fuels to get the required energy. Even electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels at most power plants. Plus, I believe I've read that more energy would be needed to generate pure hydrogen from water than would be output from a hydrogen fuel cell.

The benefit of using hydrogen fuel cells is not that net air pollution is reduced. Rather, it's that the pollutants are redistributed from densely populated areas to sparsely populated areas. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's being overlooked.

Maybe someday we'll be able to generate an abundant supply of hydrogen with no pollution. But that's still many years away.

[Willie Green]

The idea is to invest in NEW WAYS to extract hydrogen, from such sources as water.

There are many ways to skin a cat,
but none of them can circumvent the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

[boris]

"The idea is to invest in NEW WAYS to extract hydrogen, from such sources as water. Remember, water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. By removing the two parts of hydrogen, the leftover product would be pure oxygen, right? In a closed environment, this should pose no hazard to our atmosphere or forests, should it?"

With sufficient nuclear power this would not be a problem. Water has a "heat of formation" of 68,000 calories per mole. An electrolysis machine has to pump in lots of power per pound of H2 made by electrolysis. Electrolyzers are typically only 70% efficient. Possibly ion-exchange devices are more efficient but you will have to pay the cost of breaking that strong chemical bond.

Water is "hydrogen ash"--literally the ashes left after combusting H2 with oxygen, and it is hard to "unburn" it.

--Boris