How green would a hydrogen car industry be on a world wide scale?
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I have been reading a number of articles about changing to hydrogen cars and how it would result in a decrease in pollution. While it is true a hydrogen car would be a number of times cleaner than a regular gas car, I have a few doubts about how clean the hydrogen making process would be.
If hydrogen is obtained from water, wouldn’t it require a great deal of energy to get the hydrogen out of it? Wouldn’t the energy required to do this come from oil and the more traditional non-green energy sources?
Overall, is the process for obtaining enormous amounts of hydrogen overall green at all?
I think you answered your own question. If the source of initial energy to separate hydrogen from water is a renewable source (wind, solar, geothermal, or tidal) it would be a huge green power source. If hydrogen was recovered using fossil fuels, it wouldn’t be green at all. Its like eating a super sized big mac, with large fries and ordering a diet coke, the diet coke really isn’t the problem.
It wouldn’t be clean at all. Your right about it taking a bunch of energy. All the pollution reduced by burning hydrogen would be offset by the energy used to produce it.
Russia (former Soviet Union?) drilled the deepest hole on earth- down approximately 40,000 feet. They hit a formation of some type that was saturated with pure hydrogen gas. Since that was the only hole ever drilled that deep, no one knows if it’s a regular occurring phenomenon at that depth or if it was just a fluke that might never happen again.
Hydrogen splits off super heated steam much easier than it does of room temperature water. Another use for nuke power.
Hydrogen would be a great fuel source if (not likely to ever happen) there was an oversupply of green energy sourced power. Or, if I were to put up a large windmill and not be allowed to connect it to the grid, hydrogen would be a useful way of storing energy for later use in a vehicle.
You haven’t been reading the right stuff. This car runs on water which uses hydrogen on demand, does not store the hydrogen and uses no oil.
the fossil fuel powered split would only be necessary at the very beginning of the process. Hydrogen releases more energy than is required to split H from O2, so you’d be producing Hydrogen by means of a Hydrogen powered process. green all the way around.
switching to hydrogen power would do way more than just decrease pollution. It would also make energy very cheap because the process of splitting water is relatively simple. You could literally have a mini power plant behind your house producing a great, clean source of energy, that powers your entire house, and your car. Fuel stations could produce hydrogen on location.
In large cities, for safety purposes, there would probably still be a reliance on energy companies, to prevent having large quantities of such an explosive within city limits. Imagine if a city were to start to burn with pockets of hydrogen everywhere? I’m reminded of the great chicago fire and the san francisco fire.
but yes, you can totally have a green process for splitting hydrogen from oxygen.
Yes. Everything you said was correct. You know everything.