Natural gas currently provides most of the hydrogen used in industry. Alternatively fuel tanks could be filled with petrol or methanol, with the cars using on-board reformers to generate hydrogen for their fuel cells. This shows promise as a transitional measure while research proceeds on the problems of storing hydrogen. In steam reforming the hydrocarbon fuel reacts with water at high temperatures to produce hydrogen gas. An alternative approach now under development, autoreforming , should increase the attractiveness of on-board hydrogen production.
Water is the only potentially pollution-free source of hydrogen.
But the technology most likely to be adopted on a large scale is electrolysis, which uses an electric current to split water into oxygen and hydrogen. This German passenger airship, kept aloft by hydrogen, crashed in flames as it came in to land at Lakehurst, New Jersey, USA in May 1937. Thirty-five people died. Hydrogen is highly flammable, but recent research has indicated that the airship s fabric, not hydrogen, was the culprit in the Hindenburg disaster. Properly handled, there s no reason to think hydrogen is any more dangerous as a fuel than petrol, the explosive liquid now carried safely in the tanks of untold millions of motor vehicles.