What Are the Complications With Hydrogen Power?
By: Jordan Fearn
Tags: Energy, Future, Physics, Sustainability, Science

Why Isn’t it Already Being Widely Used?

As I stated above, the process of generating Hydrogen is incredibly simple, in theory. But as with most things, it gets a lot more complicated in practice. As of right now, there are two major issues with Hydrogen power:

Getting the hydrogen. It is expensive. There isn’t the infrastructure

Getting the Hydrogen

Hydrogen is the lightest element in the periodic table, this means it has a very low density, so low in fact that it even floats in the air. Despite making up 75% of our universe, hydrogen in its pure form(without being mixed with anything else) is only really available in our atmosphere which makes it hard to get to.

Obviously, there is hydrogen in water, you can get it out using the process of electrolysis, but this requires an energy input that defeats the point of hydrogen power in the first place.

An overwhelming amount of hydrogen currently produced is done so in fossil fuel plants where natural gas is mixed with water to produce carbon monoxide and hydrogen. This, unfortunately, is also polluting which is beside the point of hydrogen power in the first place.

New technologies are being produced that are trying to come up with new, green ways of producing hydrogen. One of the most promising of these is using what is known as Thermochemical Water Splitting process. The Water Splitting process uses waste heat from nuclear reactors or concentrated sunlight to start a chemical reaction that produces hydrogen as an end product.

Examples of two out of the hundreds of possible Water Splitting processes. If you want to learn more I recommend reading this images Source.

Other methods take advantage of chemical reactions in plants that use sunlight to produce water and hydrogen, though this field of research is in its early stage and won’t be available long in the future.

It is Expensive

As explained above, to use hydrogen energy in cars companies are experimenting with Hydrogen Fuel Cells that use a catalyst to split protons and electrons. This catalyst is typically Platinum, which is incredibly expensive at approximately $33,000 per kilo.

That being said, there has been new research that shows the possibility of using a mix of Nickel-oxide and cobalt, or some other mixture of Nickel-oxide to create cheaper catalysts. This research is still being undertaken though.

There is also the issue that due to its difficulty to obtain; hydrogen is more expensive than traditional fuel as well. The Hyundai Nexo can cover just over 400 miles for the price of about £63($83) in the UK, which has recently made efforts accelerate the replacement of petrol and diesel cars with electric and hydrogen cars.

A Hyundai Nexo. Source: Wikimedia Commons

It’s worth noting that the combination of these two issues, among others, means that despite the large amounts of money car and fuel companies are putting into Hydrogen power there has yet to be a full hydrogen car released, and the only one out are hybrids. This is unsurprising, as there isn’t the infrastructure to support fully hydrogen-cars yet either.

There Isn’t The Infrastructure

Looking at the map of hydrogen stations provided by the U.S Department of energy, if you’re in America the only place you will really be able to drive your hydrogen car without having to rely on its hybrid capabilities is California.

A similar map for the UK shows that you would have to be around London, or in Aberdeen.

If you compare that with the map of Tesla charging stations you begin to understand the issue.

That’s not to say there is nowhere where hydrogen cars are being used. As shown here, Germany has 88 hydrogen refuelling stations. This shows that there is some hope for the green energy.

It is also worth considering how much faster the number of refuelling stations in the future. The UK government has recently announced plans to remove all petrol and diesel cars from sale by 2030. Another type of vehicle will have to fill this gap, that creates a perfect market for the hydrogen-powered car