Blewbury Energy Initiative

Is Hydrogen the Fuel of the Future?

Hydrogen can supply energy without significant effects on the planet. It can either be burned as a fuel or used to generate electricity in fuel cells. But the hydrogen must be produced from renewable resources, not fossil fuel, without generating greenhouse gases or pollution. To achieve these goals, serious cost, safety and technical problems must be overcome.

This page covers the generation of hydrogen, its storage and transport, its use for fuel cells, examples of projects currently underway, and the general issues of its economics, safety and environmental problems. It ends with brief summaries of the current status and outlook.

Hydrogen would appear to be the ideal fuel. It is available in great abundance and is non-toxic. The residue from burning pure hydrogen is simply water, without other pollution. It could be used as a fuel for power stations, for heating, and for use in land vehicles, aeroplanes and ships. It has already been used to power space rockets, and in prototype buses and cars.

The advantages of using hydrogen to replace oil, gas and coal have been recognised for several decades, and a great deal of research and development has been devoted to this. However, the hoped-for hydrogen economy has been slow in coming. Nevertheless, hydrogen remains a potentially attractive option for combining a long-term solution to global warming with the freedom to expand energy usage to meet human demands.

Much of the publicity gives the impression that hydrogen can simply be used as a clean energy source to replace fossil fuels, as soon as some challenging technical problems are solved. But this misses an important point. Unlike fossil fuels, which already exist, hydrogen has to be produced, and that uses energy. In effect, hydrogen acts as an energy storage medium rather than an energy source. So in deciding how useful hydrogen is we must take account of the way it is produced, as well as how it is distributed and used.

At present almost all hydrogen is produced from fossil fuel. The ideal is to produce it from water, and to do so using renewable resources such as hydropower, wind or solar energy. It can also be produced by nuclear fission power, and possibly in the distant future by nuclear fusion.

Hydrogen could be used to store energy from sources which don't work all the time, such as solar photovoltaic panels, or which generate energy when it is not needed, for example from nuclear power stations which are more efficient if run continuously.

Hydrogen could also be used as a means for transporting energy. For example, solar energy installations in desert areas could extract hydrogen from water. The hydrogen would then be transported by pipeline or ship to where it is needed; this is discussed further below.

In many cases, an alternative to hydrogen is the use of rechargeable batteries as an energy storage medium. It seems unlikely that the use of batteries will satisfy some applications – for example powering aeroplanes. However, the relative future importance and balance of battery solutions versus hydrogen solutions is difficult to predict, and depends on how the technologies develop. It may also prove more economic to create other fuels rather than hydrogen.

On this page we will outline the situation, status and outlook. More detailed discussions on the hydrogen economy can be found in the Wikipedia and a report to the US Department of Energy.

Hydrogen is a very energetic fuel by weight, yielding around 33 kilowatt-hours per kilogram. This is two and a half to three times the energy of the same weight of conventional fuels, such as natural gas or petrol. However, hydrogen has a very low molecular weight, and as a result it is a very light gas – one kilogram at atmospheric pressure occupies 11,200 litres. Liquid hydrogen is course denser, but petrol at room temperature is roughly 10 times denser still, so by volume liquid hydrogen actually has only about one-quarter of the energy density of petrol.

This means that a basic problem with hydrogen is storage. If stored as a gas it needs to be highly compressed, and energy is needed to do that. And as a liquid hydrogen must be kept very cold since its boiling point is –252.8°C, or 20 K, and even more energy is needed to liquefy it and keep it cold.

Hydrogen burns with a light blue flame which is not easy to see. To avoid people touching the flame accidentally, it is desirable to mix the hydrogen with a small proportion of a fuel such as methane to colour the flame. Burning hydrogen in air is not entirely benign, as some nitrous oxide (a potent greenhouse gas) is also produced. More serious is the problem of explosion. A wide range of hydrogen concentrations in air can explode if ignited, so care must be taken.

Fuel cells (discussed below) allow the direct conversion of hydrogen energy into electricity. This is much more efficient than simply burning the hydrogen like a conventional fuel, for example in an internal combustion engine.

Hydrogen is currently used in large quantities as an industrial chemical, to make ammonia for fertiliser and in processing crude oil to make fuel. Almost all of this hydrogen is produced from natural gas, oil and coal, as in the photo. Producing hydrogen from natural gas is fairly efficient, partly because waste heat from power stations is used in the process. However, the fossil-fuel sources are not renewable and carbon dioxide is also produced as a by-product, so this is not an acceptable solution.

Electrolysis of water, currently used to produce only about 4% of industrial hydrogen, could be far cleaner and more sustainable.

Electric current is passed between two electrodes immersed in water. Oxygen appears at the positive electrode and hydrogen at the negative electrode. The diagram illustrates the basic principle. The water must be pure as impurities can degrade the electrodes. The advantages of this process are that:

About 80% of the electrical energy can be stored as hydrogen. The remaining energy appears as heat, which must be removed.

If electrolysis takes place at a higher temperature, or even on steam, more of the energy used to create the hydrogen can be thermal energy, which is less expensive than electrical energy. However, the need for high temperatures rules out solar photovoltaic and wind energy. Heating by solar concentrators or by nuclear power would be possible. A 100-kilowatt pilot project in Spain, which concentrates sunlight to obtain the 800 to 1200 °C required to split water, is Hydrosol-2, which started up in 2008. In the case of nuclear power (which is opposed by many people), electrolysing water to make hydrogen could help in utilising the inflexible always-on operation at times of low electricity demand.

Thermochemical processes have been demonstrated which produce hydrogen and oxygen from water and heat, without using electricity. These could be more efficient than processes involving electrolysis, since the input energy is only heat. However, none has been implemented on a commercial scale.

At temperatures of 3000 °C water molecules separate into their constituent hydrogen and oxygen. The necessary temperature can be reached by furnaces heated by solar concentrators, and the gases can then be separated by diffusion through a suitable membrane. This method of separation is currently only experimental; there are no commercial installations.

* The energy for making hydrogen should ideally come from a cheap, clean, renewable source – we are still a long way from this goal.

If hydrogen is stored at atmospheric pressure, its low density means that there is only about one-third as much energy per cubic metre as in natural gas. A gasometer holding the same energy reserves needs to be three times the size if hydrogen is the fuel. To reduce the storage volume needed, hydrogen must be stored in a compressed or liquefied state, or in some sort of chemical form. Hydrogen at 50 atmospheres pressure provides about 0.13 kilowatt-hours per litre, and liquid hydrogen provides 2.36 kilowatt-hours per litre. (Petrol or oil provide about 10 kilowatt-hours per litre.)

At present, temporary storage of bulk hydrogen for later use is most cheaply done in suitable underground caverns. ICI stores hydrogen at 50 atmospheres pressure in old salt mines at Teesside. Stationary storage above ground uses similar pressures.

If hydrogen is to be used as a transport fuel it must provide a sufficient driving range. It takes energy to compress the gas, and although compressing the gas improves the energy density, smaller tanks are not necessarily lighter than big ones because they must be stronger, and heavy tanks are not good for fuel economy.

For example, a 100 litre tank of hydrogen at 250 atmospheres pressure holds about 2.2 kg of hydrogen providing 72 kilowatt-hours of energy. Such a tank might weigh 30 kg, far more than the hydrogen itself. By comparison, only 8.2 litres of petrol is needed to provide 72 kilowatt-hours of energy – this weighs about 6 kg plus a tank weighing a fraction of a kilogram. These figures also indicate that such a hydrogen tank would not provide very much driving range – well under 100 miles in today's most efficient cars. To match the driving range of a typical petrol car in this way would require a hydrogen tank of about 1 cubic metre.

Hydrogen is a small, energetic molecule, so it tends to diffuse through any material intended to contain it. This causes embrittlement, or weakening, of tanks and pipes.

Liquid hydrogen presents more problems. An energy-intensive liquefaction process is needed to get to the required –252.8 °C, and then cryogenic storage must be used. Liquid hydrogen storage tanks must be well insulated to minimise boil-off. Due largely to the use of liquid hydrogen fuel for space rockets, good low-mass liquid hydrogen tanks have been developed. However, they will still be heavier and bulkier than petrol tanks, and for the same energy yield the hydrogen volume must be more than four times greater. The photo shows a liquid hydrogen fuel tank in the boot of a car.

Instead of storing pure hydrogen, it can also be stored as a chemical hydride or some other hydrogen-containing compound. Hydrogen gas is reacted with other materials to produce the hydrogen storage material, which can be transported relatively easily. At the point of use the hydrogen storage material can be made to decompose, yielding hydrogen gas.

Charging the metal hydride store with hydrogen generates heat, and heat must also be applied to the container to release the hydrogen. Barriers to practical storage schemes include the high pressure and temperature conditions needed first to form the hydride and then to release the hydrogen, which only comes out slowly. In addition, the hydrides either degrade very quickly when exposed to the oxygen in air or are very flammable.

Interesting research at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, UK, is developing nanobeads that can be poured and pumped like a liquid. The hydrides attach to the beads, which are safer, have a longer life, and release the hydrogen much faster when heated.

Compared with compressed hydrogen, storage as a hydride provides a higher energy density: 72 kilowatt-hours of hydrogen would need about a 20 litre lightweight container, and the hydride would weigh about 110 kg. But compared with the equivalent petrol tank, the hydride store is about three times the size and twenty times as heavy.

Another approach is to absorb molecular hydrogen into a solid storage material. Unlike hydrides, the hydrogen does not combine chemically in the storage system, and hence does not suffer from some of the limitations of hydride storage systems. Hydrogen densities similar to liquefied hydrogen can be achieved with appropriate absorption media.

However, the most common method of on-board hydrogen storage in today's demonstration vehicles is still the simple option of compressed gas, at pressures of up to 700 atmospheres.

The low density of hydrogen also means that pipeline distribution of compressed hydrogen gas is less efficient than a similar natural gas pipeline. As mentioned above, to get the same energy as natural gas three times the volume of hydrogen must be delivered, and this uses more energy. In addition, hydrogen accelerates the cracking of steel (embrittlement), which increases maintenance costs, leakage rates, and material costs. Well-established pipeline installations in the USA and Germany do exist to transport hydrogen over distances of up to 40 miles. However, hydrogen pipelines are more expensive than even long-distance electricity lines.

Pressurised containers can also be used to transport gaseous hydrogen, at pressures up to 250 atmospheres, on lorries, trains, and ships.

Liquid hydrogen can be transported in standard shipping containers which include the necessary cooling and insulation. Each container holds about 40 cubic metres of liquid hydrogen. Large-scale world-wide distribution of liquid hydrogen would require ships equipped with cryogenic tanks and cooling facilities.

Hydrogen can also be stored for transport in the form of metal hydride, as described above, balancing convenience with a big weight and energy penalty.

The problems of transport raise the important question of whether it is better to:

* Either way, the infrastructure for obtaining hydrogen where it is needed does not yet exist.

The low-tech option of simply burning hydrogen in place of fossil fuels could be used for a variety of applications:

Transport is probably the main area of interest for hydrogen. However, fuel cells driving electric motors can convert much more of the energy of the hydrogen into motive power than an internal combustion engine.

* Fuel cells are generally seen as a more appropriate technology than simply burning hydrogen.

Another area where fuel cells might become widely used, if they are more efficient and cost-effective than batteries or portable generators, is to supply electricity in places where there is no mains electricity supply.

Fuel cells provide a very efficient way of converting the energy in the hydrogen into electricity. They were first made in about 1842 by a Welsh scientist, Sir William Robert Grove, and were first used in spacecraft in the 1960s. Since 1990 there has been intensive development for commercial applications.

A fuel cell is an electrochemical conversion device. It produces electricity from fuel and an oxidant, which react in the presence of an electrolyte. The fuel and oxidant flow into the cell and the reaction products flow out of it, while the electrolyte remains inside. Fuel cells can operate virtually continuously as long as the necessary flows are maintained.

The difference between fuel cells and batteries is that fuel cells must have external supplies of fuel and reactant, e.g. hydrogen and oxygen (usually from air), whereas batteries internally store electrical energy chemically. Other combinations of fuel and oxidant are possible: fuels include hydrocarbons and alcohols, and oxidants include chlorine and chlorine dioxide.

In a hydrogen fuel cell the electrons and protons making up hydrogen are separated by a catalyst, typically platinum or a similar metal or alloy. The hydrogen's protons pass through an electrolyte. Its electrons, however, are forced to travel through an external circuit, thus producing electrical power. Another catalytic process takes the electrons back in, combining them with the protons and the oxidant to form water, the waste product. The diagram illustrates this. Other fuels than hydrogen produce carbon dioxide as well as water in the waste. In normal use a number of fuel cells are stacked in order to generate more electrical power.

There are quite a few different kinds of fuel cells, with different applications.

Alkaline Fuel Cells were the original type used on spacecraft. They are simple and cheap to make, but must be fed with pure hydrogen and oxygen since carbon dioxide degrades the electrolyte.

Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC) are very light, very efficient, and require only atmospheric oxygen instead of pure oxygen. A membrane allows the protons through and into the electrolyte, but forces the electrons to flow through the external circuit before they can combine with oxygen to form water. However, these fuel cells are very sensitive to carbon monoxide. The photo shows a stationary stack of PEMFCs with a rated output of 5 kilowatts. This is the favoured type of fuel cell at present for small-scale and portable applications, but the cost is still very high and needs to be reduced.

Phosphoric Acid Fuel Cells (PAFC) are already in use for commercial combined heat and power applications. They are specific to large installations, as the cell becomes unusable if its temperature ever drops below 42 °C. Fuel cells with an electric power of 200 kilowatts and a thermal power of 220 kilowatts are available.

Molten Carbonate Fuel Cells (MCFC) operate at around 600 °C. They can accept a variety of fuels including natural gas, and are not harmed by impurities.

There is a fuller discussion, including many other types of fuel cells, in the Wikipedia.

Due to abundant and cheap hydroelectric and geothermal energy sources, virtually the only use of fossil fuels in Iceland is for vehicles and fishing boats. (Photo shows a geothermal power station.) Therefore, it is not surprising that Iceland's plans for using hydrogen are the most advanced, especially as they can use hydrogen generated cleanly by geothermal energy. In 1998 Iceland committed to becoming the world's first hydrogen economy, by the mid-21st century.

In 2003 the world's first hydrogen station, like a petrol station, opened and some buses using fuel cells fed by compressed hydrogen started running in Reykjavík. These buses were part of a larger programme in a number of cities including London – see buses below. Every city bus in Reykjavík was supposed to run on hydrogen within less than a decade, followed by a switch to hydrogen-driven cars. Fuel cell-powered ships are being developed as well, with the aim of converting Iceland's 2500 fishing boats to hydrogen by 2015.

There are, however, reports that the programme is progressing more slowly than planned in getting beyond three prototype buses and one filling station, and little recent information on progress seems to be available.

Pilot projects demonstrating a hydrogen economy are under way or starting up on a number of small, isolated islands. For example, on the Norwegian island of Utsira the installation combines wind power and hydrogen power. In periods when there is surplus wind energy, the excess is used for generating hydrogen by electrolysis. The hydrogen is stored, and is available for power generation in periods when there is little wind.

Hydrogen-powered buses are particularly advantageous in improving the air quality in cities, since their exhaust is just water vapour – much cleaner than diesel buses which emit polluting particulates and oxides of sulphur and nitrogen. Two Mercedes Citaro buses powered by hydrogen fuel cells operated in London for three years, starting in 2004. This was part of a European programme called Clean Urban Transport for Europe (CUTE); Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Perth, Reykjavik and Beijing also participated. The aim was to test first-generation fuel cell-powered buses.

Eight hydrogen buses of an improved design are being put into service in London between December 2010 and mid-2011. These buses use their hydrogen fuel cells to recharge batteries that drive electric motors. Energy generated during braking is also used for recharging. This hybrid system makes them more efficient than the buses used in the CUTE pilot study, and they can run for up to 18 hours before they need to refuel. If the buses prove to be reliable then more may be ordered, although they cost much more than the diesel-electric hybrids now coming into routine use in many cities and towns.

Many of the main car manufacturers have produced a wide variety of hydrogen-fuelled cars. A list can be found here. However, most of these are prototypes or one-off demonstrations.

Some, such as the BMW Hydrogen 7 (100 produced) use internal combustion engines – the BMW can burn petrol as well as hydrogen (which is stored in liquid form). Others, such as the Mercedes F-cell, use fuel cells fed by compressed hydrogen to drive electric motors. Some of the concept cars have also been hydrogen-driven electric/petrol hybrids. However, the main interest is in fuel cells.

The first hydrogen car to go into small-scale production beyond the level of a few prototypes is the Honda FCX Clarity, shown at left. However, mass marketing is only planned for 2018. It is powered by a 100 kilowatt hydrogen fuel-cell stack. Electricity is stored in a lithium-ion battery, to give higher output when needed. Its range of 240 miles is provided by 3.9 kg of hydrogen stored at 150 atmospheres pressure. Limited leasing of about 200 cars began in June 2008 in California. However, the 2000 cars foreseen by 2010 may be unrealistic, especially since their range is short and there are only 26 filling stations, limited to southern California.

In 2010 a prototype London taxi, powered by hydrogen fuel cells charging lithium-ion batteries and built by Lotus, was shown. It was claimed that a prototype fleet, of unspecified size, would be in operation by 2012.

There are about two dozen hydrogen filling stations in Germany, while other European countries have only one or a very few each.

As noted above, a number of hydrogen-powered buses have been in use in various cities, and this is allowing designs to be tested and refined. Prototype lorries and vans are also being developed. A very few small prototype boats have been built.

Hydrogen technology is too new, and too little used at present, to be directly competitive with technologies which have many years of experience and a mass market to support them. Thus its first practical applications would likely be cases where current technologies do not provide a suitable solution. Prime examples might be:

Currently, fuel cells are much more expensive to produce than internal combustion engines but are becoming cheaper as new technologies and production systems develop. Fuel cells can use other materials as their energy source, but the vision is to use hydrogen. If the cost of fuel cells could be reduced to the point where some important applications can use them effectively, mass production would then drive the cost down further as new techniques are developed.

For use in cars, there are possible attractions beyond clean emissions. Fuel cells driving electric motors are lighter in weight and much more efficient than conventional engines. However, as noted already, hydrogen storage is a major problem, and so is the cost of making the fuel cells. At present it also takes more than twice as much energy to make a hydrogen fuel cell than it produces during its lifetime.

Fossil fuels such as oil and gas are often used as the cost reference, but this is not a fair comparison. No allowance is made for the millions of years it took to make these fuels in the earth, yet the energy used for hydrogen production does get counted, even if it comes from a renewable source such as solar energy. It is better to compare hydrogen with other systems using renewable energy.

One company claiming progress in reducing the cost and efficiency of proton exchange membrane fuel cells is ITM Power, which is developing fuel cell systems using hydrogen produced by off-grid renewable resources. They have developed much cheaper, platinum-free membranes.

Converting to a hydrogen economy might well require a lot of new infrastructure for distribution and storage, depending on how and where the hydrogen is generated and used. On the other hand, electric vehicles using batteries can use the existing electricity grid or local renewable generation for recharging, and much of this could be done at night when the grid is not heavily used.

* Hydrogen must be shown to be more efficient, practical and cost effective than other renewable technologies, most notably rechargeable batteries.

A confusion in introducing the hydrogen economy is the popular linkage of the term with the hydrogen bomb. There are, of course, no radioactivity problems in the uses of hydrogen being proposed here. A totally different use of hydrogen, nuclear fusion, is discussed on another page.

If hydrogen is produced from directly from fossil fuels, or by electrolysis of water using fossil-fuel generated electricity, carbon dioxide will be produced that will add to global warming unless it is captured and stored.

If hydrogen is released to the atmosphere by leaking from storage vessels or during use, it can escape from the earth as the molecules are so light. This would deplete the total hydrogen on earth. However, even if the entire energy requirements of the world were met by hydrogen, the total hydrogen used in a year might be only a 30-billionth of the hydrogen component of the water in the oceans. This is very unlikely to be significant.

A recent paper hypothesised that escaped hydrogen gas in the stratosphere might form free radicals due to ultraviolet radiation. These could act as catalysts for ozone depletion. It is felt that the amount of leakage from even widespread use of hydrogen is probably too little to be a problem, but this underlines the need to minimise leakage, which is necessary anyway on safety grounds.

The unavoidable product of using hydrogen is water, so would water vapour from the exhausts of millions of vehicles add to global warming? In fact, the volume of water in the atmosphere created by burning hydrogen would be negligible compared with that generated by natural processes. The main concern might be the deposit of water at high altitudes by aeroplanes fuelled by hydrogen.

Fuel cells have a limited life, and there may be difficulties in recycling the materials from which they are made.

For several years interest in hydrogen has focused on transport, with the emphasis on fuel cells rather than simply burning hydrogen in conventional engines. But although trials of hydrogen-powered cars and buses continue, and new models still appear, there is a distinct impression that the current emphasis is shifting to electric vehicles with rechargeable batteries.

In 2003 President George Bush initiated a $1.2 billion programme to develop hydrogen-powered cars. However, in May 2009 Prof. Steven Chu, the Obama administration's Secretary of Energy, cut the programme's annual budget from $168 million to about $68 million, with the remaining funds redirected to fuel cells for use in buildings rather than cars. Prof. Chu said: "We asked ourselves, is it likely in the next 10, 15 or 20 years that we will convert to a hydrogen car economy? The answer, we felt, was no". The reasons given are the need for better fuel cells and the lack of hydrogen distribution infrastructure.

Both Ford and Renault have dropped development of hydrogen cars. Ford in particular had produced a number of hydrogen prototypes but will now concentrate on hybrids and battery-driven cars. Renault will work solely on battery-driven cars.

Hydrogen is fairly likely to have some role in energy supplies in the future – the question is how big a role, and what it will be.

Electricity generation – The main use of hydrogen might be to provide flexibility: hydrogen production when there is spare capacity, and generation using hydrogen when demand becomes very high and other renewable sources are not available. This limited role is because producing hydrogen using electricity, transporting and storing the hydrogen, and then generating electricity from the hydrogen cannot be very efficient.

The use of solar power in distant tropical desert areas might provide another application. Very long transmission lines may prove to be much more expensive than producing and shipping hydrogen. This is discussed in more detail on our green energy page.

Fuel cells could take over from batteries in providing back-up when mains power fails, or for off-grid use.

Space heating – In the long term, better buildings can greatly reduce the consumption of energy for space heating. Hydrogen might have a role to play in providing clean heating, but there are other technologies that might prove to be more cost effective, such as heat pumps and wood burners.

Fuel for industrial processes – Many processes, notably industrial ones (for example processing of metals), require high temperatures. A clean fuel source is needed, and hydrogen may well be the solution in place of such fuels as oil and gas.

Transport – For several years the most likely application of hydrogen has looked to be transport, but enthusiasm may be waning. Although both direct combustion and fuel cells are being tried, fuel cells driving electric motors seem to be the better choice. But the alternative of using batteries, recharged using mains electricity from renewable sources, is also being developed. At least for cars, buses and lorries (and possibly ships) it is not yet clear which will turn out to be more effective. For trains, renewable mains electricity seems to be the best solution. For aeroplanes batteries seem to be too heavy, so if hydrogen storage tanks can be made light enough then hydrogen is a possible fuel source.