Hydrogen would be a nearly perfect fuel if it didn’t take more energy to extract it than you can get out of it. Scientists have been working for years to isolate it in an economical fashion. The most common element in the universe, hydrogen makes up 10 percent of the weight of living things here on earth – mainly in water, proteins and fats. Its bonds in water make it pervasive, but still distant. Obtaining it can be as simple as the video below. But the short bursts derived from this approach will exhaust the battery and not provide as much energy in return. Waste Not, Want Not Ironically, much of the earth’s other resources, more easily gained, are wasted in our society’s rush to consume. Recent reports show that up to a third of the food produced today goes to waste. Huge quantities of biomass could seemingly be put to good use rather than adding to the methane that …
Cambridge, MIT Chasing Room-Temperature Hydrogen
News from Cambridge University shows some promise for inexpensive production of hydrogen, an elusive process considering the lightest element in creation is also the most common, said to make up 90 percent of the visible universe. On earth, it readily combines with oxygen to form water, a handy thing to have around for the benefit of our species. Getting hydrogen out of the water so that we can burn it in our cars and airplanes is a frustrating process, though, often requiring more energy for the extraction than can be obtained from its combustion. According the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, “To make [hydrogen] usable in fuel cells or otherwise provide energy, we must expend energy or modify another energy source to extract it from the fossil fuel, biomass, water, or other compound in which it is found. Nearly all hydrogen production in the United States today is by steam reformation of natural gas. This, however, releases carbon dioxide in the …