Introduction
I think we all can agree that the climat changes are really getting in to our heads. Nowadays people as indivduals and the governments are taking measures to decrease the level of CO2 emmisions which is mainly considered as a game changer in climat and polution of our planet. So what can we do to prevet our planet from getting hoter and hoter? Well answer was found very quickly as the politcians firstly thought about global transport, not only in the meaning of transporting goods but also about us people that uses many kinds of transport to get anywhere this days. Well there are 2 main alternatives for comonly used gas powered vehicles which are Evs( electric powerd vehicles), hybrides, or as the title of an article says hydrogen powered cars. But why we are talking about hydrogen if we can focus on developing electric powerd sources of transport? We will answer this question later in this article. Now let us proceed forword with the subject.
Why Hydrogen?
To answer that question we first need to look at donwsides of gas engines, electric motors and hybrid system. For the first one, diesel car as well as petrol car have to burn specific kind of fuel to work. While the fule is burned the exhaust gas from engine is CO2. Hybrids are more ECO friendly because of regular engine and electric motor working together. This leads to better fuel efficency but there are still exhaust gases being released. Electric motor cars as many people think are 100% ECO friendly, cause they work of electricity and no exhaust gases are released. Well the truth is that to charge electric vehicles we need electricity which is produced by power plants. The problem is that most power plants are using non-renewable sources such as gas, fuel, coal, to create electricity. By burning non-renewable sources power plants contribute to globalwarming. And that is where the electric motor cars are not ECO friendlly. Sure some people would say that we can change to renewable sources such as wind, water flow, sunlight, geothermal, but there is a lack of technology and problem at keeping the renewable sources permanent means of creating the electricity. Alos the range on electric vehicles is rather low and the charge time is often very long. And this are the problem that hydrogen cars can solve. Firstly Hydrogen cars are powerd by Fuel Cell which works through a chemical reaction where the finall process is water( and thats not a yoke, there is water coming out of exhaust. Thats why Hydrogen powerd cars are 100% ECO firndly. To put it simple Hydrogen car are just electric motor vehicles but insted of charging them we just need a tank filled with hydrogen which creats electricity by passing through the Full Cell.
Ways of producing Hydrogen.
There are 2 most common ways of producing Hydrogen:
- Natural Gas Reforming: It is a thermal process in which we use superheated steam to react with a hydrocarbon fuel like for example methane to prodiuce hydrogen.
- Electrolysis: electricity is run through a water to separate hydrogen and oxigen atoms.
The process of Natural Gas Reforming releases carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide in to the atmosphere which contributes the climat change and that negates the ideo of switching to more ECO friendlly fule. Whereas Electrolysis can use wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and many other energy sources, also this process is a very low cost choose. So the choose is simple, Electrolysis is going to be used to creat Hydrogen.
Why the idea of hydrogen is not spread globaly?
The mean reason is price. Simply the Hydrogen refueling station build cost can hit even about a 6 times more then average gas station, that is why the fueling companies like Shell do not want to build them. Another problem is that the lack of hydrogen refueling station and only 3 models of car bing available on a market which are very expensive, people are simply not interested in hydrogen cars.
What about the Performance?
Right now the performance of hydrogen cars depends on number of Fuel Cell Stacks in a car. For example Toyota Mirai has a power of 182 horse power and a top speed of 175km/h according to Toyotas dealer ship. But whats the best out of hydrogen cars is the range. Toyota says that the Mirai can travel up to 650 Km on a full tank and 0-100 Km/h in 8.7 seconds.
Summary.
Hydrogen car really have the potential to change the game in automotive industry, but first companies as well as customers need to deal with high price tags, little choice and for some lack in performance. But in needs in creating more ECO friendly fuel hydrogen is winning. There is always a space to improve.
Used sources:
https://czerniakowska.chodzen.pl/new-cars/mirai/ ,
https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/how-do-fuel-cell-electric-cars-work ,