Hydrogen future

Edward Beaney might be right when suggesting hydrogen’s time has come

Edward Beaney (PE August) might be right when suggesting hydrogen’s time has come. 

Hydrogen cars and heavier road vehicles are being tested, hydrogen aircraft have flown and Birmingham University students have built a small hydrogen fuel cell powered train (Denmark is developing an internal combustion train).

The production, transport and storage of hydrogen can be complicated (rather than technically difficult), and so is the choice of how to use it to deliver energy. Ideally, the production of bulk hydrogen should move from the present fossil fuel basis. 

Apparently there are nuclear methods and there is, of course, the electrolysis of water. The latter is very inefficient in terms of energy used in deriving hydrogen and oxygen from water then recombining them to re-produce electricity. 

But could the electricity generated from free wind, wave and tides produce hydrogen (and oxygen) at times when winds farms, etc. lie idle (e.g. at times of low electricity demand)? It is a means of storing energy. The storage and transport of bulk hydrogen is best at high pressure (or low temperature) with steels becoming slightly more complex and expensive the higher the pressure. Small distance pipelines of a few miles do serve some petro-chemical complexes but a pipeline network such as that operating for national gas distribution would be – challenging? Storage depots serving a hydrogen powered rail system would seem to be a good technical and commercial starting point for a hydrogen network and the railways already have engineers who could adapt to the safety precautions required with hydrogen facilities. And, trains carrying their own tanks of energy must be preferable to long distance copper electrification systems.

John Allison, Maidenhead, Berks

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