{"id":94,"date":"2008-03-28T10:18:33","date_gmt":"2008-03-28T09:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/94"},"modified":"2008-03-27T18:21:01","modified_gmt":"2008-03-27T17:21:01","slug":"are-hydrogen-fuel-cells-a-serious-contender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/94","title":{"rendered":"Are Hydrogen Fuel Cells A Serious Contender?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fancy a fuel that only emits water and is abundantly available in nature?<\/p>\n

How about one that can be used both to power internal combustion engines and <\/strong>to generate electricity – just by combining it with oxygen?<\/p>\n

Hydrogen offers the potential to be the<\/em> fuel that will solve our carbon emission problems – if we can get it right.<\/p>\n

The situation at the moment is that it works well in vehicles, but:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. There’s pretty much no distribution network in any country<\/li>\n
  2. The process of making hydrogen gas currently generates CO2 and uses a lot of energy – defeating the purpose of having a zero emission fuel.<\/li>\n
  3. Hydrogen fuel cells are currently extremely expensive to produce and require precious (expensive) metals for their manufacture.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    However, history teaches us that logistical and engineering problems like those above are often solvable – meaning that hydrogen could have real potential as a fuel of the future.<\/p>\n

    Not everyone agrees, however. Jamie Beevor, from the Energy Saving Trust, believes that future fuels are likely to be a combination of existing and emerging technologies – “there is unlikely to be a silver bullet.”<\/p>\n

    Beevor also thinks that it’s possible that “with battery and electric vehicle technology rapidly progressing, battery electric vehicles could steal a march on hydrogen.” <\/em><\/p>\n

    So the jury is still out on hydrogen. At least two major motor manufacturers – BMW and Honda – have invested heavily in developing hydrogen-fuelled vehicles that are now commercially available (just!).<\/p>\n

    Honda’s FCX Clarity uses hydrogen fuel cells to power and electric motor, while BMW’s Hydrogen 7 has a regular petrol engine that can run on hydrogen or petrol. It’s technically a hybrid, but that’s primarily because there are so few places where you can fill up with hydrogen.<\/p>\n

    I’d love to see hydrogen succeed – if only because it would be a boyhood science fiction concept come true – but I wouldn’t be surprised if electric power wins over most other types of fuel in coming years. It already is developing fast and offers the twin advantages of mature , global distribution networks and centralised generation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    ancy a fuel that only emits water and is abundantly available in nature?<\/p>\n

    How about one that can be used both to power internal combustion engines and to generate electricity – just by combining it with oxygen?<\/p>\n

    Hydrogen offers the potential to be the fuel that will solve our carbon emission problems – if we can get it right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[139],"tags":[152,150,16,149,17,28,44,151,148],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}