Hindenburg was helium, not hydrogen

The problem is that the hydrogen that is needed to make these devices run is not readily avbailable. Hydrogen can be extracted from natural gas and from water (by using electricity), but it probably costs more to produce the hydrgen that to simply use the gas and electricity for other purposes.

Furthermore, there is presently no storage and distribution system for hydrogen, even if it were available.

it is being considered… it will also be used to power houses in the future

You people know nothing about this subject. I am an expert. I am building a hydrogen vehicle.

Hydrogen is being looked into for cars in 2 ways, combustion and fuel cells. I know about combustion, not fuel cells, but fuel cells aren’t gonna be ready til’ 2050 or so.

Clearly the most practical use of hydrogen is hy-boosting. That is when you use a conventional fuel such as gasoline and add in a 5% to 7% boost of hydrogen gas. Below 5% wouldn’t make a difference and adding more than 10% gets you dangerous backfires.

Doing this 5% boost, you characterize the event like a hydrogen event. It’s like pouring gasoline all over wood to get the fire going. The hydrogen makes the liquid fuel burn 10 times quicker. It lets you burn ANY liquid fuel in your engine! Ethanol, biodiesel, gasoline, diesel, vegetable oil, butanol you name it. It also doubles your fuel efficiency and gets rid of the unburned gasoline and carbon monoxide in the exhaust.

I’m trying it.

For books on the subject, go to knowledgepublications.com

OK the relies cover most everything. Making it at present pollutes more than just using gas or diesel.

Fuel cells are a real interesting answer and 10 years ago they were 20% lighter than a horsepower internal combustion engine. Have no moving parts. produce carbon dioxide and water as their polutants and produce more energy.
I don’t understand why they are not being developed.

Oh yes just FYI gasoline is much more explosive than hydrogen and if you research it the Hindinberg killed very very few when it “exploded” .

It is called Fuel cell car. Some car makers have already done the road test.

the amount of energy you get out of making hydrogen that way is less than the fossil fuels used to split the water into hydrogen. Even if the power source was coming from solar cells, that power would be better used in the power grid because more of the power it generates will actually be used where as half of it would be lost in the electrolysis process. Hopefully, we will soon find a way to produce mass amounts of hydrogen without requiring so much energy.

Because:

1) It costs more to produce than an energy equivelent amount of petroleum based fuels

2) It has a low energy density making transportation and storage difficult

Hydrogen is explosive. Pressurized hydrogen, which is essential for space-saving considerations, isn’t just explosive… it’s incredibly explosive. Unless you plan on using hydrogen to put something into orbit, the explosive force is a real problem.

Hydrogen is being considered for fueling cars. Tons of money is being put into its research, but there are many problems with it.

1) Cost. It is indeed expensive to separate the hydrogen from oxygen through a process of electrolysis. It takes a lot of energy and is currently extremely inefficient.

2) Energy. Using energy to perform electrolysis is a waste when you could directly use that energy to fuel a car. Until the process becomes more efficient, it’s wasteful.

3) Transportation and Storage. Hydrogen gas is not easy to transport and store – there’s currently no infrastructure for it. It would cost billions of dollars to create such an infrastructure, and who’s going to pay for that? Especially since we don’t have the technology to use hydrogen as a fuel for cars yet.

A more promising way of using hydrogen is to get it from aluminum-gallium alloys. Combining them with water will produce hydrogen. That way you just need to fill up with aluminum alloy pellets and water, which basically solves all the problems listed above (cost is close to gasoline). The technology is still new and there may be a problem with the amount of heat produced by the reaction, but it’s quite promising. Still many years away though.

From what I’ve read, it would be harder to have available even than gasoline is, and therefore even more expensive. So, IF they find a way to make it safe (it’s quite combustible in the right conditions), then they also have to find a way to make it affordable, or no red-blooded American I know will make the switch.

It IS expensive. I’m pretty sure all the hydrogen vehicles are more expensive and getting the hydrogen into a tank is also expensive currently.

And no hydrogen filling stations yet.

But it IS being done. BMW has declared hydrogen is the future fuel for cars (in their belief). Ford has hydrogen vehicles (mostly busses) in production.

So it is being considered.