

New process emulates nature to yield most efficient hydrogen production yet












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RE: Why not just burn it??
By geddarkstorm on 4/11/2008 2:15:47 PM , Rating: 1
Hydrogen being burned would be horribly ineffective, and substantially lower energy yielding than gasoline. Hydrogen gas has the lowest density already, so using it for combustion based expansion (how car engines run) would hardly work--not to mention you'd need at least 3 to 4 times more hydrogen molecules (it's diatomic as a gas) than gasoline it's you're only looking at the oxygen:hydrogen to water reaction. You could use liquid hydrogen, but then you run into compression and refrigeration issues, and then it's still lower density than gasoline liquid. On top of the density issue is the fact gasoline yields several gases (CO, CO2, water, other minor ones) all of much lower density than the gasoline fluid to drive expansion whereas hydrogen will yield just water (mostly, and which has higher density than the oxygen or hydrogen used in the reaction); and gasoline burns hotter, again driving expansion more than hydrogen could.

In short, you can't use hydrogen as effectively in combustion (unless you're a solid fuel rocket engine), but for a controlled redox reaction (electricity production), it's great and makes a ton of energy.

