Is hydrogen the fuel of the future? You have heard this before. Fuel cells to power cars, but this is not that. Forget about everything you thought you knew about hydrogen. With the advent of battery packs for the grid, hydrogen is new again and becomes a potential integral piece of the renewable energy schema. This is a crazy idea.
The production of hydrogen can be not as expensive as it has been. We now have the ability to make localized solar-based power stations to create hydrogen by electrolysis anywhere there's a good water source and abundant sunlight. With the use of a solar farm and battery-based energy storage, a hydrogen electrolysis plant can operate day and night unabated. The US Department of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy has a webpage on electrolysis which you can find here.
How to use hydrogen? We can use hydrogen to fuel craft that cannot resupply electrical power due to long-range or excess weight. Aircraft can be designed to use hydrogen as fuel. ZeroAvia is a company that seeks to make planes that run on hydrogen. A very informative Royal Aeronautical Society article on them is here. Electric cargo ships can be powered by hydrogen fuel cells (article). Rockets can use hydrogen as a fuel directly for their first stages. Very few rockets have ever done this. Hydrogen has often been reserved for upper stages. Using it for the first stage would be environmentally sound. The Space Launch System will use liquid hydrogen in its core stage, but that stage is arguably not its first stage because of the solid rocket boosters (NASA SLS core stage page).
What about safety in using hydrogen? Ever since the Hindenburg accident, hydrogen has been suspect as an explosive material. Hydrogen is a gas at room temperature. As such, it behaves vastly different than gasoline which we are all used to. Some safety videos demonstrate this (video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA8dNFiVaF0 ). There are several safety considerations to consider when dealing with hydrogen. It is often stored in liquid form, so frostbite is an issue. It is a gas, so suffocation in confined places is an issue. It is a light gas so it tends to rise and pool on ceilings. It is combustible, so it will instantly burn as it mixes with the oxygen in the air when sparked. Here is a full safety report made by Lockheed Martin for the state of Idaho. These issues can be mitigated once understood. We shouldn’t be scared by the calamity of Hindenberg to enjoy the benefits of hydrogen.
So how does hydrogen fit with renewables? Much like a battery, it's an energy transfer device but weighs less and takes up more volume. This is why it is a good thing for flying vehicles and ships in the high seas. We make hydrogen from water using electrolysis and solar energy. Then the vehicles, airplanes and/or ships, use them at a later time and turning the hydrogen back into water as they travel. It’s clean and environmentally friendly. In fact, it is the only environmentally friendly fuel out there. All the other fuels emit carbon dioxide. Hydrogen is the only one that does not. Sure, traditionally the production of hydrogen has been dirty. We need to change that. We need to make the production of hydrogen strictly via electrolysis and off the grid by renewable energy.
So hydrogen is the fuel of the future when you consider that it works with solar power to transfer energy to vehicles such as airliners and cargo ships. Sure there are a lot of technologies yet to be developed and business plans and financial models to be made. There is also a lot of groundwork also played down and a foundation to build on. We can do this and get rid of fossil fuels.
