There was a time when it looked as if hydrogen was going to be the answer to all our energy needs. There was a lot of talk about the hydrogen economy and how it would shape the future. So far it hasn’t really worked out that way. Switching over to hydrogen has proven more problematic than most people thought it would. While the work hasn’t stopped a lot of people have changed their opinion about the future of hydrogen. If it is to become a major fuel source there are a lot of challenges that need to be overcome.

There are actually a few different ways that hydrogen can be used as an energy source. The simplest is to burn it in an internal combustion engine just like you would gasoline. The other is to use a fuel cell and combine hydrogen and oxygen in order to make water. As a byproduct of this you get electricity. In recent years most of the research has gone into fuel cell however they have proven problematic. A fuel cell is expensive to make, it breaks easy and so far nobody has figured out a practical way to use them at temperatures below freezing. Clearly these are serious issues that are going to have to be sorted out before fuel cells become widely used.

The biggest problem facing hydrogen as a fuel source is that it isn’t very energy dense. That means that you need to carry a lot of it if you are going to travel any distance. This means that you need a huge fuel tank which increases the size of the car. This means more weight has to be moved and that means more hydrogen burned, making the whole thing even less efficient. Even worse because hydrogen needs to be stored at a very low temperature it needs a very heavy and well insulated tank. This adds even more to the weight.

Perhaps the biggest challenge that hydrogen is going to face is infrastructure. It is a bit of a chicken or the egg thing. In order for anybody to buy a hydrogen vehicle they are going to need easy access to a gas station that sells hydrogen. Of course nobody is going to build the station unless there are enough hydrogen vehicles on the road to make it profitable. Unless this problem can be solved the future of hydrogen is not looking good.

Even if somebody were to build the required hydrogen fueling stations there are issues that need to be overcome. The biggest is the safety issue. Hydrogen is highly flammable which is going to make fueling the cars a problem. The other issue is where is the hydrogen going to come from. Right now ninety percent of our hydrogen comes from fossil fuels. If we use hydrogen to replace oil our supply of hydrogen is going to dry up. This is an issue that will need to be resolved.