Is Hydrogen the Fuel of the Future?

Abstract

Shrinking fossil-fuel resources and rising environmental concerns have made imperative, as all the world must now be aware, the development of new power sources. Alternatives such as nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, geothermal, tidal and meteorological power will all be used to a greater extent to produce electricity. But they can also be used to produce nonfossil chemical fuels. One such fuel, hydrogen, is being examined with increasing interest as a possible major fuel of the future. The primary use of nuclear reactors is to generate electricity. This electrical power could be used to electrolytically decompose water to hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen could be used as a primary source of fuel or could be converted to a number of other fuels including ammonia, methanol, methane, hydrazine, acetylene and other hydrocarbon fuels. The by-product oxygen could be used in many ways. Some suggest it be used for gasification of coal or in a basic oxygen furnace for the production of steel. Depending on this utilization of oxygen and the cost of electrical power from large nuclear reactors, this system will become economically competitive as the cost of fossil fuels increases. The Common Market's Joint Research Center, for instance, sees hydrogen as a suitable fuel of the future. Euratom scientists G. DeBeni and C. Marchetti, speaking for the research center, claim that electricity, the usual form of marketing nuclear energy, will meet only 10 percent of the energy needs for a technologically developing society. Hydrogen, they feel, could penetrate the remaining 90 percent of that market. They are attempting to produce hydrogen, not by electrolysis, but by using the heat from a hightemperature gas reactor to crack water directly. In a closed system, hydrogen would be produced from water by a heated chemical reaction. This method, says Marchetti, is more direct than the steam-electricity-electrolysis process. A pilot plant, probably in Ispra, Italy, could be in operation within two years, he says. With the present technology it would run at 40 to 50 percent efficiency. Electrolysis under pressure can operate at up to 85 percent efficiency. William C. Gough and Bernard J. Eastlund of the Atomic Energy Commission, who two years ago proposed using plasma leakage from a thermonuclear fusion reactor to reduce trash to its chemical elements (SN: 3/7/70, p. 249), now suggest using ultraviolet light generated by this plasma to dissociate hydrogen and oxygen from water. Another method of hydrogen production utilizes solar energy. William J. D. Escher of Escher Technology Associates in St. Johns, Mich., says an