How Hydrogen Powered Cars Work
There are a number of methods used to produce hydrogen fuel. Some of these include incinerating garbage in order to heat water or natural gas to the degree necessary to release the hydrogen which is present. Of course we can’t just put our old banana peels in the tank and drive off, but those banana peels can be part of fuel production in a hydrogen production facility. Hydrogen powered cars that benefit directly from the work that your banana peels are doing now are on the horizon.
There are several different ways in which cars can be adapted to run on hydrogen fuel, and eliminating the need to burn gasoline at all. The same exact internal combustion engine used for gasoline powered vehicles can be used for hydrogen powered cars with modifications to burn hydrogen as the energy source.
Existing cars can be retrofitted as hydrogen powered cars with specially designed installations to completely do away with gasoline as the fuel source altough this could be expensive. There are also kits available that show you how to modify gasoline engines so that hydrogen gas is added to the current air gasoline mixture. This modification not only results in dramatically improved emissions, but in strikingly higher gas mileage as well.
Hydrogen powered cars are roughly three times more efficient than their fossil fueled counterparts and have low to zero emissions resulting in a carbon footprint free vehicle. Electric vehicles can be set up to utilize hydrogen as the fuel for on board electrical generation. An electric or fuel cell vehicle has a storage tank for hydrogen gas, which is fed into a fuel cell where the hydrogen is converted into electricity to power all vehicle systems.
Hydrogen fuel is an efficiently produced energy source. While gasoline production in the United States currently requires about three hundred billion gallons of water, the production of the same amount of hydrogen fuel takes about one hundred billion gallons. What this translates to is that hydrogen fuel production only costs roughly half of what it costs to produce the equivalent amount of gasoline.
Every major automobile manufacturer is engineering its own hydrogen powered cars. Several of these hydrogen-powered models will be available in limited production in 2008. As availability of hydrogen fueling stations grows you can expect to see a steady increase in the number of hydrogen-powered vehicles in your neighborhood. Several of the automobile manufacturers are also working on home systems for hydrogen production that can not only serve as a gas pump in your driveway for your hydrogen power cars, but can also supply hydrogen fuel to generate the electricity to power your home.
As far as safety concerns you can rest assured hydrogen powered cars are as safe, or safer, than their gasoline fueled counterpart. The high-pressure tanks used to contain the hydrogen have undergone extreme testing to ensure they will resist any leakage in even the most severe accidents.
