Hydrogen: Fuel or fantasy?

When I was younger, people viewed nuclear power as cheap energy that could run everything from planes to small industries. Nuclear power seemed so promising, so clean, and so inexpensive that some pundits predicted we'd no longer need power meters. Why measure something we would get for practically nothing or for a small annual fee?

Today, people would have us believe a new, practical, inexpensive source of energy—the fuel cell—is around the corner. (Actually, fuel cells aren't that new; they date from the mid-1800s.) Typically, a fuel cell combines two materials—usually hydrogen and oxygen—to produce electricity. Fuel cells have proven themselves good sources of electricity in niche applications, but it's unlikely we'll see them anytime soon in mass-market products at costs that compete with present energy sources.

The widespread use of fuel cells in automobiles, for example, has yet to overcome the issue of producing and storing hydrogen in an efficient and safe way. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal speculated that a chemical such as sodium borohydride (NaBH₄) could "store" hydrogen in a solid until a fuel cell needed it. Reacting the sodium borohydride with a reagent would release the hydrogen. The writer worried that it might take considerable effort to scale up production of this solid compound. Considerable effort, indeed. First, sodium borohydride contains only about 10% hydrogen by weight, so it's not very efficient as a hydrogen carrier. Second, producing sodium borohydride takes a great deal of energy and lots of hydrogen gas, and it's not a "clean" process. Third, someone must recycle cartridges of used reagents.

Articles about fuel cells often mention the abundance of hydrogen, but they neglect to mention the cost to produce, transport, and store it. The press's simplistic coverage of fuel cells reminds me of a well-known cartoon by Sidney Harris (www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/gallery.htm). In the middle of equations on a chalkboard a researcher has written, "Then a miracle occurs." The other participant points and says, "I think you should be more explicit here in step two." Likewise, boosters of any new energy source—not just fuel cells—should be more explicit about the cost of the entire process, not just the cost of its last few steps.

Reader responses

I found your April 2002 editorial, "Hydrogen: Fuel or fantasy?" very enjoyable and, in a way, comforting. I was really beginning to wonder if I was missing something. Whenever I would raise the issue of producing the required hydrogen, people never really seemed to think it was much of an issue. I am an engineer, and I like to play the stock market. I have followed the fuel cell story with some curiosity for a few years and have seen some ludicrous claims in some of the stock newsletters about them. I have never seen a complete analysis of all the steps involved. Is it really more efficient and cleaner to use fossil fuels to create electricity to obtain hydrogen to use in fuel cells? Or just to use the fossil fuels direct? Even a very small difference would be significant on a world scale. I would be very interested if you had any information on such an analysis.

Robert Franz, P.Eng.
AMC Technologies

Your editorial touched on one of my pet peeves—hydrogen fuel cells. They really should be called batteries, because, somewhere, a power plant is going to be supplying the electricity to cleave the hydrogen from water. We might as well be making spring driven cars (not such a bad idea if you start thinking about it). Along with electric cars, people enthusiastically tout these as pollution-free solutions, as if there really is a free lunch. My question to them is "how many miles per ton of coal will it get?" As clever as I think I am being, my witticism is nearly always met with a dumb look, a sort of don't-confuse-me-with-facts look. In the end, it will all come down to price—how much will the car cost, and how much will it cost to run it?

Rod Livingston
Livingston Scientific