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The Hydrogen Economy Howard Cork Hayden December 1997 Hydrogen Recent advances in fuel-cell technology (or, more likely, sudden awareness on the part of the press) have prompted The Economist (Oct. 25, 1997) to title an article optimistically, "The third age of fuel: Just as coal gave way to oil, oil may now give way to hydrogen." Nothing of the sort is happening. Pundits have long spoken of "the hydrogen economy," a concept that means one thing to the technically literate and quite another to The Economist's editors. The main difference comes in understanding where the hydrogen comes from. No Wells of the Stuff There are no hydrogen wells, period. However, there are oceans full of hydrogen in the form of dihydrogen monoxide (water), vast reserves of hydrogen in petroleum and natural gas, and the hydrogen in plant and animal life. Petroleum contains many different chemicals, including gasoline, once considered a useless and dangerous by-product of kerosene production. For the most part, there are approximately two atoms of hydrogen for every atom of carbon in petroleum. When petroleum is burned, some energy is required to separate the molecules into individual atoms, but much more energy is given back as the carbon and hydrogen atoms combine with oxygen to give carbon dioxide and water vapor. Natural gas is primarily methane, composed of individual molecules that have one central carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms on the outside, positioned as if at the corners of a triangular pyramid (a tetrahedron). As with petroleum, some energy is required to separate the molecule into separate atoms, but the energy is more than returned when the carbon and hydrogen burn to form carbon dioxide and water vapor respectively. From an energy standpoint, we simply recognize that burning either petroleum or natural gas involves oxidation of both carbon and hydrogen, with the release of energy. As well, plants and animals contain carbon and hydrogen, but also a fair amount of minerals that make their presence known as ash residue after burning. Biomass is not a substantial source of energy, let alone just of energy from its hydrogen, for if it were, nobody would have ever started using coal. 1