The Energy Evolution - Hydrogen and Fuel Cells: Advances in Transportation and Power - page 2

New inventions are rapidly progressing that will enable a solar hy-
drogen society to enter a non-carbon age of material excellence. Renewable
energy for this advancement will be converted into safely storable, effi-
ciently transportable, and clean usable hydrogen.
Hydrogen is a universal fuel that could power automobiles, aircraft,
spacecraft, power plants and appliances, including gas stoves that can op-
erate on mountain-tops. Since it is a zero-carbon emission fuel, carbon
emissions that may effect pollution and global climate change are elimi-
nated. Shifting to hydrogen energy can have a profound positive impact
on the Earth's biological systems.
Every product has a basic energy cost and the rising consumption of
fossil fuels makes it difficult to predict energy costs in the future. Shifting
to hydrogen will reduce future cost and supply uncertainties and signifi-
cantly improve the U.S. balance of trade.
Many relate hydrogen fuel use, which involves a chemical change,
with hydrogen weapons, which involves a thermonuclear reaction.
Many people do not realize that most of the passengers and crew of the
Hindenburg survived, and that extensive testing and utilization evidence
by NASA & BMW show hydrogen to be safer in many ways than gasoline
and other petrocarbon fuels when accidents do occur.
HYDROGEN THE BASIC ELEMENT
The chronicle of hydrogen begins with the Big Bang theory of uni-
verse creation 15 billion years ago, when hydrogen atoms were first formed.
Gravity acted as the primitive force that caused the hydrogen to condense
into vast clouds that collapsed into stars, which consume the hydrogen
as fuel. When the larger stars with adequate mass no longer have enough
hydrogen, a supernova is formed which then transforms into heavier ele-
ments. These giant molecular cloud formations, consisting almost entirely
of hydrogen, are the most massive objects within galaxies. Gravity eventu-
ally causes the hydrogen to compress until it fuses into heavier elements.
Without the energy emitted by the sun, life as we know it could not
exist. The primary fuel for the sun and other stars is hydrogen while the
force that allows the sun and other stars to burn is gravity. Our sun con-
sumes about 600 million tons of hydrogen every second. As this hydrogen
is fused into helium, photons of electromagnetic energy are released and
eventually find their way through the earth's atmosphere as solar energy.