Can hydrogen become an alternative fuel to petrol and diesel?

Have you ever wondered how our cars work? Every day, people go to the office, school, mall, and other places that we often visit daily. Most of the time, we travel not only using our feet but also with the help of vehicles. Because of this, we might already know that these vehicles consume fuel for them to move. The fuel that we use on our vehicles come in two types, mainly petrol and diesel. 

Without fuel, our vehicles cannot start and will not work. Furthermore, we use petrol and diesel in so many ways, more than we ever knew. These uses are present in our daily lives, including cooking food, heat our homes, generate electricity, heavy equipment, and in some products that we buy in the market. 

With all these said, we can say that these fuels are in demand in our modern world, it is more likely that our world today runs with the help of fuels. Without petrol and diesel, it is not only our cars that would not work, as well as various devices and equipment, since the production of fuel has a significant impact on the generation of electricity. 

Since these fuels produce incredible results, we might come to think of other ways for us to create the same type of energy using a different source. Today, scientists already learned how to harness the power from various natural resources, mainly from our sun, as well as from wind and water. 

Now if these are possible, we might think if there are other ways to produce enough energy similar to petrol and diesel. One widespread query about this is – is it possible for us to use hydrogen as an alternative fuel to gasoline and diesel?

Can we use hydrogen as an alternative fuel?

A straightforward answer to this question is – yes. Technically, we can use hydrogen as an alternative fuel, and various car companies did their share in testing this new technology. 

The use of hydrogen fuel sounds good since we are all aware that petrol and diesel sources will dry up eventually. Knowing that there could be an alternative fuel in the form of hydrogen is good news.

However, having hydrogen as an alternative fuel would have its pros and cons. Like any other type of fuel that we use today, hydrogen has its advantages and disadvantages.

Let us first look into the advantages of hydrogen fuel.

First and foremost, hydrogen is present in most places all around the globe. Meaning to say, we can see that hydrogen is significantly more abundant compared to petrol and diesel. It is one of the basic elements of our planet, which means we would have an incredibly large energy reserve. 

Moreover, hydrogen does not produce harmful substances when burnt. Unlike most fuels, hydrogen does not produce carbon dioxide when burnt. This feature is inarguably better than fossil fuels since they produce large amounts of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, which will cause adverse effects, or commonly known as greenhouse effects. 

With this said, we can say that hydrogen fuel is non-toxic compared to other fuels that we have today. Most of our modern-day fuels, if not all, have a harmful effect on our environment. That is why hydrogen fuel is rare when it comes to environmental friendliness.

However, despite these benefits, there are also several disadvantages to the use of hydrogen. We can pretty much tell why since our modern world still doesn’t utilize this so-called incredible technology.

Here are some of the disadvantages of hydrogen fuel

One main factor why car companies do not utilize hydrogen fuel is the cost. Despite its abundancy, cars cannot start with simply using water or anything with hydrogen. For starters, the hydrogen atom should be separated from the other elements, which would consume a lot of time. Since the process is complicated than it seems, the production of hydrogen would be more costly compared to fossil fuels. 

Another disadvantage of hydrogen fuel is its storage. Unlike fossil fuel, hydrogen fuel is challenging to store. One reason for this is that hydrogen is the smallest and lightest element, which is relatively lighter than helium. Because of this, hydrogen has a very low volumetric energy density. 

These are only some of the factors for using hydrogen water. Despite all of these, we can say that hydrogen fuel could come handy in our technological advancement and hope that one day, our scientists invent or develop a way to utilize this abundant element efficiently. This way, we could significantly help our planet to avoid harmful effects.

Additional reading:
Hydrogen fuel (Wikipedia)

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