Wales to Launch UK's First Hydrogen Highway

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As the world looks more and more to alternative energy sources and low carbon alternatives to fossil fuels, new terms such as Hydrogen vehicle and hydrogen fuel cell are being tossed around. But what does this mean? How does hydrogen work as a fuel? Is it better than petrol? What is a hydrogen fuel cell, and why not just burn the gas? In this short piece, I will be looking at these questions and answering them in simple layman's terms.

Hydrogen as a source of energy:
The first thing you need to realise is that however you use it, Hydrogen is not a source of energy! It is what is known as an 'energy carrier'. Basically, Hydrogen can be used to 'trap' energy in a form that can be more easily transported. Petrol is actually a source of energy in and of itself- you simply extract it from crude oil by distillation, and when you burn it, energy is released. The reason why hydrogen fuel is not technically a source of energy is because it is not naturally occurring in nature- you can't just drill for it like oil, you need to manufacture it.

Hydrogen is very reactive, meaning that it quickly bonds with other chemicals, making it useless. It's a lot like sticking two Lego bricks together to make one big one- you no longer have the original bricks, you have one large structure. When hydrogen bonds with Oxygen, energy is released.

So, when you burn hydrogen, it joins with oxygen and in the process, releases energy. But because you need to spend energy to get the hydrogen by itself in the first place (Pulling apart the bricks), there's no net gain of energy. In fact, you loose a lot of energy when you compare the energy you get out of burning hydrogen compared to the energy cost of 'making' and transporting it.



Read more: Wales to Launch UK's First Hydrogen Highway, But Is Hydrogen Fuel the Way Forwards?