HYDROGEN CONVERSION
RHF'S TECHNOLOGY
THE HYDROGEN ECONOMY
WHY DO WE NEED A NEW HYDROGEN ECONOMY
PYROLOSIS, NOT HYDROLYSIS

Hydrogen Conversion

Some people have been talking about the new “hydrogen economy” for some time now. So, why isn’t it here? If switching to hydrogen would be such a panacea, why isn’t it happening all around us, right now?

The truth is, there are some challenges with the hydrogen economy, at least the way it generally has been presented. These challenges are both technical and economic.

Hydrogen is the best of fuels and the worst of fuels. It’s the best—as a fuel. It burns cleaner, produces more power per pound and combusts more efficiently than any other fuel. But it’s also the worst, as an energy storage and transport medium—it has the lowest energy density per volume (very important when you’re filling your tank), it’s very difficult to compress or pump, and, as the smallest of all molecules, it has an annoying tendency to escape right through the materials tanks and pipelines usually are made of.

Replacing just the transport and storage infrastructure of the U.S. with a system suitable for gaseous hydrogen could cost more than $1 trillion. That doesn’t even count the cost of creating a whole new manufacturing system to make the hydrogen! And, even after all that investment, the energy required to compress and pump hydrogen fuel could be far more than we would ever get out of it.

So, what’s the answer? Is there some way to get all the benefits of hydrogen as a fuel, and still use our existing infrastructure? Is there a way we can begin using hydrogen now, rather than waiting for fuel cells to become practical? Is there a safe, sustainable, practical solution?

Yes, there is. It happens that hydrogen is a principal component of nearly all organic matter. Plants have it. So do the liquids we can easily make from them, and the waste biomass that comes from farming and forest management. And so do the millions of tons of waste food and waste paper we send to landfills every year. Even things like grass clippings are rich in hydrogen. This hydrogen is chemically bound to carbon, but it turns out those bonds are relatively easy to break, making the hydrogen available for use.