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Question: Hi Josh I am Mohamed and I have a question for you. How will the hydrogen work and make cars move won't the cars explode because of the hydrogen
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Asked by mohamed2536 to Josh on 18 Jun 2013.Question: Hi Josh I am Mohamed and I have a question for you. How will the hydrogen work and make cars move won't the cars explode because of the hydrogen
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Comments
07stoombs commented on :
If your using hydrogen for the energy it releases, there must be 100’s of ways to power a car, why use hydrogen? there must be other ways that are perhaps not as dangerous as hydrogen. For example, light emits energy when excited. Is hydrogen the most efficient?
Josh commented on :
That’s a great point, 07stoombs. There are lots of different fuels you could use to power an engine. For example, you can use other chemicals like ethanol, methanol or ammonia, or solar power even. The kinds of things we think about when we choose a fuel are:
-How much energy does the fuel release for a given amount?
-How easy is it to make/extract the fuel?
-How much energy does it take to make the fuel?
-How expensive is the fuel?
-How common is the fuel?
-How dangerous is it for people and for the environment?
-And lots more questions!!
So why do I think hydrogen is a good fuel? Well, for a kilogram of fuel, hydrogen releases a huge amount – three times as much as petrol. So it is a good fuel. There’s lots of hydrogen around, locked away in water and natural gas. Importantly, when you burn hydrogen, you don’t produce any carbon dioxide, which would cause global warming. So those are some of the reasons why hydrogen is attractive as a fuel.
As far as the safety side goes, it’s definitely something to be wary of. Unfortunately, any material that has enough energy locked away inside of it to drive a car around is going to have some risks with using it. Petrol is actually very dangerous, we’re just used to using it. One of the parts of my research is storing hydrogen in materials in a way which means that it isn’t explosive.
Hope this helps! 🙂