• Question: will your work be good for the envirement because hydrogen is not

    Asked by boss3000 to Stuart, Josh on 20 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by tomboy, sade13.
    • Photo: Stuart Archer

      Stuart Archer answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      You are absolutely right in pointing out that hydrogen itself isn’t that good for the environment – it’s a pretty bad greenhouse gas (actually worse than carbon dioxide), so we would have to find a way to transport and store it effectively so it doesn’t leak into the atmosphere. Josh does a lot of work in this area – you could ask him to tell you a bit more about it!

      The advantage of hydrogen over petrol, for example, is that it can be produced from water in a manner that doesn’t damage the environment. Also, when you burn it, the only thing you get out is water – exactly the same amount as it took to make it. So, you can never run out of hydrogen, and it doesn’t pollute the atmosphere in the same way that a petrol car does!

    • Photo: Josh Makepeace

      Josh Makepeace answered on 26 Jun 2013:

      Hi boss3000,

      Like Stu said, hydrogen can be quite dangerous in it’s gas form. Before and after it’s used in a car, it’s stored as water, which is, of course, safe! So we are trying to find the best way to store it for use in a car. Some people put it in high pressure tanks, but that doesn’t get rid of the problem of it being explosive. What we do in my lab is we react the hydrogen with chemicals to store it in the form of a new chemical. That way, it’s not there as a gas any more, so is much less dangerous. The materials still store lots of energy – they have to to be able to move a car around – but we try to make them as safe as possible.

      If hydrogen escapes from a car, it’s so light that it doesn’t stay in the atmopshere very long at all (it actually can escape the earth completely). So assuming it doesn’t catch on fire, it can’t do much harm.

      Thanks for the question 🙂

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