TheWorldJournal.com

H is Coming
By Jean-Francois Numainville, TheWorldJournal.com

Most of the time, people forget how much comfort they enjoy: running water, electricity, heated housings and cars are among things we could difficulty live without in a typical day. After all, they make everybody's life so much easier allowing us to freely pursue our goals. The time you save by using a car to go to work rather than going there by foot can be saved to do useful tasks. But evidences of a cruel irony are now undeniable: as much as those supports can facilitate our existence, the effects of the fossil fuel they are using are now threatening to disrupt it. The ozone layer is scattered with holes of considerable size, creating a general increase in the global temperature. Climate changes is not a direct threat to the survival of man kind, yet troubles such as droughts, diseases and floods will increasingly affect human populations everywhere.

Although some consequences of global warming have taken effect, most of the specialists agree that it is reversible if proper actions are taken promptly to clean up our act. Fuel cell is what seems to be the way of the future in terms of clean and especially efficient energy source. Such a devise is capable of transforming hydrogen into water while producing precious electricity. The trick is to control the combustion of hydrogen with air so that the reaction is safe and generating the right amount of energy needed. A fuel cell can have various sizes, but it remains relatively small: it is a cube of about 4 m. long by 5 m. wide and by 3 m. tall. Furthermore, they are noiseless and don't have any moving parts, which makes them very convenient. Some cells are using hydrogen directly and another type transforms natural gas into hydrogen before combustion.

Some large-scale power plants as well as cars will soon be running on hydrogen-based electricity. Prototype of electric cars and buses are being developed: at last year's Detroit auto show, BMW revealed a type 3 model converted for hydrogen power. The car's performances still can't match traditional engine, but the future remains promising. Also, Shell Corporation has already finalized a system capable of filling future cars with hydrogen.

Fuel cell technology are not just promises for a better future, a growing number of enterprises are adding those devices to sustain their activities. Some recent office towers are running on hydrogen created energy as well as industries and factories. Despite it recent commercialization, fuel cell technology is proven to be extremely efficient and reliable: NASA and the Russian Space Agency have counted on it to empower their spacecraft since the 1960s.

Undoubtedly, hydrogen energy could certainly help us a lot, still a main factor prevent a wider use: current costs for a fuel cell are too high to allow most of the corporation or even private citizens to get a hold on one of those machines. And only a single firm (ONSI Corporation of Connecticut) is providing fuel cell technology to the public.

Yet, it is just a matter of time until those marvels of human innovation become a vast or potentially a universal source of energy. Fuel cells might just share the same success that TV had after a slow start. Remember, after all, that televisions were only a luxury for the richest of this world when the first came out. Since the quality of the future of humanity largely depends on a cleaner source of energy, changing fossil fuel energy to fuel cell technology wouldn't be too much to ask for.

© January 25, 2002

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