Article written by www.precisionfluidonline.it on 10/06/2021 – Read the Original Article
For over a century, the fuels used for transportation have been based almost exclusively on petroleum hydrocarbons. More recently, hydrogen has emerged as a potential long-term substitute for hydrocarbon-based fuels and is expected to play a major role in the energy economy of the future characterized by environmentally clean sources and vectors.
What makes liquid hydrogen a potentially perfect ecological fuel?
Hydrogen is light, has a high energy density (3.4 times higher than gasoline with respect to weight) and its combustion does not produce harmful substances. That said, although hydrogen is potentially the perfect ecological fuel, as well as one of the most abundant elements on earth, it is almost impossible to find in its purest form.
It is therefore necessary to extract it from the molecules in which it is present, such as water and organic compounds. Several methods and technologies can be used for this purpose, including electrolysis of water to split hydrogen from oxygen, reformation of natural gas (gasification), renewable liquid reforming using renewable liquid fuels such as ethanol, and renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, biomass conversion or geothermal technologies. To allow hydrogen and fuel technologies to progress, these methods will need to be optimized …
