Hydrogen Gas In Cars - A Viable Alternative To Gasoline

By Adrian Fletcher

Your car is very likely to be running on gasoline blended with ethanol, a corn-based fuel, which has been touted recently as the answer to the dilemma of ever-increasing oil prices and emissions of greenhouse gases. There is a great debate about whether growing crops for fuel is an efficient use of the land and is as environmentally friendly as advocates of the technology would have us believe. While this debate rages, ethanol has been considered as a viable fuel for cars. However, it has been used in this capacity for a long time without optimization, making it questionable that it has a long term future as the answer to energy problems. Hydrogen gas in cars can offer improved fuel economy, and is a more recently available option in this field.

Using hydrogen gas in cars has numerous advantages over ethanol and gasoline. It's a much cleaner-burning fuel which leaves no carbon footprint, since the only emission is water vapor, which consists mainly of nitrogen, an element that accounts for more than 75% of the air we breathe. Hydrogen fuel also gives us about two-thirds better fuel economy at roughly half the cost.

The two major setbacks of changing over to hydrogen gas in cars are the system within the car and fuel availability. If you do not live within close proximity to a hydrogen generation plant (and who does ?), chances are there are probably no stations where you can purchase commercially produced hydrogen to fuel your car with.

The process of producing great quantities of hydrogen fuel on board a vehicle to burn instead of gasoline still faces technological limitations, compromising widespread use of this technology on the road. A few automobile manufacturers planning to manufacture fully hydrogen-powered vehicles are also planning to produce home hydrogen gas fueling stations. This will not only allow you to fuel your car but also generate power for your dwelling, giving you a big cost reduction in energy expenditure and help in environmental protection.

There are several viable options for converting your gasoline-powered vehicle into a hydrogen hybrid that will allow you to take advantage of both the increases in fuel economy and a large reduction in your vehicles emission. Commercially available kits produce small amounts of hydrogen using the electricity generated by your car and add it to the gasoline air/fuel mixture the car is already running on. Prices range in cost from roughly two hundred dollars for kits composed of easy to find parts, to kits requiring specialty equipment that costs several thousand dollars.

When hydrogen fuel production begins on mega scale and will be easily available in big volume, we will definitely begin to see new inventions when we start using hydrogen gas in cars. Indeed, BMW are publicizing their work on a hydrogen fuel car but it is only a one off prototype without any commercial potential to date. Before that date when this becomes commercially viable arrives, home-made kits that use readily available parts and plain water can help the mechanically-inclined to get a long up on the technology. Instructions for creating your own water to gas kits are found on the internet through sites such as Water4gas.

Government, energy companies and auto manufacturers starting now to focus on hydrogen fuel as an alternative fuel choice. Even backyard mechanics are looking at hydrogen fuel with the water4gas kits. With further research and better technological advances, there will be a great move to use hydrogen gas in cars. - 21393

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