Guest Author - William Charles Vetter

Hydrogen is the lightest most common element in the universe, it only contains one electron in its outer ring and one proton in its nucleus. Hence it has an atomic weight of one. Hydrogen is even lighter than Helium. Hydrogen is rarely found in its pure state. That's because it is unstable in its pure form and prefers to be bonded to another atom like oxygen, which is of course -- water. Our sun fuses hydrogen atoms into helium atoms at 50,000 degrees in a process known as fusion, releasing large amounts of energy and light in the process and giving us all sunburns.

What is Hydrogen?
Hydrogen is a very flammable gas, when it burns and combines with oxygen it produces large amount of energy and pure water. It burns cleaner and produces more heat per kilogram than any other gas known to man. It burns so clean in fact that a hydrogen flame gives off no visible light, since there is no carbon involved, which is where the light in a flame actually comes from; the ionization of carbon burning creates the visible flame that you see on your stove top. Hydrogen has no carbon so its burning creates no pollution, no poisonous gasses and no greenhouse gasses. If you had a hydrogen heater you could actually light it right it in the middle of your living room without a flame, ventilation, fumes or smell, it burns that clean!

How can Hydrogen be made?
Water is actually just burned hydrogen, which is a strange way to think of hydrogen or water for that matter, 3/4 of our planet’s surface is covered with the stuff, in some places to a depth of over seven miles. We have lots and lots of it and the process that turns hydrogen into water can be easily reversed separating the hydrogen and oxygen molecules back into their gas components. It is a very simple process known as electrolysis; it is so simple in fact that you can do it right in your kitchen. All it takes is a DC current like that from an ordinary battery, solar cells or a wind generator and a container with water mixed with a little battery acid or electrolyte, put the negative wire in on one side and the positive wire in on the other side and those little champagne like bubbles that you see coming up are pure hydrogen and oxygen gas. Please be very careful if you decide to try this, remember hydrogen mixed with oxygen is potentially explosive and you don’t want it turning back into water all at once and blowing out all of your windows and also your ear drums in the process.

Hydrogen is without a doubt the perfect fuel. It burns perfectly clean. It creates a lot of heat and it is as plentiful as, well, it is as plentiful as water. If hydrogen is such a perfect fuel then why are we not using it to power everything in our lives? That my friends is the Billion Dollar question, or more accurately it a 1.2 Billion Dollar question. In January President Bush pledged $1.2 billion in government grants for research into hydrogen fuel cell technology. Fuel cells promise to be able to generate electricity and heat from pure hydrogen gas and oxygen; unfortunately it gets very murky after that. Our president is first and foremost an oil man. It is rumored that a great deal of the grant (your tax) money is earmarked for energy companies to develop ways to produce hydrogen, and since most of our energy companies are also oil companies their efforts are largely targeted towards developing a way to produce hydrogen from fossil fuels. Yes, the same dirty, mostly imported fossil fuels that got us into this mess in the first place. A 10 year old with a battery can do it in your kitchen with plain water but our government is giving billions of your tax money to oil companies to get hydrogen out of coal, oil and natural gas. If you think this is absolutely ridiculous then you should consider running for president. I think that Einstein said it best at the dawn of the nuclear revolution, “Everything will change except the way that we think.”

Hydrogen Cars
The fact is that any internal combustion engine even the one in your car is capable with some modifications and specially designed fuel tanks to run on pure hydrogen. There are several companies that offer a custom hydrogen conversion for an existing car, the price of a custom conversion can run upwards of $30,000 dollars, in production these numbers will come down considerably. There is also a custom hydrogen fueled Ford Shelby Cobra replica available for $149,000.00 That will do 0-60 mph in about 5 seconds. No major car manufacturer currently offers a production hydrogen car. If you have the resources to buy a hydrogen powered car or have one modified, you would face the most difficult challenge of all, finding a fuel station. California currently leads the nation in hydrogen fuel stations with a whopping grand total of 13 stations.

When will Hydrogen cars be available?
I have known that hydrogen is the miracle fuel since I was a 15 year old chemistry student. I remember telling people that we would all be running on water before long, but unfortunately I didn’t know anything about politics back then. In 1969 we were told that a hydrogen fueled car was only a decade away. I believe that we are no closer to hydrogen power today than we were 39 years ago. Realistically if we wanted to, we humans could generate a virtually unlimited, clean and economical supply of hydrogen from water and a clean renewable energy source, like solar or even wind generated electricity. When will we actually see that happen?

That’s easy, it will happen when we change the way that we think or when pigs fly…