Researchers seek ways to create affordable hydrogen fuels

Although elemental hydrogen is essentially free, the costs to trasnform hydrogen into fuel have far outweighed any benefits that could be derived. That is set to change as new ways are found to economically produce hydrogen fuel on a large scale. Various countries are working to find a way to utilize this low-pollution energy alternative that could revolutionize the fuel industry.

• And the product is hailed as the mean, green, fuel of the future.
• Like oxygen, in whose sweet embrace it produces water.
• Currently, the cost of producing hydrogen fuel is greater than the value of the energy it delivers.
• Production entails either electrolysis in water or extraction of hydrogen from fossil fuels like natural gas.
• But as scientists worldwide race to find cheaper ways to produce hydrogen, last week teams from the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia announced some major advances.
• "I think it is indisputable that it is a race because the people who develop the IP (intellectual property) that works will be the OPEC of the future," said professor Christopher Sorrel, a director of the Centre for Materials and Energy Conversion at the University of New South Wales.
• Last week, Sorrel and colleagues promised advanced materials developed in their lab would lead to a commercial solar panel in seven years that would produce cheap hydrogen from water, a production method known as solar hydrogen.
• Karen Brewer, who leads a team at Virginia Tech that last week announced another method to produce solar hydrogen, is less gung-ho.
• Sir William Grove invented the first hydrogen fuel cell in 1839.
• But interest in the technology took off in recent years to combat greenhouse gases and end oil dependence.
• Sorrel said that's what the University of New South Wales team did, using modified titanium oxide ceramics in a solar panel.
• "(They're) optimistic, and missing some pieces of the puzzle, but that's par for the course with these announcements," said Stephen R. Connors, director of the Analysis Group for Regional Electricity Alternatives at MIT's Laboratory for Energy and the Environment.