Hydrogen Powered Cars Explained
There are many different ways to make hydrogen fuel. Some of these involve burning trash to generate the heat required to break hydrogen out of natural gas or water. You won't be able to drive on a banana peel, but that peel can be used by a hydrogen production facility to produce the fuel that your hydrogen powered car can use to operate.
Hydrogen powered cars can utilize hydrogen through several different methods. A hydrogen internal combustion engine powered vehicle utilizes the same engine used in the gasoline-powered production models with the exception of being modified to burn hydrogen fuel.
Existing cars can be retrofitted as hydrogen powered cars with specially designed installations to completely do away with gasoline as the fuel source altough this could be expensive. There are also kits available that show you how to modify gasoline engines so that hydrogen gas is added to the current air gasoline mixture. This modification not only results in dramatically improved emissions, but in strikingly higher gas mileage as well.
Powering cars through the use of hydrogen fuel can result in a vehicle that does not leave a carbon footprint since there are virtually no emissions. Hydrogen powered cars are also approximately three times more efficient than traditional gasoline fueled cars. Electric cars use hydrogen fuel to generate their own electricity. The hydrogen can be stored in a tank, fed into a fuel cell where it is converted into electrical power, and then used to supply the power that the vehicle requires.
Hydrogen fuel is an efficiently produced energy source. While gasoline production in the United States currently requires about three hundred billion gallons of water, the production of the same amount of hydrogen fuel takes about one hundred billion gallons. What this translates to is that hydrogen fuel production only costs roughly half of what it costs to produce the equivalent amount of gasoline.
The number of hydrogen powered cars will increase steadily as hydrogen fueling stations become more available. Starting in 2008, several hydrogen powered vehicles will already be available in limited numbers. Even now, every major automobile company is working on designing and engineering its own model. Some car makers are also trying to develop in-home systems that produce hydrogen, meaning that we could conceivably not only have pumps in the driveway to fuel up hydrogen powered cars in the future, but we could also supply hydrogen fuel to supply electrical power to our homes.
Hydrogen powered cars are at least as safe as any gasoline-powered car. The hydrogen comes in specially designed tanks that won't leak any hydrogen fuel, even under extreme conditions.
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