happydolphin said:
So what's stopping us from making it happen? Also, can commercial airplanes run off hydrogen cells with today's technology? |
Two things mainly:
Hydrogen is highly flammable. It also escapes through normal deposits walls, due to the tiny size of the hydrogen molecule, so you need do develop a much thicker wall to enclose it and make it secure in case of crash, and that is really heavy.
It's not something you can obtain without spending huge quantities of electricity in the electrolysis. Hydrogen isn't an energy source, it's only an accumulator, as we can't extract H2 without spending more energy than we obtain burning it. Where do you obtain that electricity to do the electrolysis? when we have much more efficient renewable energy sources, then it would be a good way to store that energy. Until then, you'll need to burn carbon, petrol, gas... to obtain that hydrogen.
