Problems with a hydrogen economy
The hydrogen economy without a doubt will help reduce the level
of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, however in order to implement
a hydrogen economy we have to solve a number of problems. One
problem concerns the storage of hydrogen because in order to
use hydrogen in our cars we need to be able to store it at a
low temperature. The other problem is the transportation of
hydrogen from one state to another. Finally, the serious problem
has been stated by a computational physicist named Kyeongjae
Cho at Stanford University;
(As a reminder: in a fuel cell, a catalyst strips electrons
from hydrogen atoms to generate electricity. A catalyst consists
of nanoparticles of platinum.)
"However, platinum is not a cheap
metal, and it's a finite resource," says Cho. "There
will be lots of problems if we try to launch a hydrogen
economy based on fuel cells, because we don't have enough
platinum to do the job." [1]
Read
on to learn more about the approaches researchers
are using to tackle this issue. |