KARACHI:
It is strongly believed that with the scarcity of fossil fuel and the intermittency associated with most renewable energy sources, the world will move towards hydrogen as the primary fuel to run the economy. As hydrogen burns to give energy, it combines with oxygen producing water vapours. Thus neither air pollution nor carbon emission in any form is involved.
Nevertheless, there are a few hindrances — such as the unavailability of hydrogen in free form, storage, etc — regarding hydrogen as fuel. Hydrogen primarily exists in nature in the combined state, such as water and organic compounds like methane and petrol. It is possible to electrolyse water so that it splits. Although it looks straightforward, the reaction needs an energy input. Along with the collection, there is a problem with hydrogen storage. Being highly explosive, it needs to be stored either in compressed gaseous or in liquid form. The former large tanks are needed which have logistic limitations so far as the user is concerned. For later, low-temperature requirements again need expenditure of energy. Yet another worldwide tried-out storage mechanism is the storage in solid form (as metal hydride).
Using fuel cells is an optimized manner to harness energy from hydrogen. A fuel cell is like a battery that burns hydrogen to produce electricity. The fuel cell draws the input hydrogen and oxygen from outside. We are far behind other nations in research concerning fuel cells. The first and foremost is understanding which development stage various fuel cell technologies have reached and the yearly performance improvement rates of such technologies. State support can improve the prevailing non-existent scenario in this regard.
Dr Intikhab Ulfat
Karachi
Published in The Express Tribune, August 4th, 2022.
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