Hydrogen-Burning Internal Combustion Engines

Here are four critically important facts:
1) Powering transportation with hydrocarbon (HC) fuels is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
2) The internal combustion (IC) engine is presently the most fully developed mobile power source.
3) Powering transportation with hydrogen-burning IC engines, which produce almost only water as a waste gas, is the most expeditious route to reducing green house gas emissions and to greater energy independence.
4) The only nonpolluting and economic way to produce hydrogen in adequate quantities is by the electrolysis of water using nuclear generated electricity.

HC fuels include wood, coal, gasoline, ethanol and other petroleum products and alcohols. Points (2) through (4) require some discussion of technical and safety issues.

Purely electric mobile power plants do not answer our transportation needs. Presently, storage batteries charge too slowly and weigh too much or, in the case of the Ford beta-alumina battery, operate at too high a temperature and have sealing problems that decades of engineers have failed to solve in an industrially suitable way. Presently, hydrogen fuel cells are delicate things and operate at high temperature, and suitable methods of manufacture have yet to be developed.

In the past, one of the most important obstacles to hydrogen-burning IC engines has been the great weight of pressurized-hydrogen containment vessels. This problem has been eliminated by the development of suitable carbon fiber reinforced tanks. The second major obstacle was hydrogen embrittlement, that is, hydrogen diffuses into metal, weakening the metal. This problem has been solved by work done at the Ford Motor Company Scientific Research Laboratories, at Strathclyde University, in Scotland, and probably at many other facilities.

Burning HC fuels to produce electricity for producing hydrogen can result in only a minor reduction in green house gas emission. Alternatively, covering the country with windmills or solar cells is neither economically feasible nor esthetically desirable. This leaves nuclear generated electricity, but the nuclear power issue to which the public is sensitive is safety. Fortunately, this is really a non-issue. With the exception of Chernobyl, in the former Soviet Union, in the more than 50 years that nuclear power has been used all over the world, no accident has occurred that has released radioactive material into the environment. Even in the case of our somewhat lax NRC, there has been no such accident in the U.S. Our AEC/Energy Department has built a container for the rail transport of radioactive materials, which has been demonstrated to be effective at shielding the environment, even when struck by a speeding locomotive that caused it to roll over miles of countryside. Our national lab at Sandia has developed a nuclear-waste storage vessel that, conservatively, will last 10,000 years. The 100,000 year durability requirement, which has recently been raised in public debate, is a red herring. First, at the rate that we are going, the human race may not be around in one hundred thousand years. Second, the European Union has developed a rule to guard against the mistakes that we are always making in new undertakings. Their rule is that nuclear wastes must only be disposed of in such a way that if we have made a mistake, then the wastes can be easily recovered and our mistake corrected. This means that we cannot dump containment vessels into the Marianas Trench or bury them under thousands of feet of landfill.

Finally, there is one issue that has not yet been mentioned – the method of distributing hydrogen. A consortium of power producers, fuel distributors and auto companies was formed some years ago. They have addressed the distribution issue, and it seems to be far from insuperable.