An article that I came across recently made me proud of what the TATAs (along with ISRO) are doing in their own way to help combat Green house gas emissions. They are hoping to launch a Fuel Cell car propelled purely by Hydrogen.

Hydrogen has the following benefits:

·        It is the most abundant element on earth and it is a versatile energy carrier that can be produced from any source of energy

·        It would reduce oil dependency, and bring transport-related air pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions to virtually none

·        It can be stored and easily kept over time

While the potential advantage of hydrogen is that it could be produced and consumed continuously, using solar, water, wind and nuclear power for electrolysis, todays available technology has not matured to a stage where by the required Hydrogen can be produced with minimal pollution. Infact  hydrogen vehicles utilizing hydrogen produced using hydrocarbons, produce more pollution than vehicles consuming gasoline, diesel, or methane in a modern internal combustion engine, and far more than plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

That apart todays fuel cell vehicles face three major challenges:

·        Fuel Cells are expensive to produce

·        Most fuel cell designs are fragile and can't survive freezing conditions. And even if they could a lot of the power generated would be lost due to cold conditions. (This may not be applicable to most of India)

·        Lastly and perhaps most importantly is the problem of producing Hydrogen efficiently. With the best of technologies of today, hydrogen production today is costly, inefficient or POLLUTING.  

·        Coupled with this is the problem posed by the lack of an established distribution network.

From a Global warming point of view, POLLUTING does not sound too encouraging. One possible way to get around this problem is to break away from the traditional mindset that requires of us to have a established distribution system. Unlike Petroleum products that need to be distilled and taken in large tankers, Hydrogen need not be distributed in the same way. It could BUT it does not have to be.

In fact in a company in Michigan that is using photovoltaic cells on the roof of the fueling station to generate electricity, electrolyze water and create hydrogen, which they use to fuel up their hydrogen car. With this method, hydrogen is created cleanly and greenly and no hydrogen has to be produced in centralized locations and hauled by truck or pipeline. It's onsite, on-demand, all the time. This same setup can be used by large companies to supply hydrogen to their employees' cars as well.

There is yet another development I read about on the internet. It is believed that a company called Hydrogen Power Incorporated has created a prototype vehicle that uses water, aluminum and an environmentally friendly catalyst to create hydrogen-on-demand inside the vehicle. If this invention takes root and takes hold this will be the ultimate water car and no hydrogen infrastructure whatsoever would need to be built to support this vehicle. All that will be required will be filling the car with water and changing out the aluminum compound in the canister every so often

Well certainly a lot of developments are taking place concurrently the world over. And as far as India is concerned, one thing is for certain - with the best car manufacturer in the country and a space agency that has come of age with indigenous solutions (overcoming sanctions et al) things, if any, can only go RIGHT.  As a layman I am all excited about getting to drive my own rocket errr … car. I wonder thought if we have the roads for it !