HYDROGEN HORRORS AND HYDROGEN HOPES

Solar energy, nuclear energy (including breeders and controlled fusion), geothermal energy are three of several possibilities of a clean and abundant energy supply. Given enough support, they can effectively be harnessed within the decade. But they will not help in the following nightmarish scenario: Suppose the Arab sheiks, egged on by their Soviet buddies, cut off the crude in an attempt to blackmail the US over the issue of Israel or other points not to their liking. With 25% ofthe US consumption imported from abroad in 1972 (more this year, still more next year), the US economy, critically dependent on the internal combustion engine, would be crippled; so would US defense and life in general. What then?

One of the few hopes is hydrogen, though not even this possibility would give immediate relief in an emergency. Hydrogen can be used as a fuel for conventional internal combustion engines with relatively few modifications. Pollution is incomparably lower than for gasoline. (The process as such has nothing but water vapor as an exhaust product; however, it is usually overlooked that in high compression engines, some nitrogen oxides will arise, too.) Hydrogen can be produced by electrolysis from sea water, so that its supply is unlimited (and even automatically recycled). It's production is cheap, and it contains more energy per unit weight than any other known fuel.

So what's the snag?

Mainly distribution and storage. At present, it is stored in liquid form at very low temperatures (22°C above absolute zero) in heavy metal containers. Such containers could, in principle, be mounted on motor vehicles, but this runs into serious safety problems; also, the amount of liquid hydrogen that can reasonably be carried by a motor vehicle limits its range to only about 100 to 150 miles before refuleing. Refueling where? To truck hydrogen to service stations in small containers ready to be mounted on vehicles in place of empty containers is an economic absurdity. In a viable distribution system, it would have to be pumped through a pipeline network to liquefying substations, which would retail the containers. Using part of the existing pipeline network for natural gas is a possibility. So is the use of all of the existing gas network, implying, of course, that hydrogen would replace natural gas as a fuel altogether. (On this point, see, for example, The Coming Hydrogen Economy, Fortune, November 1972

A BREAKTHROUGH?

All in all, the picture is bleak for immediate emergency relief, mainly due to the storage and distribution problem.

But now comes a flash of hope. Scientists at the Philips Research Labs in Eindhoven, Netherlands, have made a discovery which may prove momentous: Certain compounds of rare earth metals and nickel or cobalt can absorb and release large amounts of hydrogen, and can therefore act as potential storage elements. In a compound of lanthanium and nickel (LaNi5), the density of the absorbed hydrogen is nearly twice the density of liquid hydrogen at a pressure of 2.5 atmospheres and this is the rub — at room temperatures.

Not too much should be read into this. There is a long way to go from discovery to commercial application, and that way may yet end in a blind alley. But it could also be one of the big discoveries of our time, a discovery that could bail out the internal combustion engine until cleaner and more abundant sources of energy become readily available.