For a research project my topic is hydrogen fuel cells, I need to answer some questions about it.For the life of me I cannot find a good website that has the information I need. If anyone can give me a website or answer some questions I have I'd greatly appreciate it.Which countries use hydrogen fuel cells.How much of their total energy is being supplied by that form?Is our country using hydrogen fuel cells? If so, how much are we producing and what percent of our total energy use is from the source?What are the advantages and disadvantages of hydrogen fuel cells?Is it expensive (cost effective or not?) to use hydrogen fuel cells?Compare the cost of one watt of electric power that we obtain from hydrogen fuel cells to one watt produced by burning coal.If you could either answer these questions for me or give me a site I can find it would help me alot.
Fuel cells are at least twice as efficient as internal combustion engines, have no moving parts, require little maintenance, and produce little or no pollution depending on how their hydrogen fuel is produced. Most major automobile companies have developed prototype fuel-cell cards and hope to have a variety of affordable fuel-cell cars on the market by 2020 and greatly increase their use by 2050. These cars would depend on a new network of hydrogen filling stations. General Motors (GM) developed a prototype of the fuel-cell car in 2002. Such a car as this would have a fuel efficiency of more than 100mpg. This is all I have for you regarding this topic.
Those are great questions. Hopefully this will clear a few things up. Hydrogen is a chemical element. In fact it's element number one, and it is the simplest of all elements, comprised of (usually) just one proton and an electron. Now brace yourself: Hydrogen is not a source of energy. No one anywhere produces energy from hydrogen (until we can figure out how to sustain fusion reactions). What hydrogen CAN be for us in regard to our energy needs, is an energy STORAGE device. The energy from hydrogen must be expended first in order to deliver it later-- the hydrogen is just holding onto it for us as potential chemical energy, in that it is highly reactive. But that initial expenditure of energy is generated from coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, wind, or geothermal sources. All that being said, it is not an efficient method of energy storage and winds up creating a net loss of energy-- it takes more energy to produce the hydrogen than it provides.
