Plugging Leaky Hydrogen | Green Energy News

June 15, 2003 – Vol.8 No.12

PLUGGING LEAKY HYDROGEN.

One of the ways to plug the leaks in a hydrogen economy is to eliminate some of the opportunities where it CAN leak. Hydrogen produced in one place and shipped by truck or pipeline to another far away opens many opportunities along the way for leakage. But hydrogen produced at the point where it is pumped into a vehicle would eliminate miles of those opportunities.

Shell Hydrogen and Vandenborre Technologies, now a division of Stuart Energy, have agreed to work together to develop a home hydrogen refueling unit. The unit will electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen using power from the grid to slowly fill a vehicle’s pressurized hydrogen tank overnight.

The home refueling device would give people the option of refueling at home or filling up much faster, if needed, at a larger hydrogen refueling station. =

Strictly speaking, of course, the hydrogen would only be as clean as the grid that powers the home. People who bought green electricity from the grid and people who generated their own electricity, possibly from solar, would have the greenest hydrogen. Visit Stuart Energy at http://www.stuartenergy.com/ .