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Alternate fuels are a subject that I sometimes find myself going back to. There are so many ways of supplying energy today that it boggles the mind, but methods for supplying fuel are not a panacea in themselves. There are certain criteria that have to be met by these methods before they become viable. I guess that many people would argue that the first and most important criteria is that the method chosen must be economical. Following closely on the heels of economy is environmentally friendly, after all what good is generating power if you are going to destroy the atmosphere and with that the planet? Some would say this should be the first consideration, but I didn't list it as such because even if something is not environmental friendly you can take certain steps to strip the exhaust of harmful elements. These steps include things like installing scrubbers, but this adds to the cost and may make something that was economical become uneconomical.

I am not going to go into the different alternate sources of energy because I have done this many times before. I would like to concentrate this article on just one source, hydrogen. Hydrogen seems to be a good choice for an alternate source right now, but all hydrogen is not created equal. Some may wonder what the heck I am talking about, isn't hydrogen, well hydrogen? The answer to this is yes, but the more complicated answer is that hydrogen can be made by many different ways. One of these ways still includes petroleum usage. In that method when hydrogen atoms and carbon atoms are separated, much less energy in the form of hydrogen is returned, thus it seems if we use this method to obtain hydrogen we are using up a lot of energy. The government has expressed interest in using this method to create hydrogen in the future.

Many things have hydrogen atoms in them. You will find them in plants, animals, water etc. If someone asked me right now, where the best source of hydrogen would be, I would have to say from water. I am not a scientist and many might disagree with me on this point, but with a planet that is 3/4s water, I don't see how they could argue otherwise. For the sake of argument lets say the water is the best source. Now we are left with finding the best method of separating the water so that we can get to the hydrogen.

We could use solar energy to separate the elements in water and obtain hydrogen. There are a couple of kinds of solar energy that might work. First there are solar cells that could supply electrical current powering devices to separate the water. The problem here is that our solar cell technology has not reached the point yet where the efficiency is high enough. In 1999 a test solar cell array reached the efficiency level of 32.3%. What this means is that the array converted about one third of the energy it received from the sun into energy. This array was employed in space but ground based arrays have also had increased efficiency. To be economical these cells have to last and they have to be reasonably priced. They haven't reached this plateau yet. For the moment solar cells are out of the equation, but this can change at any time as they get more efficient and more dependable. The other type of solar power I was thinking of is the kind that uses mirrors. Huge mirrors gather the sun's light and shine it on a huge tank of water creating steam that can be used for power. Unfortunately, this is even more expensive, so it is not practical. The solar arrays cost millions of dollars to build and require maintenance.

Many scientists are talking about using fuel cells. Fuel cells have really advanced over the years. At some point, every home may be powered by one instead of being hooked up to a central electrical generation plant. This would put an end to those power outages that strike thousands of homes from time to time. Fuel cells themselves can be hydrogen powered. Hydrogen creation, of this type, needs heat and that source could be a fuel cell. Fuel cells are getting more and more reliable. One company has run a fuel cell for the equivalent of ten years then taken it apart to examine it. It seems to have faired very well. There are now fuel cell back up units in some places. I have even heard of fuel cells powering small office buildings. The question here will be, can we use one to create more fuel than we burn doing it. Science say this can never be and that you can't get more out of something than you put in.

Other methods for extracting hydrogen from water are beginning to appear. There is a company that claims to have had a lot of success with extracting hydrogen from water using a process that employs an alloy. The alloy is in the form of tablets and the hydrogen extraction can be adjusted to yield more or less hydrogen, according to the needs of the extractor. They claim that there are other chemicals in the alloy tablets also and that when you drop them into water, hydrogen is released. This seems almost to good to be true, but the company is so sure of this process that they are going ahead with plans to manufacture these tablets even before testing is finished.

There are other methods for the manufacture of hydrogen, far too many to go into here in any kind of detail. If the alloy tablet works it could solve the hydrogen 'mining' problem. Think of it, a fuel that would cost almost nothing. Every manufactured item on the planet could be reduced in price since a large part of the cost is the energy used in it's production. Gee do you think big oil might mind? Lets hope that hydrogen production begins sooner than later and that it is not petroleum based. Very little modification is required to the engines in our cars before they can burn hydrogen so we are practically set to go.