Hydrogen is envisaged as the energy carrier of the future that can store and deliver energy in a usable form. Hydrogen can be produced from diverse domestic feedstock such as fossil fuels, biomass or even water using a variety of process technologies such as thermochemical and biological conversion, photolysis, electrolysis, etc.
Currently, there are technological limitations in the use of renewable sources to produce hydrogen as the prevailing methods can only produce a small volume of the energy.
One of the cleanest and most energy-efficient methods to convert hydrogen into power for stationary and mobile applications is the use of fuel cells, which use hydrogen and oxygen to create electricity with an electrochemical process. Several types of fuel cell technologies exist, with varying capacity and performance. The longer-term potential for fuel cell technologies is to run on renewable/alternative fuels.
Despite the immense projected potential of hydrogen and proponents claiming that the technology for hydrogen power is available, the challenges of commercializing it as clean power remain.
The transition to a hydrogen-powered society from our world today is a long journey that must be recognized as a large-scale global effort.
