The hydrogen economy: Its history

The concept leading to a hydrogen economy lay in the work of a Nazi engineer, Lawaceck, 1968. I heard his suggestion of cheaper transfer of energy in hydrogen through pipes at a dinner in that year.A paper was published with Appleby in 1972 which was the first published document concerning that title and involving the title of A Hydrogen Economy. The first meeting was in Cornell University in 1973. In 1974 T. Nejat Veziroglu organized the first big meeting on hydrogen (900 attendees).At this meeting I presented privately to Veziroglu the possibilities of a world development and he told me that he was ready to put his organizing ability to use in spreading the ideas worldwide.However, he not only proceeded to do this but he, also a professor at the University of Miami, contributed several papers of notes, particularly the one with Awad of 1974 about the cost of pollution.Gregory worked at the Gas Research Institute from 1971 and confirmed the expectations put down by Lawaceck.Veziroglu founded the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy in 1974. Research in hydrogen was relatively low cost and therefore was taken up most eagerly by those from the newer countries.The National Science Foundation awarded Texas A&M University in 1982 a five year support for hydrogen as a fuel with the condition that half the costs be borne by at least five industrial companies. I was appointed director of the research under the grant and chose to concentrate upon the decomposition of water by solar light via an electrochemical photo fuel cell.We were able to obtain considerable increases in efficiency of decomposition of water by solar light, and at the time the work was interrupted we had 9.6 percent efficiency for decomposition.S.U.M. Khan and R. Kainthla were the principal contributors to the theory of using light via electrochemical cells for this purpose.The Texas A&M University work on hydrogen was interrupted in 1989 by the arrival of claims that one of my former students had carried out electrolysis of deuterium oxide saying that an extra unexplained heat had been observed and he suggested this heat was nuclear in origin.Later, seeking to reduce the cost of hydrogen as a fuel I involved Sol Zaromb in discussions and we came across the idea that if one included a carbon dioxide molecule obtained by removing it from the atmosphere in the structure of methanolAT, no increase in global warming would occur from the use of methanol with that condition, (published in 2008).By this condition methanol took on the largest advantage of gaseous hydrogen: That it did not cause global warming. The estimated cost of the new (anti-global warming) fuel, methanolAT was less than $30/GJ.This estimated cost could be compared with the $48/GJ which is now being supported by a French Canadian group who published an attractive book with six pages of calculations of costs. The difference between the cost estimated by this group and the costs which have been assumed by hydrogen enthusiasts in earlier times was that they took into account the auxiliary expenses which would come with the use of hydrogen, in particular the storage at high pressure.The characteristics of the new methanol to cause no global warming put that aspect of it on an equal footing to the gaseous hydrogen. The CO2 which was an essential part of the structure of methanolAT was necessary to be created in a stream, rather than directly from the atmosphere, but it was easily shown that this could be done by the use of biomass and by carbonaceous wastes.A German team under Weiderman and Grob appeared in 2008 and proceeded to suggest some extensions of the ideas which had been undergoing publication for some time. The aim of the German work was to reduce costs of a compound which they called Methasyn.The present situation is that the claim of methanolAT as a world fuel to be used without any concerns of exhaustion or pollution depends on the commercial point of view of the costs being less than that of obtaining oil from the tar sands.