is hydrogen a nonrenewable resource?

Question

Our homerwork today was to think about alternative fuels for transportation. apparently, "our generation" is resonsible for replacing fossil fuels. But I think the last generation is just trying to dump the work on us. Anywat, I was reading about hydrogen powered cars, and quite frankly, it seems like a perfect solution! but Is hydrogen a renewable resource? i am pretty sure it is, but i wanted to be sure.

PS did you know we will run out of tugsten in less than 140 yrs? better start apreciating flurescant lights!

Answer 1

Hydrogen is renewable because it can come from water and it recombines with oxygen to make water again. So hydrogen can be part of a cycle.

The nonrenewable aspect of using hydrogen is any process that uses nonrenewable fuels as a hydrogen source or as the energy to split the water molecules.

Answer 2

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. The "H" in H2O is hydrogen so the oceans are full of it. It's not renewable in the sense that trees are but we're not going to run out of it.

Hydrogen cars do seem perfect and pollution free until you consider that it takes lots of energy to isolate the hydrogen. With current technology it takes more energy to make the hydrogen then its fuel value. That's why hardly anybody drives hydrogen cars.

P.S. Nobody knows how much tungsten there is or will be in 140 years. Do you know that people were saying that the earth was running out of petroleum in the 1920s?

Answer 3

Well, this is where most of the public discussion of hydrogen goes wrong - hydrogen is NOT a fuel - it is not a magical source of energy - it is only an energy carrier, just like a battery.
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Hydrogen is usually extracted from water using electricity. When the fuel cell uses the hydrogen, we get water and electricity back out. That's a reversible chemical process, exactly what a battery does.
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Except that batteries are much more efficient than the hydrogen process is. This means using electricity to charge a pure electric car will be cheaper than the electricity for making hydrogen (because making hydrogen uses more electricity than the fuel cell gives back.)
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Plus, in the case of hydrogen, there are also costs (and additional pollution) associated with trucking and storing the hydrogen. Charging EVs by wire (95% efficient) wastes much less energy.
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Electric vehicles are cheaper and cleaner across the board. They are also much cleaner than gas vehicles, even if power plants burn dirty fuel, because EVs make much more efficient use of energy than gas powered cars do.
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Take a look at a modern electric car:
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http://phoenixmotorcars.com/models/fleet.html
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The Phoenix electric pickup truck - using new, advanced Altairnano batteries (based on research from MIT) - can:

-Travel up to 250 miles per charge
-Carry 5 passengers plus cargo at 95mph.
-Charges batteries in as little as TEN MINUTES.
-Has batteries that last 250,000 miles (never need replacement.)
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Yes, this is a real car, being manufactured right now for fleet customers like PG&E.
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Answer 4

Hydrogen is not an energy source because it does not occur in nature, at least not in large enough quantities to be useful. It has to be made. And making it takes more power that burning it gives back. So it is not an energy source.

By the way, we are NOT going to run out of tungsten in 140 years. Any such estimate is flawed in that it assumes no new discoveries of tungsten ore, no new ways to get tungsten from other ores and no change in the rate at which we use it.

Answer 5

The problem of using hydrogen cars is that you will need a lot of energy to create hydrogen. A way of getting around this is by building nuclear power plants to create hydrogen. Nuclear power is clean and does not create co2. The burning of hydrogen is also clean.

Answer 6

Hydrogen is renewable because it can be created artificially, but that is kind of misleading because in order to create it we need to use energy from another source, since much hydrogen is created using fossil fuels the actual energy you get from hydrogen is not renewable because it is really from non-renewable energy sources.

Answer 7

Hydrogen is renewable. Unfortunately, you don't find it laying around. You have to spend energy to make it. Also, it's difficult to store. It needs to be stored as a liquid and with today's technology, even if you didn't drive the car, the tank's contents would evaporate in a week.

Answer 8

the problem is that hydrogen is not efficient to power cars. Better to use electric. Then solar turbines that use the sun. Water is a bad greenhouse gas far worse that CO2

Answer 9

I don't know whether it's renewable or not, but there are SO many sources of it, the question is moot.

By the way, people have been doom-saying for centuries about things like tungsten. Don't believe everything you read. Those predictions are almost always blatantly wrong.

Answer 10

A renewable source is something which will strengthen decrease back or in any different case regenerate, like flora and water. A nonrenewable source is one which, as quickly as used, is long previous, like oil or coal.