The technological revolution has led to the fact that the consumption of energy in all its forms has increased dramatically. Approximately every 10 years the amount of energy consumed is doubled. The main share of the produced thermal power plant. In the boiler furnaces burning valuable universal commodity chemical industry, which has a limited supply.
Nevertheless, in the furnaces continue to burn oil, gas, coal. Waste of these products besides poisoning the atmosphere. The use of solar and fusion energy is unlikely to be implemented in the next decade, as the technical development of these methods has not reached a stage to confidently target them in the coming years.
But the energy problem is not only the problem plants. For example, a certain portion of energy (ranging from 10 to 20 percent of the total energy budget) — oil and products from oil that goes to transportation needs. And it is transport which provides the bulk of harmful emissions that pollute the atmosphere.
The possibility of using hydrogen as a fuel for land, sea, air transport proved the research work carried out by the automobile companies and laboratories in some countries. Valuable is that the replacement of fossil fuel by hydrogen does not entail major alterations of existing types of internal combustion engines. According to some experts, most promising for translation into hydrogen fuel is the engine system, Wankel. Other solutions are possible. So, Philips has created a hydrogen fuel external combustion engine. The engine is silent and has an efficiency of about 40 percent. The original design of the engine at the time suggested Brookhavens national laboratory (USA). It utilizes a hydride of magnesium, which under certain conditions emit or absorb hydrogen being the "fuel tank".
In addition, the hydrogen engine are practically no harmful emissions into the atmosphere, which in itself is a tremendous accomplishment, he also has significantly more power than gasoline. Thus, the calculations established that the use of hydrogen for aircraft type "Boeing" allows to increase the payload more than twice. In addition, hydrogen is widely used in rocket technology and cosmonautics.
But not only as a motor fuel you can use hydrogen. It can be widely used in everyday life, as a substitute for natural gas and polluting power plants that had engulfed the earth with a dense network of wires.
Thus, hydrogen can play a major role in meeting the energy needs of human society. But the question arises: how to obtain it in such enormous quantities as to transfer energy to the place of consumption?
Hydrogen is extracted from natural gas and used for the production of ammonia. It is known that inexhaustible reserves of hydrogen are concentrated in the water of rivers, seas and oceans. One of the ways of getting it out of the water are thermochemical cycles. Their essence consists in the fact that with the help of a series of sequentially occurring chemical reactions (where the participating substances are returned to the original state), the water decomposes into its component parts — hydrogen and oxygen. Imagine a vessel in which water is pumped. It occur cyclically repeating chemical reactions. The result is oxygen and hydrogen, which are discharged through pipelines. But in order that chemical reactions were possible, the required high temperature. Yet, the most realistic source of energy for this process — nuclear reactor. Such stations, as the calculations will be (including costs for own needs) efficiency of approximately 56 percent, which is much higher than the efficiency of thermal power stations.
The hydrogen produced can be used immediately to guide it to the fuel cells where it is oxidized by oxygen to give electricity. But then the current will have to pass through the wires to consumers, so, again, a significant loss of energy. What if transfer over long distances the hydrogen?
World practice has this experience. In Germany and the United States built aqueducts with a length of up to 300 kilometers, through which the gas is pumped to the consumers. Calculations show that the use of hydrogen much cheaper transmission of electricity through the wires. Especially over long distances.