The Hydrogen Society

If cars would run with water as fuel, then every motorist would be transported into his or her own dreamworld. Imagine running around uninhibited by the amount of gas one has in his/her fuel tank. That would just be sublime.

Researchers in Japan have most recently pronounced that in the future, cars would be running on water…no not exactly…. on water-components to be exact, with highly pressurized hydrogen firing up the car engines.

This would result in radically lessened expense on fuel and in fact would be so clean that it would boasts of zero rate emission of carbon dioxide. With the issue on climate change and global warming at the forefront in recent times, this hydrogen fuel prediction is none lesser than what could be termed as timely.

An executive of Mazda Corporation had boldly announced how his company foresees “The Hydrogen Society”, explaining how a rotary engine would make hydrogen fuel fully viable fuel for cars and other road transports. He said that the rotary engine would resolve the problem of abnormal combustion that common-type internal combustion engines poses when using highly-pressurized hydrogen gas. Apparently, hydrogen burns faster than gasoline and at a much lower temperature thus common engines would not be able to function efficiently on it. Mazda had found a solution to this problem by using the rotary engine technology and it is applying it now on its latest RX-8 Hydrogen RE model.

In 1996, Mazda had gained permit from the Japanese government to make commercially available the RX-8 Hydrogen RE model car, one that has two fuel tanks and could run both on the usual petroleum gasoline as well as hydrogen and had been leased to a number of companies there as well as to some government agencies. Apparently, that test-marketing had resulted in some positive gains that now, Mazda is audaciously pronouncing a future of wide hydrogen use.

But is the “Hydrogen Society” really a practicable idea?

In my mind, the hydrogen technology is such a viable idea and there’s no question about its feasibility—-simply said, hydrogen is for certain a proven combustible element that could produce sizable energy. However, I feel that Mazda may be a little bit unrealistic by painting this “future” as very nearby when in fact, at the rate that the advancement in hydrogen technology (as fuel in cars) had been going and the not-so-ideal reception of the public to hybrid cars (hybrid electric cars and those powered by hydrogen fuel cells have so far not been sold in huge numbers despite it’s averred advantages), the “hydrogen society” may not be at hand in the near future. Maybe in a hundred years.

If you ask me if “The Hydrogen Technology” is a good idea, then of course I would opined that it is a very good idea, in fact nearly an utopia. By all means and in all sense, I would like to run my car in a very convenient way, on cheap fuels that is based on a very common commodity, which is water. Who would not like that to happen?

In any case, it makes me wonder how this brave pronouncement by a group of Japanese researchers would affect the present status quo in the world oil market, even as global oil prices have now reached record-high, just about a couple of days ago, towards the unbelievable $90 rate, a price level that had not been breached before. Would oil traders panic and drive the prices further upward. To be sure, a future where cars would run on widely-available hydrogen fuels would for certain harmed their interest, as demands for petroleum would dramatically go down by then.

I just hope that oil producers would not take this “Hydrogen Society” pronouncement so seriously and decide to further disturb the status quo by increasing oil prices globally.

On a more personal note, this topic reminds me how I had this friend in highschool nicknamed “Snik” (he was in higher years). He had this seemingly sordid story about this one Filipino scientist who was able to invent a car that could run on water. I was full of unbelief of course when he had brought up this story to me. He had insisted that it was true, in bated breath at that. So I asked him about what had happened to the scientist and his water-fuelled car. Snik said, the scientist just disappeared one day and was unheard of ever since. Why? I asked. How did it happen that he suddenly disappeared? I was thinking that maybe—-as Snik was insinuating—-he had gained some enemies due to his secret formula and had been exterminated. No, Snik answered me—-his face so sullen with ultimate seriousness, the kind of face one usually sees on a no nonsense kind of guy—-the Filipino scientist was bought off by the oil carter, paid a very handsome price so as not to ever introduce the technology to the public and then to surrender his masterplan on it.

By the way, Snik was also one who—-every time he hears a very good song playing on the radio—-had always said that the particular song sounds just like the one he had composed and that he had just thrown his composition into a trashcan and that most probably, somebody found it and thus, the song was being played, without him being credited as the original composer.

He had also intimated to me how one day, he had a drawing of a very powerful weapon but had decided to throw it into (yet another) trashcan. When I asked how did the weapon looked like and if he could draw it again. He just said that if I looked carefully at an M-16 Armalite, it looked exactly like that. And thus he said, he was really the one who had designed the oh-so-famous Armalite, and that somebody had just found his design in a trashcan.

So perhaps, Snik is just too wordy for comfort. He just doesn’t make sense.

But does “A Hydrogen Society” make sense to you?