Q1.
The idea of using hydrogen as an alternative for fossil fuels, has been placed on the table by reason of the depletion of fossil fuels and global warming. Despite its unavailability as a ready to use material, hydrogen has its promising features of being energy carrier or fuel. Fossil fuel consumption has generated various number of problems such as harmful pollutant emission, causing global warming and the political conflicts which threaten the survival of the humankind. Besides, these fuels need to be burnt so as to release their energy, therefore, it costs a heat-waste to the atmosphere.

In contrast, hydrogen has its own optimistic physical and chemical qualities. It has a promising future of viability as long as the existence of mankind. By means of its abundance, hydrogen can be produced or obtained using various methods of which are “green” and clean approaches, mostly. It is realistically feasible to produce and consume hydrogen in mega scale, and its consumption causes with minimal harmful pollutants in which the only byproduct is to be water regardless of the utilization method.

The flashpoint of hydrogen is quite lower than other fossil fuels. Therefore, hydrogen powered engines may need less sophisticated ignition or starting equipment than the ones using other vehicles because hydrogen achieves its gaseous state at low temperatures to be burnt. Furthermore, the large gap of 4-75% between the lower flammability level (LFL) and the higher flammability level (HFL) makes it possible to be used as a fuel for turbines and combustion engines. Hence, hydrogen makes the designs of the engines in automotive, transportation and industrial applications more structurally simple.

In addition, hydrogen has a significantly high-octane number compared to other fossil fuels, in which it can avoid unnecessary auto ignitions in combustion chambers.
A range of different methods are to generate hydrogen from variety of resources. However, the main resource for mass scale of hydrogen production has been the fossil-based fuels, by virtue of its low cost and easy handling in the machines designed to run by fossil fuels. Hydrogen extraction by breaking large and heavy hydro-carbon bonds of coal, biomass, oil, gasoline, methane, and methanol, is the most famous methods of hydrogen production. The largest hydrogen production share owns to steam-methane reforming (SMR) which is almost 48%. It uses the following highly endothermic reaction.

H2O + CH4 ----------> CO + 3 H2

Coal and oil line up in next in the hydrogen production share with 30% and 18% respectively. The other 4% of the share is owned by the hydrogen production by water electrodes, whereas other resources are not being used in mass scale.

If the world ran out of fossil fuels, we would need to consider increase the production of hydrogen from water, which is apparently much healthier for the existence of the world itself. By this method, water is split using an electric current. Thereby, following reactions would occur.

1. Using index notation, prove the following: 2. Consider the ve...