Environmental Prospects of "Hydrogen" Electricity for Transport

One of the main problems of our time is environmental pollution with harmful substances formed during the combustion of traditional hydrocarbon fuels in internal combustion engines that provide the movement of vehicles. This is especially acute in large cities. The solution is the transition to electric power, the use of which in transport is possible, firstly, by charging traction batteries from external power grids that transmit electricity from power plants. And secondly, by generating electricity directly in transport using fuel cells that use chemical reagents, with hydrogen serving as the fuel, air as the oxidizer, and water as the oxidation product. But the environmental effect of using electricity in transport is usually considered specifically for the places where transport is used. Electricity is mainly generated at thermal power plants by burning hydrocarbon fuels - natural gas and coal, which results in the formation of harmful substances and their subsequent release into the atmosphere. When generating electricity at nuclear power plants, a large amount of water vapor is released into the atmosphere (due to cooling water in cooling towers), which has three times the greenhouse activity of carbon dioxide. The operation of plants using renewable energy sources (solar, wind) depends significantly on natural conditions: the presence and strength of wind and clouds, precipitation in the form of snow, hail, freezing rain, due to which their installed capacities are not realized and this type of electricity generation plays only an auxiliary role. Hydroelectric power plants also play an auxiliary role due to their low prevalence. A partial solution to the problem of environmental pollution is the joint use of a heat engine and an electric motor: in this case, the former operates periodically and also provides recharging of traction batteries. An additional effect is provided by the use of hydrogen in heat engines instead of traditional hydrocarbon fuels, since the direct product of hydrogen combustion is water, and the accompanying product is nitrogen oxide due to the oxidation of nitrogen by oxygen (components of air) as a result of the high temperature developed during the combustion of hydrogen. But in nature there is practically no free hydrogen, and its production is ensured mainly by steam conversion of methane, which is accompanied by the formation of harmful substances and "greenhouse" gases. In addition, hydrogen has a very low volumetric energy density, due to which energy is required for its compression, liquefaction, production of high-pressure cylinders and cryocylinders, as well as for the creation of the corresponding filling infrastructure, which differs from that for natural gas. The same applies to liquid hydrogen carriers.