The First Element: Delivery sistems

Hydrogen and fuel cells have the potential to solve the major energy security and environmental challenges that face decendence on petroleum imports, poor air quality and gas emissions. But the overall challenge to hydrogen production is cost reduction.

In order to succeed in the commercial marketplace, hydrogen must be comparable to conventional fuels and technologies on a cost-competitive transportation. A hydrogen economy requires an infraestructure to deliver hydrogen from where it's produced to the point of end-use. It includes a stationary power site, compressors, trucks and dispensers for delivering fuel.

Becouse of that, the U.S. Deparment of Energy supports a research with 7 million dolars to develop a wide range of technologies, to allow an economically and environmentally friendly production of hydrogen. The money will be given to four projects in California, Washington and Oregon to advanced hydrogen storage technologies, in order to help domestic automakers bring more fuel cell electric vehicles into the mainstream market. They attend to increase the performance of hydrogen storage by developing innovative materials, as well as advanced tanks for efficcient and safe transportation, in a three-year project that will help lower the cost of this energy source.
The technologies used for storing hydrogen vehicles will also affect the design and selection of a hydrogen delivery system and infraestructure. The system must avoid any unnecessary energy-intensive stage to maximize the overall energy efficiency. We have to consider three potential delivery paths:

Gaseous hydrogen delivery
Liquid hydrogen delivery
Novel solid or liquid hydrogen carriers

The liquid and gas paths transport pure hydrogen in its molecular form (H) via truck, pipeline, rail or barge, and those are primary methods for deliveryng industrial hydrogen today. The carrier pathway uses materials that transport hydrogen in another form than free H_2 molecules, such as liquid hydrocarbons, metal hybrides, chemical hybrides or ther hydrogen-rich compounds. Here are an explaining figure: