Every year, companies produce more than 56 billion kilograms of hydrogen worldwide. Using 2009 data from the Renewable Fuels Association, that works out to 2½ times more hydrogen than ethanol produced worldwide. Air Products, Linde, Praxair and other industrial gas companies have hydrogen production sites near almost every major U.S. and European city.
In North America, about 53% of the hydrogen is dedicated to transportation. It’s used to remove sulfur from petroleum at refineries, making gasoline cleaner. The second biggest use of hydrogen is making fertilizer. The “Haber process” converts nitrogen from the air, which plants cannot use, into a form (ammonia) that they can use. Next on the hydrogen use list is making methyl alcohol, which is used in used as a solvent and in the manufacture of paints, cements, inks, varnishes, paint strippers, and many other products. It is what burns in the camping fuel, Sterno.
Hydrogen is also used in food processing and producing consumer products. Hydrogen is used to test airtight packages for leaks, to make sorbitol in sugar substitutes, and is added to products like toothpaste and laundry detergent to help whiten and brighten. The major use of hydrogen for consumer products is hydrogenation of fats and oils. Most animal fats are unsaturated—they have some double bonds between adjacent carbon atoms. Hydrogenating the fat fills the gaps in the double bonds with hydrogen atoms, converting the double bonds to single bonds and creating a saturated fat. Saturated fats, like margarine, have higher melting points and stand up to heat better than unsaturated fats. However, saturated fats raise people's blood cholesterol and increase the risk of heart disease.
Hydrogen also has applications in physics and engineering. Hydrogen is used for TIG welding, to cool rotors in electrical power generators, for processing metal, cutting quartz, and to prevent oxidation in vacuum tubes. The semiconductor industry uses hydrogen in several ways to make the chips that go into all our electronics.
Hydrogen as fuel is still a new idea, but using hydrogen is not. Many of the codes, standards and safety regulations developed for hydrogen over the last 60 years are paving the way for dispensing hydrogen as a vehicle fuel.
