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Originally Posted by Sparks333
Hello!
I did an ISEF project on hydrogen and its uses as a power source. Believe me, you would do a lot better to modify a standard generator to run of hydrogen directly. It's easy, safe, and there's plans all over the place. It may be a little louder, but much quicker (Ex: a fuel cell is slow but efficient. A hydrogen engine isn't nearly as efficient, but much quicker.) Furthermore, any thoughts that it might explode is bunk. Unless you're using brown's gas (a really stupid thing to do), the hydrogen will (1) not even ignite until it comes within contact with the air, (2) not explode, only burn, unless it's compressed, which is almost never the case when a leak occurs, and (3) float up into the atmosphere, so even if it is burning, it will dissipate into the air quick enough it won't do damage, and it won't stay on the ground, like propane.
Sparks
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I was just going to point out the same thing. A small canister of hydrogen is safer than the small propane tanks used for camp stoves, and you never hear of those exploding.
Most of the perceived danger of hydrogen is actually Nazi propaganda. In the 30s, the United States had the only significant helium generation facilities in the world, and we refused to share the technology with the Germans. After the Hindenburg explosion (which was caused by the rocket-fuel-like coating used to make it shiny, not the hydrogen), the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, who had originally funded the Hindenburg, started spreading the myth that the hydrogen had exploded and that the disaster could have been avoided if the United States had been more open.
In fact, there is evidence that the hydrogen on the Hindenburg never caught fire at all -- it floated away before it could ignite. This is especially likely, because two years before the Hindenburg disaster, a helium dirigible exploded over California just as violently despite the lack of hydrogen.