the most abundant element on earth.

It really is nature's fuel.

We're at a very interesting stage of development

of this technology where it's not quite ready for prime time

time but it's getting tantalizingly close

Fuel cell technology is evolving,

the technology is improving constantly.

We're competing in a market that we have to compete

with batteries and generators, and how do we do this?

I think hydrogen has great potential

to become one of our primary fuels

for the transportation industry in the future.

I would much rather drive my fuel cell vehicle

than my gasoline vehicle.

Funding provided by:

The U.S. Department of Energy

National Energy Technology Laboratory.

The Energy &amp. Environmental Research Center's

National Center for Hydrogen Technology.

and the members of Prairie Public.

[bass &amp. drums play in bright rhythm]

(female narrator) You've probably heard something about hydrogen.

You may know hydrogen can be used to fuel cars.

But did you know that hydrogen is used safely

all around you every day?

In data centers, warehouses,

golf courses, and even breweries.

Hydrogen is nature's fuel.

It can be made where you want, when you want.

Imagine living in a world without concerns about

energy security or pollution. where you can get

all the energy you need from domestic sources.

Imagine the world of fuel cells

using safe, clean, abundant hydrogen.

This is actually an electric car, it's got

an electric motor in the front that drives the car forward.

And it gets most of its electricity

from fuel cell system that converts hydrogen and oxygen

from the air into electricity and water as a waste product.

The concept of the fuel cell has

been around for 150 years as a chemical principle.

Starting about the '60s these devices were made for space

and over about last 15 years automakers have been

working very hard to develop the technology for automobiles

as a way of simultaneously reducing the use of oil,

reducing air pollution and also

reducing the release of greenhouse gases

This type of fuel cell is called

a PEM fuel cell, proton exchange membrane.

The way I like to explain it, it's like a sandwich where in

the middle of the sandwich, the meat of the sandwich,

if you will, you have a membrane material, you have hydrogen

on one side, and you have platinum as catalyst material.

That catalyst allows the hydrogen molecule

to split apart into protons and electrons.

The protons go through the membrane, the electrons have to

go around the membrane, and as those electrons are

going around the membrane, they are powering the electric motor.

Everything meets on the side with the oxygen

and forms water as the waste product.

Sometimes you'll hear it called a fuel cell stack.

It's a whole stack of these fuel cells just like you stack batteries

together in a flashlight to build up more voltage.

In a car like this you might have 400 fuel cells

all stacked together to give you a few hundred volts.

Currently we produce in the world

over 50 million tons of hydrogen

with about a fifth of that

being consumed in the United States.

That hydrogen is being used primarily as a feedstock

for making agricultural products such as fertilizer

and also a chemical feedstock

to take the petroleum in its raw form and make it

into e petroleum that we use in either diesel or gasoline.

It's also used for medical applications, food processing,

a variety of smaller type uses.

If you look down the road in the hydrogen economy,

some of those uses are for transportation

such as forklifts in a warehouse, backup power,

or even putting electricity onto the grid.

As always, when you start going into new markets

it becomes difficult for commercial companies

to invest in something that is years out,

so that's why we have programs

like the National Center for Hydrogen Technology

where you have some government support

because that federal support helps bridge that gap.

With that we work closely with commercial partners,

and we find opportunities to provide

developments in terms of being more effective, lower cost,

better environmental advantages, and these are all things

that are helping to buoy the hydrogen economy.

As we go down this path and we get those goals met,

we start grabbing more and more market opportunities.

becomes a matter of greatly reducing

the cost of producing the hydrogen as well,

the fuel cells, and also the end uses.

And we then reach more and more applications,

and we then see it accelerating, and as that happens

you get the benefit of more public buy-in.

The more they're familiar with technology,

the more they want it, and the more they are interested.

We see some very significant

technological evolution taking place which says

that hydrogen can be exceptionally competitive,

and we firmly believe that the ultimate

energy source in this world is going to be hydrogen.

Hydrogen is interesting. it can be made

a lot of different ways there's a lot of domestic resources

that can be used to make hydrogen.

Any source of electricity can be used

to make hydrogen from water.

Hydrogen can also be made through a lot of biomass pathways.

Right now it's made a lot from natural gas

which is not ultimately sustainable

but is sort of a bridge technology to potentially

getting to cleaner sources of hydrogen in the future.

(narrator) To get hydrogen from water,

we can use electricity

to break the chemical bonds between oxygen and hydrogen.

This process is called electrolysis.

Hydrogenics is a global leader

in the development of fuel cells and on-site hydrogen generation.

We can provide the hydrogen stations that produce the hydrogen.

The process starts with the electrolyzer-- that's where we make that hydrogen.

We take city water, and we purify it,

and put that inside our electrolyzer.

From then, the water's electrolyzed.

We produce hydrogen and oxygen.

Oxygen is vented and hydrogen is captured.

It is then purified through our dryer and purifier.

The purifier removes any trace oxygen

inside the hydrogen stream.

And the dryer removes any moisture

that was left over from the electrolysis process.

The gas comes out at about 150 psi.

From then on it's compressed to 6000 psi

where it is stored into storage tanks.

From the storage tanks, the gas is diverted into the dispenser.

(narrator) Most of the hydrogen we have today

comes from natural gas

through a process called steam methane reforming.

I would say about 90% of the world's hydrogen

comes from fossil fuels, from reforming natural gas.

For that you need the capital cost of millions of dollars

to create your plant.

And you produce thousands of kilograms in one day.

(narrator) We can get hydrogen

from coal through gasification.

(Tom Erickson) We've been using coal in this country for many many years,

and primarily it's been combusted.

We burn the coal d we essentially

convert it entirely to heat.

In a gasification system, we convert coal

into something very similar to natural gas.

Then that natural gas has an extremely high hydrogen content,

and we can then take that

and either manipulate it to pure hydrogen

or we can even produce liquid fuels from it.

Gasification has the promise of being one of the few sources

that we can use to produce

very, very large quantities of hydrogen.

So as we transition to a hydrogen economy, coal is

one of those domestic resources that can really step in.

We believe very strongly that

coal must remain a part of our energy future.

In order to do that we must find the technologies

to utilize it more efficiently and effectively.

We're convinced that because of the experience and knowledge

that we've gained from our Dakota Gasification Project

that we have a way in which to find the solution

to this very challenging issue