REFUELING AT YOUR OWN RESIDENCE

Refueling at your own residence could be possible, that question is really about what our decision-makers come up with, but it will certainly be feasible. We can already "refuel" our own electric car, as well as other people's. So with the right equipment, if we want to be environmentally friendly, i.e. green electricity, which means solar cells on the roof or a wind turbine, you can produce your own hydrogen, it “just” needs to be compressed to have it in a vehicle.

For nearly 150 years, we have more or less relied on petrol and diesel to propel our vehicles and vessels on roads, in water and in the air. There were actually also other options over a hundred years ago that were probably so close to succeeding instead. Electricity, for example, was far ahead, all sorts of different types of electric vehicles existed over 100 years ago. Speed ​​records of over 200 km/h with electric cars were set on the high-speed tracks at the beginning of the last century in America. Steam-powered vehicles were also an option, not only trains but also passenger cars. But then what was it that made the petrol and the diesel the ones that won the game? You will not be able to get any answers to these questions. Another relevant question is; what would the environment have looked like today if other alternatives had been found then?

Would we have had the global temperature increase that we have today if we had invested in something else instead of diesel and petrol? But the fact is that when the car and the combustion engine made their entrance at the beginning of the last century, it was considered a good environmental investment, the big cities around the world had big problems with all the horses inside the cities that pulled wagons with both goods and people. A big problem was that the horses also had to fulfill their natural needs both number 1 and number 2 and of course this was done everywhere in the middle of the city.

In addition, this was something that the horses did 24 hours a day, regardless of whether they were in use or not, unlike the car, when it was not being driven, of course you just turned it off, and then did not consume any gasoline or diesel at all, it then released nor emit any exhaust gasses.

 

The hydrogen, on the other hand, at this time did not have a major field of use, in any case it was no longer relevant as propulsion for vehicles on the roads, at least not for general use, on the research level there was an ongoing process. What they came up with instead was that you could use the light gas to make other crafts fly, the Zeppelin. Actually, these were intended for helium and had been used to fly across the Atlantic. Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich Von Zeppelin, who was born in Germany in the early 19th century, was the man behind these crafts.^[1] Since America at that time was the world leader in helium production but at the same time did not allow export, the craft was filled with hydrogen. Unfortunately, together with air or oxygen it becomes very flammable. In 1937 during a flight with the Zeppelin Hindenburg in America when landing it suddenly caught fire. It is believed that it was struck by lightning but it is still not clear today if this was what triggered the accident, or if it was a sabotage. In any case the whole thing was caught on film. The craft quickly went down to the ground and the progress of the fire was very fast. 35 people on board and one on the ground died. Whether or not this accident may have led to great skepticism about hydrogen gas or not, one can only speculate, but the strong disaster film probably had a great impact on the use of the gas. In any case, the Hindenburg disaster marked the end of the era of large airships, for the time.^[2]