Yesterday I attended a webinar on clean coal or coal to hydrogen technology. I think that this technology represents a way for us to transition from our current energy sources to a viable hydrogen economy in both the electric and vehicular fuel areas. When producing hydrogen from coal steam and coal (or another hydrocarbon) are reacted with each other and the hydrogen produced comes from the water primarily or partially depending on the hydrocarbon used.

One thing I am not fond of is that they are focusing mostly on fuel cells as a future use of hydrogen I pointed out that normal cars can be fitted to run on CNG and on hydrogen with the same system. Cars that are converted to run on CNG (compressed natural gas) can also run on gaseous hydrogen. If an on-board reformer is included in the system the consumer can cut their hydrocarbon fuel requirements by as much as 60% and their CO2 pollution by a similar percentage. So this process is a logical evolution of the Pickens Plan and, as such, should be interesting to members of the Plan.

Link to recorded webinar.

At the end of the webinar I was able to ask the expert panel questions about this process and while their answers weren't exactly what I had hoped for because they advocate producing the hydrogen at central facilities and then selling that to the consumer and this erases the personal savings the consumer would see by having the processor on board the vehicle it was a good explanation of the process overall.