It was not the use of hydrogen that was discredited, rather, scientists realized that the infrastructure to support the hydrogen economy would be very expensive. In fact, the Department of Energy published an estimate of $500 Billion for infrastructure costs. Other factors that dampened the initial enthusiasm for hydrogen were the stubbornly high costs of fuel cell technology, and the difficulty of finding low-cost methods to store and transport hydrogen.

Asemblon’s hydrogen technology, the HYDRNOL™ Carrier, solves these issues in a very elegant way. While the lack of affordable fuel cells is likely to be an issue for another decade at least, hydrogen can be used with great effect to co-combust with gasoline or diesel in existing vehicles. Pollution, including carbon soot, can be reduced substantially at reasonable cost while engine power and efficiency are actually increased.

Hydrogen is not expensive to produce. Large volume purchases at the source can be made for less than $1.50 per kilogram. Whereas the cost to deliver this same kilogram is between $3.50 and $6.00 using compressed or liquid hydrogen, the cost to deliver it using the HYDRNOL Carrier is about $2.28.