What is the difference between hydrogen combustion and fuel cell technology? Are they the same thing?
Combustion simply means burning. When you burn hydrogen in the presence of oxygen, you produce heat and water. One example of combustion is the burning of hydrogen (or gasoline or diesel or natural gas or propane) inside an internal combustion engine of a car. Striking a match, burning a piece of paper or lighting a fire in a fireplace produces combustion. Fuel cells combine hydrogen and oxygen in an electrochemical reaction to produce electricity, heat and water. • How does the energy from hydrogen compare to other fuels? Hydrogen is the lightest element occurring in nature and contains a large amount of energy in its chemical bond. Hydrogen has the highest energy to weight ratio of all fuels: 1 kilogram (kg) of hydrogen has the same amount of energy as 2.1 kg of natural gas or 2.8 kg of gasoline. Hydrogen burns in air at concentrations in the range of 4 to 75% percent by volume (methane burns at 5.3 to 15 percent concentrations by volume). The highest burning temperature of hydrogen
