First and foremost, I love scitechdaily.com, always something interesting to read there. This caught my eye a couple days ago as more methods for hydrogen fuel extraction are popping up but most fizzle out due to it being not economically viable.

This article though shows some promise though thanks to those doing the research at the University of Colorado Boulder. The image reminds me of something from Fallout: New Vegas too.

Anyways here is the article: http://scitechdaily.com/engineers-develop-water-splitting-solar-thermal-system-to-produce-hydrogen-fuel/

Now it is still experimental (theory) but the article states something is very true, using the sun as the primary energy imput to split water for hydrogen fuel is truly the holy grail of the next step. Of course there are many hurdles that center around logistics (storage, distribution, and getting people to buy into it) but with some time and investment, that could easily be solved. Though the big one is time because almost all invdestors, even long term ones, want quick turnarounds...usually within 5 years.

Thought I would share with you all, enjoy the read.

The biggest challenge for using hydrogen as a fuel source is finding a way to safely store it in a form that has a sufficiently high energy density to be competitive with existing fuels. For a comparison, gasoline has an energy density of 36 MJ/L, while even compressed to 70 MPa (690 atm) hydrogen only has an energy density 5.6 MJ/L (and at that kind of pressure you're looking at some serious nastiness of the tank were to rupture). Until the issue of safely storing hydrogen in a form that has a high energy density is solved it simply won't be a competitive fuel source regardless of how readily it can be produced.

Hydrogen also has a nasty habit of leaking like a sieve. It's nearly impossible to contain hydrogen with even the best of our current technology, much less the cheap consumer-grade technology that would be used in mass-produced cars.

In the end, though, hydrogen isn't a fuel source. Hydrogen is effectively a battery. It's the reason why hydrogen production currently cheats by fracturing it off of fossil fuels: Creation of hydrogen from water is a net-energy loss and always will be. That said, hydrogen does have many advantages over traditional batteries.

Oil companies would never allow a new, viable source of energy to arise. They are at the seat of power in terms of economics, and in a sense, they rule the world this way.

The only way this new method of obtaining hydrogen fuel is ever going to be our "new oil" is if these existing oil companies start producing it themselves.

A thick-walled metal tank seems to do the job all right, at least from how long the one in my lab seems to hold hydrogen at several thousand psi. Then again, once you introduce more moving parts and valves (more places for the hydrogen to escape) and crank the pressure a bit more, I wouldn't be too suprised if it does become much more difficult to keep hydrogen contained.