Hydrogen Fuel - no toxins, but plenty of greenhouse gases

Greenhouse gases are those that contribute to global warming. If you were to take a reading of the main gases in a greenhouse, you would get Water, Oxygen and CO2. Water and CO2 absorb infrared strongly, which means that high amounts of them in the atmosphere will make the place a whole lot warmer.

Hydrogen fuel cars catalyze the combination of H2 and O2 gases into water with either a platinum or palladium catalyst:

2(H2) + (O2) ---> 2(H2O)

Here's my question: Today our cars and factories are completely dousing the environment with toxins and pollutants. If we were to stop this amount of pollution and replace it with an equivalent water vapor output, would we be releasing too much water into the air than good? Would this contribute even more to global warming?

I suspect that if we can put out enough gunk-air to put a hole in the ozone layer, then I suspect that we could put out enough water vapor to significantly raise the temperature of air globally. Of course, I am studying to be a biochemical/organic analyst, not an atmospheric chemist or meteorologist, so my hypothesis on this is limited.

Add a condenser to turn the vapour to liquid and just let it drip away, or conversly 'season it' and put it into a tank for consumption by driver/passengers. Much easier to fix then C02 IMHO.

Or again Divert it to a tank and have solar panel embedded in the roof re-catalyze it releasing O2 and adding a trickle of H into the tank.

The bigger questions of the Hydrogen economy are not the Vapour issue, but the issue of catalyzing enough H2 sustainably. The only economical way right now is through Nuclear power.

[edit on 6-9-2005 by sardion2000]

All that water dripping from thousands of vehicles will freeze onto the road and increase the number of times a road surface would have to be de-iced by the salt trucks.

All that salt eventually ends up in the storm drains and in my area that run-off goes into Lake Ontario.

In warmer weather, like our hot humid summers, I can only imagine on a calm day how much more humidity this could add to the air in a major city.

It will be interesting to see how this works out, I don't see any way to really test this before we actually move forward into hydrogen fuel in a large way, and see the results as we go along.