Hydrogen: The 19th and Early 20th Century

My main focus for this blog has been to explore the question: "Is hydrogen a realistic fuel source for the future?"  In order to discover more about the topic, I researched some of the early origins of hydrogen and its early applications.  I was surprised to find that much of the history of hydrogen research occurred several hundred years ago.  This led me to another question, how was hydrogen being used in the 19^th and early 20^th century?

Christian Friedrich Schonbein published  his experiment with electrolysis in 1838.

Much of the lead up to the modern history of fuel cell use occurred in the 1800s.  In 1838, a German scientist named Christian Friedrich Schonbein published some of the work he had been doing documenting the effects of electrolysis on water.  A few years later, Sir William Robert Grove, a Welsh scientist and attorney, using Schonbein’s principles, designed what many consider to be the first fuel cell.  The Grove cell, as it came to be known, used zinc and platinum electrodes submerged in two different kinds of acid solutions to generate electricity.  Grove’s fuel cell served as both an inspiration to future battery system designers, as well as future hydrogen fuel cell designers.  Grove’s cell was so popular at the time of its invention that it became the primary energy source for the American telegraph system from 1840-1860.

The Grove cell was used in the American telegraph system from 1840-1860.

Sir William Robert Grove, Welsh scientist and attorney.

Another landmark event in the history of hydrogen occurred later in the 19^th century.  The author Jules Verne thought enough of hydrogen as a future fuel source to include it in his 1874 novel, “The Mysterious Island.”  In chapter 11, after a meal in the granite house, the journalist Gideon Spilett questions the railroad engineer Cyrus Harding about the future of coal-powered industry:

"And what will they burn instead of coal?"

"Water," replied Harding.

"Water!" cried Pencroft, "water as fuel for steamers and engines! water to heat water!"

"Yes, but water decomposed into its primitive elements," replied Cyrus Harding, "and decomposed doubtless, by electricity, which will then have become a powerful and manageable force,”

(See the bottom 1/3 of the page in the link, if you want to read the full text)

"The Mysterious Island" by Jules Verne, published in 1874 predicts the use of hydrogen fuels.

During the discussion, Harding’s wild proclamation is met with agreement by the other characters Pencroft, Neb, and Herbert, who all seem to agree that water will be the fuel of the future.  To clarify, water is a primary ingredient in the hydrogen fuel cell process since the hydrogen used to produce the electricity is usually derived from water.  By extension, water is considered a fuel source, when using hydrogen fuel cell technology, as predicted by Jules Verne in “The Mysterious Island.” This anachronistic prediction is still used as evidence of the power of hydrogen fuel by proponents of the fuel source, even in the 21^st century.

The LZ-1 takes flight in 1900.

Much more research on hydrogen was done in the latter half of the 19^th century, and at the dawn of the 20^th century, many believed that hydrogen held great promise as a technical wonder of the future.  Among those was the German general and aircraft manufacturer, Ferdinand von Zeppelin who in the year 1900 launched his first hydrogen filled airship, the LZ-1.  A few years later in 1906, Zeppelin proved that airships could be useful for manned flight when he produced the LZ-3.  The LZ-3 traveled 4,398 km over the course of 45 successful flights and was eventually purchased by the German military, where it remained in use until 1913.

Despite the success of some early airships, hydrogen eventually was met with a degree of skepticism as a reliable lightweight gas for inflating airship chambers.  This was mainly due to the fact of its highly combustible nature.  The potential of hydrogen as a fuel source is questioned, to this day, because of one major event, the notorious 1937 Hindenburg disaster.  The LZ-129 Hindenburg was a very large commercial airship, built by the Zeppelin Company of Germany in the early 1930s.  While the LZ-129 successfully completed seven round trips to Rio De Janeiro and ten round trips to New York, it is mostly remembered for its monumental crash at the U.S. Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Manchester Township, New Jersey.

The LZ-129 Hindenburg explodes over U.S. Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey.

While preparing to land, the LZ-129 Hindenburg mysteriously exploded into a massive ball of fire, the cause of which is still debated today.  While speculative theories range from the possibility of sabotage, to the existence of an unusually flammable kind of paint on the exterior that may have caught on fire, the most widely accepted theory used to explain the explosion is due to the fact that when pure hydrogen gas, in the right proportions, mixes with atmospheric oxygen, it can become combustible.  It is a lesser-known fact however, that many people actually survived the accident.  Only about 1/3 of passengers or crew, on the ground or in the ship, were killed in the explosion.  Despite this fact, even today when engineers debate the use of hydrogen in engineering applications, critics constantly remind them of the Hindenburg crash.