Hydrogen is used in various fields of everyday life. It is used in the preparation of ammonia, heating oil, rocket fuel and methanol. It is also used in making lubricants, soaps, cleaners, cosmetics and vitamins etc. It is also used in the internal combustion engines of vehicles. Hydrogen has also replaced natural gas for heating and cooling purposes. It is used in existing wind and hydroelectric plants for storing energy.
Water is an important compound of water. Now let us look at the importance of hydrogen. • Weather Balloons: Since it is the least dense of gases, meteorologists use hydrogen to fill their weather balloons. The balloons which are about 2 m in diameter float up into the atmosphere, carrying a load of instruments. The instruments record information about atmospheric conditions. • Making fertilizers: A much more consuming demand for hydrogen is the manufacture of ammonia. Ammonium salts are used as fertilizers. • Extracting Metals: Some metals are obtained from their ores with the help of hydrogen. Tungsten is the metal which is used to make electric light filaments. It is mined as tungsten oxide. Hydrogen converts heated tungsten oxide into tungsten and water. Hydrogen removes oxygen from tungsten oxide. Another way of saying this is: hydrogen reduces tungsten oxide. • Margarine: Another industry which consumes hydrogen is manufacture of margarine. Solid fats, such a butter and margarine, can be sold for a higher price than vegetable oils, such as groundnut oil and sunflower see oil. Since these vegetable oils can be produced in large quantities, there is profit in converting them into solid fats. Hydrogen will do this, with the help of nickel acting as a catalyst. The process is called hydrogenation.
Hydrogen is a very important element because with out it we would not have water to drink because water is a compound made of oxygen and hydrogen{one atom of oxygen and two atoms of hydrogen hence the name H2O}
Airships and balloons,fuel and ‘clean’ fuel (petroleum), rockets, thermonuclear energy (nuclear energy caused by explosions) from the sun and fertilizer.
