有时候看新闻看光标题是不够的。比如这篇。译完了才发现这居然是篇会议新闻通稿？居然没谈氢气价格很快会下降的方法？只说了日本熊本大学的一个最新研究发现。
Cheap Hydrogen Could Soon Become A Reality
便宜的氢气很快能变成现实
Few younger readers will remember how popular hydrogen fuel cells were in the media a couple of decades ago. They came beforeelectric cars. They were supposed to be the cleaner alternative to internal combustion engines. And they never really took off because hydrogen fuel cells were simply too costly to make. But people continued to work with hydrogen because it is the most abundant element in the universe, and its conversion into energy does not as a rule result in harmful by-products.
很少会有年轻的读者能记得十几年前燃料电池是多么的受媒体的欢迎。它们比电动汽车的出现更早。且被认为是内燃机的清洁替代品。而燃料电池之所以没有真正的被推广起来，是因为氢能燃料电池的成本简直是太高太高了。时至今日人们仍然在对燃料电池进行研发，是因为氢是这个宇宙中最含量最为丰富的元素，在氢利用的过程中不会有任何有害副产物的排放。
A recent study by researchers from Kumamoto University found a way to extract hydrogen from ammonia without the release ofnoxious nitrogen oxides. They added a new compound comprising copper, silicon,and aluminum, which made ammonia combust at lower than usual temperatures, andit eliminated the release of nitrogen oxides. Theoretically, this method couldproduce energy from hydrogen in a much cheaper way than other existing methods.Until it’s scalable, this breakthrough remains in the potential stage.
日本熊本大学最近的一项研究，找到了一种从氨气中提取氢气而不翻译有毒的氮氧化物的过程。他们往里增加了一种新的化合物，包括铜，硅和铝，这就使得氨的燃烧的温度要低于平时的温度，并且消除了氮氧化物的释放。从理论上琰说，这种方法可以比其它现有的办法，能够更为便宜的提取到氢气。而在大规模的利用以前，这种突破仍然处在一种潜在利用的阶段。
Meanwhile in Europe, renewable power is becoming soabundant that it could be used to produce cheap hydrogen without the need forany scientific breakthroughs. Last month Euractiv cited a report from a Germananalytical firm, Energy Brainpool, that said surplus electricity from solar andwind farms can be used to convert water into hydrogen through hydrolysis.Hydrogen is relatively easy to store and use when needed or fed into the hydrogen fueling station network, which, truth be told, is a very sparse network.
同时在欧洲，可再生能源变得异常丰富，可以生产更为便宜的氢气，而不用任何科学方面的突破。上个月欧洲动态，引用了德国一家分析公司Energy Brainpool的分析，说太阳能和风能发电的多余电力，可通过电解水制氢将水转化为氢气。氢气相对容易存储和使用。说实话，氢气的管道还是非常少的。
According to Energy Brainpool, using surpluselectricity for hydrogen production can become cheaper with time as the efficiency levels of solar and wind installations rise and maintenance costsdecline further. In fact, at some point in the future, hydrogen could become cheaper than natural gas, which would naturally have major implications for its adoption. Again, this is only a theory because power-to-gas facilities in some countries in Europe are subject to high feed-in tariffs and grid charges that make them uneconomical in the application outlined by Energy Brainpool.
据Energy Brainpool公司说，利用多余电力制氢，随着时间的推移，太阳能和风能发电装置水平的提高，其维护成本也在进一步的下降。实际上，在未来的某一天，氢气可能会比天然气更为便宜。同样的是，这只是一种理论，因为欧洲某些国家的能源和天然氢的设施受到高电价和电网费用的制约，这就使得Energy Brainpool提出的氢能的应用显得不经济了。
Despite the challenges, work will certainlycontinue to find ways to use hydrogen as energy source or even as analternative to batteries. Hydrogen can be used for the storage of energy through hydrolysis—the process that breaks down water into its constituent elements. The hydrogen resulting from this process is then stored in caverns or tanks until the time comes when it needs to be converted back into electricityin gas-powered plants, for instance, or in fuel cells for vehicles. Again,costs are to date proving prohibitive for scaling this application of the gas.
尽管充满了挑战，但继续寻找氢能作为能源的方法，或是作为电池的方法仍然在继续进行-将水分解成其它元素的过程-进行能量的存储。在这一过程中产生的氢气会存储在地下室或是储氢罐中，直到，在天然气发电厂或是汽车的燃料电池中，利用氢气重新转化为电能。同样的是，同样的是，目前的成本也证明了氢气的大规模利用是受到了抑制的。
Early 2017 saw the launch of the Hydrogen Council,a group involving several leading automakers as well as Shell and Total,seeking ways to make hydrogen more commercially viable. The council allocated $1.4 billion to the development of energy storage and fuel cell project development until 2020, and has high hopes for the future. Indeed, the latest edition of gasworld that took place last month in Amsterdam had the Hydrogen Council’s Secretary Pierre-Etienne Franc talk about a hydrogen economy.
2017年被我们见证了世界氢能委员会的成立，这个由几家世界级的汽车生产商，和壳牌公司，道达尔，一起来寻找使氢能可适用于大规模商业应用的方法。世界氢能委员会将会投资14亿美元，对能源存储和燃料电池项目进行开发，一直投资到2020年，并寄希望于未来。上个月在阿姆斯特丹的最新的GASWORLD的会议上，世界氢能委员会的秘书长Pierre-Etienne Franc就谈到了氢能经济。
Hydrogen is tempting because of its abundance and the various ways in which it can be used as a cleaner alternative to oil and gas. Without solving the cost and scalability problems, however, it may never live to see its heyday.
氢能之所以有诱惑力，是因为它丰富多样的制氢方式，可作为更清洁的可替代石油和天然气的替代品。然而，如果不解决成本和规模利用的问题，我们永远也不会看到氢能发展的全盛时期了。
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