Hydrogen has been used as a
fuel since the industrial revolution. Coal gas is over seventy percent hydrogen, the rest is carbon monoxide and small amounts of methane. During the war when domestic petrol was as rare as hen's teeth, farmers and buses and cars got by by making hydrogen as they went by getting a container of coke or anthracite glowing nicely, then letting
water into it to produce steam which was then reduced to hydrogen and carbon monoxide plus carbon dioxide. They called it Water-Gas. The cleaner the coal--the less scrubbing the gas had to go through before it could be used in an internal combustion
engine. Particle filters and bubbled through
water was about it.
Simpler versions, but less efficient just burned the coke in reduced oxygen and produced carbon monoxide--which would also run an internal combustion
engine but far less efficiently, but without having to carry a tank of water..
The advocates of the hydrogen economy are not intending to electrolyse acidulated water using excess
wind and
solar and tidal sources, while releasing the oxygen component into the atmosphere, or bottling it for uses requiring high purity. It would be GREAT of that were the case--and it should be the case.
What the fossil
fuel industries have in mind is to make it from coal. Watch out for the bastards in the fossil fuel industry and their rentlings in
power. They will destroy your little planet and make another Venus out of it. Unless they are stopped it is a certainty--but moving on--Making hydrogen from coal produces no oxygen--just more greenhouse CO2. No advantage whatsoever.
For a yachtsman, the way to store Hydrogen in small quantities is in a rubberised bladder--it is how it was done in WW2 when buses ran on it. They had a large rubberised
canvas bladder on the roof. Only those with a good
compressor could store it in bottles. The atomic hydrogen cutters used in precision industry use hydrogen stored in cylinders cylinders of
steel lined with special paint--but I think the
paint is just for prevention of
corrosion. It may also provide some seal.
The easiest way to produce hydrogen is in an electrolytic cell using caustic soda solution as an electrolyte. These use a
stainless steel container and
stainless steel electrodes. Plans for them exist on the internet--but it is essential the gasses produced do not mix.
The Russians ran jet engines on hydrogen as well as piston engined aircraft--but it was impractical unless liquefied, and in this condition it is used as rocket fuel, at which hydrogen excels. The second stage of the Atlas-Centaur space launch vehicle was hydrogen fuelled..It mixes 2:1 with liquid oxygen in the combustion chamber to form nothing but high pressure steam.
As
power for a yacht, the easiest way would be to use it in a
fuel cell to produce the power for an
electric motor. That way, excess power from
solar while at
anchor could be used to pr9oduce a bladder of hydrogen to use in a
fuel cell. Not all that practical, but possible.