Tpo 9 (integrated)

In this set of materials, the reading part discusses disadvantages of the internal-combustion and using hydrogen-based fuel-cell engine instead, and the author provides three reasons of support. And the listening section casts doubt on the information presented in the article, and argues that it is true that the internal-combustion engines are harmful for environment but the reasons for using hydrogen-based engine are little optimistic.

First, the passage posits that petroleum is finite resource but the hydrogen cannot easily be depleted and hydrogen can be derived from various plentiful sources. However, the talk makes the point that hydrogen is not an easily available substance. Deriving pure hydrogen technically is very difficult, it needs a lab with -150 degree environment, and storing it as liquid is hard, therefore it is not practically easy to use as fuel.

Second, the text asserts that hydrogen-based fuel cells will solve many of the world's pollution problems, carbon dioxide is the product of burning oil. On the contrary, the lecturer believes that the factories which is purifying the hydrogen use oil or coil as their energy source, hence, purifying the hydrogen itself need lots of energy which comes from fossil fuels and the factories will contaminate the earth instead of the cars.

Third, according to the article, the fuel-cell engines are cost and energy efficient and they consume half energy that the internal-combustion engines use for the same distance. The speaker disagrees with this point, and postulates that the manufacturing the hydrogen-based engines is costly because they use platinum which is very expensive and rare metal, hydrogen needs it to make electricity, moreover the researchers’ try for replacing platinum with other cheap material is unsuccessful.