"Hydrogen purification" isn't a term that's considered part of the popular lexicon. While politicians and armchair environmentalists discuss the feasibility and possibility of an impending hydrogen economy, the details of how we'll process and use the hydrogen in question are rarely brought up (and reasonably so, since the process of hydrogen purification isn't tremendously accessible to the lay person). But hydrogen purification is a lurking giant. Though the process has been relatively common for years, it has the capacity to affect a tremendous change in the world economy and culture.

Simply put, hydrogen purification is the method by which pure hydrogen is obtained from an existing source, or by which contaminants are removed from impure hydrogen. While the engines of the future may be fueled by hydrogen (alongside other alternative energy sources like wind, solar and wave power), that hydrogen must be ultrapure, or almost entirely free of impurities. This means that, for a widespread hydrogen economy to be implemented, science and industry must embrace hydrogen purification as a means of generating a fuel source. Currently, hydrogen purification is most often used to obtain ultrapure hydrogen for use in creating things like light-emitting diodes and semiconductors.

But if we purify hydrogen in order to use it as a fuel source, we can power our cars, trucks, trains, boats and heavy industry with a cleaner and safer brand of fuel than we currently use. Hydrogen purification, when used as a tool to produce motive power, carries three big benefits:

Hydrogen purification reduces air pollution and other forms of pollution.

Hydrogen is a clean-burning fuel source. Current internal combustion engines, while among the most fuel-efficient in history, are still far from perfect, and release an unsafe amount of carbon monoxide and other pollutants, which in turn create smog and lower air quality. Much of this occurs in cities, where the majority of the world's population lives and works. What's more, storage and transportation of fossil fuels is also imperfect, resulting in oil spills, pipeline explosions and leaks, and oil well fires. Increasing the amount of hydrogen we use as fuel can drastically reduce the incidence of pollution.

Hydrogen purification weakens the impact of global warming.

Carbon monoxide, the primary by-product of burning gasoline, is a greenhouse gas. While some greenhouse gases are essential to Earth's atmosphere (without them the planet would be too cold to sustain life), an excess of such gases can overheat the planet. In a worst-case scenario, this can result in rising sea levels, optimal conditions for tropical parasites and other ailments, and limited availability of potable water. Most of the world's nations have named global warming as one of the primary challenges to be solved in the coming years, meaning the search for alternative energy sources will only increase.

Hydrogen purification makes us less dependent on fossil fuels.

Along with providing a more readily renewable energy source than oil, coal or natural gas (all of which are rapidly dwindling in supply), a hydrogen economy would make the U.S. less beholden to nations that produce oil. This would mean less involvement in the volatile politics in places like Russia, the Middle East and Venezuela.

As the problems associated with fossil fuels seem to grow insurmountable, the world will look to other methods of creating motive power in order to preserve the comfortable lifestyles many of us enjoy. While some futurists and environmentalists look to a 21st Century without cars or widespread air travel, others of us look to the fossil fuel problem as one to be solved creatively, with tools already at hand. Hydrogen purification can be one of our most important tools.