Otherwise, the practicality of electrolytic hydrogen will depend on whether electricity is available. That in turn first requires either the proximity of a river with a suitable gradient and flow rate (for hydroelectric power), or of fuel (coal, oil, wood, etc.) to burn. And secondly, you need the turbine for converting the kinetic energy of falling water, or the boiler and steam engine (piston or turbine) for converting the chemical energy of the fuel. I considered this, in a rail electrification context, in Cooper, Locomotion: The Next Generation (Grantville Gazette 34).
Unfortunately for Copenhagen, which in canon is a leader in airship development, Denmark is not well suited for electric power generation of any sort. As we know, Marlon Pridmore chose to rely on the steam-iron process. However, generating steam requires heat, and plainly the Danes are burning some kind of fuel to do it. With no waste, you need nine grams of water to make one gram of hydrogen (0.42 cubic feet), and to make several hundred thousand cubic feet of hydrogen is going to require a heck of a lot of fuel. My guess is that the Danes will establish a big steam-iron plant that is on the Copenhagen-Venice route and near to a coal field or at least has ready river or rail access to a coal field. Hannover is a possibility, but coal would probably be cheaper near Cologne, and they could add service to Amsterdam and Hamburg. The airship would make a "pit stop" when its gas cells were getting dicey.
I think that there will also be some experimentation, by would-be airship powers, with the steam-carbon and steam-hydrocarbon processes. The former uses coal, which is abundant in western Europe, and the latter can make do with petroleum fractions that aren't useful as vehicle fuels. And of course, if you have carbon or hydrocarbon for use as a reactant, you can presumably use some of it as fuel for steam-making.
We know that there is going to be rapid scale-up of both iron and sulfuric acid production, which will provide some initial impetus to explore the potentialities of the wet method. If the Civil War buffs in Grantville have particulars of Lowe's hydrogen generator, that will also give it a boost. However, acid-iron has too many disadvantages to be attractive in the long-term.
The search for oil will inevitably result in the discovery of natural gas reservoirs, like that in the Grantville area. The pyrolysis of coal, to produce organic chemicals such as benzene, will produce coal gas as a byproduct. The accelerated development of chemical knowledge will lead to the relatively early discovery of catalysts suitable for reforming methane (and other volatile hydrocarbons) from natural gas or coal gas. This will facilitate stationary hydrogen production.
Of the classic field methods, I think silicol will be the first one to become practical in the 1632 universe. A crude silicon can be made easily enough, and there is going to be demand for ferrosilicon by the steel industry and that will help bring costs down.
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****
TMI
William Gibson saw it, although not completely clearly, this future-this present-filled with self-obsession and knowledge at our very fingertips. I’m not sure Bill was the first to see it-I know Algis Budrys saw miniaturization and small computers long before anyone else-but I know this: When I first read Neuromancer, I thought Bill’s future sounded awful.
And now I’m living it.
Yeah, I know, the computer isn’t jacked into my brain-yet. But I have more information at my fingertips than I could ever consume. And I’m in minute-by-minute contact with people all over the globe through various social networking sites, if I so choose to be.
I’m halfway through my life, raised in an analog world, so I’ve only partially adapted to this one. Yet I loathe it when I can’t log on at the minute I want to, and I love to whip out my iPhone to answer some trivia question. I took one look at the Kindle Flame and decided it wasn’t for me. Not because I think it a bad product-I don’t. But it runs on wireless, and my experience with wireless, particularly in remote places (like the town I live in), means that I won’t be able to download something the moment I think of it.