Government launches hydrogen motoring task force

[SimonHobson]

http://www.reghardware.com/2012/01/18/uk_government_launches_hydrogen_motoring_task_force/

Government launches hydrogen motoring task force
Can Britain be ready for 2014 h-car rollout?

The UK government hopes Britons could be motoring in Hydrogen-powered cars as early as 2014, Business Minister Mark Prisk said today.

Speaking in London at the launch of UKH2Mobility, an initiative to evaluate what Britain needs to make that vision a reality, Prisk admitted that the e-car is still part of the government's CO2 emission reduction plan.

"We are technology agnostic," he said. "No one knows which technology will lead." We want the UK to be the best place to develop zero-emission-at-the-exhaust-pipe technologies, he added.

UKH2Mobility's task to is to see if Britain can create the infrastructure necessary to make hydrogen a viable alternative to fossil fuels, to existing hybrid technologies and to emerging battery powered plug-in e-cars.

...

Personally I think hydrogen is a daft fuel to try and use for mobile applications. It's hard to store and transport, the in-vehicle tanks have to be massively strong (and hence heavy) for a relatively small fuel load, and it leaks out of any cylinder since it's so small that most materials are porous to it.
There are better fuels we can make. Methanol is liquid at normal temperatures and pressures which means it can be handled without pressurised vessels and with existing transport and retail infrastructure. It's miscible to petrol (and ethanol), safer than petrol, and can be burned in existing engines with minor modifications that would cost virtually nothing to incorporate at the design stage.

[dhaslam]

It won't do any harm  if money is spent to improve hydrogen  production because it is a step on the way to other possibilities.   

In general  governments aren't  good at managing  new technology, sometimes it can be quite humorous.     I   was told by the postman recently that the An Post, the state owned postal service in Ireland,  was told they had  to have  electronic signing  in order to keep up with the private couriers.     They now have a system  but it is so slow    that unless you write a  a snails pace the signature won't  echo on the screen,  again some  brilliant civil servant has just  spent millions of government funds on  equipment that is ten years or more out of date.       

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC0410/S00063.htm

[Richard Owen]

Tis all true.

If you want to store hydrogen efficiently, bind it to a carbon atom.

[renewablejohn]

What absolute idiots. Do they not read what is going on in the rest of europe in respect of Natural gas or Syn Gas (methane) as the transport fuel of the future. Yes there is a role for hydrogen but thats only in the production of methane getting rid of CO2 as a positive benefit.