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Originally Posted by punky
Me283: Very interesting. Certainly sounds good. What I don't get is, why can't we use hydrogen instead of oil in a current internal combustion engine? The current ICE works using explosions with petrol pushing a piston, hydrogen is quite violently explosive, couldn't that be used to drive a piston instead? The only byproduct would be water. To source hydrogen it would need electrolysis so its not toally renewable but with moderate nuclear facilities, its far better than where we are ATM?
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hope I'm not butting in - the problem with Hydrogen is storage & distribution, it is very dangerously flammable, anyway, but even more so if compressed, so it has to be effectively 'dissolved' in expensive metals like Palladium, in order to be stored.
- plus at the moment, barring nuclear, it costs more energy to produce than it delivers.
- long term, especially if ideas like using solar energy for conversion take off, it could be good - in the short term I would like to see more research in renewable fuels, such as biodiesel, gasohol - and methanol fueled fuel cells, such as the one on its way to power mp3 players
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3837585.stm