Hydrogen power is now.

http://www.dtu.dk/English/About_DTU/News/M...technology.aspx

http://www.amminex.com/index.htm

Completely safe, very compact, cheap, and the only waste product is water.

This is a breakthrough. Hydrogen power is now a viable option, though there will probably not be an energy revolution for a decade at least. The makers of this new tech say they will have a working car powered by this in under a year.

Think about that. A car that can travel 600 kilometers without refueling, only producing water as pollution, and no risk of petrol fires if there is an accident.

Oh yes, and they arn't the slow toy cars that electric vehicles are, they run at the same speeds as normal ones.

Think of the fuel economy. Think of the safety.

And another thought... think of space travel. Couldn't this be adapted to the shuttle program? To my knowledge hydrogen is the most efficient fuel we know of, this could slash the price for launching into space. The ships can be lighter and carry more fuel at the same time. Not only that, theres no risk of the thing exploding as the hydrogen is inert until processed!

Wow.

*mind boggles*

This couldn't really be used in a space program - the fuel they use is much more powerful - I believe that it is basically liquid hydrogen.

I look forward to the future a lot, but I'm a skeptic of the new power sources.. every year for the last 50 years they have been planning this revolution, they produce their prototypes every year, and every year it doesn't happen.
I have science books in my house talking about fusion power powering our homes by 1992, and that the technology is being finalised.. hmm.. worrying stuff

When they make a hydrogen car, I'll bite the bullet and learn to drive.

What concerns me is that there are so many alternative (non-fossil fuel burning) power sources for cars that are already available.

I saw on Top Gear a programme about taxis in a city in Italy (I think it might have been Milan?) that have got duel engines - electric within the city limits and a top speed of 45 miles per hour and petrol or diesel outside the city with the regular top speeds of up to 90 mph.

There are cars in Brazil that rely on alcohol based fuels at a fraction of the cost of normal petrol. There are cars in papua newguiney that run on fermented coconut milk. And trial runs on compressed air shows that cars can run for miles and miles for next to nothing.

The problem seems to be that many car manufacturers aren't incorporating these new ideas (that are proven to work) into new models. Some like Toyota have started running new designs that do this - but more are needed to follow suit.

people also need to be prepared to buy them.
You can already get electric cars, but no one buys them... people stick to what they know until they are forced otherwise. What car company is going to take the first step and with draw all their petrol cars knowing they'll be bankrupt within a year? doubtful any.... I can see only one way people will stop using petrol cars.. when petrol becomes too expensive to use them anymore!

Part of the problem is that many fuels are unavailible to most people. I can run my car on gasoline, because I can buy gasoline just down the street. Electric cars are okay, but there isn't anywhere that I can buy these hydrogen tablets, nor the ammonia to refuel them.

One problem with that. EIOER. Energy Invested On Energy Return. Hydrogen can't just be pulled out of thin air.


Tell it to the guys at www.peakoil.com

My concern really is for the economy. Granted these oil prices are staggering and not doing much to help matters (thieving bastards...) but how many people work in gas stations? In oil digs? In oil refineries? How many people's very livelihoods depend on oil?

Granted, that doesn't mean I don't want to see cheap, clean, safe fuel - I do. I'm all for hydrogen, but will happen to the people above?

EVERYTHING needs to be transported in some way, so everything is somehow dependent on oil. When the price of oil goes up like this, it means that everybody suffers, because the prices of everything goes up. The people at gas stations would find jobs delivering ammonia. The people in oil rigs and oil refinarys would have the same jobs, just replacing oil with hydrogen.

Not as simple as that sadly..
oil also runs the plastic industry, among the fuel sources it's the only one that can flow down pipes.. doesn't seem that useful first glance, but we've become fairly dependant on that property (Natural Gas flows too, but isn't heavy enough apparently).
aaaand.... we also run our aircraft on it.. now that problem with that last one is the way aircraft work. They run on Naptha (oil based petrol). They don't burn oil to produce electrcity, or to turn motors or any of that. They burn it to create thrust.. and neither hydrogen/fusion/solar or whatever produces thrust like burning something flammable and explosive will do.
I guess we could go back to the propeller driven craft, but we best be prepared for the world to slow down.
I think that's really the bottom line. People have to accept that the world WILL change. There's no ifs, buts, or ways around it. Things have to change, and either we change how we act, or change will be enforced upon us by the reality of watching all the needles hit empty on all the cars and aircrafts.
Every solution I ever seen suggests the same thing. That even if we do get it to work, things won't be as they used to be. Fusion power produces great elecrity, but you can neither run a car/nor plane on it.. (Well, maybe a car.. but would you like to watch a fusion car in a car accident? me neither). Solar, wind, and tidal are great for some countries at running homes.
But countries with lower levels of annual light or wind can't hope to use it. Plus it doesn't produce enough to run industry.
That seems the story being taught is that something has got to give way.. we cannot infinitely live our lives the same way constantly. So many ideas come up that seem great, but are given up because they don't sustain the way things are currently.
My question it's "so what?" sometimes is good that things have to change if they aren't working out the way are.

Most Diesel powered cars here are also ran on canola oil, works a treat and smells kinda fragrant to. Im surprised that they (and im not talking about the guy in America who changed his name to 'They') havnt came up with some sort of synthetic petrol or something similar. I really like the Hydrogen idea but in the end, many ideas will have to be used/combined to produce enough energy to keep things running the way they are. ***CONSERVE RESOURCES***

They can make artificial petrol, they make it from artificial oil. Problem with artficial oil is that it takes more electricity to create, than it generates back when you burn it. It takes a lot of energy to create fuel. Way more than you get back when you burn it. That's why we burn the fuel nature gives us instead.

But yeah as you said "conserve resources!"

I doubt that the move from oil to alternative energy sources will really be an overnight matter with hundreds of thousands losing their jobs in one go. It will be a gradual decline that can be effectively handled through not taking on new staff and agreed redundancies - though as Witless then points out the industry as a whole may shrink - but never fully go away as there are so many other elements to oil than simply car fuel.


Artificial oil may take more energy to produce (and thus burn) than regular oil, but that may well change as advancements in synthetic oil are met. What is needed is more money to fund scientific research - something that seems to occur in Europe, in Asia, even in some universities in Canada - but not as much in the US (though it isn't clear that this is due to oil industry special interest interference or just the socio-political zietgiest).

Initial trials into rapeseed oil suggest that it may be purified much more efficiently and cheaply to provide an alternative to high octane - as used with aircraft. There are moves to find cheap and cost effective ways to use coconuts, potato based alcohol and other organic systems for fuel.

They might not be widely available in the US or UK - but they are in Brazil, they're becoming more widespread in Australia. Trials in Chennai (Madras) in India could lead to compressed air being used in auto-rickshaws and some taxis - and for that petrol stations just need a compressor and air.

This is going to take time, it will need to change many hearts and minds, it will need further research in some cases and better marketing in others - but it can be and should be achieved.

as you said "conserve resources!"

Hydrogen is burned, and does create thrust - but it is much less controllable because it is so reactive. However, we aren't looking to use hydrogen for everything, only for automobiles. That is all we really need to do to help conserve oil. We could use nuclear energy, a relatively clean, efficient energy source, to create the hydrogen tablets, even if it 'wastes' energy, if we don't 'waste' the energy on it now, we will run out of oil eventually, and will need to simply do it then, anyway.

... and aircraft... and plastic... also need oil..
Let's not forget just how bad the world got when planes were grounded only in the states for all of 3 days. The large ship industry also needs oil lest we start equipping every last powered ship with a nuclear reactor in it.
Currently however the nuclear fusion program has all but ground to a crawl as they struggle to to produce a reactor that actually produces more power than the power cost to maintain it.
Fission produces not nearly enough to power the automotive industry with enough artificial fuel for it's cars.

What i am still not getting is why don't they start going over to electric cars.. whatever you do you're gonna have to come up with a new solution to refuelling/powering cars anyway.. why not just make recharging stations/posts for electric cars? That solves a million problems right there.. the technology already exists. We already have electric working cars today, here and now. Just no one uses them because no effort has been made to implement them into everyday living.

So, first off, the whole hydrogen economy is a bogus idea. Each fuel cell requires a small amount of platinum that is used as a catalyst. Unfortunately, platinum is very rare, to the point that there simply isn't enough platinum on this planet to make enough fuel cells to run all the cars that are currently running right now.

Secondly, as far as aircraft goes, it doesn't matter how you get an 700 tonne lump of metal, flesh and suitcases up to 30,000 feet, it costs you a lot of energy to do it. Oil is currently by far and away the 'cheapest' energy source, in terms of EOEI (Energy Out for Energy Invested). As we move over to other forms of power, the cost of energy will rise drastically.

Don't mean to sound too much like I've got my tin foil hat on, but take all the foreign holidays you can, because the cost of travelling halfway across the world will put it out of the reach of ordinary folk.

[EDIT - Gah - this is Jonman posting.]