Cow turds fuel Blighty's hydrogen filling station embrace
Birmingham Uni fills up on brown gas
Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery
Britain is about to get a new wave of hydrogen filling stations, allowing those few organisations and individuals in possession of hydrogen vehicles to top them up.
According to the Times, "Britain's first hydrogen fuel station" opened yesterday. But, in fact, Blighty has previously had hydrogen stations - they just didn't stay open, being intended to support projects with closing dates.
Yesterday's hydrogen forecourt is at Birmingham University, which is doing a feasibility study on hydrogen transport using a fleet of five "Microcab" fuel-cell vehicles. There will also be stations in London from next year until 2013, supporting Mayor Ken Livingstone's 70-vehicle hydrogen trial fleet. The London government project will see both internal-combustion and fuel-cell hydrogen kit tried out, in buses, police vehicles, and other city applications.
The five-year London trial is to cost £22m, according to the Times. Air Products, the same company which has set up the "mobile fueller" equipment in Birmingham, will provide the capital's new hydrogen stations as well.
"We are extremely proud to provide the first hydrogen fuelling station to a UK university," said Air's Ian Williamson. "We have already installed 21 mobile fuellers and built more than 80 stations worldwide."
Seeking to address the safety worries often attendant on hydrogen, which is very flammable and potentially a serious explosion risk in enclosed garages, he added: "Over 50,000 vehicle fuellings have already safely taken place thanks to Air Products technology."
Normally, hydrogen is produced in industrial quantities by reforming natural gas - which involves massive CO2 emissions, making the use of hydrogen vehicles rather pointless. The idea is that in future one might make bulk hydrogen instead by cracking water electrically, a lovely clean process of itself.
Next page: Cow Patting toward a Browner Tomorrow
COMMENTS
@Anton Ivanov
My comment was meant tongue in cheek. Maybe I should have used the joke or coat icon.
However, I can't let a challenge pass: How about pushing the smelly methane through activated carbon filters - the carbon being made from the waste CO2 - then burying the carbon in landfill thus:
- removing the smell
- reducing the carbon load
- laying down future coal reserves for our descendents.
(yes, yes, completely impractical, I know)
Also, I seem to remember, from school chemistry, bubbling sulphur compound solutions through ammonia (from the urine) and the sulphur precipitating out. But that was 40+ years ago, so the chemistry might be wrong, and I'm sure the ammonia compounds formed would be just as smelly.
Use the cow to tow the car instead
May I humbly suggest an alternative?
Use the cow to tow the car instead
We have a crop surplus, we have to pay farmer NOT to grow it.
The cow exhaust is wonderful for roadside gardens or verges
The resultant plants are havens for endangered insects, which are eaten by endangered birds
which privide us with birdsong
which provides us peace and harmony
Its easy to be green
just takes a re-think.
Hydrogen cars hit by marketing disaster..
Oh, Bugger.
How to make a decent ad. for the new Ford Hindenburg???
(Unless, of course the fuel comes from them Concrete Cows. Butta course, they are only indigenous to Milton Keynes)
If you want real green motoring, read on, dear vulture-lovers:
Mate of mine made a wooden car. Wooden chassis, wooden seats, wooden gearbox, wooden engine.
Natch, it 'wooden' go. (Can't believe I wrote that, and then didn't delete. Sodding hell....)
-Gorrit already.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Cloud based data management
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
