Carbon-neutral petrol

[vetran]

Not that easy. You can't put pressurised liquid hydrogen into an unmodified fuel system, plus you need a specialised regulator, but none of that is all that difficult to overcome. It's not as energy dense of petrol (very little is, actually) so you'll use a lot more by volume, but the end result is comparable.

I've seen someone claim it will produce NOx as a by product, used this way, which I find a little puzzling...

JCB seem to think it is a goer on bigger engines.

[malvolio]

True - low revving, high torque and heavily built ones. Not sure they would translate up to smaller units.

But hey, someone has to try it out!

Incidentally anyone noticed that "hydrogen" is sneaking into boiler adverts and road work notices...?

[WTFH]

I've seen someone claim it will produce NOx as a by product, used this way, which I find a little puzzling...

Unless you keep the temperature down, when you burn hydrogen in air the heat causes the nitrogen in the air to combine with oxygen to produce NOx

[d000hg]

Sustainable fuels exist, biodiesel and such - F1 is going 100% sustainable fuel in the near future.

But it seems a bit daft, you're just making more problems to solve.

[Lance]

Hydrogen is a potential fuel supply for the future, but it has some issues.

• It's fecking explosive
• It requires cryogenic storage to keep it for any length of time. That requires power input to keep it liquid.
• It leaks like chuff when gaseous (it's like really small molecules, of just 2 protons in H2, so is hard to contain in normal pressurized containers)
• It's explosive (did I mention that)

Whereas alcohol/methanol has none of those problems.
There are other chemicals that could be used. But I'll detail methanol for now


My reference material is How to Live on Mars: A Trusty Guidebook to Surviving and Thriving on the Red Planet , Zubrin, Robert - Amazon.com

Methanol (CH3OH) can be produced within a reactor with copper-on-zinc oxide pellets. Heat that to 250C and feed it CO and Hydrogen at 20 bar presuure.


So the yeast/sugar bit can be bypassed, although it would be more efficient.
The downside of using sugar is that it requires the use of human edible food sources.

[Zigenare]

Ahem...

https://www.velocys.com/