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OK, everybody, chill. Forget about electric cars, potential world war over the last dregs of underground oil and global warming – and all you greenies can get off your anti-4x4 soap boxes.
Rev up that V8 and get ready to party because some enterprising Pommy scientists have invented... artificial petrol! And it could cost less than R2 a litre and leave not a trace of carbon in its wake.
Corn can go back to feeding people, the oil companies can go bust.
According to Gizmag’s website, the hydrogen-based product could be on fuel forecourts within three years and work on any car engine – or aeroplane, for that matter. Unless, of course, Shell or some other oil company buys out and scuttles the project.
So you don’t have to worry any more about emigrating to Australia or America by boat.
The first road tests are due in 2012 and, if all goes well, the cut-price fuel could be on sale in three to five years.
A PERFECT SOLUTION?
Professor Stephen Bennington, the Cella Energy project’s lead scientist, said: “In some senses, hydrogen is the perfect fuel. It has three times more energy than petrol per unit of weight and, when it burns, produces only water.
"Our new hydrogen storage materials offer real potential for running cars, planes and other vehicles that currently use hydrocarbons."
Energy from hydrogen can be harnessed by burning the gas or combining it with oxygen in a fuel cell to produce electricity but current methods of storing hydrogen are expensive - and not very safe.
The boffins at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, University College London and Oxford University have found a way to pack hydrogen densely into tiny beads that can be poured or pumped like a liquid.
Stephen Volker, also of Cellar Energy, explained to Gizmag: "Early indications are that the micro-beads can be used in existing vehicles without engine modification."
A tank of the artificial petrol, which has yet to be given a brand name, is expected to around 550km – about the same as a tank of petrol.
However AA UK president Edmund King warned (perhaps worried about his future employment): "The fact the hydrogen is cheaper now doesn’t mean it always will be because governments would soon get their hands on it and increase the tax."
Remind us this time in 2013 to find out what happened to the idea.
Rev up that V8 and get ready to party because some enterprising Pommy scientists have invented... artificial petrol! And it could cost less than R2 a litre and leave not a trace of carbon in its wake.
Corn can go back to feeding people, the oil companies can go bust.
According to Gizmag’s website, the hydrogen-based product could be on fuel forecourts within three years and work on any car engine – or aeroplane, for that matter. Unless, of course, Shell or some other oil company buys out and scuttles the project.
So you don’t have to worry any more about emigrating to Australia or America by boat.
The first road tests are due in 2012 and, if all goes well, the cut-price fuel could be on sale in three to five years.
A PERFECT SOLUTION?
Professor Stephen Bennington, the Cella Energy project’s lead scientist, said: “In some senses, hydrogen is the perfect fuel. It has three times more energy than petrol per unit of weight and, when it burns, produces only water.
"Our new hydrogen storage materials offer real potential for running cars, planes and other vehicles that currently use hydrocarbons."
Energy from hydrogen can be harnessed by burning the gas or combining it with oxygen in a fuel cell to produce electricity but current methods of storing hydrogen are expensive - and not very safe.
The boffins at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, University College London and Oxford University have found a way to pack hydrogen densely into tiny beads that can be poured or pumped like a liquid.
Stephen Volker, also of Cellar Energy, explained to Gizmag: "Early indications are that the micro-beads can be used in existing vehicles without engine modification."
A tank of the artificial petrol, which has yet to be given a brand name, is expected to around 550km – about the same as a tank of petrol.
However AA UK president Edmund King warned (perhaps worried about his future employment): "The fact the hydrogen is cheaper now doesn’t mean it always will be because governments would soon get their hands on it and increase the tax."
Remind us this time in 2013 to find out what happened to the idea.
