Hydrogen car to be 'open source'

The manufacturer of a hydrogen car unveiled in London on Tuesday will make its designs available online so the cars can be built and improved locally.
The Riversimple car can go 80km/hr (50mph) and travels 322km (200mi) per re-fuelling, with an efficiency equivalent to 300 miles to the gallon.
The cars will be leased with fuel and repair costs included, at an estimated £200 ($315) per month.
The company hopes to have the vehicles in production by 2013.
Next year, it aims to release 10 prototypes in a UK city which as yet to be confirmed.
Riversimple has partnered with gas supply company BOC to install hydrogen stations for the cars in the city where the prototypes are launched.
'Open source' model
The car itself is an amalgam of high-efficiency approaches in automotive design.
Its four motors are powered by a fuel cell rated at just six kilowatts, in contrast to current designs that are all in excess of 85 kilowatts - required because the acceleration from a standing start requires a great deal of power.
Riversimple's solution is to power the car also from so-called "ultracapacitors", which store large amounts of electric charge and, crucially, can release that charge nearly instantly to provide the power needed to accelerate from rest.
The ultracapacitors are charged as the vehicle brakes to a halt, converting the energy of the moving car into stored energy.Without a combustion engine, gearbox, or transmission, and with a shell made of carbon fibre composites, it weighs 350kg.
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Human waste to heat thousands of homes

It gives a whole new meaning to cooking with 'natural' gas.

Within two years, thousands of people will be preparing their dinner and heating their homes using methane gas extracted from human waste.

The energy company behind the scheme say the 'sewage works gas' will be clean, environmentally friendly and indistinguishable from the North Sea variety.The pilot biogas conversion plant will be built at Britain's second biggest sewage works in Manchester and could generate enough power for 5,000 homes by 2011.

Other plants are expected to follow - eventually producing sewage gas for hundreds of thousands of people.

The £4.3 million scheme is the brainchild of United Utilities who yesterday got Government funding for the plant at Davyhulme waste water treatment works.

Caroline Ashton, the company's biofuels manager, said: "Sewage treatment is a 24-hour process so there is an endless supply of biogas.

'It is a very valuable resource and it's completely renewable.

'By harnessing this free energy we can reduce our fuel bills and reduce our carbon footprint.'

Methane is produced when microbes break down sewage sludge in a process known as 'anerobic digestion'.
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The car that runs on thin air

The 'air car' plugs into a wall outlet, allowing an on-board compressor to pressurize the car's air tank to 4,500 pounds per square inch.

It takes about four hours to get the tank to full pressure and the cold air is then released gradually to power the car's pistons. Only fresh air comes out of the almost frozen exhaust pipe at low speeds.However engineering experts are skeptical of the technology, saying it is clouded by the caveat that compressing air is notoriously energy intensive.

'Air compressors are one of the least efficient machines to convert electricity to work,' said Harold Kung, professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern University.

'Why not use the electricity directly, as in electric cars? From an energy utilization point of view, the compressed (air) car does not make sense.
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Biogas projects awarded £10m

The government has announced five new biogas projects that will receive funding through its £10 million Anaerobic Digestion Demonstration Programme.

The £10 million fund has been under development since last year, when Defra decided more needed to be done to push the technology into the mainstream
Under the AD Demonstration Programme, the five projects will be expected to show how to maximise the cost and environmental benefits of the technology, as well as the potential for anaerobic digestion to reduce the carbon footprints of the food and water industries.

The programme will also see the demonstration of biogas being cleaned up for use as a transport fuel, and to be injected into the national gas pipelines.
Anaerobic digestion involves using of bacteria to break down organic material in huge tanks, which produces a methane-rich biogas suitable as an energy source.
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