Quote:
Originally Posted by Laird Scooby
I don't know if it came across in my post Alan but my figures were very much guessed at. They were based on my experience of LPG tanks that are considerably heavier than the LPG that goes into them, for something that only holds a kilo or 2 of hydrogen then i daresay the ratio is closer to unity than in the LPG tanks and unless i've totally misunderstood something, hydrogen needs to be stored under higher pressure than LPG so needs to withstand that pressure from a large quantity.
As for having pump attendants at filling stations, the local Shell station at Fiveways tried that a few years back.
At the time V-Power was new and was still doing what it said in the blurb (it no longer does  ) so i was using that.
I pulled up to a pump to refuel and the attendant jumped out and grabbing the (basic) diesel pump nozzle, offered to fill my tank for me.
My vehement refusal shocked him. He still didn't get it when i grabbed the petrol nozzle 
I point blank asked him as i was returning from paying if he'd worked out why i didn't want a tank full of diesel and he admitted he had no clue.
With that kind of mentality, attended service isn't necessarily going to be the answer! |
I'm no expert on the pressure vessel piece Dave - and it is not important enough to worry about here :-)
The attendant piece: yes, I can imagine one might not get the cream of the crop as fuel attendants. I'm more thinking that there might be a requirement to make it a proper trade in order to make re-fuelling with hydrogen safe enough, should it ever be rolled out to the domestic car market. I must admit, I'm dubious enough about selling LPG direct to the car-buying public!
I'm pretty sure there will be a decade or more of experience from the haulage industry before anyone tries to sell hydrogen powered cars direct to Joe Public, it will be much easier with professional and regulated drivers of course, so the fuel industry will be able to work out the acceptable risks.
When I think back 50 years to when I was a child though, many of the risks we took with fuel would seem bizarre today. We still had town gas (just about, the change over to natural gas was happening), kerosene (paraffin) was sold at hardware stores into any old container the customer had (probably by a chap smoking a Craven A), every town had a coal yard with a haze of dust hanging over it, people burned coal on open fires, people smoked in their cars (even at gas stations, even whilst filling their cars)... in the light of all that do I think the risks of distributing and storing hydrogen are unacceptable: no I don't.
Alan