All apparently is not lost - synthetic fuel is just round the corner - or its has been since 1920 !

Synthetic fuel testing begins on fighter engine

Fischer-Tropsch process - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nick,

28/05/08

All apparently is not lost - synthetic fuel is just round the corner - or its has been since 1920 !

Synthetic fuel testing begins on fighter engine

Fischer-Tropsch process - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nick,

28/05/08

Although it allows hydrogen to be made into fuel, whilst neatly side-stepping the need for a 'hydrogen economy' infrastructure, you still need to make the feedstock. And what's currently the most economical source of hydrogen? Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat's riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!!!!! Steam reformation of methane!!!

Still, you could tweak the process to give CO instead of CO2 fairly easily I think. Then you could feed it in...

Hang on, why not just burn the methane?

Ho hum...

US coal reserve within US borders ?

Nick,

29/05/8

US coal reserve within US borders ?

Nick,

29/05/8

Seems the South Africans are already doing it: Petroleum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia AFAIK, the UK has quite a lot of coal still, it just wasn't economic to mine it in the 80s when all the pits were closed. Maybe it's an option for us too, instead of pinning our hopes on the mast of North Sea reserves...?

(Getting enough H2's still an issue, but you could always build a few power stations to electrolyse seawater on a massive scale...)