Minister calls for intensive search for alternative fuels

Chairman of The Combustion Institute-Indian Section and Scientific Adviser to the Defense Minister V.K. Saraswat has called for an intensive search for alternative fuels, and said that any development in the future would be dominated by challenges with new fuels, improved combustion and emission control. He said that there was an urgent need to move away from a fossil fuel-based economy to a hydrogen-oriented economy, by 2030. For this, the challenges lay in production, transport and storage of hydrogen, he said. Hydrogen was potentially an inexhaustible source of energy and it could be produced from several primary energy sources, Saraswat said, adding that it would reduce dependence on petroleum imports and had several environmental benefits. (December 11, 2009)