ONGC, BARC sign deal to produce hydrogen from Thoranium

Jaisalmer, May 12 (UNI) The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has signed a deal with Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) to produce hydrogen gas from Thoranium and use it as an alternative fuel.

Stating this here today ONGC's chairman M Rajgopala Rao told UNI, ''Scientists are hard pressed to find alternative fuels in view of the steadily depleting sources of oil and its increasing prices. And Indian scientists have been engaged in research and development of alternative fuel for quite sometime now.'' He said scientists have found that mixing thoranium with water produces hydrogen gas, which can produce high energy. This high energy can be tapped not only to develop power generating units but can also make vehicles and machines move.

Mr Rao said southern India is rich in Thoranium and has huge reserves, which can be used for another 100 years. Presently thoranium is being used to produce atomic energy and is second only to uranium.

He said experiments are currently on to check the use of hydrogen as an alternative fuel. ONGC and BARC's agreement in this regard will further look into the use of hydrogen as an alternative fuel.

But he asserted it will take time before the fuel is used commercially.

He said till now there are no vehicles which can be run on hydrogen but in future hydrogen is expected to work as a magic fuel in case of oil scarcity.

Speaking about coal reserves, Mr Rao said ONGC has prepared a plan to produce gas out of coal from those deep reserves from where it becomes difficult to dig out coal. He said ONGC will try to make gas from coal embedded in these reserves.

Discussing about the production of methane gas from coal, he said the pilot project of producing coal methane gas is in the pipeline and ONGC has signed a deal with oil majors Shell in this regard.

ONGC is also planning to step up research in tapping wind energy.

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