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On average, a car is in use for ten years or more, so I think that embrittlement, as well as leakage, might be significant over that timeframe. You are talking about consumption in a fixed location, which is not the same as for private vehicle power.

An auto gasoline tank can be stamped metal, shaped to fit around other components, but a high-pressure (10,000 psi) hydrogen tank will have to be a heavily reinforced cylinder. And what is gained in the lower fuel weight will be given up many times over in the tank weight.

In addition, dispensing a gas is far different from dispensing a liquid. Expansion and compression during fueling wastes a significant amount of energy. And then how do you measure the amount dispensed? Actually, I think that the most practical solution would be tank exchange, which would require every hydrogen car to use a standard tank.

And for this, for the same tank volume you get about 1/3 the hydrogen of gasoline, and far less energy. True, it can be used far more efficiently in a fuel-cell electric car, but I don’t believe the cost will ever make it worthwhile.

Back to butanol. As a “hydrocarbone-like” alcohol, it actually can almost replace gasoline in most current engines, unlike ethanol. It used to be made by fermentation in the Weizmann ABE reaction, which produces acetone, butanol, and ethanol in a 3:6:1 ratio. Weizmann was a chemist before becoming the first Prime Minister of Israel. You can read about it from one of its proponents at Butylfuel LLC, which has developed a modified reaction to maximize butanol yield.
http://www.butanol.com/

"On average, a car is in use for ten years or more, so I think that embrittlement, as well as leakage, might be significant over that timeframe. You are talking about consumption in a fixed location, which is not the same as for private vehicle power."

Go back to my first response. I do NOT consider hydrogen to be acceptable as a vehicle fuel. I can't be any plainer than that. I don't know why you keep harping on it.

And anecdotal data on the "time frame" for embrittlement. A carbon steel pipeline in the Ruhr Valley has been used to transfer hydrogen FOR ONE HUNDRED YEARS.

And I'm very familiar with the proposed use of fermentation to produce butanol. But, as yet, it is NOT considered a viable commercial approach.