by Doug Allen
Stephen Webster points to new hydrogen fuel research:
Researchers at Virginia Tech announced Thursday that their latest breakthrough in hydrogen extraction technology could lead to widespread adoption of the substance as a fuel due to its ease of availability in virtually all plant matter, a reservoir previously impossible to tap. The new process, described by a study in the April issue of the scientific journal Angewandte Chemie, uses a cocktail of 13 enzymes to strip plant matter of xylose, a sugar that exists in plant cells. The resulting hydrogen is of an such a “high purity” that researchers said they were able to approach 100 percent extraction, opening up a potential market for a much cheaper source of hydrogen than anything available today. …
The rise of such an alternative fuel could seriously disrupt the pollution-producing industries that run on oil and natural gas, and potentially spark a new industrial emphasis on growing plants with high levels of xylose in their cells. The environmental benefits of that potential future are twofold: the plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, helping in small part to address the climate crisis, and the resulting portable fuel only outputs water when burned.
Less than ten years ago, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs) were touted as the solution to the transportation sectors fossil fuel woes. The electric car was dead, while Governor Schwarzenegger announced the development of a statewide hydrogen refueling infrastructure to help spur the hydrogen car’s transition to a commercially available vehicle. At the time, I wrote my undergraduate honors thesis on the costs and benefits of Schwarzenegger’s plan, arguing that the high cost of both the cars themselves and the pathways for producing hydrogen fuel made it unclear that the future for HFCVs was any brighter than that for electric vehicles.
Hydrogen technology failed to improve, while advancements in batteries resurrected hopes for the electric car. Now there’s an electric car commercially available (though it’s not cheap) and hydrogen has largely faded from the alternative fuel discussion.
This newest finding is a step in the right direction, but I’m not ready to call it a “gamechanger” for the transportation sector yet. The experience in the early ’00s showed that there’s a significant difference between technologies that seem nearly ready for market (like the HFCV) and technologies that can actually be brought to market (like the Tesla Roadster). I look forward to tests of this new technology on a larger scale, and declines in the cost of HFCVs themselves, but I’m not holding my breath.
The Dish 