Posted on 04/13/2008 6:36:47 AM PDT by Dane
NEW YORK: Sugar-powered cars may be in our future. Researchers have developed a "revolutionary" process for converting plant sugars into hydrogen, which they claim could be used to cheaply and efficiently run vehicles.
According to the researchers, the conversion process involves combining plant sugars, water and a cocktail of powerful enzymes to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide under mild reaction conditions.
The new system helps solve the three major technical barriers to the so-called "hydrogen economy" the roadblocks involve how to produce low-cost sustainable hydrogen, how to store hydrogen and how to distribute it efficiently, the researchers said.
"This is revolutionary work. This has opened up a whole new direction in hydrogen research. With technology improvement, sugar-powered vehicles could come true eventually," lead researcher Percival Zhang of Virginia Tech University said.
Zhang and his colleagues believe they have found the most promising hydrogen-producing system to date from plant biomass. They think they can produce hydrogen from cellulose, which has a similar chemical formula to starch but is far more difficult to break down.
Rio and the coastal area is probably what you might be thinking of, but overall population per land area may be the difference.
It is the 5th largest population, but the interior is very sparsely populated. Their road system is limited mostly to the coastal regions and their travel requirements are small compared to other large geographical and populated countries. (According to what I gather from Wikipedia.)
Actually Dane, if this panned out it would be revolutionary. The hydrogen/solar hype is a plain crock. The best way to transport hydrogen is as a hydrocarbon (i.e. gas, diesel, or yes cellulose).
More burning of food for fuel.
Every idiot who comes up with another lame brain scheme like this costs us more in higher food prices.
I do not look forward to paying $5 for a bottle of pop.
HYDROGEN! The fuel that’s just 5-10 years away from any date in the future.
Actually, I mis-remembered an article I read on Human Events.
You are correct, they do use Sugar Cane for ethanol production.
Doesn’t really matter, one way or another. It still takes land and water to grow the feedstock for ethanol. It strikes me as being an incredible waste of resources and in the end will wind up being quietly phased out.
Bottom line: Does anyone who has looked at the “ethanol as a solution to our energy problems” issue really think this is anything more than knee jerk emotional hokum with less value than snake oil?
Well, thank you. However, there have probably been those who used other adjectives in front of my screen name....
“Other than a diffusion process which requires compressors (more use of energy) I know of no other method of separating gasses.”
A centrifugal seperator would work but the whole thing is still a bad idea.
“I just ran through 7000# of corn to heat my house all winter for $420.”
I have about 30,000# of wood stacked to dry for next winter. About $20 for gas and oil, $15 for a new chain oh, and a few sore muscles.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.