Wanted: A cheap, reliable power source to satisfy energy-hungry industrial superpower. Must also be pollution-free and provide energy security by being domestically abundant. Immediate opening.

While candidates like solar and wind have sent in their résumés, it seems hydrogen is the perfect match to fuel America's energy demands - right?

Well, maybe. President Bush touts a future hydrogen economy, while environmentalists decry it as a red herring to avoid addressing global warming today. But new research may add a fresh angle to the debate.

From the wintry climes of Minnesota, Lanny Schmidt, a University of Minnesota chemist, and three colleagues of his have discovered a process that could leap several of the hurdles facing the hydrogen economy: the high cost of making hydrogen, the impact on global warming of burning hydrogen, and the safe and efficient use of hydrogen in cars.

The new approach, reported in the journal Science last week, offers hope for the cheapest and most efficient method for extracting hydrogen yet.

Because the gas is typically found in compound form, it must be extracted from other elements to be used. The new process extracts the gas from corn-based ethanol using rhodium and ceria, exotic metals needed in the catalytic process.

Currently, extracting hydrogen from natural gas costs $3.60 to $7.05 per kilogram, even with the best technology, a new National Research Council (NRC) report said last week.

But this new technique - confirmed late one night while the scientists waited for a pizza to arrive at the lab - could produce the gas at $1.50 per kilogram. That would put it in the ballpark even with ultracheap conventional sources like coal, Dr. Schmidt says.

The new process could theoretically be used to fuel power plants and automobiles.

"I want to be careful, I don't want to oversell this," Dr. Schmidt says, adding, "Down the road this looks as if it will work."

The most common way of making industrial hydrogen today is by separating it from natural gas through a "steam reforming" process that requires very high temperatures, large furnaces, and a lot of energy.

By contrast, Schmidt's process used a simple fuel injector from an automobile engine inserted into a glass tube - a device about as big as an ear of corn. He and his colleagues sprayed an ethanol-water mix into a warm chamber to vaporize it. When the vapor passed through a porous ceramic plug embedded with the rhodium and ceria catalysts - voilà, hydrogen flowed out the other end. Lots of it.

Schmidt's process is autothermal, meaning it supplies its own heat, he says. Because of that, the equipment is only a hundredth the size of steam- reforming systems and requires far less energy to extract hydrogen from ethanol.

Another plus to Schmidt's approach is that it won't contribute to global warming. When hydrogen is extracted from ethanol and then consumed in a fuel cell, its byproducts - carbon dioxide and water - can be absorbed by the corn crop grown to produce more ethanol. Result: No net gain of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

"I think it will be used in rural areas first - off the grid," Schmidt says. "But some day every town in America could have its own power system instead of building a megaplant."

This process could be made to work in automobiles, too, he says. The biggest obstacle facing hydrogen-powered cars is not so much fuel-cell technology, but the ability to create, or store on board, enough hydrogen.

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