One step closer to hydrogen economy?

Right now there are two alternatives: keeping canisters of highly compressed hydrogen on board - a prospect that makes those who recall the Hindenburg a little nervous. Or, a "reformer" can be used to extract hydrogen on the fly from a feedstock like natural gas. The output could be burned in an engine - or processed through a fuel cell to generate the car's power.

Unfortunately today's small partial-oxidation reformers haven't worked efficiently enough to produce sufficient high-purity hydrogen for on-board fuel cells, say experts. Schmidt's approach may change that.

"If they can, indeed, produce hydrogen very efficiently from ethanol, that would be a significant breakthrough," says John DeCicco, a senior fellow at Environmental Defense, an environmental group in New York, who has written about fuel-cell technology in automobiles. "One of the biggest problems of fuel-cell-powered cars: storing hydrogen on the vehicle. This research suggests this technical barrier may be solvable."

Overall, he says the University of Minnesota research sounds promising, even if some hurdles remain.

One such hurdle:It would require at least 40 percent of the cropland in the US to produce enough ethanol to power the nation, according to the new NRC report.

The NRC said that while hydrogen could "fundamentally transform the US energy system ... the impacts on oil imports and carbon dioxide emissions are likely to be minor during the next 25 years," even with huge investments. Its findings do not consider the new technique.

Environmentalists point out that pure ethanol - of the sort currently burned in automobile engines - requires a lot of energy and money to produce before it ever gets to Schmidt's clever process.

Schmidt agrees - but says the lion's share of the cost of making ethanol flows from the cost of extracting every drop of water from it.

His system for powering cars - which would not burn the hydrogen in an engine but run it through a fuel cell for electricity - does not require pure ethanol, but actually works better with watered-down ethanol.

Amory Lovins, CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute, says a key part of the solution is designing lighter cars that run on hydrogen. He is trying to make cars out of carbon fiber - rather than requiring futuristic hydrogen fuel cells to shove tons of metal down the highway. "This research is headed the right direction," Mr. Lovins says. "If you combine those efficiencies with a light, but safe vehicle" then hydrogen might compete better economically with today's fuels.

Some researchers hope that hydrogen eventually will be used to power America. Hydrogen also is:

• a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and nonpoisonous gas under normal condition on Earth, but it is highly flammable.

• the most abundant element in the universe, accounting for 90 percent of the universe by weight. It is rarely found in its pure form since it readily combines with other elements.

• a more efficient fuel source than conventional sources. The amount of energy produced by hydrogen per unit weight of fuel is about three times the amount of energy contained in an equal weight of gasoline, and almost seven times that of coal.

• Its combustion produces no carbon dioxide or sulfur emissions. Hydrogen can produce nitrous oxide under some conditions.

SOURCE: The National Hydrogen Association

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