Big Advance In Hydrogen Production Could Change Alternative Energy Landscape

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at Virginia Tech say they've had a genuine breakthrough in alternative energy production that could shake up the world's energy structure. Specifically, they've hit on a way to derive large amounts of hydrogen from any plant source. The method uses renewable natural resources, releases almost no greenhouse gasses, and needs no costly or heavy metals. The key is using xylose, the most abundant simple plant sugar, to produce a large quantity of hydrogen that previously was attainable only in theory."

Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh it sounds nice but unfortunately the big oil companies will bury this so deep no one will think about it for the next 50-60 years minimum.

Really?

[slashkitty]

I find it very hard to believe that they are somehow going to get more energy out of plant matter than biodiesel or simply burning it. Hydrogen may be clean, but it's certainly not convenient. I my area, they can run cars on trash. Trash is burned in a Waste-to-Energy facility, and cars are recharged from the electricty.

Re:Not a replacement yet

[h4rr4r]

Yes, but the amounts required are quite different, or have been so far. Has that been fixed yet?

Hydrogen is valuable NOT as a fuel source

[Billy the Mountain]

While hydrogen can be used as a fuel, it makes more sense for it to be used in ammonia production. The #2 most-produced chemical is ammonia and it is most commonly produced using natural gas which produces CO2 as a by-product.

Ultimately, the true test of this new process is how do the costs compare to steam-reforming of natural gas into hyrdogen?

Re:Not a replacement yet

[kenaaker]

It's called a Sabatier reaction. It is the reaction of hydrogen and carbon dioxide, under pressure, at 300-400 C, in the presence of a nickel catalyst to produce methane and water. The methane can be transported in the existing natural gas pipeline system or used by a reforming fuel cell. The methane can also be used in one of the variations of the Fischer-Tropsch reactions to make liquid fuels.

factor in the plant mass

[Chirs]

There is energy in the plant mass. The full equation is

plant mass + input energy = output hydrogen energy + waste plant mass

Entropy is still preserved in the overall system.

Beauty of a Hydrogen economy

[ElitistWhiner]

A Hydrogen economy STOPS green house gas emission from transportation, litters our roadways with H2O instead of oil and disrupts power in the Middle East.

SO...

What are we waiting for? We could extract our asses out of the deserts of the world with simple plant processing now