A team of Virginia Tech researchers has discovered a way to create hydrogen fuel using a biological method that greatly reduces the time and money it takes to produce the zero-emissions fuel. This method uses abundantly available corn stover - the stalks, cobs, and husks - to produce the hydrogen. The team's new findings, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could help speed the widespread arrival of the hydrogen-powered vehicles in a way that is inexpensive and has extremely low carbon emissions. "This means we have demonstrated the most important step toward a hydrogen economy - producing distributed and affordable green hydrogen from local biomass resources," said Percival Zhang, a professor in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering, which is in both the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering. New discovery may be breakthrough for hydrogen cars
I like the work but the standard way of making H2 from CH4 will be hard to beat economically and environmentally. The other way to use organics like wood is gasification, where you make CO + H2 upon heating, so you could do it that way much faster. Many videos on YouTube running engines on the vapors from burning wood. WWII believe there were several millions cars running off wood, just piping the vapors over to the carburetor.
Great, so corn stover will be in demand for hydrogen in addition to fuel ethanol and pyrolysis syn crude in the future. Hopefully, we'll still leave enough on the fields for fertilization and carbon sequestering.
