Congratulations to researchers at Pennsylvania State University who recently announced they have discovered a way to convert cellulose into hydrogen with a 288% return on energy input! This could be a huge development in the move to a hydrogen economy given that splitting natural gas was previously the only economical way to derive hydrogen.

Hydrogen sourcing has long been one of the major obstacles to using hydrogen as a clean fuel. And what makes it even sweeter is that unlike ethanol, which is made from glucose (the fruit of plants), this process uses cellulose (the stalks of plants). That leaves our agricultural fruit for eating, unlike ethanol production which consumes food crops (corn, sugar).

Sound too good to be true? It’s all thanks to bacteria and a little chemistry.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 8:08 pm and is filed under Education & Research, Energy, Research/Publishing, Sam Hummel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.