I've been fairly negative on the idea of the 'Hydrogen Economy' that our President is pushing, mostly because it is a stupid and unworkable idea. However, some researchers, who are significantly smarter and better informed about fuel technology than Mr. Bush have come up with an interesting process for producing liquid transportation fuel from energy sources (i.e., wind, hydro, coal) and carbon sources (i.e., biomass, coal) to produce liquid hydrocarbons. This looks to me much like a biomass/coal-to-liquids process but with much of the CO2 emissions typical of theses processes recycled or utilized so that the valuable carbon is not lost to the atmosphere.
As usual the challenge will be making the process cost-effective and ramping up production while the economy still has the potential of driving the development of technologies such as this.
"In a recent study, scientists have demonstrated that a hybrid system of hydrogen and carbon can produce a sufficient amount of liquid hydrocarbon fuels to power the entire U.S. transportation sector. Using biomass to produce the carbon, and solar energy to produce hydrogen, the process requires only a fraction of the land area needed by other proposed methods."
H2CAR could fuel entire U.S. transportation sector
As usual the challenge will be making the process cost-effective and ramping up production while the economy still has the potential of driving the development of technologies such as this.
"In a recent study, scientists have demonstrated that a hybrid system of hydrogen and carbon can produce a sufficient amount of liquid hydrocarbon fuels to power the entire U.S. transportation sector. Using biomass to produce the carbon, and solar energy to produce hydrogen, the process requires only a fraction of the land area needed by other proposed methods."
H2CAR could fuel entire U.S. transportation sector
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