Hydrogen Making the News

Brian Westenhaus has an interesting article dealing with producing hydrogen from algae. As Brian has often commented, the advanced biofuels movement is going to require a lot of hydrogen.

Cambridge Mass. startup Sun Catalytix has $3 million in venture capital to develop its catalysts for producing hydrogen from water using sunlight as an energy source. Some analysts see this as a good way of producing "fuel" for overnight generation of power at solar power plants.

Hydrogen is notoriously difficult to store safely, but Carnegie Institution scientists think they have discovered a means of hydrogen storage that might eventually be made safe and inexpensive.

Hydrogen will be particularly useful for fuel cell applications -- stationary rather than mobile -- and for catalytic production of biofuels from biological materials such as biomass and bio-oils.

For mobile fuel cell applications, methane and methanol fuel cells are likely to take the lead.