Monday, November 23, 2009

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.

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