Proposed legislation provides money for ethanol-to-hydrogen fuel research
Thursday, February 17, 2005, 4:11 PM
by Josh St. Peters
Iowa’s Democratic Senator has introduced a bill in Washington that would encourage research on the viability of taking ethanol and making hydrogen fuel, which could be used to run new hybrid electric vehicles (HEV's).
“I believe this has a lot of potential,” Harkin said. “Keep in mind, when we use ethanol, we add no net new greenhouse gases to the Earth’s atmosphere, and that’s the benefit of it.”
The Senator said his proposal could someday lead to a change in the types of fuel that Americans depend upon. “I think that this has the potential to take us another step towards a clean, renewable, hydrogen economy,” he said. “Eventually, we want to get to a hydrogen fuel that is made totally from renewable: it would be ethanol, it would be wind, it would be solar, that type of thing.”
Currently, hydrogen is created by dripping natural gas to evaporate the fuel. Harkin said this process is too costly to be utilized on a broader basis.
“We can use ethanol as the source for hydrogen in fuel cells,” he said. “If we are going to be taking hydrogen and using it for fuel cells, I can’t think of a better place to get it than from home-grown ethanol.”
Harkin’s plan would call for the federal government to spend five million dollars over the next three years to expand the investigation into convention the corn-based fuel to a form useable by the HEV’s.
The three-phase bill would first fund the building of an ethanol-to-hydrogen fueling system. In addition, the government would convert 10 internal combustion HEV’s, allowing the cars to operate on hydrogen. The cars would be used for an additional two years, allowing researchers to study the vehicles emissions and how they function during variable weather conditions.
The legislation, presented on Wednesday, has been endorsed by the National Corn Growers Association. In an e-mail sent out by the NCGA, a leader of the group praised the Senator’s work.
“This piece of legislation encourages important innovation in the automobile industry,” said Gerald Tumbleson, NCGA first vice president. “Hybrid electric cars are the forerunners of hydrogen-propelled cars, and this bill gives a boost to the research that’s being done in this area.”
Tumbleson said ethanol is a natural choice for advancing hydrogen-powered technology. “Ethanol is a safe, affordable fuel that is easy to transport because the necessary infrastructure is already in place,” he said.
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