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Technology Stocks : Energy Conversion Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: WALT REISCH who wrote (6880)	9/6/2002 11:03:15 PM
From: Krowbar	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8393

Sweet step to hydrogen revolution Platinum extracts green fuel from glucose. 29 August 2002 PHILIP BALL Chemists in the United States have developed a way of making hydrogen from plant matter. It is a step towards hydrogen becoming cheap and plentiful enough for it to be used as non-polluting fuel. James Dumesic and co-workers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison heated a glucose solution extracted from plant tissues to around 200 °C under pressure. They passed it over a catalyst comprised of tiny platinum particles scattered throughout a matrix of porous aluminium oxide. This process breaks the glucose down into hydrogen, carbon dioxide and small amounts of methane1. The technique is even more efficient when methanol is used instead of glucose. Methanol and ethanol are already produced as biofuels from plant sources such as corn and wheat. But hydrogen is a better, cleaner fuel. A type of sugar, glucose is manufactured in vast quantities, for example in corn syrup fermented from corn starch. It provides large amounts of energy and fuels our own metabolic processes. Glucose is also the building block for carbohydrates such as cellulose, which supports plant tissues. So Dumesic's team hope that their process might work not only with refined glucose, but also with waste plant matter such as wood pulp, straw and stover, the fibrous remains of corn production..... nature.com