From Guest Blogger Jordan: Scientists Discover a More Cost-Effective Way to Produce Hydrogen Fuel

While hydrogen fuel is being touted as a cleaner and potentially more affordable alternative to gasoline than electricity, it is still far from being the ideal transportation fuel, considering that the most common methods for producing hydrogen nowadays are not entirely green, as they release certain amounts of carbon dioxide, and are quite expensive, as well. Scientists from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University now claim that they have found a way to change that, and create a method for producing hydrogen fuel that would cut costs and would not have any harmful emissions.

According to a report recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a group of Virginia Tech researchers have figured out how to create hydrogen from clean, readily available sources, without producing carbon emissions in the process. They have managed to produce hydrogen fuel from corn stalks and husks, a source that is abundantly available in many regions around the world. They say that the technique they have created is very cost-effective and eco-friendly.

“This means we have demonstrated the most important step toward a hydrogen economy – producing distributed and affordable green hydrogen from local biomass resources,” said Percival Zhang (pictured), a professor in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech, one of the authors of the study.

The method created by the researchers employs dirty biomass, unlike other techniques that use processed sugars, which cuts production costs substantially and makes it more practical, since it relies on a source that can easily and quickly transported to processing plants.

Joe Rollin, co-author of the study, and a former doctoral student of Zhang’s at Virginia Tech, said that they used a complex genetic algorithm to analyze the different steps of the enzymatic process that breaks down the corn husks and stalks into hydrogen and carbon dioxide, creating a system that is able to process glucose and xylose simultaneously, transforming the biomass into hydrogen fuel at a much faster rate than traditional methods.

What’s more, the reaction rate in this model is three times higher than most other methods employed today, which helps reduce the size of facilities in which hydrogen fuel is produced. According to the researchers, with their method, hydrogen fuel could be produced in facilities similar in size to a gas station, meaning that the initial investment for companies interested in producing hydrogen fuel would be pretty low. Also, given that this model is based on corn biomass, which is locally available, the costs and carbon emissions associated with transportation of the energy source to the processing facilities can be reduced to minimum.

“We believe this exciting technology has the potential to enable the widespread use of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles around the world and displace fossil fuels,” Rollin said.

At the moment, hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles are far from becoming mainstream, with only a couple of models that are commercially available, the Toyota Mirai FCV sedan and the Hyundai Tucson SUV, which is only available through leasing for now.