Hydrogen is real--50 years from now
DAVIS, Calif.--UPDATE: John Melo, CEO of alternative fuel (and medicine) maker Amyris Technologies, told an audience at the GoingGreen conference that when he worked at BP two years ago, he was part of a project to determine if hydrogen made sense as an auto fuel.
The answer was yes, decades from now.
"We determined that it would take 40 to 50 years to get hydrogen at scale," he said."It will be a reality. It will just be further out."
In the meantime, there will be a biofuel boom that will go for 20 to 30 years or more. Melo, naturally, sees more hope out of making ethanol, biodiesel or jet fuel with synthetic biology and waste plant matter than making fuel out of food crops. Amyris specializes in synthetic biology, which involves mimicking biological processes for breaking down plant matter into sugars and fuel in labs. The company grew out of research conducted by UC Berkeley's Jay Keasling. It has developed a malaria drug and is now working on fuels.
Recently, Melo said that its organic jet fuel passed a test that showed it could be used at minus 70 degrees Celsius. It gets cold outside of airplanes, after all. (Ed note: I thought he said minus 17. Amyris called to say he said 70. Sorry.)
BP is a name to watch in biofuels. The company will contribute $500 million to Berkeley and the University of Illinois to develop biofuel technologies. Sources in the VC world also say that the company is scoping out tropical real estate to grow feedstocks.
You also see ex-BPers like Melo cropping up at biofuel start-ups.
Posted on: September 12, 2007, 6:30 AM PDT
Story: Getting fuel out of water
9v battery will create hydrogen from water: reader comment from Zupek
Posted on: June 4, 2007, 9:47 AM PDT
Story: Alternative fuel for thought
Go home, fill a small dish with water. Go get a NEW and FULLY CHARGE 9v battery. Put one wire to the postive and put it in the water and do the same for the negative.
Those bubbles you see in the water are HYDROGEN and OXYGEN. and it took hardly any power...
Water- the divine gift has the power life to all beings on earth will also give power to all common combustion engines in the simple process of electrolysis to produce the fuels in the form of hydrogen & oxygen gases HHO that we would ever need to run everything on earth in including power stations & rockets
- what 50 years from now?
- by budzinsorp1 September 12, 2007 12:48 PM PDT
- Germany made and started selling hydrogen cars about 2 years ago. They can run on fuel and with the flip of the switch run of hydrogen (using hydrogen to combust not fuel cell) about same power as fuel not sure how efficient and how long hydrogen would last. They also got or building a highway with hydrogen stations.
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