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Driving on Starch
Roland Piquepaille writes "Using sugar contained in corn or potatoes to build hydrogen-powered fuel cells has already been done. But now, a team of U.S. researchers has developed a new sugar-to-hydrogen technology. Why not put the starch inside the tank of your car? With the help of 13 specific enzymes, 'a car with an approximately 12-gallon tank could hold 27 kilograms (kg) of starch, which is the equivalent of 4 kg of hydrogen. The range would be more than 300 miles, estimates one of the researchers. One kg of starch will produce the same energy output as 1.12 kg (0.38 gallons) of gasoline.' The beauty behind this idea is that no special infrastructure would be needed. Starch could be distributed by your local grocery store."
Wouldn't that be a lot of starch? I mean, wouldn't we then have a shortage of it? I know it's more renewable than gas, but could they even produce enough? They're having a hard enough time with 10% corn for gas. 12 gallons of starch is like, 110 or so bags of starch at the store...
Well, what need to do is bring back external combustion engines. Then we can simply burn anything: Garden waste, wood, coal, anything that will burn. There is enough coal on this planet to fire up steam engines for thousands of years...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It's Roland the Plogger again, wrong as usual.
It's been possible to convert cellulose to ethanol using enzymes for a while now. The problem is that making the enzymes is still too expensive for this to be useful as a fuel process. This Wikipedia article provides some background on that. It's a good idea. If the cost of making the enzymes can be brought down, there's plenty of agricultural waste (straw, bagasse, corn cobs, wood chips) available at low or even negative (it costs money to dispose of it) cost. Venture capital is going into developing cost-effective processes.
But it's not likely to be done in a car's fuel tank. Something more like a brewery scaled up to oil refinery size is more like it.
they already tried that, it didnt work. cellulose takes 2 days on average to be hydrolyzed into usable fuel. they use starch because it is immediately broken down into sugars. enzymes in saliva can break down starch in less than a few minutes producing that sweet taste after holding a piece of uncooked spaghetti in your mouth. animals have special bacteria in their stomachs which break down cellulose but it is a very slow process. one that isnt so great for powering cars.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.