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."

Comments

Re:Pop and junk food or ... human fat !

[avtchillsboro]

But then we have all this energy already stored as fat on our bodies. Well, we'll just have to design a car that runs on human fat. Just cut that love handle, toss it in a gas/fat tank and there you go

Seriously. I guess you meant that as a joke, but a lot of things in life seem to be bad, unless you wait long enough to see that they are actually good. Human obesity for example.

For much of human history (at least prior to the last 10,000 or 15,000 years), human obesity was probably quite rare. Today, in more technologically advanced economies, it is more common. Why? Except for the fact that food is more abundant, (and there are some diseases that cause it) we don't know why.

My guess is that there are some genetic &/or biological advantages, even beyond the obvious fact that the ability to store energy as fat helps humans to cope with short-term situation where there is *no* food (like if one gets lost in the woods for a day or two), and longer term situations where there are food shortages, like during a famine.

Well, as it turns out, human fat tissue has a high concentration of stem cells (can't cite the source, but I read it on /.). This may mean that at some point in the future, folks that need a new organ will be able to have one grown that is a perfect genetic match for themselves, from their own stem cells harvested from their own body fat.

I would also hazard a guess that the human species is more efficient at turning food to fat than almost any other species, and that there are a great many heretofore unrealized advantages to that, such as enabling humans to hibernate on long space trips, etc.