Originally published November 27 2005
Consortium explores the possibilities of fuel cell technology
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The Bush Administration has supported the research consortium called FreedomCAR in its fuel cell research.
American drivers now burn about 370 million gallons of gasoline a day in passenger vehicles, a number which is projected to grow to 433 million gallons over the next decade.
Given the rising demand for gasoline around the world, chronic refinery under capacity and periodic weather and war-related convulsions in supply, the baseline price of gasoline is certain to rise until we find an affordable fuel to replace it.
A research consortium spearheaded by the Bush Administration called FreedomCAR promises do for fuel cells and hydrogen what the Manhattan Project did for atomic energy.
The main criticism of the project has been the difficulty of obtaining inexpensive hydrogen, which is abundant naturally in many molecules but has to be stripped away using another energy source to arrive at its elemental state for use as a fuel.
It's expensive (because natural gas is expensive) and still leaves the nation hostage a non-renewable fossil fuel.
The other commercial method is through electrolysis, which costs three times more than the process using natural gas in that the hydrogen element has to be cracked from a water molecule using electricity.
Believe it or not, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley recently discovered that pond scum, which is technically a form of green algae, produces hydrogen gas when deprived of sulfur during photosynthesis.
The most promising of these is being conducted by a Pennsylvania company whose main business is developing diagnostic kits for infectious diseases.
This firm has done a feasibility study showing that it could develop a bioreactor to process the algae into hydrogen using the company's patented bacterial culturing method that is the basis of its existing business.
The hydrogen economy got a further boost this year with the dedication of Syracuse University's Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems headquarters building, where hydrogen fuel research will be advanced and strategies developed to commercialize and mainstream hydrogen fuel-cells.
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