Cheap beer, with a Boilermaker chaser

Our editorial on Wednesday’s Community Forum page, “The price of beer – and energy,” discusses the problems with diverting food crops – even barley for beer, in Germany’s case – to produce ethanol as an alternative for petroleum-based fuels. And it looks at some possible ways to keep our fuel needs from leading to scarce, high-priced foods. But the ultimate solution may take a “magic bullet” – a scientific breakthrough that completely changes the technology and the economics behind fuel production. Well, bang bang: Here are a couple of tantalizing possibilities, both announced recently by faculty members at Purdue University:

• In March, Purdue senior researchers outlined a new, environmentally friendly process adding hydrogen during biofuel synthesis to provide “a sustainable fuel supply to meet the needs of the entire U.S. transportation sector” from waste crops and existing sources – without requiring an expansion of agricultural acreage. Note that bottom line: It would meet all – all – of the nation’s transportation fuel needs (including aviation), produce no extra carbon dioxide, and use no extra land or food crops. The Purdue scientists call it the dawn of a “hydrogen-carbon economy.” This may sound too good to be true, but the science appears sound enough that it’s been detailed in a paper for the National Academy of Sciences.
  
  
• Last month, Purdue professor Jerry Woodall went public with his discovery: a way to produce hydrogen for vehicle fuel using a reaction between water and a metal – an aluminum-gallium alloy. Someday soon, fueling your car could be as simple as mixing some of these alloy pellets with water in a tank.. The aluminum extracts oxygen from the water, freeing up the hydrogen; the gallium helps keep an oxidation “skin” from forming over the aluminum and preventing further reaction with oxygen. Woodall actually discovered the process in 1967 while working in the semiconductor industry. It would solve one of major stumbling blocks to building a hydrogen-powered car – how to store the dangerous element safely. Woodall’s patented process (a start-up firm called AlGalCo is working on ways to commercialize it) would mean you wouldn’t have to store it, but make it as you go along.
  
  

Other researchers are experimenting with other ways – magnesium oxide pellets, silicon and sodium, even a certain microorganism – to enable controllable hydrogen production for vehicles. If a hydrogen car sounds like pie in the sky, consider that Daimler Chrysler plans to be selling such cars to consumers as early as 2012. E85 hybrids? That’s so old school.