Sugar: The Next Hydrogen Car Hope
Hydrogen-powered cars are here already. BMW, Honda and GM have all made them. The problem is — besides their extreme cost — that there’s no cheap and abundant source of hydrogen production out there. Scientists from Virginia Tech have developed a process that can convert sugar from plants — cellulose — into hydrogen.
They combine the sugar with water and a batch of enzymes and tah-dah: hydrogen. Of course, it’s not really that easy. The resulting amount of hydrogen is too low for commercial use, the group says, but it could be the first step into developing a realistic way to produce consumable hydrogen.
