Just as corn kernels have found their way into gas tanks, corn stover could soon end up in fuel cells.
A team of Virginia Tech researchers used previous research by Professor Percival Zhang and his team into xylose to turn corn stover — husks, stalks and cobs — into hydrogen through a genetic algorithm model to increase both enzymatic generation and breakdown rates by a factor of 10 and three, respectively.
The result is a reduction in both time, capital costs and facility size as far as hydrogen production goes. Lead author Joe Rollin — a former student of Zhang's, who is also a co-founder with Rollin on a biofuel startup — says the new process can be carried out in a facility the size of a standard gas station, lowering one of the hurdles for widespread hydrogen production and distribution:
We believe this exciting technology has the potential to enable the widespread use of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles around the world and displace fossil fuels.
The project was partially funded by Shell's GameChanger initiative, as well as the National Science Foundation's Small Business Technology Transfer program, and was carried out by Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
The post Virginia Tech Transforms Corn Stover Into Hydrogen appeared first on The Truth About Cars.
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