Researchers have found an easy way to extract hydrogen, an alternative fuel, from soy beans.


Nov. 3, 2006 - In an age of anxiety over oil and climate change, hydrogen has been touted as a potential alternative energy source. The problem has been where to get the hydrogen. Extracting it from fossil fuels is easy but nonrenewable. Taking it from plants is elaborate, time-consuming and expensive. In today’s issue of the journal Science, Lanny Schmidt, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota, and his team of graduate student announced a new process of extracting hydrogen from soy-bean oil that is as easy as getting it from fossil fuels. The research might one day lead to a car that runs on grass clippings or wood chips. NEWSWEEK’s Tony Dokoupil interviewed Schmidt by telephone.

Excerpts: (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15551090/site/newsweek/)

We've already had cars that ran on wood chips. Remember the old Stanley steamer?
Lots of the old boats in our area still run on wood chips.

The new technology seems a little different though.

The problem with that new method is that it produces both hydrogen AND carbon dioxide. What would one do with carbon dioxide if the entire object of the alternative fuels thing is to not produce greenhouse gasses?