Many voices clamor for attention in times of turmois such as this period, and of those many seek, for whatever reason, to underscore how bad the present is, especially compared tot he past. This is not very nourishing fare to say the least.

There is a great deal to be said in favor of seeking out and promoting those pieces of news which often get overlooked which actually are harbingers of good.

One example, from the current edition of Nature, follows:

29 August 2002 Nature 418, 964 - 967 (2002); doi:10.1038/ nature01009

Hydrogen from catalytic reforming of biomass-derived hydrocarbons in liquid water

R. D. CORTRIGHT, R. R. DAVDA & J. A. DUMESIC

Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA

Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to J.A.D. (e-mail: dumesic@engr.wisc.edu).

Concerns about the depletion of fossil fuel reserves and the pollution caused by continuously increasing energy demands make hydrogen an attractive alternative energy source. Hydrogen is currently derived from nonrenewable natural gas and petroleum, but could in principle be generated from renewable resources such as biomass or water. However, efficient hydrogen production from water remains difficult and technologies for generating hydrogen from biomass, such as enzymatic decomposition of sugars, steam-reforming of bio-oils and gasification, suffer from low hydrogen production rates and/or complex processing requirements. Here we demonstrate that hydrogen can be produced from sugars and alcohols at temperatures near 500 K in a single-reactor aqueous-phase reforming process using a platinum-based catalyst. We are able to convert glucose—which makes up the major energy reserves in plants and animals—to hydrogen and gaseous alkanes, with hydrogen constituting 50% of the products.

We find that the selectivity for hydrogen production increases when we use molecules that are more reduced than sugars, with ethylene glycol and methanol being almost completely converted into hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

These findings suggest that catalytic aqueous-phase reforming might prove useful for the generation of hydrogen-rich fuel gas from carbohydrates extracted from renewable biomass and biomass waste streams.

Regards,

Amos