The World in 2030

The World in 2030 229
store such a difficult gas (or liquid), a professor at Purdue
University in the USA has announced the development of
a new technique to generate hydrogen ‘in real time’ (in a
continuous manner) from water via the use of aluminium. If
this announcement turns out to hold the potential suggested
(and although the concept has been patented that remains
a big ‘if’), cars would only have to carry water, a supply
of aluminium pellets and a low-power electrical source to
produce their own hydrogen fuel as they travel:
Purdue University professor Jerry Woodall has discovered
a way to make hydrogen out of a reaction
of water and an alloy of aluminum and gallium. The
production technique eliminates the need to store
hydrogen, he said. Mixing water and pellets made
up of the alloy in a tank can produce fuel for a small
engine, or conceivably a car.
The process, along with other recent hydrogen developments,
could work to dispel some of the criticism of
hydrogen as a fuel source in the coming decades. 439
Leaving aside the difficulties of storing hydrogen within
vehicles and the problems of providing a re-fuelling
infrastructure, hydrogen as a fuel for domestic power
consumption – especially when the electricity required to
produce the hydrogen comes form a renewable source such
as solar or wind-power – has a remarkably bright future. As
Jeremy Rifkin explains:
The most important aspect of using renewable resources
to produce hydrogen is that the sun’s energy,