They have created a bio-reactor to create hydrogen out of waste. They have one commercial scale set-up at welches grape facility that has very small traces of methane. They are no working on getting it out of waste water. see this article found on this site
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/06/nanologix_to_bu.html much more info available on the net

Most hydrogen used by industry is made from natural gas and used to produce Ammonia for fertilizers and explosives and a few other uses. Ammonia is a much more transportable fuel than hydrogen. I don't know of any engines that can burn Ammonia.

Making Hydrogen always wastes energy in the process, but so does making gasoline from crude oil.

The electric car, with a small gasoline generator built in and five to ten gallons of fuel in a tank for emergency use only, is the answer to fuel and city air polution problems.

You can frequently buy packaged charcoal in the grocery store for a better price than gasoline and the same energy content. Perhaps we could go back to Mr. Diesel's day and try to run engines on powdered carbon. 951413314159...

Roger Pham is either a hydrogen shill, a fossil-energy booster using hydrogen as a diversion, or just deluded.

Typical electrolyzers are about 70% efficient, so if you start with solar energy systems at 30% you can only get 21% of the original solar energy as hydrogen.  45% of that is 9.5%.  Compare to ~95% efficiency in Li-ion cells, you get 28.5% out or 3 times as much.

Hydrogen is a boondoggle unless it is the original form of the provided energy (like algae which make it directly), and even then it may be most efficient to convert it to something else for storage, transport and use.

(Incidentally, the motor of the X-15 burned anhydrous ammonia and liquid oxygen.)

Oh Wow!! A hydrogen-fueled 6.8-liter V-10 engine.
That sure hits a market sweet-spot.........Not!

K,
Technically, you are quite correct. The heat band can be used by thermal engine to make extra electricity. But, practically, that is not done, so only 30% electrical efficiency is quoted for the concentrated PV. What I am trying to say is that H2 production someday can be efficient and low cost, and that we do need a source of stored energy other than battery that so far has a lot of limitation.

Eng-Poet,
Since you did not bother to look at: http://www.ne.doe.gov/hydrogen/HTE.pdf

I hereby quote the last paragraph out of that webpage for your convenience:

"HTE(High Temp Electrolysis) is ideally suited for use with an advanced nuclear reactor system because a portion of the heat from the reactor can be used to create steam, while high efficiency electrical conversion cycles make maximum advantage of the high- temperature reactor heat source. It is expected that
with this combination of a high-temperature reactor and high-temperature electrolysis, the
process will achieve a thermal conversion efficiency of 40 to 50% while avoiding the
challenging chemistry and corrosion issues associated with other hydrogen production processes."
You can do the same for Concentrated Solar Energy at similar efficiency level.

Roger: thanks for the reply re: heat band. We probably agree about H2 being Just Dandy. And disagree about when that Dandy Man will arrive.

A year ago I would have said hybrids and diesel would be the next generation, dominant for 10-20 years. Now I see how batteries are improving and expect EV to be a choice for commutes and neighborhood vehicles from 2009 onward.

My reservation about H2 is that I expect truly difficult problems in transportation and storage. Electricity already has the means - we know exactly how to build transmission networks, generate the stuff, and send it to your home and car. And we have for decades - the batteries just weren't up to the job.

"the process will achieve a thermal conversion efficiency of 40 to 50% while avoiding the...."
This is like putting lip-stick on a pig. Electrolysis is a net energy LOSS no matter what!
There's better uses of waste heat from reactors: fermentation, anaerobic digestion, etc.

Hydrogen? And here I was thinking about Hondas Solar Race Car?

The Dream II.

Not that Honda is a forward thinking company.

It is not the solar race car, it is the technology.

This reminds me of another somewhat similar company.

Ovonics. I think they are owned by Shell.

Fords effort may not be the best possible, but reducing polloution in congested areas are always welcome.

When major manufactures from the automotive and oil industires are looking for ways to fuel your car at home when possible from the Sun, you know who is thinking about tomorrow.

Others are trying to survive.

I am surprised by the fact that they haven't used Stanley meyers invention and use the water fuel cell. Opps I forgot they get paid off by the oil industry to stop patents that are vertually free from getting on the market.

this is so kool

Efficiency is not the true issue,in my opinion if you are generating Hydrogen using a renewable non polluting energy source such as Windmills or photovoltaic cells the true issue is that we are not increasing the level of pollution especially if we use non polluting renewable energy to manufacture the windmills and solar cells.The hydrogen thus produced could be used in fuel cells for electric cars or ICEs.In addition you could power homes with the same .

Its about time. The MTSU Agricultural Dept. in Murfreesboro, TN designed an automobile engine with the help of Nissan in nearby Smyrna, TN over 15 years ago and no body will manufacture one for consumers! The design has won several awards worldwide and still not any funding! What a shame. That automobile set the land speed record for Hydrogen powered car on the Bonneville flats at around 100 mph and it will go faster than that.

Satish: Don't dismiss efficiency so quickly. It determines if you will ever get enough out to make a process usable.

If PV cells last 20 years but over that period will generate only 100% of the power that was used to make them then they will be a niche application. If they generate a thousand times that amount the story is much different.

Are you really going to put up a 100 foot tower with an expensive turbine and blades to get 100 watt hours per day regardless of whether renewable energy was used to manufacture it? I doubt it. Efficiency does matter.

Bio diesel is where its at. My VW jetta can go 600 miles on 13 gallons of fuel. I make my own from used vegetable oil and 10 % methanol and a small amount of lye. This my friends is where the term cheap fuel originates. I have an endless supply of oil and i can make 55 gallons in about 3 hours. Enough to suppply me and a neighbour for a month in 3 hours and a few dollars worth of methanol.