Termites and hydrogen

Searching for a miracle... a fuel source that is actually efficient.

Ethanol has been a disaster, barely breaking even in energy output, not doing well at all in carbon footprint, and driving up the price of corn and other grain. Time to try something else.

Hydrogen hasn't been much better, so far - it's still not cost effective. We simply don't have an industrial process to make it cheaply and in bulk. Wouldn't it be nice if we did? Termites, and the microbes in their guts that allow them to digest wood, could change that.

Termites? Termites!

A worker termite tears off a piece of wood with its mandibles and lets its guts work on it like a molecular wrecking yard, stripping away sugars, CO2, hydrogen, and methane with 90 percent efficiency... Offer a termite this page, and its microbial helpers will break it down into two liters of hydrogen, enough to drive more than six miles in a fuel-cell car. If we could turn wood waste into fuel with even a fraction of the termite’s efficiency, we could run our economy on sawdust, lawn clippings, and old magazines.

Check out the article... it's fascinating.