Feb 21 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Bob Fliss The Sun, Port Charlotte, Fla.

Imagine a future where you can fill the tank of your automobile with clean-burning hydrogen with as much ease and safety as you can pump gasoline today -- and cheaper, too.

Meanwhile, off Florida's Atlantic coast, undersea turbines will be rotating slowly, converting the ocean current of the Gulfstream into electrical current for thousands of Florida residents.

The House Committee on Energy -- chaired by State Rep. Paige Kreegel, R-Punta Gorda -- heard brief but eye-opening presentations about both these new technologies at its meeting Wednesday. Although the Florida Legislature doesn't formally convene until March 4 for its annual 60-day session, it's hard to tell the difference during this final committee week. Interest groups are descending on the Capitol, hoping to get an early ear from legislators.

"Hydrogen is very cheap to make, but very expensive to store and move," said Patrick Quarles, chief executive officer of Asemblon Inc., a Redmond, Wash.-based chemical research firm.

Scientists at Asemblon have developed a liquid hydrocarbon that they have patented and trademarked under the name Hydrnol. It is not a fuel itself but rather a storage and transportation medium for hydrogen molecules.

"It's a killer idea," said Kreegel, who spent about two hours discussing Asemblon's research in depth with Quarles on Tuesday. He noted that Hydrnol is chemically related to propane or butane. "It's about as stable as the fuel in your lighter," Kreegel said.

Another "killer idea" was presented earlier in the meeting by Jim Dehlsen, chief executive of The Aquantis Project, a Florida corporation that proposes to build what's essentially a wind farm beneath the ocean. Dehlsen said that his first efforts at commercial wind energy started in 1980. Essentially, the undersea electric turbines that Aquantis proposes to install off Florida's Atlantic coast are a relatively straightforward adaptation of wind technology for marine use.

Each underwater "current plane" will be moored about 50 meters below the surface, and shouldn't interfere with aquatic life, Dehlsen said. Each will have a pair of three-bladed propellers, about 120 feet wide. Because of the density of the water, they will only have to rotate about five times a minute to produce electricity.

Dehlsen told the legislators that he believes that the Gulfstream could be producing about 7,500 megawatts of power by 2017 -- roughly 12 percent of Florida's needs. He is asking the state to join Aquantis in a partnership to produce the first third of this capacity.

Being both combustible and one of the most plentiful elements on Earth, hydrogen usually comes up in any broad discussion of alternative fuels. But Quarles noted that all most people know about hydrogen is that it provided the lighter-than-air lift for early airships like the Hindenburg, which crashed and burned at Lakehurst, N.J., in 1937.

In practical terms, the big difference between Hydrnol and today's gasoline or diesel fuel lies in what's left after combustion. The residues from the series of petroleum explosions that happen within the cylinders of an internal combustion engine pass through the vehicle's emission system and ultimately through the exhaust and into the air.

Hydrnol doesn't produce any exhaust, Quarles explained. Rather, what's left over is quantities of spent fuel that no longer contain hydrogen.

Although this poses some engineering challenges, they're easily overcome by creating a double fuel tank -- one part containing hydrogen-charged fuel, the other spent fuel.

Therefore a fill-up will involve a double-headed nozzle -- one to pump in hydrogenated fuel, the other to remove the spent fuel. The spent fuel would later be transported to a plant to be re-energized with fresh hydrogen. Because only the hydrogen is being burned, Hydrnol could be recycled many times.

The Hydrnol-fueled car or truck won't look much different from today's vehicles. Quarles said that a fill-up should take about three minutes and should be good for 300 to 400 miles on the highway.

Quarles told the legislators that Asemblon isn't looking for any Florida funding for its work. However, he sees ways that his company and the state could collaborate on pilot projects. One possibility might be converting a municipal bus fleet to a combination of diesel and Hydrnol.

Florida could play a big role in making hydrogen the fuel of the future because of the vast amounts of biomass it produces, Quarles said. Currently, byproducts from the state's citrus and sugar industries are being touted as feedstock for ethanol, a type of alcohol that could be blended with petroleum.

Quarles said there may be a better use for this biomass -- conversion into Hydrnol. Ethanol processing plants could be converted to make Hydrnol without much problem -- Quarles specifically mentioned the new ethanol plant near Bartow as a possible location.

"I think that what this shows is that there are plenty of private initiatives that, properly harnessed, could help us solve both the problem of energy independence and that of carbon sequestration," said State Rep. Gary Aubuchon, R-Cape Coral, who also sits on the Committee on Energy and chairs Charlotte County's legislative delegation.