Sweet ride: Cars to run on sugar soon

If scientists are to be believed, a new fuel may turn driving into a really sweet experience.

Researchers have developed a "revolutionary" process for converting plant sugars into hydrogen, which they claim could be used to cheaply and efficiently run vehicles.

According to the researchers, the conversion process involves combining plant sugars, water and a cocktail of powerful enzymes to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide under mild reaction conditions.

The new system helps solve the three major technical barriers to the so-called "hydrogen economy" - the roadblocks involve how to produce low-cost sustainable hydrogen, how to store hydrogen and how to distribute it efficiently, the researchers in US said.

"This is revolutionary work. This has opened up a whole new direction in hydrogen research. With technology improvement, sugar-powered vehicles could come true eventually," lead researcher Percival Zhang of Virginia Tech University said.

Zhang and his colleagues believe they have found the most promising hydrogen-producing system to date from plant biomass. They think they can produce hydrogen from cellulose, which has a similar chemical formula to starch but is far more difficult to break down.

In laboratory studies, the scientists collected 13 different, well-known enzymes and combined them with water and starches. Inside a specially designed reactor and under mild conditions (approximately 86°F), the resulting broth reacted to produce only carbon dioxide and hydrogen with no leftover pollutants. The method, called "in vitro synthetic biology", produced three times more hydrogen than the theoretical yield of anaerobic fermentation methods.

"However, the amount of hydrogen produced was still too low for commercial use and the speed of the reactions isn't optimal," the ScienceDaily quoted Zhang as saying.

A sugar-fuelled car would be inherently safe because its hydrogen is used immediately, said Zhang. He added that it would also be cheaper and cleaner to run than even the most efficient petrol-driven car.