A New Brunswick inventor thinks he has found a new, cheap way to produce hydrogen gas. If he's right, we may someday use old pop cans to help fuel cars.

Hydrogen gas is often touted as the fuel of the future, but freeing up the gas can be difficult and expensive. The fuel is also difficult to store and transport.

Jim Andersen of New Denmark, N.B., may have come up with a solution. Andersen says he can make lots of hydrogen gas by mixing caustic soda, water and aluminum over a wide range of temperatures.

Car makers are interested in the technology's applications

"We use pie plates, aluminum foil, car block wire that is coated, pop cans," said Andersen. "All we have to do is shred it and put it in our process."

The discovery flies in the face of what chemistry textbooks predict will happen.

Since Andersen never finished high school, he had trouble convincing the patent office he was right.

With the help of chemist George Jenkins at the University of New Brunswick, Andersen got the U.S. patent and the attention of auto makers developing hydrogen-fuelled cars.

Scientists knew metals can produce hydrogen, but the reaction normally stops. In Andersen's invention, corrosive sodium hydroxide acts as a catalyst that doesn't break down so long as more water and aluminum are added.

Jenkins says the invention solves the problem of having the hydrogen where you want, when you want it.

"With our system, all you'd have to do is move the aluminum around," said Jenkins. "If you had water, you could make it wherever you wanted to, so you'd have hydrogen on demand, on site."

The inventor says the product is also of interest to the aluminum industry, which is looking for some way to recycle old pop cans.