Hydrogen Fuel Cells Running On Sunflower Oil

tigersaw writes "You've heard about Biodiesel , Greasecars, and Fuel Cells for a while now. At yesterday's meeting of the American Chemical Society, researchers from the University of Leeds in England described a novel approach that combines these ideas in a fuel cell device that employs steam and two separate catalyts to generate hydrogen using sunflower oil. Experimental results show a hydrogen yield of 90 percent, versus 70 percent in other hydrogen fuel cell technologies. 'The sunflower oil used is the same type found on grocery shelves. "We would happily toss our salad with it," says the researcher, who adds that the process can also work with other types of vegetable oils.'"

Comments

Re:Only if you ignore the realities

[JGski]

Yep. Hydrogen is a pretty poor energy carrier (not energy source!!) for several reasons, first being energy "return": oil is 100:1 for Saudi oil (100 barrels out for 1 barrel in to cover extraction, transportation and refining) to as low as 10:1 for Alaskan/Texan oil. Compare to other sources: natural gas 50:1, wind 3:1, solar 4:1 (silicon fab operations and materials), ethanol 1:1 or less (need to count inputs from fertilizer and farmer equipment fuel), hydrogen 0.5:1 (energy in for electrolysis with losses plus transportation).

And then since hydrogens's only a carrier (like a rechargeable battery - there is no such thing as a "hydrogen well") you still need a real energy source to "charge" it. Sunflower oil might be a potential source...until you do a back-of-the-envelope on how many arable acres you would have to grow it on and what percentage (most) of the US's arable acres are only so due to energy-intensive and oil-intensive farming providing water, fertilizer, pesticides, etc. and how much of the "naturally arable" land has been paved over for suburbs and cities (e.g. the entire Santa Clara valley aka Silicon Valley).

Even this sunflower one makes me wonder: what are the fertilizer and farm equipment inputs? where does the energy for the steam come from? So what's the net energy return? I'd put money on it being no better than ethanol!

An interesting post I saw else where: for good energy return on low density sources like biomass you want to have minimal energy inputs from petro or other sources. As an energy cash crop you want to have something that grows pretty much like a weed. Guess what produces good quality oil and grows like a weed? :-) Well, "weed" of course, or actually hemp. Wouldn't it be funny if we need to rely on hemp for the "Peak Oil" time.

A better catalyst?

[Randym]

The catalysts, which are key to the process, orchestrate a series of chemical maneuvers that ultimately result in an increased hydrogen yield. First, one of the catalysts (the nickel-based unit) absorbs the oxygen from the air and this interaction heats up the reactor bed of the device. Simultaneously, in the presence of heat, another catalyst (a carbon-based adsorbent) releases any carbon dioxide previously trapped in the device.

I wonder if they have tried this one. It's designed to supress methane production and increase hydrogen production.

From the article:
...a Raneynickel catalyst, named after Murray Raney, who first patented the alloy in 1927.

Raney-nickel is a porous catalyst made of about 90 percent nickel (Ni) and 10 percent aluminum (Al). While Raney-nickel proved somewhat effective at separating hydrogen from biomass-derived molecules, the researchers improved the material's effectiveness by adding more tin (Sn), which stops the production of methane and instead generates more hydrogen. Relative to other catalysts, the Raney-NiSn can perform for long time periods (at least 48 hours) and at lower temperatures (roughly 225 degrees Celsius).