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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.'"
The modern Hydrogen economy has to get over a huge hurdle in the wide-scale distribution network of H2.
Distribution for H2 is pathetically inefficient. In order to ship it at an efficient level, they have to compress it into liquid form. That takes up a lot of energy, along with the associated costs of now transporting a very cold liquid (yeah - not very energy efficient either).
If H2 can be made using a novel approach, you can minimize the huge potential transport and distribution costs by setting up a lot of small production facilities (local refineries?).
This could be a pretty big deal.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
Imagine if the $50 billion or whatever the US spent invading Iraq was spent of H2 research, production and infrastructure?
That's the whole point: one problem to solve (at the power plant) instead of many to solve (at the cars). If you run many electric cars from a single power station, then you have:
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
In the article they mentioned that the byproducts of methane and carbon dioxide were produced. Isn't it possible to generate electricity using methane? I remeber hearing about some dairy farmers that were doing that. I don't know what the effects of that would be, but it could be one more way for the system to become even more efficent, and possibly self sustaining.
The real problem is the efficiency and the practicality. (Your other points)
Biodiesel and Ethanol are good examples. Biodiesel can be made from a variety of sources, is efficient enough to be workable now, is compatible with the existing energy infrastructure, and is compatible with a large number of diesel engines (In fact I use B20 nearly exclusively). Ethanol is problematic in a number of ways, but still more or less workable. So given the right situations alternative energy sources can be useful, despite the fact that an entire economy doesn't use them. And given enough alternatives western societies can lessen their dependence on energy sources which must be purchased from unsavory regimes. This can be nothing but a good thing
Unfortunately the site is down so I haven't read the article so I can't comment about this specific implementation. However, I view anything H2 related as problematic because of both its incompatibility with existing energy delivery infrastructure and the ridiculous hype surrounding it.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
"Producing hydrogen from sunflower oil could provide a more environmentally-friendly alternative by reducing [pollutants such as carbon monoxide and greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane] while offering an abundant, low-cost and renewable resource that reduces dependence on foreign oil," says the study's lead researcher Valerie Dupont, Ph.D., an energy engineer with the University of Leeds in England.
Of course, carbon dioxide and methane are also produced by the process, so I'm not sure what the advantage is supposed to be. Still, the aim seems to be reducing pollution by not actually burning fuel, with a side benefit of using less petroleum. In that context, using hydrogen from vegetable oil might make some sense. Regarding your specific points:
The reactor doesn't generate hydrogen with 90% efficiency, it generates hydrogen of 90% purity. Given that the off-gas is about half methane (RTFA) it appears to me to be very inefficient.
First part (efficiency vs. purity) you quite right. I'm not sure what the "more efficient" claim is supposed to mean. The most likely thing that comes to mind is that when you use the hydrogen in a fuel cell, more pure would mean more efficient.
There are already engines, and even fuel cells, which can burn hydrocarbons directly. Sunflower oil makes reasonable diesel fuel....
Quite right. It isn't clear what advantage this new process is supposed to afford, except possibly the aforementioned greater purity which could mean better performace and/or longer life from the actual hydrogen fuel cell components.
Hydrogen as a motor fuel suffers from huge problems with storage.
Again, pretty true. Ultimately if we are going to use hydrogen fuel cells to power vehicles, the reformer and fuel cell need to be small and light enough to be on-board. They'll be fed by the real fuel (vegetable oil, ethanol, gasoline, whatever). Eventually, that will be possible/practical. Whether it will ever be preferable to biodiesel (or better yet a hybrid biodiesel/electric drivetrain) or whatever is the next big thing, is anyone's guess.
... because:
1) by-products are carbon dioxide and methane.
2) unseen by-products: whatever is required to grow sunflowers (fertilizers & their production, tractor fuel by-products, etc)
3) scaling: how many sunflowers does it take to make how much usable fuel?
4) scaling: how much viable farm land can afford to be lost to the production of "fuel" vice "food"?
Fuel cells are really neat. The problem of fuelling fuel cells is huge. Even without fuel cells the whole concept of biomass based fuels simply can't scale to current demand . Think about it, the U.S. produces amounts of oil measured in millions of barrels per day to sustain current consumption (let alone what it imports)! What quantity of biomass is required to come close to that and what are you willing to sacrifice to do it?
Sorry, but this story is a non-starter. If we're serious about addressing the dangers of fossil fuels, then we have to cut back on our energy consumption first and foremost. Anything else is just a "diet pill" approach. Don't change your fuel or engine, learn to live without/depend less on the vehicle(s).
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Total area of the USA is 3,618,784 square miles, so you're talking 12% of the total land area (including Alaska) and a much higher fraction of the arable land.
Note that if you want to replace the gasoline as well, you have to multiply that figure by about 4.5. This is clearly not possible.
Sustainability and energy independence essay