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

This could actually be really cool...

[Drunken_Jackass]

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.

Centralised Power

[sbszine]

It's like an all-electric car... sure it uses no gas but that power has to come from somewhere to begin with. You've only moved the problem to someone else's back yard.

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:

• one point to filter for emissions (in the case of fossil fuels)
• no car pollution in cities(!)
• an easy upgrade path when you replace your coal plant with biodiesel or solar or fusion or whatever
• possible economies of scale (subject to electrical transmission losses)

...and so on.

Re:Only if you ignore the realities

[bhima]

I don't think it matters what percentage of energy consumption a given energy strategy will meet; because the hegemony of petroleum is not likely to be repeated soon, by any alternative energy sources.

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.