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

Ultimate hippy car

[jebiester]

A car that runs on flower power?. Wouldn't that make the ultimate hippy car?

Especially as a VW combi van.

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.