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Microreactors Change Propane into Hydrogen
Roland Piquepaille writes "Microreactors have already been used for on-site reforming of fuels, such as methanol or propane, to produce hydrogen to be used in fuel cells. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have designed very efficient ceramic microreactors to do this task. The scientists say that their microreactors are much better than other fuel reformer systems. They are now trying to reform gasoline and diesel, which are more widely distributed than propane. Does this mean that one day we'll be able to go to a gas station to refill the fuel cells powering our laptops? Probably not before a while, but read more for additional details, references and a picture of a prototype."
Oh, it's a Roland P article, of course....
I don't get it..... ......aren't there better things we should be trying to turn into hyrdogen?
I mean.... propane, oil, gasoline, thats great......but half the problem is we are running out. And what happens to all the carbon when its converted to hydrogen? (I admit I didn't read). I would hope its not released as an emission of sorts, that wouldn't help what so ever....other than localizing a problem possibly making containment easier.
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One thing I would like to hear is if you really get much better results with this and hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells than you would get with a propane-oxgen fuel cell. If it is a much larger difference than you get with reforming the propane then it is interesting - propane is easier to store and ship around.
Turning hydrogen into fossil fuels. Now THAT would be something to see.
Microreactors Change Propane into Hydrogen
Finally, a good example of vaporware. And not in the Duke Nukem Forever sense of the word.
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This shit is nothing. I'm putting the finishing touches on a process that will turn diamonds into multifunction printer paper.
Hank Hill can get into the Zepplin buisness now.
God spoke to me.
Not to mention the burn in people's pockets from having to pay to refuel. I know I'd prefer to have to refuel rather than just plug my device into a power socket.
From the article:
In their latest work, the researchers incorporated the catalyst structure within a ceramic housing, which enabled the steam reforming of propane at operating temperatures up to 1,000 degrees Celsius. Using the new ceramic housing, the researchers also demonstrated the successful decomposition of ammonia at temperatures up to 1,000 degrees Celsius. High-temperature operation is essential for peak performance in microreactors, said Kenis, who also is a researcher at the university's Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. When reforming hydrocarbons such as propane, temperatures above 800 degrees Celsius prevent the formation of soot that can foul the catalyst surface and reduce performance.
1000 degrees Celcius? Makes a Dell exploding battery look positively chilly! How are they going to remove that heat from the laptop, assuming this is where they're headed?
Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse. -- L. Long
and/or landfill methane. OTOH, a process that turns those into CO2 probably isn't the best, unless we have a way to convert that waste stream into something more useful. I've seen, and worked on some chemistry, for that, but not really on the scale they'd need here. I suppose we could use a varient of carbonic anhydrase to convert the carbon dioxide to carbonate anions, which could be co-precipitated with calcium to form the Great DuPont Reef of Northern Delaware, but that's a different project.
[OffTopic Rantlett] Today, we have a real science, or at least engineering, article with real applications. Yesterday we had another "oops, I waved away a couple of integrals and invented a reactionless space-drive". Take bets on which one accumulats more total responses, and is duped more frequently.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
I think the point of turning gasoline into hydrogen would be that it would finally solve one of the biggest problems with fuel cell acceptance. The problem of where do you "fill up".
If your car has a method of efficently turning gasoline into hydrogen then a huge distrubition problem is solved. Fuel cell cars could become accepted much more easily because you wouldn't have to worry about being out of fuel. Yet in a large majority of the cases you'd never actually need to fill up at the gas station assuming you recharged your fuel cells overnight.
Of course that's assuming this is really efficent instead of just more efficent than an already unefficent process.
Making a fossil fuel "alternative" with fossil fuels.
Hydrogen and fuel cell technology as it stands today is a white elephant of epic proportions. When you convert one form of energy to another, there is always a loss of efficiency. Instead of just converting the fossil fuel to energy in the vehicle, it's converted into another form of fuel, losing efficiency.
You actually use MORE petroleum running a hydrogen car than an equivalent gasoline-powered vehicle.
Feh. I'm not impressed until it'll convert ethanol. Anything less is just another use for petrochemicals.
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Duh. Parent even said "And not in the Duke Nukem Forever sense of the word." Mods these days.
argumentum ad fallacium: Fallacy of defining a fallacy which allows one to dismiss the argument in question.
ethanol is a waste, to fill up an SUV it takes enough ethanol to feed a family for a year with the grain instead of turning it to ethanol, and using corn ethanol you burn more petroleum making the corn than you get in ethanol out of it
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Zonk can't get enough of Roland's well used ass...
What you turn into hydrogen is really not the issue.
Where you get the energy is. As long as we are still using fossil fuels, it is better to be able to put them into a fuel cell and get almost all the energy out in the form of electricity, instead of burning it in turbines and internal combustion engines where we only use around 25% of the energy converted. (the rest is mostly waste heat)
Here's a paper from AC Propulsion that explains why fuel cells are the technology that never will be. The smart money got out of fuel cells years ago.
Perspectives on Fuel Cell and Battery Electric Vehicles
Ethanol does not have a very efficient growth, conversion, delivery and use cycle, although in some countries that have an abundance of sugar the creation/use cycle and government subsidies can can make a difference. For a country like the USA and other industrialised countries there are better uses for the land than growing ethanol fuel crops. After all it is rather pointless consuming 2 units of fuel to make 1 unit of fuel (use gallons or liters for units and you get the picture).
Even growing for bio-diesel which has a positive efficiency cycle has issues, since you need to determine what land is to be used for food to land that is to be used for bio-diesel production. It is rather pointless growing bio-diesel rich plants in marginal soil if the production costs wipe out the positive side of the energy equation or worse distroy the land. As countries such as China and India become more industrialised this problem is going to get worse.
The holy grail seems to be hydrogen fuel cells but there are enormous issues with efficient manufacture , safe storage and eventually disposal. It is rather pointless developing this technology if it is going to be put in inefficient vehicles so a whole range of new transports will have to be made, for many the transition is not going to be comfortable.
There is no easy solution to the energy needs of all nations, although energy efficient vehicles and effective food distribution would go along way. I personally think that there is something slightly obscene in countries importing items that upsets the energy equation (growth + harvesting + delivery costs) such as bottled water to name one, still people can justify anything given the chance.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
I think the point is to be able to generate electricity much more efficiently. This is not a replacement for a gasoline engine in your car. It's a replacement for a laptop battery for a traveling salesman or satellite-phone battery for a USMC lieutenant in the field.
As such, it's a big win. Batteries are an environmental disaster, since they often need nasty heavy metals (e.g. lead or mercury), and they don't last very long. Furthermore, you waste a lot of transportation energy transporting around the mass of batteries in something that's supposed to be portable. Finally, the process of generating and distributing the electricity you need to use to recharge the batteries is itself not very efficient at all. Generation losses, transmission losses, the fact that you can't store the stuff easily and have to have it running all the time for the intermittent occasions you need to recharge your batteries, et cetera.
This way, you generate your electricity on the spot, very efficiently (hence fewer emissions). And you don't need a heavy battery containing noxious metals.
Propane is a nice alkane between ethane and butane whose properties are very useful in certain applications. Nothing is accomplished by converting it to hydrogen. Go pick on water or methane!
you work for haliburton?
You have to separate the problem of the energy carrier from the energy source. All current existing methods to make hydrogen available start with upstream in-the-ground based energy sources (methane, propane, gasoline, etc.) and involve dumping the CO2 that results from extracting the hydrogen into the atmosphere. So long as the hydrocarbon (or carbon) source is coming out of the ground you have only solved the NO pollution problem -- you haven't solved the CO2 part of the global warming problem. I.e. you have not produced a sustainable solution.
The only sustainable solutions involve producing hydrocarbon carriers using carbon extracted from the atmosphere -- that currently means biodiesel, bioethanol or biomethane. Propane, methane and gasoline in our current economy are energy carriers produced using solar energy harvested in ancient times. Until one switches to an economy based on energy harvested or created in real time one has an unsustainable reality. That means one has to be harvesting solar energy (incident visible or IR energy, wind or hydroelectric) or nuclear energy (in the long term using breeder reactors or fusion). The bio-carrier sources are inefficient (harvesting 1-2% of incident solar energy) but there is a large installed infrastructure designed to produce them. As whole genome engineering and/or mass production of inexpensive photovoltaic cells increase the solar energy harvesting efficiencies it will become completely feasible to migrate from a "steal from the past" to a "harvest the present" sustainable economic framework. It would help if people could keep this straight in their minds (and if people in leadership and press positions would not mislead or misdirect where the emphasis should be placed).
So I agree with comments that better reformers are not particularly worthy of attention. A more efficient catalytic system for splitting water (compared with photosynthetic efficiencies) would be worth getting excited about.
Of course I'm waiting for the day when our fusion reactors are powering the breeding of Gd-148 which in turn is used to power the nanorobots and/or replicators which will sustain our economy. But we are probably a several decades away from that at this time.
Does the conversion to useful energy without any intermediate step of a fuel cell too.
It's otherwise known as the petrol engine in my car. LPG
I didn't see any mention of efficiency in TFA, apart from it being "very efficient". I do however recall something about how much more efficient an internal combustion engine would be if made from ceramic, and allowed to run at much higher temperatures.
Now look at what you've written and tell me where the inefficiency is.
I'll agree that using corn to make ethanol is brain dead, but thats got more to do with voters in Iowa than it does about saving the environment. Sugar cane and sugar beet do a much better job and with a net gain in energy - even when using diesl machinary. But if you do grow corn for transportation energy it is possible, and with zero fossile fuel consumption - its called manpower. The Greek and Roman Empires ran off it, most of South America, India, China and Africa still do. So where is the inefficiency. Is it in the use of corn, the use of ethanol or the use of diesel guzzling mechinary.
I'm not going to tell you that working a corn field using ox/shire horse and man power is fun and good, honest work. Its not. But using fossil fuels to replace man power is a stop gap. It might mean that the US is able to compete with northern Africa or Asia for corn, but at some point, unless we figure out a way to replace the internal combustion engine, we will have to force the poor in to peasantry again - I guess we might get away with communism for a couple of years - that tends to take the edge off being a slave.
Then there is the other statement: "to fill up an SUV it takes enough ethanol to feed a family for a year" I'm not sure if thats entirely true, but I suspect its not that far off. Now is it the ethanol that is inefficient or the SUV?
The energy in gas, doesn't just appear, it had to be stored at some point so the surely the issue is that the SUV eats more in a week than your family eats in a year, be it fossil fuel or corn.
Lets look at some other options. Smaller EU cars like the Smart or Japanese minis like the Yaris get twice as much bang per gallon. 125cc four stroke motorbikes make Smart cars look like SUVs (two strokes are as bad as diesels for pollution). A 500cc bike will eat up american highways, carry a passenger and enough luggage for communting. They're faster than 90% of cars and still get over 50 mpg. Oh, and they're fun. If you can swap to a bike for your commute and all the single passenger journeys you'll actually save money, time and the environment. Better yet, fuel cell motorbikes are starting to be produced in the UK albeit with a very young technology (they kind of remind me space age Indians... you can see that they have the potential for greatness).
Then there is the use of horse. They sure eat a lot of grain, but is it anywhere near as much as an SUV? Sure you've got long highways to deal with, but America was forged with the horse. It can be so again, although I'd be suprised if it could stay a federation. Fedral government needs good communication to survive. Even was spilt into many kingdoms before the Romans came along and gave us roads (oh and Alfred the Great kicking some danish arse didn't hurt either).
Or perhaps the real answer is bread power. One loaf of bread contains enough energy to propel a bicycle for over a hundred miles. If you want to do a direct comparison, you could even run the bike of ethanol (although most civilized nations have rules about drink driving).
Like I said, I agree there are better options than ethanol from corn for powering an SUV. But you I think the real question is, is there a right way to power an SUV?
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
This isn't the only research on the subject at the moment. From The Chemical Engineer magazine:
HUI Tong Chua, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Western Australia (UWA), believes he has cracked the problem of how to break up methane into its constituent components of hydrogen and carbon without creating carbon dioxide - which, while much less potent than methane, is still an important greenhouse gas.
The process, which is currently under consideration for the UWA "Inventor of the Year" award, could make a significant contribution to the development of a "hydrogen economy" fuelled by abundant natural gas reserves, allowing people to exploit these fossil fuels without contributing to global warming, Chua says.
"It is actually a very simple process. What is required firstly is heat - about 800 C - and a catalyst, and then you can easily convert the natural gas into hydrogen and carbon." He adds that to make the process work, he and his collaborator Lizhen Gao, a lecturer in the same mechanical engineering department, had to find a catalyst with a long lifespan and a high conversion efficiency. He claims success: "We have achieved 65% conversion efficiency rate from methane into hydrogen over five days' uninterrupted operation."
The inventors are now trying to determine whether their reactor could also be used for other forms of methane, such as biomethane from agriculture or coal seam gas, which is found in considerable concentration in many mines.
Chua and Gao recently received a grant from the Australian Research Council to build a prototype reactor to test their process, and hope to advance to pilot plant stage within two years.
Which is why, of course, I don't understand the purpose of making corn into ethanol. You get much higher yield out of jerusalem artichokes per unit plant mass, and you barely have to care for the plants.
I also don't get why they don't run tractors off of the other potential by-product of corn production for ethanol production: corn oil sourced biodiesel (or just heated corn oil).
Of course, the ideal solution here would be for Changing World Technologies to produce self-contained small-scale TCP devices for use on farms.
Meanwhile, while ethanol is less efficient than gasoline for use in an internal combustion engine, I say that a fault of the engine rather than an issue with the fuel. Even highly-tuned ICE's max out at about 25% efficiency (work output relative to chemical energy in fuel).
But on the other side, ethanol in a DEFC gets about 80% efficiency, and hydrogen in a PEMFC gets anywhere from 85% to 99% (so the overall efficiency of an ethanol-converted PEMFC is dependant of the efficiency of the converter). The fact that ethanol can presently burn in almost all cars (with a modification), just makes them an expensive way to use the stuff.
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One loaf of bread for over a hundred miles?
Buddy, you either eat way less than the average cyclist, or your loaves are way, way bigger.
Wow. One loaf.
Bad news, folks. This is a standard PR release to hype up the chemists results. Thr problem with this work is simply that it has to be carried out at 500 to 1000 degrees. Do you really want to power your PDA with that? And besides: the conversion of propane etc to H2 and C is endothermic at 25 deg. This accounts for the 1000 deg microreactor.
Wow. GP is one extreme, you're the other.
What, exactly, is wrong with fueling agro-fuel vehicles with a part of the fuel you're producing? What's wrong with replacing the ICE with DEFC driven hub motors (Internal Combustion Engine / Direct Ethanol Fuel Cell)?
The idea for stopping both greenhouse emissions and dependance on foreign oil is to use a fuel that is biologically based (to re-close the carbon cycle) and locally grown (to re-close the fuel cycle).
Sure, gasoline is of a higher energy content (120% that of ethanol), but ethanol can be burned far more efficiently (25% for gas/ICE v. 80% for Ethanol->DEFC->Motor). People pooh-pooh electric cars, but the fact is the limitation _was_ batteries. With the new DEFCs, you can get the kind of wattage you need to pull one ton from zero-to-sixty in under ten seconds at 80% drivetrain efficiency (82kW to obtain 88HP).
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In theory there is no difference in fueling agro fuel veheicles with the fuel your are producing, except for one scary fact: you use more fuel in the agro vehicle than you reep from the field. Thats what the GP was getting at. Its a genuine fudge up. You may think you are using less fossil fuels by using corn ethanol, but witha all the processing etc you end up using the same or more! (Sugar cane/beet are notable exceptions... by a small margin)
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Fossil fuels in the last century reached their extreme prices because of their inherent utility: they pack a great deal of potential energy into an extremely efficient package. If we can but sidestep the 100 million year production process, we can corner this market once again.
I believe it is possible to have a system where -- people go in, and fuel goes out. This is something I think about, and discuss with friends. Yes, they do think I'm nuts, but it makes sense. What else are we going to do with out unemployed government contractors and former human resources people? I say, to turn them into gas for my Subaru, so I can get to work.
...
First, you need a victim-hopper. This is where you put the people. I think you could also use, like you mentioned above: plastic, sawdust, printed pages, extra cigarette packets, too-old leftovers, farming waste, chicken processing waste -- anything you can find.
You'll need to grind everything up into a slurry -- a victim slurry. They'll hate this, but I'm sure there's some engineer out there, who can design a giant mascerator. I can imagine it large enough to handle the daily waste of a City, or other trucked-in waste, plus the populace of any conquered city, or other undesirables.
And then the refining would begin. New Jersey might be an idea place for this kinds of action to occur -- they already have refineries, and lots of 'em. 'Cause what you're talking about, is the refining of bulk material. You're going to have to react this material in some way, and collect and refine the raw materials. Since we're talking about using humans as a fuel source, I am going to suggest humans, their waste (sewage), and the waste used to feed the humans (farm and animal processing waste).
This isn't a new idea. Wikipedia has a great article on thermal depolymerization, which describes things better than I can, but put simply, cooking stuff breaks molecules into smaller molecules.
I believe a process involving this procedure, things like fermentation and other types of biological digestion, with various types of refinement processes, would be able to produce just about any type of chemical you'd need -- gasoline (or diesel, hydrogen, etc.) included.
To put it another way:
1) grind up people into slurry
2) digest and refine raw materials
3)
4) profit!
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
A properly tuned diesel engine contributes less pollution, and uses less fuel, than a comparable gasoline engine. Do a little reasearch before you fall for the FUD about diesels, OK?
Take some propane, subject it to a process that runs at 1000d C, and convert it to hydrogen and presumably carbon-something-or-other. So, how to get the 1000d temperature? Maybe burn some kind of fuel? Maybe burn some PROPANE? How much energy does it take to extract the hydrogen from propane anyway? Or to put it another way, how much equivalent propane is used up to generate the energy necessary to make a given amount of hydrogen?
Why not just burn the propane directly in an automobile engine or otherwise use it to directly produce energy? What am I missing?
:wq
I used to work as a researcher for a diesel additive technology firm. The only time I've seen a diesel engine beat a gas engine was when they ran gas tests on a well tuned diesel. You might think that proves your point, you'd be wrong. Diesel engines produces some truely evil chemicals that petrol just doesn't, but the most obvious is black smoke or particulate matter.
In the good old days we used to test for PM6, or particles in of size greater than 10^-6 meters. Water injection, some metal additives and even ethanol-diesel blends (using an water absorbing mixing agent) have dramatic effects on reducing these emmissions, which in turn make the black soot and most of the smell dissappear. Good news?
No.
What happens is that the diesel is burnt more completely, the soot is burnt generating much better fuel economy. Again, isn't this good news?
No.
Why?
Because all it does is create smaller particles which are denoted PM9 (10^-9 meters across - nano particles). These are nasty little buggers. Too small to smell, see and perhapps more scarily for your body to recognise as foriegn bodies. They are super sticky, impossible to cough out (even if your body could be convinced it needed to) and there is a similar volume of these produced to the PM6 of old.
To put in words that polititians and the public understand: clean diesel emmisions kill children. (You don't see that written on the pumps, like you do on your pack of Marlboro).
Oh, and don't think that running the engine off vegetable oil lets you get away with anything. The PM9s are still there. Diesel engines are a dangerous technology, the only reason we tollerate them is because they save more lives than they take (by not having people die in fields or in galleys from over work). As soon as we have an alternative, just watch Rudolf Diesel's biographers and the EPA change their tune.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
We have to be seriously careful when we start talking about bio-fuels. There is something intrinsically wrong with using our valuable food resources to satisfy our addiction for energy. Push wind, solar and fusion research. We have lots of room for exploration and improvement. Use these non-carbon alternatives to extract hydrogen from water. Fuel cells for cars are a good idea. Cars will not be able to accelerate as fast or reach the same top speeds, but traveling will be a reality.
No. There is no solution to the energy demands of all nations. "Need" and "energy" can be defined in many ways, some of them rather far from what we use now. For instance, there is no apreciable need to burn fossil fuels in a world which a)does not need/use cars as personal transport and b)uses nuclear fission and perhaps some alternatives (mainly hydro and wind) to make electricity.
Before you jump me for proposing fission (thousands of power plants would need to be created, yadda-yadda) consider that today's plants are horrendously inefficient and produce horrid amounts of long-lived waste because of the non-proliferation treaties BS which prevents useful things like breeder reactors from being used commercially in the free world but does not prevent "rogue countries" from building them anyway.
Can you imagine such a world? I bet you can. Heavy machinery would use biodiesel. Medium- and long-distance cargo? Rail, nuclear-powered cargo freighters perhaps. Short-haul and door-to-door? People power and hybrid trucks. Electricity-powered mass transit in and between cities. Personal transport? People power, perhaps some pack animals. Air travel? Airships.
This is all tech that exists, is used and has been proven, except for the device needed for extracting soccer moms from their SUVs. That is coming fast, however, in the shape of a $400 barrel of oil.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
I thought the Amish didn't use computers, let alone slashdot...?
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