Researchers Convert Biomass To Hydrogen Using Sunlight (rdmag.com)

New submitter omaha393 writes: Cambridge chemists have developed a new catalytic approach capable of converting biomass into hydrogen gas using only sunlight as an energy source. The method converts lignocellulose, one of Earth's most abundant biomaterials, into hydrogen gas and organic byproducts when in a basic water and in the presence of the cadmium sulfide/oxide nanoparticle catalysts. The new method, published in Nature Energy, offers a relatively cheap fuel alternative that researchers are looking to scale up to meet consumer demands at the industrial level. Per R&D Magazine: "'With this in place we can simply add organic matter to the system and then, provided it's a sunny day, produce hydrogen fuel,' says joint lead author David Wakerley. 'Future development can be envisioned at any scale.'" In addition to lignocellulose, the team was also able to produce hydrogen gas using unprocessed material including wood, paper and leaves. Further reading: New Atlas; ScienceDaily

Comments

This is going to take some work

[Crashmarik]

The Photo-catalyst is Cadmium based.

Solar-driven reforming of lignocellulose to H2 with a CdS/CdOx photocatalyst
The nanoparticle is able to absorb energy from solar light and use it to undertake complex chemical reactions. In this experiment, it rearranges the atoms in the water and biomass to form hydrogen fuel and other organic chemicals, including formic acid and carbonate

Yeah can't see heavy metal contamination being a problem with that witch's brew.

Re:This is going to take some work

[dbIII]

You eat margarine don't you?
From that example you should know that toxic catalysts don't always end up in the end product - especially since here the end product is a gas.

Re:This is going to take some work

[Plus1Entropy]

Catalysts are not necessarily used up in a process though. They may be completely recycled as part of the process, or they may have to be "scrubbed' periodically as they saturate.

However, TFA doesn't make it clear which is the case.

Re:This is going to take some work

[Rei]

Well..... it depends on the process ;) Some catalysts are highly stable and last for years without renewal (or even indefinitely), while on the other end of the spectrum some disappear quickly and end up in the product by design (plastics are particularly bad about this, to the point that it blurs the line between catalyst and initiator).

That said, industry constantly uses toxic catalysts in huge quantities. Acting like this is some sort of new horrible development is just silly. Where toxicity might be a concern, the rate of entrainment into the product is measured, and if it's too high for safety, either a new catalyst has to be found, the previous catalyst has to be better stabilized / retained, or you have to add a post-processing step to recover the catalyst from the product.

Re:This is going to take some work

[Rei]

Rather than spending your time reading Wikipedia, I suggest you spend some time learning about real-world processes. At least read Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry or something similar. In the real world, catalysts do get used up, and frequently even entrained to varying degrees into the product. In fact, it's relatively rare that a catalyst lasts indefinitely (there are some processes where the catalyst does, but most do not). Some processes have a relatively simple step to renew their catalysts. Others require complete replacement of their catalysts with newly produced ones. Sometimes the catalyst is lost by design.

The way in which catalysts become "used up" varies greatly. Sometimes, analogous to your "concrete", it's lost by design into the product stream, such as with most plastics polymerization. So for example, with polyethylene, you may get something like 5000 grams of PE per gram of catalyst, but then the catalyst is gone. Usually there's no recovery step. In some processes, catalysts are lost by being poisoned, either by impurities or by side reactions. Catalysts can be "gunked up" and lose their reactive surface area - for example, by coking in petrochemical refining. Catalysts can also erode - for example, in the Ostwald process for making nitric acid, there's almost always a catalyst recovery stage downstream, because platinum and rhodium are very expensive, and erosion rates are high. Even the process of erosion varies - for example, in some cases it might be substrate attack, or active surface attack, or formation of dendrites which break off, or all sorts of things.

In general, in industry you call it a catalyst if it catalyzes a significant number of reactions, rather than being used up in the first reaction (the latter being considered a feedstock). There is no requirement that it be able to catalyze an infinite number of reactions. Technically things which catalyze a "small number" of reactions should be called initiators, and those which catalyze a "large number" should be called catalysts, but the distinction isn't always clear, and the language overlaps.

Uses toxic Cadmium

[Anonymous Coward]

"The system operates under visible light, is stable beyond six days and is even able to reform unprocessed lignocellulose, such as wood and paper, under solar irradiation at room temperature, presenting an inexpensive route to drive aqueous proton reduction to H2 through waste biomass oxidation."

It uses Cadmium compounds in water. With the use of such an environmental toxin, I sincerely hope it's stable for a lot longer than six days.

Re:Hmm.. (worst fuel out there)

[Hognoxious]

You can stop most of that shit by attaching it to carbon. I know, crazy talk...

Re:Hmm.. (worst fuel out there)

[Rei]

Hydrogen is not only applicable to hydrogen cars (where you're correct, it doesn't make for a very good fuel choice). It's an incredibly important chemical in industry. As one example among countless, it's one of the two feedstocks (the other being nitrogen) in the Haber process for producing ammonia, which forms the root of all industrial production of nitrated products on Earth (particularly fertilizers). Right now Haber process hydrogen almost exclusively comes from natural gas reforming (CH4 + H2O -> 1 CO + 3 H2; CO + H2O -> CO2 + H2).

How much does the biomass cost?

[sjbe]

The new method, published in Nature Energy, offers a relatively cheap fuel alternative that researchers are looking to scale up to meet consumer demands at the industrial level.

Whether it is cheap or not depends on how expensive it was to create the biomass. Since most biomass used commercially is basically a conversion of diesel fuel to biomass, it's not immediately clear whether or not this technology would actually be cheap. Perhaps as a means of using excess/surplus biomass that would otherwise be wasted it could be useful but even then it's not entirely clear. WAY too much glossing over details and naively optimistic future projections in the article.

I would also be curious what they do with the carbon in the biomass since that is a nontrivial component of any biomass. Conveniently they do not mention that little detail

Re:Hmm.. (worst fuel out there)

[ColdWetDog]

Add an oxygen here and there and you're back to CO2. Might as well just burn the stuff like we started out to do. No need for the Rube Goldberg stuff.

Cut, kill, dig, drill.

So ...

[PPH]

The research team used different types of biomass in their experiments including pieces of wood, paper and leaves

... they invented a goat.

Let met guess...

[Bodhammer]

"The process is 5-10 years away from commercially viable production but has the potential to change the world as we know it."

Re:Getting Hyrogen from Water

[rgbatduke]

Yeah, if I were going to get hydrogen from water I would take a solar panel and hook it up to a floating platform sitting in the ocean. Underneath there would be two gold or platinum plated electrodes, one of which I would leave free and the other of which I would put in a vertical tube. On top I would have a small pump (also run by the solar cell, or maybe powered by a small wind turbine since there is usually a wind over the ocean) that compressed the hydrogen into a collection tank. That would produce hydrogen at a very, very predictable rate, fully compressed and ready to use. A small hydrogen powered boat (powered indirectly by the same solar cells) could make the rounds every week or so to replace the tanks and bring the tanks ashore for use. The rafts themselves would attract fish and de facto cool the ocean underneath. And best of all, they would produce the hydrogen for only four or five times what the electricity that produced it was worth!

Now to patent this, get a government grant, and fight the NIMBY battle with all of the boaters and fisherpeople who don't want to see the oceans and sounds scattered with floating platforms covered with solar cells and hydrogen gas tanks. I'll be rich!

Oh, wait. You mean that this idea has been around for over forty years now?

https://books.google.com/books...

You mean that it is developed to the point where one could produce hydrogen peroxide, or release the CO2 in the ocean water and capture THAT at the same time we generate the hydrogen (for an even larger multiplier for the actual value of the electricity)? You mean that even a patent troll would have a hard time locking this one down? You mean that there really are some people, somewhere, who have heard of the second law of thermodynamics or the first law of economics (that in business, one's product has to sell for more than the cost of production)?

So what? As long as we have a government, these will not be obstacles...

rgb

Re:What happens to the carbon?

[Rei]

According to the paper, all CO2 generated by the photooxidation of lignocellulose enters the basic solution as carbonate ions. So it's up to you as to what you want to do with them after that - industrial feedstocks, reaction and sequestration, or even simple exhaustion as CO2, with the knowledge that at least it's a closed fuel cycle (CO2 taken in during growth being released back to the air).

It's a shame that the process doesn't generate CO rather than CO2. CO + H2 = syngas = great source for synfuels and other petroleum products (CO is relatively stable at normal temperatures and pressures but highly reactive at elevated temperatures and pressures, to the point of even spontaneously breaking down to C + CO2 - so when you have hydrogen in the mix, you have the stage set for the formation of hydrocarbons of varying lengths depending on your environmental conditions). Of course, I guess if they wanted syngas they'd just partially oxidize the lignocellulose directly under heat. In fact, as the paper mentions, that what's already done in biomass gasifiers. They just want the hydrogen.