Posted on 02/12/2004 4:53:51 PM PST by wallcrawlr
University of Minnesota scientists have figured out an efficient way to capture hydrogen from ethanol, a development that could provide a simultaneous boost to efforts to create a “hydrogen economy’’ and the state’s ethanol industry.
The discovery, outlined in the Feb. 13 issue of Science magazine, appears to remove a key obstacle in the effort to reduce society’s dependence on imported fuels such as gasoline and natural gas.
Even though hydrogen is the most common element on earth, the process of isolating it has been costly, dirty and energy consuming, thereby limiting its appeal.
Enter Lanny Schmidt, Regents professor of chemical engineering at the university, and two assistants, Gregg Deluga and graduate student James Salge.
Over the past year, they’ve built a reactor that converts ethanol, a renewable corn-based product produced in 14 plants statewide, into hydrogen. That, in turn, can be used to power a fuel cell, a battery-like device that converts hydrogen and oxygen into electricity and heat.
Schmidt said the reactor can be built small enough to hold in a hand and could in five or more years provide electricity for houses, lighted billboards, and air-conditioning units in vehicles.
Eventually, he said, it could be used as an alternative fuel source in automobiles, as well as for decentralized power systems. “Every county or town could build its own local power system rather than having to have a megaplant,’’ Schmidt said.
The scientists accomplished the breakthrough by making two adjustments to a process already used to extract hydrogen from methane, natural gas and gasoline.
The first was altering the composition of a material that acted as a catalyst to convert the ethanol into hydrogen. The second was using an automotive fuel injector that vaporizes an ethanol-water mix.
“We really don’t understand why the catalyst works so very well,’’ said Deluga, who suggested the ceria option after reading about its properties’
Asked how he happened to focus on it, he said, “I just had an inkling it might work.’’
“He (Deluga) said it was brilliance,’’ Schmidt said jokingly. “I said it was a wild guess.’’
The effort was not without complications. For a long time, the project was plagued by fires in the reactor, but that problem eventually was solved.
“We were kind of surprised nobody had done it previously,’’ Schmidt explained. “But after you look at it, we see why people may have tired and given up.’’
Private industries, he said, have a keen interest in hydrogen technology and can be expected to expand on the technology’s opportunities and options.
The most obvious immediate boost, Schmidt said, is to the state’s ethanol industry, which relies on homegrown corn. Its energy content, he said, is similar to other fossil fuels such as natural gas.
“Someone made the line up that Minnesota is the Saudia Arabia of renewable products,’’ he said. “We could supply the energy needs of the country from the Upper Midwest.’’
The discovery comes as Minnesota and the rest of nation escalates efforts to make hydrogen more feasible as a power source.
President Bush, for example, has made widespread use of hydrogen fuel cells the centerpiece of his energy plan.
The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, meanwhile, recently submitted a report to the Legislature examining ways to develop a hydrogen economy in Minnesota. In the report, it argues the technology should be developed across the state, where renewable resources such as ethanol are immediately accessible, rather than in specific, targeted enterprise areas.
In its most elementary form, the university’s process works this way: Ethanol is fed through a fuel injector, vaporized and heated, and then converted by a rhodium-ceria catalyst into hydrogen, which can then be fed to a fuel cell to produce electricity.
One of the benefits of converting ethanol into hydrogen for fuel cells, Schmidt and Deluga said, is improved energy efficiency. A bushel of corn, they said, yields three times as much power if its energy is channeled into hydrogen fuel cells rather than burned along with gasoline.
“Ethanol in car engines is burned with 20 percent efficiency, but if you used ethanol to make hydrogen for a fuel cell, you would get 60 percent efficiency,’’ Schmidt said.
The reason, Deluga said, is because all water must be removed from ethanol before it can be put into a gas tank. But he said the new process, which strips hydrogen from both ethanol and water, doesn’t require such a pure form of ethanol.
The work was funded in part by the University of Minnesota’s Initiative on Renewable Energy and the Environment, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.
Schmidt and Deluga said the university can be proud of the accomplishment.
“The university wants to be, can be, and is in a position to make a major impact in this long-term solution,’’ Schmidt said. “It’s a long-term solution to a lot of problems in Minnesota.’’
Not just France, but Canada as well. Ontario "Hydro," a major power exporter to new england has nuclear for over a third of its generation capacity. Considering there is a higher concentration of environazis in new england than anywhere else except Kalifornia, I find this somewhat ironic.
What is the SUN if not one giant reactor?
It is entirely possible to heat/cool your home and have all the electric/electronic toys as well using solar photovoltaic panels ;the downside is the initial cost adds $25 to 45 thousand dollars to the home's cost. Persons willing or not who live simpler(enegy misers) can get buy with $7 to 15 thousand dollar systems. Once people in this nation had only a few 60 watt bulbs ,and perhaps a radio. The water pump was hand-cranked,the cookstove wood=fueled.These are NOT viable options for 95 % of the population. But we do have hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of acres of roof space which could support solar-powered electric generation.
Perhaps someone could work up the numbers re:cost vs. benefits of displacing imported oils with roof power.
I think Henry Ford envisioned farmers fueling their new Fordson tractors with farm-prouced ethanol;unfortuneately our government was hijacked by anti-alcohol wackos about that same time.And once having gained control,few relinguish it readily. Yes ,you may be able to get a permit to make alcohol fuels if you don't mind jumping through gov't hoops and paying fees;plus they WILL suspect you are making "shine" whenever you can instead of fyou said:uel.
No it is not. Night, winter and cloudy days prevent this without some sort of energy storage. Are you proposing hydrogen as the storage medium?
My fault for not making more clear that annual energy is balanced;sometimes you send(sell) power to the grid, sometimes you take(buy) from the grid. LARGE batteries can be used to store a few days of power .
I don't advocate shutting down coal-fired plants but using American coal. Why not burn solid fuels in place and liquid fuels in motion.
There is a lack of appreciation for APPROPIATENESS;no one fuel or power source can do all things well. (A solar chain saw is silly unless you are willing to pull a wagon with a BIG battery.)
Very expensive and not particularly long lived in that they would have to be replaced every few years at considerable expense. In fact this storage system would be about the same cost as the solar cells themselves, but not las as long. SOlar cells decline in output over time, so what whould be adequate in 2004 would only be putting out 80% of it's rated power in 2007.
I read were tied to the utility power grid with bidirectional flow(and automatic cutoff in case of failures).It's not cloudy EVERYWHERE at once.
You still need the power grid and the conventional generation, because although it's not cloudy everywhere at once, it does get dark everywhere on an interconnected grid more or less at the same time, and winter affects an entire hemisphere at once.
I don't advocate shutting down coal-fired plants but using American coal.
Why not nuclear?
Solar is just not practical for most usage.
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