Posted on 01/08/2008 2:18:32 AM PST by CutePuppy
Sandia's synthetic-fuel recipe: Mix CO2 , water; heat with sun
R. Colin Johnson
(12-19-2007)
In the hydrogen economy, automobiles would be powered by the simplest element on the periodic table, leveraging the element's abundance. But as the Hindenburg disaster demonstrated, hydrogen is also the most difficult element to compress into a safe, usable form. Why not instead synthesize a hydrocarbon-based fuel, such as methanol or even gasoline? Sandia National Laboratories is building such a fuel synthesizer in a bid to harness sunlight to reverse the process of combustion. The reactor would use reclaimed carbon dioxide emissions to create renewable synthetic fuel by combining the CO2 with water.
"Rather than make hydrogen for people to use in fuel cells, we think it might make more sense to make a synthetic fuel that is already compatible with our existing [gasoline engine] infrastructure," said Rich Diver, inventor of the Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (CR5). "Others are working on ways to make liquid synthetic fuels from natural gas, but we are going back a step further and looking at ways of thermochemically making the precursors for synthetic fuel using solar energy, carbon dioxide and water."
Unbelievable as it sounds, Diver claims that his solar-powered reactor could help clean up the planet by making internal combustion a reversible process. His team calls the project Sunshine to Petrol (S2P) and the envisioned synthesized product Liquid Solar Fuel.
"One way to look at it is as reverse combustion—taking heat from the sun, adding it to carbon dioxide and water, and making a synthetic fuel from them," said Diver. "We were originally just looking at ways of using solar energy to make hydrogen from water, but some of the same principles can be used to upgrade carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide. And with the right combination of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, you can make synthetic liquid fuel."
The conventional fuels with which we are familiar—gasoline, propane, butane, methane, natural gas—are all just various types of hydrocarbon bondings. When enough hydrogen and carbon atoms are bonded together, they become heavy enough to exist as liquid at room temperature. For example, 100 octane gasoline is just 8 atoms of carbon bonded to 18 atoms of hydrogen: C8H18.
"Combining hydrogen and carbon monoxide gives you a fuel which you can use similarly to natural gas; and using a few chemical processing steps, you can make methanol and other liquid fuels that you can burn in engines designed for gasoline," said Diver.
Right now, it's cheaper to drill for oil and refine it, according to Diver; but in 20 years, as oil grows scarcer, synthesizing fuels for traditional gasoline and diesel engines will become an increasingly attractive alternative. That's when "our work will start to look very attractive," said Diver. "When the fossil fuels run out, you either have to go to solar energy or nuclear energy; there are no other choices."
Diver's invention, the CR5, is essentially a stack of counter-rotating rings coated with iron oxide (rust) along their edges. The top ring in the stack is exposed to direct sunlight to supply the necessary heat to power the fuel generator. Inside the reactor, the levels of iron oxide are diminished as some of their oxygen atoms are removed. At the other end of the stack of counter-rotating rings, water is introduced in the form of steam. The iron grabs oxygen from the steam, thereby re-oxidizing the iron oxide (which is conserved throughout the reaction) and leaving behind pure hydrogen.
"It's basically a heat engine, but instead of taking heat and making mechanical work, it takes heat and makes chemical work in the form of hydrogen and oxygen from water," said Diver. "The same device can also make carbon monoxide and oxygen from carbon dioxide."
The traditional method of making hydrogen from water uses electrolysis, but Diver claims his technique offers greater than 20 percent higher efficiency because it "eliminates the step of making electricity from solar energy."
If testing is successful this winter, the lab plans to hook up the CR5 to parabolic solar collectors and prove its concept by making synthetic fuel that will be used to power conventional internal combustion engines. If they succeed, carbon dioxide would be collected from coal-burning plants and recycled by the CR5 to produce synthetic fuels able to power conventional automobile and truck engines, making vehicle powering a renewable process that does not further pollute the planet.
However, even if all steps come off without a hitch, 15 to 20 years are needed before the CR5 can be put into widespread use in creating synthetic fuels, according to Sandia.
Diver hand-built the CR5 at Sandia's National Solar Thermal Test Facility. Other members of the research team at Sandia included Jim Miller and Nathan Siegel, along with project champion Ellen Stechel, manager of Sandia's Fuels and Energy Transitions Department.
Funding was provided by Sandia's internal Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program, the Department of Defense and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).
All material on this site Copyright © 2008 CMP Media LLC. All rights reserved.
From today's IBD:
Greenhouse gas fuel of the future?
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratory say they can take global-climate-change causing CO2 and sunlight out of the atmosphere and turn it into fuel. The CO2 recycling technique, Sunlight to Petrol project, essentially reverses the combustion process to recover the building blocks of hydrocarbons. The researchers say the technology already works, but a large-scale deployment could be a decade or more away. They hope to have a prototype available by April.
And so we will never see it.
Fender-benders should be more interesting with what is essentially a low-level car bomb.
At last, a story from a credible source. But Sandia underestimates the noble quality of greed. If oil prices continue to rise, natural Capitalism will simply do a "Manhattan Project". This engineering is not more difficult than Iran's thousands of turbomolecular centrifuges, after all.
There is a LOT of work going on in this field, using the old Fischer-Tropf catalysis and variants. Here is the first hit:
Patent Agent: Air Liquide - Houston, TX, US
Patent Inventors: Paul Wentink, Denis Cieutat, Guillaume De Souza
Applicaton #: 20060116430 Class: 518726000 (USPTO)
Related Patents:
Chemistry: Fischer-tropsch Processes; Or Purification Or Recovery Of Products Thereof, Hydrogenation With Gaseous Hydrogen To Purify Or Recover
If they can take “climate-change causing” CO2 out of the atmosphere to make fuel, doesn’t it just become CO2 again when it’s burned? So the net effect is zero, which is better I guess than taking it out of the ground. CO2 is a greenhouse gas , but a very mild one, and plants just consume excess CO2 anyway, resulting in more plants. Of course, Al Gore would beg to differ. His numerous degrees in climatology would tell him that CO2 is likely to drown more trees as ocean levels rise than anything else.
~~Anthropogenic Global Warming ™ ping~~
What part of the Hindenburg disaster demonstrated that hydrogen is the most difficult element to compress into a safe, usable form?
This writer is absolutely clueless.....
bttt
Do you think this fuel would contain more chemical energy or be more flammable/explosive than gasoline?
So, we are running out of “fossil” fuels, or someone is hoping we will so that an expensive solution for what we have plenty of, will stand a chance in 7734 upside down and backwards of being produced. First of all, using fossil before the word fuel, strikes me just like the word change, in the present political campaign. I have a great deal of trouble dealing with the word and it’s implications.
Hmmm... effectively patenting sunlight. Or maybe, just maybe, he can even blame global warming on it. It’s even believable, if spun the right way...
Yes, it’s now down to just a “scale” thing... and, of course, the profitability at different scale levels. Fortunately, we know the ultimate size of the market and thus, scale.
Well, somebody has to... I can't imagine a better candidate, except maybe one of the Clintons... I don't think Kerry could pull this off, he'd be immediately "sun-boated".
If this works, it's worth trying. Yes, we could cover the Southwest with plants like this and algae farms to make biodiesel. We have sunshine and we have ingenious people. And Hugo and Mahmood would be weeping into their beers because China would copy it in a New York minute, and where's the $100 oil?
Sounds good....better than centrifuges for Iran.
Huh?
The are talking about synthetic gasoline or diesel as the final product, not hydrogen.
as the Hindenburg disaster demonstrated, hydrogen is also the most difficult element to compress into a safe, usable formThe Hindenburg's hydrogen gas was merely contained in a number of lift cells, not "compressed"; the hydrogen that burned during the Lakehurst disaster was leaked out of a leaky cell, beginning a few minutes before docking maneuvers began, and when ignited (and there's no firm concensus on how that happened), burning holes in the other cells, which ignited the rest of the hydrogen in the cells.
Rich Diver, inventor of the Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (CR5)... claims that his solar-powered reactor could help clean up the planet by making internal combustion a reversible process... Right now, it's cheaper to drill for oil and refine it, according to Diver; but in 20 years, as oil grows scarcer, synthesizing fuels for traditional gasoline and diesel engines will become an increasingly attractive alternative... Diver's invention, the CR5, is essentially a stack of counter-rotating rings coated with iron oxide (rust) along their edges. The top ring in the stack is exposed to direct sunlight to supply the necessary heat to power the fuel generator. Inside the reactor, the levels of iron oxide are diminished as some of their oxygen atoms are removed. At the other end of the stack of counter-rotating rings, water is introduced in the form of steam. The iron grabs oxygen from the steam, thereby re-oxidizing the iron oxide (which is conserved throughout the reaction) and leaving behind pure hydrogen... The traditional method of making hydrogen from water uses electrolysis, but Diver claims his technique offers greater than 20 percent higher efficiency because it "eliminates the step of making electricity from solar energy." ...carbon dioxide would be collected from coal-burning plants and recycled by the CR5 to produce synthetic fuels able to power conventional automobile and truck engines, making vehicle powering a renewable process that does not further pollute the planet. However, even if all steps come off without a hitch, 15 to 20 years are needed before the CR5 can be put into widespread use in creating synthetic fuels, according to Sandia.Iron oxide has also been used to improve the efficiency of the competing technology, water electrolysis to produce gaseous hydrogen / oxygen. Thanks Ernest.
You rang the bell when you swung the hammer. :’)
New Catalyst Paves Way For Cheap, Renewable Hydrogen
Science Daily | National Science Foundation | 30 June 2003
Posted on 06/30/2003 1:21:26 PM EDT by sourcery
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/938133/posts
Fuel cells get a boost
ISA | 9-17-04
Posted on 09/17/2004 6:43:53 PM EDT by Indy Pendance
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1219346/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1492650/posts?page=3#3
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.