Our family swears by cane chairs for the dining room...
Posted on 04/13/2008 6:36:47 AM PDT by Dane
NEW YORK: Sugar-powered cars may be in our future. Researchers have developed a "revolutionary" process for converting plant sugars into hydrogen, which they claim could be used to cheaply and efficiently run vehicles.
According to the researchers, the conversion process involves combining plant sugars, water and a cocktail of powerful enzymes to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide under mild reaction conditions.
The new system helps solve the three major technical barriers to the so-called "hydrogen economy" the roadblocks involve how to produce low-cost sustainable hydrogen, how to store hydrogen and how to distribute it efficiently, the researchers said.
"This is revolutionary work. This has opened up a whole new direction in hydrogen research. With technology improvement, sugar-powered vehicles could come true eventually," lead researcher Percival Zhang of Virginia Tech University said.
Zhang and his colleagues believe they have found the most promising hydrogen-producing system to date from plant biomass. They think they can produce hydrogen from cellulose, which has a similar chemical formula to starch but is far more difficult to break down.
Well the article said that it is basically a mixture of plants and enzymes, which I surmise doesn't require the enrgy that electrolysis would need. The enzymes break down the plant sugar, naturally.
There may be parts of the edible crops that provide alternative fuel sources for all we know. And I can’t stand the “putting fuel into our gas tanks” whines. Nothing but emotional heart string plucking.
When it comes down to it, it is a thermodynamic calculation.
The question is will any given plant have enough energy in it to make harvesting and processing economical.
Kudzu may have a chance because it would not (as far as I know) need fertilizer. But on the other hand harvesting may be a problem.
In most cases when compared to oil based fuels the answer is no.
IMO most plant based fuels are not economically viable because they require more energy to produce (from planting to putting in your gas tank) than they yield.
I don’t include biodiesel in this if it is produced from waste cooking oil. But that is truly a nitch fuel and constitutes less than 1% of the market.
Are you saying we will pack plant matter on board our vehicles and drive down the road while it ferments?
Imagine the quantity it would take to produce the kind of power needed to move a vehicle at free-way speeds for hundreds of miles? And what to do with all that “waste” fiber left over? Imagine the disposal nightmare and the extreme hassle that would be.
I think so also, but that is not a reason to dismiss hydrogen out of hand.
My city spends thousands of dollars every year to collect raked leaves and carry them to a "yard waste dump" where they are ground up and compost generating unknown quantities of methane gas which is essentially thrown away. GASP! Vented as a green house gas!!!
Why Algore does not have a fit about this is a total mystery.
Nevertheless, the point remains, on this planet we, the humans, can not throw a rock in any direction without hitting an energy source.
The rub, the sticking point, as always, is efficiency and cost.
Best regards,
That’s what I get from this article. Granted, the article discusses only ethanol, however, I think the 2-dimensional versus 3-dimensional argument can be extrapolated to other grown fuel sources.
One thing I haven’t really looked into, though, is Brazil. I understand Brazil uses only ethanol for fuel. However, Brazilian ethanol is derived from sugar beets.
What would interest me is how much arable land is devoted, in Brazil, to growing sugar beets and how growing sugar beets has impacted the local food supply. Of course, other factors could come into play, such as the population density of Brazil. Perhaps Brazil has a low enough population density that allows them to afford the loss of arable land.
One caution I have about ethanol is: beware of fads. This has all the earmarks of being an energy fad that will fade in a few years.
It is called a still, and the BAFTE frowns on people who develop their own energy using such processes.
Fines, jail time and civil asset forfeiture of your property here in the home of the brave and land of the free.
Best regards,
Fuel cells are at least 4 times more efficient than ICE. However as soon as you start trying to force a mobile vehicle to use hydrogen, you lose all the advantages.
We are only a few years from solid oxide fuel cells that will be motor vehicle appropriate. Then you can burn petroleum in a car with enough effiency to make us fuel self sufficient.
Money spent trying to cram hydrogen into a car or burning food for fuel is a waste.
As long as we are burning 6+ billion barrels of oil for transportation fuel, there is nothing but oil that can fill that need. Through effiency, if you can decrease that demand to 1.5 billion barrels then you are approaching levels where advanced biomass technology can meet. However, with a decreased demand of this level, petroleum will become to cheap for alternatives to compete.
Which leaves us with petroleum for the forseeable future.
Our family swears by cane chairs for the dining room...
I believe Brazil uses sugar cane, not beets. Beets are more suitable to cooler climates while cane simply will not grow in the Northern climates like beets will.
Beets are not a very good sugar producer compared to cane. It takes phenomenal amounts of energy to extract sugar from beets. All though cane is not much better, they both take huge amounts of energy to process.
“I understand Brazil uses only ethanol for fuel. However, Brazilian ethanol is derived from sugar beets.”
You have been listening to BOR. Brazil has extensive petroleum reserves. They have used ethanol to bridge the gap to make themselves energy independent but in fact still have a petroleum based society.
They have been blessed with a large supply of petroleum, a large land mass with a 12 month growth cycle, adequate water and cheap labor.
ROFLMAO!!! Would make a great tagline!!
Which leaves us with petroleum for the forseeable future.
So basically it is a vicious cycle.
And, don’t forget a low population who can afford to own vehicles. No comparison. Just more wishful thinking again.
Think on the practicle industrial application of this technology.
Starting out with a vat of crushed vegatible mater add you enzymes (or bacteria).
Evacuate the atmosphere from the tank.
Wait for the enzymes to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide to fill the void.
At this point how do you separate the hydrogen and carbon dioxide?
If you use the methods of industrial gas producers you are using refrigeration, cooling the gases until one of the gases changes to a liquid.
That is a huge expenditure of energy.
Other than a diffusion process which requires compressors (more use of energy) I know of no other method of separating gasses.
Awesome screen name!
Bring it on.
I just ran through 7000# of corn to heat my house all winter for $420.
That doesn't make any sense. I think Brazil is the 5 largest in population in the world.
Compressing anything is reversing Boyle’s law. The energy required falls well into the law of diminishing returns. When you allow the compressed liquid to expand back into a gaseous form, you lose additional energy while that occurs.
I believe Dane has the right ideal, it is simply overzealous given the sudden interest my most to come up with immediate and logical solutions for a problem that has faced mankind for centuries and will for many more to come.
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