University Unveils Method to Turn Ethanol into Hydrogen

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.

“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.’’

http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/business/5052606.htm
Posted on Wed, Jan. 29, 2003

Ethanol prices hit the skids

BY LEE EGERSTROM

Pioneer Press

As Minnesota's Legislature wrangles over whether to continue subsidizing the state's ethanol producers, ethanol supplies in the Midwest have soared more than 40 percent over a year ago — driving prices down for the fuel additive.

Ethanol stockpiles in the Midwest at the end of December had increased by more than a million gallons over a year earlier, as more ethanol plants came on line in 2002.

But the ethanol glut is about to ease, industry officials said Tuesday, noting that Midwest corn farmers and agribusiness companies expanded production during 2002 to meet anticipated ethanol demand from California and several large East Coast states.

Bloomberg News Service reported Tuesday that prices for ethanol at gasoline terminals in Minnesota had fallen to $1.145 a gallon in December, which was the lowest price since July 25, and down 20 cents per gallon since Aug. 16, when terminal prices were at $1.44 per gallon.

Terminals are the bulk gasoline and ethanol centers from which the fuel is blended and distributed to gasoline stations. Minnesota requires blended fuels to improve air quality by lowering tailpipe emissions on autos.

"All I can say is I wish we were getting the terminal prices," said Rich Eichstadt, general manager of the Pro-Corn ethanol cooperative at Preston, in southeastern Minne-sota.

Pro-Corn, which is one of 14 plants in Minnesota, has been receiving prices of $1.05 to $1.10 per gallon for its ethanol during the past month, he said. Prices for ethanol at the plant, however, have dipped as low as 88 cents per gallon at times during the past three years.

The low price for ethanol comes at a time when Gov. Tim Pawlenty and the state Legislature have looked at reducing state subsidies to the ethanol program as cost-cutting measures to cope with the state's anticipated $4.5 billion deficit.

But it's the public policy of another state — California — that is partly to blame for today's low ethanol prices, said industry observers.

By January 2004, California is to phase out use of methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, as an oxygenate additive blended with motor gasoline. Most California refiners have made the switch to using ethanol or will have by the end of May, said Monte Shaw, spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association trade group in Washington, D.C.

The California market is expected to create demand for 600 million gallons to 700 million gallons of ethanol annually. California state officials were worried in 1999 that there would not be adequate supplies of the mostly corn distilled fuel additive if the state switched from MTBE to ethanol.

"We're not hearing those concerns now," Shaw said. Ethanol producers built 12 new ethanol manufacturing plants and expanded six existing plants, including the Pro-Corn plant at Preston, during the past year. This created 1 million gallons of new capacity to serve the motor fuels market.

But Shaw said the industry is hopeful the worst supply-demand imbalance has occurred and will improve as California takes a bigger part of the national supply.

Pro-Corn's Eichstadt, meanwhile, said ethanol producers have responded to growing demand for the clean-burning fuel additive. But no industry has been able to "time development" to perfectly fit the market, he added.

New York and Connecticut are now looking at making mandatory fuel switches like California has in motion, he said. This will trigger more expansion of manufacturing capacity, and markets will continue to be volatile, he predicted.

The current low prices still produce a profit for the farmer-owners of Pro-Corn, he said, but not much. The plants serve as a "hedge" for corn farmers, he said, by which they gain income from ethanol profits when their corn prices are down and live off higher corn market prices and slim ethanol profits when corn market prices are higher.

Lee Egerstrom can be reached at legerstrom@pioneerpress.com or (651) 228-5437.

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.