University Unveils Method to Turn Ethanol into Hydrogen

Pioneer Press ^ | Thu, Feb. 12, 2004 | DENNIS LIEN

[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.’’

[Voltage]

The formula is: Ethanol + Lots of taxpayer $$$$ = Hydrogen.

[SwinneySwitch]

Every county, town and home could build its own still!:)

[templar]

Asked how he happened to focus on it, he said, “I just had an inkling it might work.’’

"Intuition trancends intellect" --- Nikola Tesla.

[stylin19a]

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.

Um.....how much energy is used to get the ethanol in the first place ?
how much hydrogen would be needed ? lots ? then we need lots of ethanol, which inturn would need more energy to convert it into hydrogen......I'm starting to make my own head spin.

[Psycho_Bunny]

University Unveils Method to Turn Ethanol into Hydrogen

Sooooooooo.......we spent money to turn a difficult-to-produce, man-made fuel into the most abundant, naturally occurring element in the universe?

Suweet. 

(I know there's value here but it just sounds so absurd.)

[Rodney King]

And just what source of energy are they going to use to turn the corn into ethanol, and then to turn the ethanol into hydrogen?

The answer of course, is oil and gas. Only its much more efficient to take the oil and gas and put it straight into the energy marketplace then to wash it through a bunch of transactions to turn that energy into hydrogen.

[Falcon4.0]

We need to have this whole HYDROGEN crap vetted by the Trial Lawyers before we get too excited. Who's gonna get sued when a compressed tank BLEVE's in an intersection after a rear ender? Remember the Pinto and the Ford side saddle tanks?
(Boiling Liquid Escaping Vapor Explosion)for you none Fire Fighters.

[pointsal]

When will the Federal-folks allow industrial HEMP to go into production..... Another "old" technology waiting to be discovered.

[TBall]

The hydrogen will not compressed into a tank or frozen as liquid. Safer methods of storage have already been developed.

[dirtboy]

Great. So we subsidize the farmers to grow corn, subsidize ADM to make ethanol, and then subsidize the production of hydrogen. It would be cheaper just to burn money, because you'd only have to pay for it once.

[Enterprise]

"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. "

Sort of my question too. What powers the reactor, even if it gets small enough to hold in a hand?

[FastCoyote]

Bwahahaha, I read this as boondoggle. There are already reports that the gasoline required to run the farm machinery to make the corn requires almost as much energy as produced. Even with their claim of 60% efficiency (which is quite optimistic), it's still nearly a wash, especially with all the storage problems of hydrogen.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[usafsk]

In this case, the term reactor refers to a microchemical reactor, which is a very important technology. Don't think of large, industrial style plants. A microchemical reactor might be as simple as 2 input hoses (components, catalyst) and two output hoses (desired output, waste/exhaust). Microchemical production of hydrogen peroxide has already been proven, phrama companies are putting millions into research to simplify and reduce the cost of low-scale production of designer drugs, and battery/fuel cell research is hot.

The Japanese are putting billions into this. And ethanol production is not energy intensive. Look, I'm no Green or enviro-nut, but technologies that reduce our dependence on oil to any extent through the use of renewable - in this case the most likely end product, at least a decade away - is a small fuel cell technology that replaces batteries in cell phones, PDAs, toys, notebook PCs, etc.

This is good news.

[Moonman62]

"Intuition trancends intellect" --- Nikola Tesla.

"Hey Tesla, what happened to all that money I invested with you?" --- J.P. Morgan

[usafsk]

You are confused. First, post "some report" that supports the idea that the fossil fuels used to grow an acre of corn and produce ethanol is greater than the potential energy output of the hydrogen produced in this process. Secondly, this is not about large scale storage of hydrogen. The idea is simplify and shrink the hydrogen production reactor so that hydrogen is not stored, but produced and used as needed from a less volatile (ethanol, which is no more volatile than gasoline) source.

[Moonman62]

Bwahahaha, I read this as boondoggle. There are already reports that the gasoline required to run the farm machinery to make the corn requires almost as much energy as produced. Even with their claim of 60% efficiency (which is quite optimistic), it's still nearly a wash, especially with all the storage problems of hydrogen.

I don't think the hydrogen is stored in this process. It's used as soon as it's extracted.

[Voltage]

Good news for the pigs at the trough, bad thing for the taxpayers. The pigs will be happy.

[uncle fenders]

Maybe i am missing something on all the hate for ethanol? I swear I don't understand if I am being lied to or the people that hate it are? I live in the midwest,and have no involvement in farming or ethanol production...Personally I am glad we can grow fuel..derived from corn..the spin I always hear on tv and radio here is that there is NO SUBSIDY on ethanol..they do however pay a lower tax rate to be able to grow,compete with straight gasoline,and perfect the product...a subsidy and tax cut are different things..
Anyhow here the price of ethanol is always about 4-5 cents less than regular,and I have never heard of fuel problems with cars ,or shortages of the product. There was trouble with METHANOL years back. Now its the only fuel I buy. I have heard almost 50-60 percent of all fuel purchased here is ethanol,even though its not required in any way..
My current car used only ethanol unless I couldn't get it (out of state)and I drove 197,000 miles on the original 4 cylinder dodge motor,with only routine high mileage problems.
I guess what I am saying is if they can squeeze more out of ethanol by converting into a hydrogen product great..but I can't understand why any place other than an oil state would hate it so much?