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.’’
It takes more energy to produce anything than it releases when burned.
The increased longevity of a light bulb doesn't offset the line loss of DC transmission over long distances or the problem with a short circuit burning the line out all the way back to the generator instead of just at the point of contact (among others).
I don't know what the number is, but even if ethanol cost $2.00 a gallon, we are probably better off. No dependence on foreign oil, and we keep the money at home, employing American farmers, refiners, etc.
Plus, if we invest heavily in the R&D and become the pioneers, we can begin exporting the technology for a profit - either selling ethanol abroad, building plants in other countries, keeping the technology upper hand at home instead of abroad.
Building a complete energy source infrastructure from the ground up when you already have one in place (which isn't running out in 40 years either) is just stupidity. Hell, it would be easier and more net energy efficient to just develope a cell that would use the ethanol or just out right burn it...
Isn't this discussion originally about getting Hydrogen? Who cares about the Ethanol, why not just use water?
It just burns clean. Water vapor is the product of combustion.
As long as you keep it away from the other ~78% of air, nitrogen...
Tesla was burning through other people's money.
That's a load... Tesla foreswore somewhere on the order of 12 million in royalties owed him by Westinghouse in just the first 4 years of licensing his patents. The company was trying to consolidate and they went on to make a mint AND wire the country with AC... Tesla tended to get the short end of the stick in any of his financings because he just didn't particularly care about the money in any way but what research it could facilitate...
He was eccentric for sure, but he paid off. Investments that didn't pay off from him were provided frequently because they were the equivalent of patronizing the "coolest guy" around. The bottom line is that Westinghouse and Morgan made a mint off of him over the long term. When you're pushing venture capital you don't expect more than ~20% home runs anyway...
Check out "Tesla, Man Out of Time" by Margaret Cheney, it's pretty much a definitive work.
That's because Westinghouse was broke from his "current wars" with Edison. Edison was broke too and sold out to General Electric, and I imagine became a rich man. Tesla could have made a fortune had he enforced his contract, which would have led to J.P. Morgan buying out Westinghouse. I still think Tesla got a nice lump sum payment.
The bottom line is Tesla made business decisions that were as bad as some of his inventions were good. He lost his own money and the money of others. He was prone to exaggerated claims and he lied to J.P. Morgan when he said he was going to use his investment to develop radio.
One should note that Tesla is the martyr and patron saint of anti-capitalists. Many of the stories about him are one-sided, intended to portray how he was screwed by greedy capitalists. Tesla made a lot of money from capitalists in his lifetime and he lost it all.
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