Microreactors Change Propane into Hydrogen 122
Roland Piquepaille writes "Microreactors have already been used for on-site reforming of fuels, such as methanol or propane, to produce hydrogen to be used in fuel cells. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have designed very efficient ceramic microreactors to do this task. The scientists say that their microreactors are much better than other fuel reformer systems. They are now trying to reform gasoline and diesel, which are more widely distributed than propane. Does this mean that one day we'll be able to go to a gas station to refill the fuel cells powering our laptops? Probably not before a while, but read more for additional details, references and a picture of a prototype."
huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean.... propane, oil, gasoline, thats great......but half the problem is we are running out. And what happens to all the carbon when its converted to hydrogen? (I admit I didn't read). I would hope its not released as an emission of sorts, that wouldn't help what so ever....other than localizing a problem possibly making containment easier.
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But agreed, current electrolysis is too costly, perhaps high temperature steam electrolysis too. Perhaps Fusion, when it comes, will solve these problems with sheer energy production, or high-efficiency solar panels or some other thing we can't currently imagine.
But whatever the case, "never" predictions have a long time coming to be p
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on the contrary, Hydrogen has been the primary energy source for this planet for the last 4.5 billion years, and is likely to remain so for many years to come. The problem is that the reactor is 93 million miles away, so we only get a very small percentage of the generated energy.
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Oh no, we get enormous quantities of it. Far more than we could easily use. I'd say the problem is that it rains down in the form of high-energy photons which are difficult to collect and store.
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Re: Bio-Fuels (Score:1)
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The previous poster was making the accurate point that hydrogen doesn't replace anything. Pedantic positioning over the terminology does not diminish th
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Your logic would imply that we should never use any energy as no energy transformation is 100% efficient. Clearly a laughable position.
Perhaps the original poster didn
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Did I say that you can produce hydrogen without using another energy source. I suspect you are the same poster as the original person I replied too, with the same irrelevant person attacks and misunderstandings. Do you have to attack every person you meet? You must be very unpleasant to live with (or clinically depressed - you're displaying classic symptoms).
And there are plenty of other ways to produce hydrogen other than fission power: Given a high enough temperature it is quite practi
Re:huh? (Score:5, Funny)
They mentioned that the reactor operates at high temps (800 C. to 1000 C.) to avoid carbon (as soot) fouling of the reactor. So, they've either got an ash bin somewhere downstream or they sprew CO and/or CO2. The other boast was that they'd reformed ammonia (at 1000 C.) to produce hydrogen. No word on whether the waste was gaseous nitrogen or nitrous oxides. Hope it's not nitrous oxides. Denver's "brown cloud" used to be mainly nitrous oxides from car exhaust.
This looks like a really cool trick, but otherwise nearly worthless at this late date. I really don't want to run down to the gas station every couple of hours for a hydrogen recharge, and really, really dont't want a long warmup 800 C. appliance running in the house -- unless it also cooks 60 second pizzas. Additionally, the world's running out of their feedstock. If they had something that took plastic packaging, waste paper, saw dust, or the neighbors yapping little pets as an input and efficiently produced butane, propane, diesel or gasline, along with nicely segregated saleable piles of sulfur and laser printer toner, that'd be a newsworthy dazzling thing.
If it also made nutritious little green biscuits (maybe call 'em Soylent Green?) that'd be extra special.
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http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystem
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Soylent Fuel - It's People! (Score:2)
First, you need a victim-hopper. This is where you put the people. I think you could also use, like you mentioned above: plastic, sawdust, printed
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Re:huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Right now, today, we only have one, maybe two, wide-scale energy distribution systems. Its gasoline. If we can easily and cheaply make a gas station do double-duty as a hydrogran station that solves the short term problem of how to fill-up hydrogren powered cars. The expectation is that over time, as hydrogren powered cards theoretically become widespread, we can slowly build up alternate distribution system(s) to support them as we wean off of gasoline.
PS - the other "maybe" distribution system is electricity. I say "maybe" because we do a power grid, but we don't have metered charging stations nor do we have the capacity to support wide-scale automobile recharging. Yet. Start putting some nukes online and we might get there pretty quick.
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It would definitely have to be nuke, or some form of efficient alternative source, because burning more coal is just a non-starter.
A big problem, though, is transmission. 5,000,000 electric cars would add a huge load to t
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Power companies are very reluctant to restring thousands of miles of wire. They'd rather live with the status quo.
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In the US, grid service is a monopoly.
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Good point.
On a slightly different, but definitely related topic: ISTR that the utilities use the evenings to take some generators off line and do preventative maintenance and repair work. If so, they would not be able to do as much such needed work.
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Probably more economically viable to come up with a
Re:huh? - (Score:1)
Where you get the energy is. As long as we are still using fossil fuels, it is better to be able to put them into a fuel cell and get almost all the energy out in the form of electricity, instead of burning it in turbines and internal combustion engines where we only use around 25% of the energy converted. (the rest is mostly waste heat)
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This is a rather stupid concept. Take a readily available, limited, and consumable product and turn it into another consumable prodect that has limited distribution and use. The whole point in pushing this hydrogen fuel cell economy isn't so that we can continue to invade middle easter oil rich countries for sources of hydrogen instead of oil, but that we don't have such a dependency upon them.
Think how the entire Middle East history of the last 100 years would be if there was no oil there? No one would
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No, that's not half the problem at all. Or even close to it. The bulk of the problem is the lack of a better alternative. Ethanol is great in concept, but cannot be very efficiently produced in the US (it takes almost as much energy to produce it as you get out of it, etc). Solar and Wind power are very clean and cheap, but generally don't produce enough energy to power most devices (does your car look like this [www.web.ca]?).
When you say we are running out of oil, y
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According to the paper they published, you get CO (carbon monoxide), which is yet another fuel and (hopefully, as it is toxic) probably subsequently oxidised into CO2. This oxidation will release some extra heat, as well. It would be nice if that heat is reused in process (which involves heating steam to 1000 degrees Celsius). Anyway, IMHO, it is too dangerous tech for placing it near to end users(' private parts), in laptops, etc.
This turnin
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One must understand the difference between a means of storage of energy and a source of
How much better is it? (Score:5, Informative)
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> this and hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells than you would get with a propane-oxgen
> fuel cell.
Where do I get a propane-oxygen fuel cell?
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(Yes, we had fire, but it was black-and-white fire --- I don't remember color TV until I was rather older.)
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> made.
There are devices that are marketed as propane fuel cells, but they are actually hydrogen fuel cells with reformer front-ends to produce hydrogen from propane.
> Propane fuel cell gave us 12 v DC for a small black and white TV.
Are you sure it was a fuel cell?
> Yes, we had fire, but it was black-and-white fire --- I don't remember
> color TV until I was rather older.
Young, aren't you?
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Bobby Hill, is that you?
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But recognizable.
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That's a cool thing, but what about (Score:3, Insightful)
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This link goes there. [europa.eu]
This link goes projects home. [europa.eu]
It also uses nanotubes, and we all know how cool they are. :)
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You mean, like a tree does?
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They're called "plants" and "fungi." Perhaps you've heard of them? The hydrocarbon compound they produce is often refered to colloquially as "vodka."
KFG
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Muahaha!
Of course the damn government will have to come in and spoil our fun by requiring our vodka trees to output denatured vodka syrup.
Bastards.
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I fooled them, Grandma, I switched to biodiesel. For purely asthetic reasons I prefer my long hydrocarbon chains capped by an oxygen finial. The particular formulation of biodiesel I'm partial to is refered to colloquially as "Gouda." In order to assemble the long chains from the plant matter you will require a processing device known colloquially as a "cow."
KFG
Synthetic Fossil Fuels (Score:1)
vaporware (Score:5, Funny)
Finally, a good example of vaporware. And not in the Duke Nukem Forever sense of the word.
Parent was meant as funny, not troll (Score:2)
Whatevs (Score:5, Funny)
Great (Score:2)
Feelin' Hot! Hot! Hot! (Score:2)
From the article:
In their latest work, the researchers incorporated the catalyst structure within a ceramic housing, which enabled the steam reforming of propane at operating temperatures up to 1,000 degrees Celsius. Using the new ceramic housing, the researchers also demonstrated the successful decomposition of ammonia at temperatures up to 1,000 degrees Celsius. High-temperature operation is essential for peak performance in microreactors, said Kenis, who also is a researcher at the university's Beckman
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Heck, if it was made to the same size and form factor as a vacuum tube, it would be more readily acceptable, since vacuum tubes have been with us for a long time. Think about it- The filament in a vacuum tube gets way, way hotter and nobody complains about that, because it's insulated by the vacuum inside.
Have you ever seen/felt vaccuum tubes in operation? You can very easily burn yourself on them. I remember old tube type televisions, and the red glow inside from the hot tubes. I've heard of people b
It's probably to deal with byproducts of biodiesel (Score:2)
[OffTo
Re:It's probably to deal with byproducts of biodie (Score:3, Informative)
As such, it's a big win. Batteries are an environmental disaster, since they often need nasty heavy metals (e.g. lead or mercury), and they don't last very long. Furthermore, you waste a lot of transportation energy transporting around the m
Re:It's probably to deal with byproducts of biodie (Score:1)
HUI Tong Chua, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Western Australia (UWA), believes he has cracked the problem of how to break up methane into its constituent components of hydrogen and carbon without creating carbon dioxide - which, while much less potent than methane, is still an important greenhouse gas.
The process, which is currently under consideration for the UWA "Inventor of the Year"
Benefits. (Score:2, Insightful)
If your car has a method of efficently turning gasoline into hydrogen then a huge distrubition problem is solved. Fuel cell cars could become accepted much more easily because you wouldn't have to worry about being out of fuel. Yet in a large majority of the cases you'd never actually need to fill up at the gas station assum
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Fuel cells are "recharged" with. .
If you want to recharge your electric car overnight without going to a filling station you'll need a battery. Perhaps you can use it to make it back to the filling station.
http://www.ho [howstuffworks.com]
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Requiring your car to be able to deal with low density gaseous hydrogen, doubling the size of the car if you want any range and obviating the whole point of having a reformer in the first place.
http://www.navc.org/storage.html [navc.org]
KFG
Yet again... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hydrogen and fuel cell technology as it stands today is a white elephant of epic proportions. When you convert one form of energy to another, there is always a loss of efficiency. Instead of just converting the fossil fuel to energy in the vehicle, it's converted into another form of fuel, losing efficiency.
You actually use MORE petroleum running a hydrogen car than an equivalent gasoline-powered vehicle.
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Kind of like being stranded in the desert and making Koolaide to drink to conserve water.
Information on fuel cell vehicles (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's a paper from AC Propulsion that explains why fuel cells are the technology that never will be. The smart money got out of fuel cells years ago.
Perspectives on Fuel Cell and Battery Electric Vehicles [acpropulsion.com]
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The pdf "Perspectives on Fuel Cell and Battery Electric Vehicles" is quite an informative read although it was written on 2002, but a lot of what is said is still relevant today.
I think the summary says it all:
Battery electric vehicles based on the same platform as fuel cell vehicles can have
greater range than the fuel cell version if latest battery technology is employed.
Making hydrogen with electricity is very inefficient. Compared with battery electric
vehicles, electricity con
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Given the relative atomic mass of carbon and hydrogen, and that gasoline is a hydrocarbon fuel, I can, without reference to a chemistry textbook, immediately reckon in my head that this is not a wild or outlandish claim.
Perhaps you should read more carefully, before dismissing an established, repected commentary out of hand?
Of course, given that you need heavy, specialized storage equipment to carr
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Go back and read it again.
Propane is more useful than hydrogen. (Score:1)
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Fuel cells are not the answer! (Score:4, Insightful)
You have to separate the problem of the energy carrier from the energy source. All current existing methods to make hydrogen available start with upstream in-the-ground based energy sources (methane, propane, gasoline, etc.) and involve dumping the CO2 that results from extracting the hydrogen into the atmosphere. So long as the hydrocarbon (or carbon) source is coming out of the ground you have only solved the NO pollution problem -- you haven't solved the CO2 part of the global warming problem. I.e. you have not produced a sustainable solution.
The only sustainable solutions involve producing hydrocarbon carriers using carbon extracted from the atmosphere -- that currently means biodiesel, bioethanol or biomethane. Propane, methane and gasoline in our current economy are energy carriers produced using solar energy harvested in ancient times. Until one switches to an economy based on energy harvested or created in real time one has an unsustainable reality. That means one has to be harvesting solar energy (incident visible or IR energy, wind or hydroelectric) or nuclear energy (in the long term using breeder reactors or fusion). The bio-carrier sources are inefficient (harvesting 1-2% of incident solar energy) but there is a large installed infrastructure designed to produce them. As whole genome engineering and/or mass production of inexpensive photovoltaic cells increase the solar energy harvesting efficiencies it will become completely feasible to migrate from a "steal from the past" to a "harvest the present" sustainable economic framework. It would help if people could keep this straight in their minds (and if people in leadership and press positions would not mislead or misdirect where the emphasis should be placed).
So I agree with comments that better reformers are not particularly worthy of attention. A more efficient catalytic system for splitting water (compared with photosynthetic efficiencies) would be worth getting excited about.
Of course I'm waiting for the day when our fusion reactors are powering the breeding of Gd-148 which in turn is used to power the nanorobots and/or replicators which will sustain our economy. But we are probably a several decades away from that at this time.
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I think the issues that should be discussed is how terribly ineffecient such conversions are, plus the ineffeciencies in the fuel cells, etc. It would be far more effecient to burn the propane/gasoline in a power plant, and charge a battery-powered car from the grid, and bat
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Already got one of those (Score:2)
It's otherwise known as the petrol engine in my car. LPG [wikipedia.org]
I didn't see any mention of efficiency in TFA, apart from it being "very efficient". I do however recall something about how much more efficient an internal combustion engine would be if made from ceramic, and allowed to run at much higher temperatures.
petroleum to hydrogen (Score:1)
Let me see if I understand this correctly... (Score:1)
Why not just burn the propane directly in an automobile engine or otherwise
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Re:Merely a slight improvement to existing technol (Score:2, Redundant)
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Re:Merely a slight improvement to existing technol (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll agree that using corn to make ethanol is brain dead, but thats got more to do with voters in Iowa than it does about saving the environment. Sugar cane and sugar beet do a much better job and with a net gain in energy - even when using diesl machinary. But if you do grow corn for transportation energy it is possible, and with zero fossile fuel consumption - its called manpower. The Greek and Roman Empires ran off it, most of South America, India, China and Africa still do. So where is the inefficiency. Is it in the use of corn, the use of ethanol or the use of diesel guzzling mechinary.
I'm not going to tell you that working a corn field using ox/shire horse and man power is fun and good, honest work. Its not. But using fossil fuels to replace man power is a stop gap. It might mean that the US is able to compete with northern Africa or Asia for corn, but at some point, unless we figure out a way to replace the internal combustion engine, we will have to force the poor in to peasantry again - I guess we might get away with communism for a couple of years - that tends to take the edge off being a slave.
Then there is the other statement: "to fill up an SUV it takes enough ethanol to feed a family for a year" I'm not sure if thats entirely true, but I suspect its not that far off. Now is it the ethanol that is inefficient or the SUV?
The energy in gas, doesn't just appear, it had to be stored at some point so the surely the issue is that the SUV eats more in a week than your family eats in a year, be it fossil fuel or corn.
Lets look at some other options. Smaller EU cars like the Smart or Japanese minis like the Yaris get twice as much bang per gallon. 125cc four stroke motorbikes make Smart cars look like SUVs (two strokes are as bad as diesels for pollution). A 500cc bike will eat up american highways, carry a passenger and enough luggage for communting. They're faster than 90% of cars and still get over 50 mpg. Oh, and they're fun. If you can swap to a bike for your commute and all the single passenger journeys you'll actually save money, time and the environment. Better yet, fuel cell motorbikes are starting to be produced in the UK albeit with a very young technology (they kind of remind me space age Indians... you can see that they have the potential for greatness).
Then there is the use of horse. They sure eat a lot of grain, but is it anywhere near as much as an SUV? Sure you've got long highways to deal with, but America was forged with the horse. It can be so again, although I'd be suprised if it could stay a federation. Fedral government needs good communication to survive. Even was spilt into many kingdoms before the Romans came along and gave us roads (oh and Alfred the Great kicking some danish arse didn't hurt either).
Or perhaps the real answer is bread power. One loaf of bread contains enough energy to propel a bicycle for over a hundred miles. If you want to do a direct comparison, you could even run the bike of ethanol (although most civilized nations have rules about drink driving).
Like I said, I agree there are better options than ethanol from corn for powering an SUV. But you I think the real question is, is there a right way to power an SUV?
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What, exactly, is wrong with fueling agro-fuel vehicles with a part of the fuel you're producing? What's wrong with replacing the ICE with DEFC driven hub motors (Internal Combustion Engine / Direct Ethanol Fuel Cell)?
The idea for stopping both greenhouse emissions and dependance on foreign oil is to use a fuel that is biologically based (to re-close the carbon cycle) and locally grown (to re-close the fuel cycle).
Sure, gasoline is of a higher energy content (120%
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In the good old days we used to test for PM6, or particles in of size greater than 10^-6 meters. Water injection, some metal additives and ev
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I also don't get why they don't run tractors off of the other potential by-product of corn production for ethanol production: corn oil sourced biodiesel (or just heated corn oil).
Of course, the ideal solution here would be for Changing World Technologies to produce self-contained small-scale TCP devices for
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Even growing for bio-dies
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No. There is no solution to the energy demands of all nations. "Need" and "energy" can be defined in many ways, some of them rather far from what we use now. For instance, there is no apreciable need to burn fossil fuels in a world which a)does not need/use cars as personal transport and b)uses nuclear fission and perhaps some alternatives (mainly hydro and wind) to make electricity.
Before you jump me for proposing fission (thousands of power plan