February 13, 2004

Scientists develop new hydrogen reactor

From CNN comes a report of work being done at the University of Minnesota: bq. Researchers say they have produced hydrogen from ethanol in a prototype reactor small enough and efficient enough to heat small homes and power cars. bq. The development could help open the way for cleaner-burning technology at home and on the road. bq. Current methods of producing hydrogen from ethanol require large refineries and copious amounts of fossil fuels, the University of Minnesota researchers said. bq. The reactor is a relatively tiny 2-foot-high apparatus of tubes and wires that creates hydrogen from corn-based ethanol. A fuel cell, which acts like a battery, then generates power. Couple of big red flags here. #1) - does the ethanol need to be pure? How pure? Ethanol is purified by distillation. Conventional fermentation works up to about 20% Alcohol by Volume (ABV) and then the yeast cells tucker out and go to sleep. Any higher purity has to be done with distillation which is very energy costly. For commercial grade ethanol, you need the energy contained in 1.5 gallons of gasoline to produce one gallon of ethanol. #2) - why fuel cells? They are not efficient at all. I blogged about Microturbines here and they would definitely be the way to go. They would need to be larger scale (neighborhood power plant rather than household) but the economics of scale would dictate cheaper operating costs. #3) - why Hydrogen? All Hydrogen is is an inefficient energy transport medium. It is not a fuel since it costs more energy to make than it yields. It is also a bear to transport, it will make most metals brittle so tanks need to be of special design. Gasoline by comparison is a dream to work with. Huge stored energy and despite all the increases in prices, it is still cheaper by gallon than bottled water. There is a need to re-think our energy use in this nation (and in the world) but the so-called "renewables" are often more damaging to the environment when you look at the entire chain-of-events required to get the energy to your need. Posted by DaveH at February 13, 2004 1:36 PM