Potential Hydrogen fuel breakthrough ( really!)

[greenman3610]

I wouldn't pass this along if it didn't come from Oak Ridge National Lab.

Starch, plus water, in the gas tank. Add proprietary enzymes.
Produce Hydrogen at 1$/gallon equivelant.


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070522210922.htm

Researchers at Virginia Tech, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and the University of Georgia propose using polysaccharides, or sugary carbohydrates, from biomass to directly produce low-cost hydrogen for the new hydrogen economy.
--

Using synthetic biology approaches, Zhang and colleagues Barbara R. Evans and Jonathan R. Mielenz of ORNL and Robert C. Hopkins and Michael W.W. Adams of the University of Georgia are using a combination of 13 enzymes never found together in nature to completely convert polysaccharides (C6H10O5) and water into hydrogen when and where that form of energy is needed. This "synthetic enzymatic pathway"research appears in the May 23 issue of PLoS ONE.
Polysaccharides like starch and cellulose are used by plants for energy storage and building blocks and are very stable until exposed to enzymes. Just add enzymes to a mixture of starch and water and "the enzymes use the energy in the starch to break up water into only carbon dioxide and hydrogen,"Zhang said.
A membrane bleeds off the carbon dioxide and the hydrogen is used by the fuel cell to create electricity. Water, a product of that fuel cell process, will be recycled for the starch-water reactor. Laboratory tests confirm that it all takes place at low temperature -- about 86 degrees F -- and atmospheric pressure.

[yellowcanine]

1. Sounds as if the "spud mobile" might become a reality. Run you car on potatoes!

Or potato flakes, anyway.

[LiberalEsto]

2. Wow!

That sounds even better than the aluminum-gallium pellet method of making hydrogen from water, that someone posted yesterday. Definitely less expensive.

But how will stuffed shirts in Washington get their collars starched, if all the starch is going to power their Hummers?

:D

[gordianot]

3. Excellent, thank you Virginia Tech!

[madokie]

4. Thats good news

I say there is a lot to be discovered yet concerning our energy sources

[lonestarnot]

5. mmmm tater tot tanks.

[bananas]

6. here's a link to the paper

http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0000456

[formercia]

7. The question is:

How do you turn off your car?

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76plucy.phtml

< Lucy pulls the lever up, then sprays whipped cream and puts cherries on her first nuclear warhead. The operation goes smoothly at first, but soon the nuclear warheads are coming out faster and more numerous. Lucy attempts to spray multiple warheads at once, but they keep coming down the conveyor belt faster than she can prepare them for the shelf, so she proceeds to push some back as she collects an armful of the others. As the operation becomes more and more intense, Mr. Witherbottom re-enters unseen. >

Mr. Witherbottom: Well, Mrs. Ricardo?

< caught by surprise, Lucy screams and throws an armful of nuclear warheads into the air >

< cut to stock footage of A-bomb exploding in the sky >

< cut back to Lucy and Mr. Witherbottom standing in the smoking conveyor room, their hair and clothing frazzled from the explosion >

Lucy: What do we do now, Mr. Witherbottom?

[byronius]

8. Thanks for posting this.

Lot of new stuff coming out that could really help the HR.

[donkeyotay]

9. butbutbut, what would happen to Big Oil?

What would happen to our foreign policy? Wall Street would be hurt by this. Those so-called scientists at that liberal "think tank" must be commies. :sarcasm:

Don't you love how American workers are told to "compete" with Chinese workers who sleep on a company cot and don't have mortgages, while a little innovation like this - which would help average Americans - will never see the light of day because too many monied, oiled big shots are too big to fail. Why we'd have to bail out their sorry asses with a new homeland security GOP welfare program for po' little oil execs and put-out bankers.

[krispos42]

19. Big Oil will do just fine

By the time this comes on line and all cars are running on this I'll be nearing retirement. Big Oil as an automotive fuel maker will fade into just making motor fuels for big trucks, trains, airplanes, and ships, home heating oil, and lubricants. Oh, and our never-ending demand for plastics. You're talking the start of a fifty-or-sixty year decline to a subsistance level.

If Big Oil hurries, they can still be players with making the enzymes and fuel cells.

[lazyriver]

10. pResident Bush responds to new hydrogen technology:

"I will not allow the destruction of innocent enzymes in order to provide clean hydrogen fuel. In other words, I'm sayin' 'No' to scientists using these innocent enzymes for our own selfish purposes. In this test tube, I'm holdin' what I like to call "snowflake proteins" made from frozen enzymes. My point is, these proteins would not be possible if we allow scientists to destroy enzymes. So I'm vetoing Congress's bill to provide federal funding to support this project. Now somebody find my special veto pen Exxon/Mobil gave me..."

[Stinky The Clown]

11. That's exciting!

Not joking here ...... it sounds like you'll be able to buy "gas" at the supermarket and "distill" it in your driveway.

Water

Starch

Enzymes

Appropriate car (the biggest roadblock, probably ..... )

[hunter]

12. A starch powered car would have to be some sort of hybrid, mostly electric vehicle.

As with all these schemes, once you've got electric motors powering the wheels -- with regenerative braking, batteries, etc. -- then everything else is sort of tacked on; be it a starch powered fuel cell such as this, a tank of high pressure hydrogen and a fuel cell, or even something really exotic like a wood pellet fired stirling engine. The problem is that all these additional things are only useful for longer trips. If what you've got is basically an electric car you may as well plug it in to charge it for most of your driving. This means that most of the time your fuel power system isn't being used, and is adding useless complexity, expense and weight to the car. Realistically you are better off owning a 100% electric car for most of the driving you do, and renting or borrowing a fuel powered car for longer trips.

Now for heavily used stop-and-go vehicles like buses, taxis, or delivery vans, a hybrid system makes more sense, but in this situation a starch powered vehicle is competing against things like biodiesel hybrids which are probably more convenient.

Personally, I don't think privately owned automobiles really have a future except as playthings for the wealthy, and as very utilitarian tools used for strictly commercial purposes. Cars will have to earn their keep. Cars as "pleasure vehicles" were a product dependent upon very inexpensive oil, and without inexpensive oil the market for private automobiles collapses.

I do think this starch powered fuel cell would be very useful for other things, perhaps for powering electric wheelchairs or even robots. A robot that drinks starch water seems a bit more attractive than one that drinks alcohol, doesn't it?

[formercia]

13. A Vegetarian Robot

Exhales CO2 and pees water.

I know someone like that. His name was Adolph Hitler

[GeorgeGist]

14. I hope he misspoke ...

"the enzymes use the energy in the starch to break up water into only carbon dioxide and hydrogen,"Zhang said.

[eppur_se_muova]

16. No, the starch (a carbohydrate) provides energy, and is oxidized to release it.

But since the starch comes from plant sources, whose only source of carbon is CO2 from the air, the process is carbon-neutral overall.

[chaska]

15. Hydrogen is a bad joke. It'll never work. Google 'Alice Friedemann'...

Her article blows hydrogen away.

[porque no]

18. I agree, the solutions are elsewhere.

Hydrogen is just long enough away for big oil to drill and sell oil until the brink, and then slide right into another untennable (for us) monopoly situation with hydrogen. Hydrogen is ExxonMobil's wet dream.

[eppur_se_muova]

20. I assume you mean this article ...

http://www.energybulletin.net/2401.html

Her critiques of the use of FOSSIL FUEL as a source of H2 are certainly correct -- particularly since these produce CO2 in the process. And she knows, as many people seem not to, that H2 is only a means of storing energy. And the practical problems of compressing or liquefying H2 for storage are well known. All in all, the science in this article appears to be sound.

But one blind spot in the article is that she only seems to be concerned with the use of H2 as a transportation fuel, and particularly for small vehicles, i.e. personal transportation. H2 may be of interest for other uses as well, indeed, ALREADY IS made and used on a very large scale by the petrochemical industry, mostly for in-plant use (often H2 is made from petrochemicals at one stage and added back at another). The manufacture of ammonia, NH3, which is used to manufacture nitric acid, HNO3, is another large-scale mfging use of H2. So while the hope of using H2 in your personal vehicle may not work out, there is still good reason to welcome an alternative, carbon-neutral source of H2 from biomass. It doesn't have to solve the entire GHG problem all by itself to be a Good Thing.

[eppur_se_muova]

17. This is quite amazing. This is one of those things that always seemed like ...

it MIGHT be possible in principle, but working out the details was a killer. These guys did a LOT of work to find something like this, and they built on the work of a lot of other people. I don't know what the direct practical impact of this particular development will be, but it will certainly lead to some new lines of exploration.

overall process: 1/n(C6H10O5)n + 7H2O --> 6CO2 + 12H2

This works because the average oxidation state of C in a carbohydrate is the same as in elemental carbon. So instead of converting coal/coke + H2O to H2 + CO2 using the water gas and water gas shift reactions, a carbohydrate can be converted to the same products, but using enzymes instead of high-temperature reactors.


on edit: added some water

[ThomWV]

21. So this is the free lunch we've all been looking for?