Impressive

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/inde...omassfuels.xml

 

If it really works as said, they had better get it out in public before big oil companies and the politicians they own supress it in some way.
The oil companies just sit back and laugh at all of the attempts to find ways to supply fuel from sources besides oil, but so far no one has come up with anything that will significantly curtail our need.

 

Duhhhh, how much energy does it take to produce Hydrogen? According to all the " professionals" alot. Why not just burn the hydrogen? We have been making moonshine for years. and my final skeptical and sarcastic comment is that gasification has been around since Hitler tried taking over the world and was running out of petroleum. But otherwise, it was a good, short article.

 

ok now call me crazy but isn't this the same thing as hydrogenated oil??? Like hydrogenated vegatable oil you find in foods sometimes, the stuff w/ trans fat in it that they're trying to ban now because of how unhealthy it is? I think the main reason they use it is just like that article was saying too, because you can make a lot more of it cheaper. A huge majority of restaurants use hydrogenated oils in their fryers because it's so much cheaper, and a lot of guys use the WVO to run their trucks so it must still work like regular veg oil.

 

Here's the deal in layman's terms,

They've figured out how to create a biodiesel or alcohol fuel and artificially inject hydrogen to increase its energy content.

Hydrogen is easy and cheap to produce. It can come from many sources but our most common are electric and natural gas. Hydrogen can be pulled right out of water through electrolysis or obtained from natural gas by a process called steam reforming.

Electrolysis can come from any energy source including hydro, solar, nuclear, or wind as well as dirty sources like coal and others.

Natural gas is plentiful but injects green house gasses into our atmosphere.

Our capacity for wind generation of static power requirements is not even tapped yet.

Our dynamic requirements are all solved with liquid fuels because of the energy density factor. Liquid fuels are the way to go until we can come up with something even more dense like a solid. (they are getting there). One guy has a hydrogen gas tank that is the same size as a conventional car tank, weighs about the same and can store 50% more energy than the same amount of gas.. The problem? It requires amonia. Super dangerous in even small amounts.

Well, for now its gotta be biodiesel for me.

 

a lot of great ideas out there but still very impractical, hydrogentated biodiesel for your truck is cool though unlike hydrogenated veg oil to fry your food in

 

Lets get this straight. The proposed process is NOTaimed at producing hydrogenated BD. It is all fairly complicated and I am leaving a link to the paper written by the developers;

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full...etype=HWCIT#T1

drink several cups of coffee before you start cause it is not guarenteed to keep you on the edge of your seat.

Lets see If I can explain in terms that do not require a PhD in Physical Chemistry.

The whole process is a modification and combination of existing processes.

First gassification of biomass is currently possible. It isn't complicated just heat any biological material untill it breaks down to its elemental components. Since the main components of biomass are carbon and hydrogen the primary products of gassification are carbon and hydrogen. At the temperatures needed to gassify carbon does not stay elemental rapidly combines with oxygen to form CO2 and CO while hydrogen combines with oxygen to form H2O.

Second there are existing processes for producing synthetic hydrocarbon fuel from CO and H2. You really dont want me to go into it cause it will require a book. Just accept that it can be done.

The problem with simply combining these two processes is that the CO2 produced in gassification is wasted carbon atoms because they cannot be converted to synthetic fuel. Of course CO2 is an undesirable effluent (greenhouse gas, global warming, etc )

The modification proposed is to flood the gassification processor with CO2 and H2. The extra H2 will consume some of the available O2 and the CO2 will inhibit formation of more CO2 thus driving the gassification to produce much higher levels of CO. The resulting gas stream wil contain CO (in high levels) CO2, H2, and H2O. The CO and H2 are used to make synthetic hydrocarbon fuel, the CO2 is sent back to the gassifier to keep CO2 levels high and the H2O is subjected to electrolysis producing O2 and H2.

By using this modification to current gassification processes production of CO is predicted to rise 40 to 50%. Thats how they propose to dramatically decrease the amount of biomass needed

If the energy source driving this whole scenario is noncarbon based ie: nuclear, solar, wind, hydro the greenhouse gasses will be dramatically reduced making this a viable process.

 

wish I had the time

 

Phydeaux88,

From a broader perspective, isnt that what we've been after? Green energy is great, but none of it is a portable fuel like petroleum is. Hydrogen is very difficult to store and handle, biodiesel is great but can only take us fat americans so far.. Wind, solar and atomic all produce electricity.. Good for a home but not for transportation.

We need an energy source with an equal or greater energy density than the petroleum fuels we currently use.. In addition, it needs to come from a clean source.

I think these guys hit the jackpot.. a way to increase biomass energy output by a whopping 3 fold or more while keeping the same physical volume. The've figured out how to convert the hydrogen from green electricity to a liquid fuel by employing the use of a natural carrier media that burns clean.

Am I understanding this correctly?

Very interesting stuff..

 

Why not skip the whole BD process and just burn SVO? Perhaps that is just too simple. But, I am a simple guy.


P.S. I love this forum! It reminds me of the Boston Tea Party! Git-r-done!

 

Because burning WVO has its problems.
BD is safer.

 

What problems? I dont want to go down that road if BD is better -

 

In a clamshell, burning veggi produces a carbon build up behind the piston rings. Rings expand, cylinder gets hot, engine goes blah.

 

bummer ........

 

yea the BD is a lot healthier for an engine compared to svo or wvo
I hate to say it but hydrogenating the BD is really an outstanding idea, it's totally renewable, is not as hazardous as something like riding around w/ straight hydrogen in your tank(get in an accident and die instantly, lol), and it's probably not very harmful on the emmissions factor, it's probably got a lot of other pros that I can't think of right now. now we should just convert all of our electricity to windmills too.