Today's News by Jack Nerad for Driving Today

Converting Ethanol to Hydrogen

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Although the present trend is to battery-powered electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell technology potentially has a strong future. Hydrogen fuel cells reduce pollution by emitting water vapor in place of carbon dioxide during the power production process. However, the prevalent method of producing hydrogen from hydrocarbons, though economical, creates pollutants at the manufacturing site.

Hydrogen is also cursed by availability issues and the expenses involved in its storage. After all, as a gas, hydrogen is very explosive when it mixes with oxygen. But now some say bio-based products such as ethanol can help solve the vexing problem of keeping stored hydrogen from going ka-boom. Instead of storing volatile hydrogen, drivers can carry a tank of much less explosive and hard-to-store ethanol, which can be used in a fuel cell.

“Biomass material-based fuel cells are a better solution than power fuel cells since hydrogen is expensive and dangerous to handle,” said Al Hester, who has followed the hydrogen industry for several years. “More research should be devoted to ethanol since it is environmentally friendly and based on renewable resources.”

Conversion of biomass materials such as ethanol into hydrogen is a more cost-efficient method to power fuel cells, some say. Electrolysis of water using hydroelectric, nuclear, wind or solar power also produces hydrogen. Some researchers predict these methods may not prove to be cost-effective for the mass market. The challenge will be to reduce the cost of producing ethanol from corn and increase tax advantages in order to enable it to compete with fossil fuels. Current hydrogen production processes, such as partial combustion of natural gas or electrolysis of water, require cheap fossil fuels or electrical power.

So-called “light-induced” biological hydrogen production might be a better bet. The process uses enzyme systems present in photosynthetic bacteria, cyanobacteria and green algae to produce hydrogen. These processes are technically feasible, but they might be years away from commercial use.

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