Hydrogen from vegetable oil!

by seattleniceguy 6 Replies latest social current

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  seattleniceguy

  Awesome! One possible solution to the problem of how to get source fuel for fuel cells in a green way.

  http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&e=1&u=/nm/20040825/sc_nm/energy_vegoils_dc

  [clipping]
  LONDON (Reuters) - British scientists say they have found a new, greener way to power cars and homes using sunflower oil, a commodity more commonly used for cooking fries.
  ...
  "We use a process that mixes vegetable oil with steam that eventually goes through a catalytic process to produce hydrogen. There are no carbon dioxide emissions and it's completely renewable," researcher Ian Hanley told Reuters by telephone.
  [/clipping]
• 

  seattleniceguy

  Makes a lot of sense when you think about it. After all, the "saturated" and "unsaturated" in the names of fat varieties refer to the saturation level of hydrogen. For example, saturated fats have hygrogen tagged onto every carbon atom in the molecule, whereas mono-unsaturated fats have a single point of non-saturation, etc.

  But even in the case of poly-unsaturated fats, that's still a frigging lot of hydrogen in any kind of oil. Interestingly, they mentioned a tie-in with biodiesel. I'm not sure if this is where they were going, but if biodiesel could be used to run existing diesel engines, as well as provide hydrogen for fuel cells, that would make it the perfect bridge into a world where diesel engines are gradually phased out in favor of fuel cells, since they could both use the same fuel.

  Pretty cool, huh?

  SNG
• 

  Elsewhere

  Now that's Flower Power!

  For PR they need to make a car that is painted like this:
• 

  Rabbit

  That's a good step.

  Eventually the middle east will run out of petroleum, then imagine the economic shift to countries who can 'grow' oil. That will be good, as long as the agriculture of oil does not poison the earth with fertilizer & phospate problems.
• 

  Elsewhere

  then imagine the economic shift to countries who can 'grow' oil.

  Yup... and the US is the #1 agriculture producer in the world.
• 

  Rabbit

  yup, yup the sooner this is done...the sooner we can tell OPEC where they can put it.
• 

  Jim_TX

  Well... this is the next step in the right direction...

  Right now... one can use the same vegetable oil - to create bio-diesel - and burn it in their diesel vehicles.

  I did that in 2001 - all summer, making my own fuel for my VW rabbit pickup. (I need to get my bio-diesel processor going again...)

  Here's a car that they painted ... after they rebuilt it... and ran it on bio-diesel... it's also for sale now...

  http://www.veggievan.org/veggiecar/index.php

  Cool stuff - alternative fuels.

  Regards,

  Jim TX