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Tag: Alternative Fuels

  • Alternative Fuel Demand Seen Rising

    Alternative Fuel Demand Seen Rising

    Electric vehicle production is ramping up and market watchers predict that the segment will make up a sizable portion of the overall car market within the next two decades. At the same time, competing technologies are also making a push to help manufacturers come in under government-mandated emissions standards.

    Market research firm Navigant Research this week issued a report showing that hydrogen fuel could soon become a viable energy source for many industries. The firm predicts that hydrogen demand for industries outside of chemical and petroleum production will hit 3.5 billion kg by the year 2030. This represents a nearly 2000% increase over the 168 million kg the firm estimates was needed just last year.

    The telecommunications industry is expected to lead the demand for hydrogen fuel. According to Navigant, hydrogen fuel cells will be instrumental in powering mobile base stations in the coming years. The firm points out that China and some other markets are readying for the adoption of hydrogen fuel cell-powered telecommunications networks.

    “While hydrogen has historically been a valuable commodity gas, today, it is increasingly recognized as an important fuel and energy storage vector of the future,” said Kerry-Ann Adamson, research director at Navigant. “Increased energy demand, requirements to use renewable energy, growth in the cleantech backup power market, and the deployment of a growing number of fuel cell-powered vehicles in the transport sector will all push overall demand for hydrogen as a fuel to unprecedented levels.”

  • New Microbe Converts Carbon Dioxide into Fuel

    A study published today in the journal Science details how researchers at UCLA have succeeded in converting carbon dioxide into liquid fuel. Things gets a bit technical from here, so I’ll give the summary upfront: A team at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science at UCLA created a microbe that, when used in a reaction involving CO2 as the only source of carbon and using electricity as the sole energy source, produces a liquid that might be able to power a motor.

    “The current way to store electricity is with lithium ion batteries, in which the density is low, but when you store it in liquid fuel, the density could actually be very high,” said James Liao, UCLA’s Ralph M. Parsons Foundation Chair in Chemical Engineering and team leader for this research. “In addition, we have the potential to use electricity as transportation fuel without needing to change current infrastructure.”

    The team calls the lithoautotrophic microorganism that they genetically engineered ‘Ralstonia eutropha H16’. A lithoautotrophic organism can generate energy using compounds found in minerals. Using carbon dioxide (of which the Earth has an ever-growing abundance) and electricity, the team’s microbes convert the CO2 into isobutanol and 3-methyl-1-butanol. Isobutanol is a flammable solvent that has many industrial applications and 3-methyl-1-butanol is an amyl alcohol that, when heated, breaks down into the hydrocarbons acetylene, ethylene, and propylene. The process uses formic acid produced by the electricity as the intermediary in the reaction.

    This entire process is based on photosynthesis (the process plants use to convert light to chemical energy), but with a twist. Normal photosynthesis takes place in two stages, a light stage and a dark stage. The light stage reaction, which must take place in light, converts light to chemical energy. The dark reaction doesn’t need light and converts CO2 to sugar.

    “We’ve been able to separate the light reaction from the dark reaction and instead of using biological photosynthesis, we are using solar panels to convert the sunlight to electrical energy, then to a chemical intermediate, and using that to power carbon dioxide fixation to produce the fuel,” Liao said. “This method could be more efficient than the biological system.”

    Where plants need acres of agricultural land, Liao says his his method just needs solar panels, which could be placed in deserts or on rooftops.