Imagine a world where the energy sources essential to our society are environmentally friendly, endlessly renewable and cheap to produce. University of Wisconsin professor James Dumesic has brought that image one step closer to reality.
For the past two years, Dumesic and his team have worked to invent an efficient way to produce mass amounts of hydrogen without simultaneously harming the environment with byproducts such as carbon monoxide.
Hydrogen is considered the most viable source of energy outside of fossil fuels, but it requires a great amount of energy to obtain significant amounts of pure hydrogen gas.
Dumesic’s research has yielded a way to separate hydrogen out of sugar water with conditions that do not require huge energy outputs.
The basic procedure passes a solution of water and carbohydrates over a catalyst. The catalyst reduces the amount of energy needed to begin the chemical reaction, thus allowing it to occur at comparably low temperatures (around 500 degrees Kelvin). The solution is kept under pressure so the water does not boil, saving more energy.
Hydrogen and carbon dioxide bubble through the liquid and can easily be separated out.
“This is the lowest-temperature process invented for obtaining hydrogen so far,” said Michael Corradini, a professor in the UW engineering physics department.
The hydrogen would be put into a fuel cell that converts hydrogen and oxygen molecules to water while producing electricity.
“This is potentially a very efficient way to produce electricity from hydrogen and oxygen,” Dumesic said.
In addition to being energy-efficient, this procedure could make use of biological waste materials, such as waste streams from paper mills or whey left over from cheese-curd production.
“We could convert waste into useful energy,” Dumesic explained.
This “biomass” could provide the carbohydrates needed for the solution that separates into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would in turn be recycled, and new biomass could be grown to consume the excess.
Corradini said he suggested using heat given off by nuclear power plants to drive the chemical reaction.
“That way, no pollutants are released anywhere in the process,” Corradini said. “It’s very interesting that this process uses virtually no fossil fuels.”
Implications for the future are impressive, Corradini said.
“If [Dumesic] can successfully do this at a reasonable cost, it could compete with natural gas and other fossil fuels as an important energy source,” he said.
Dumesic also expressed enthusiasm about the future in light of his research.
“There’s talk about these ‘hydrogen economies,'” said Dumesic, “with fuel cells that work more efficiently than fossil fuels and are more environmentally friendly than combustion.”
As promising as the findings have been, a few roadblocks stand in the path of hydrogen economies, including finding a less-expensive catalyst and testing its long-term durability. Nonetheless, Corradini said these findings “are a big step forward.”
