Salad Oil For Hydrogen | Green Energy News

August 22, 2004 – Vol.9 No.22

SALAD OIL FOR HYDROGEN.

Researchers at the University of Leeds in the U.K. have developed a method to extract hydrogen from sunflower oil (and perhaps other bio-oils) that could be used to power a fuel cell for home or car.

Lead Leeds researcher Valerie Dupont and collaborators have developed a hydrogen generator that uses only sunflower oil, air and water along with two catalysts, one nickel-based, the other carbon-based. Hydrogen is generated in a stream reforming process that vaporizes water and the sunflower oil which then reacts with the catalysts to produce the intermittent pulses of hydrogen gas.

The reformer does not involve the burning of fossil fuel for necessary thermal energy. Heat for the steam reforming process now comes from the power grid in the laboratory but could eventually come from the reaction of oxygen on the nickel catalyst.

True, extracting hydrogen from this bio-source leaves behind greenhouse gases, but fuel crops continually grown as a source for hydrogen would make the sunflower process greenhouse gas neutral. But, further research would also be needed to determine feasibility of producing enough bio-oil for the world’s fleet of vehicles while still producing enough food for all. Agricultural waste would also have to be dealt with as well as the energy consumed in farming.