A Trip from Biomass Power to Fuel Cells

January 30, 2007 – Vol.11 No.45

A TRIP FROM BIOGAS POWER TO FUEL CELLS, WITH ETHANOL ALONG THE WAY.

Fuel cells and a hydrogen economy seem dormant at the moment. Ethanol is all the rage. Can the two be connected? Let’s see in a little trip from North Dakota to California by way of Panama.

The Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC) at the University of North Dakota has been busy with bio-energy and ethanol research projects at its Centers for Renewable Energy and Biomass Utilization.

In a demonstration project at the Grand Forks Truss Plant in Grand Forks, North Dakota - a maker of wood roof trusses for buildings - EERC will convert low-value sawdust and other wood waste into a combustible gas which will used to generate both heat and power. As conceived, the technology can be scaled to meet industry needs of between 10 kilowatts and 1 megawatt of power.

Gasification of biomass is not limited to wood, of course; any biomass should do, like straw or switchgrass.

EERC thinks that gasified biomass can also be made economically into ethanol, methanol or even butanol, another gasoline substitute.

EERC’s trick is to gasify biomass feedstock at high temperatures and in the absence of oxygen. The lab is working with ICM Inc. a builder/developer of ethanol production plants to prove that gasified-biomass-to-ethanol is feasible in an ethanol production situation.

Yet another project of EERC at its Centers for Renewable Energy and is a multiyear effort to integrate hydrogen production with ethanol production. The hydrogen would be used onsite in fuel cells for heat and power or sold as fuel for vehicles. Hydrogen could be a value-added, moneymaking product for an ethanol facility.

Now lets jump down briefly to Panama.

Startech Environmental has announced that it and associate Sicmar International Panama have signed a contract with the City of Chitre, Panama to build a 200 ton-per-day plasma converter facility. The facility will process municipal solid waste and produce electric power generated from solid waste synthesis gas, a byproduct of Startech plasma conversion technology. Startech calls its gas PCG or plasma converted gas.

(The super high temperatures of Startech’s technology - 30,000 degrees - disassociates molecules: breaks them up into atoms.)

While not in current plans, Startech says Chitre is considering using PCG gas to make alcohol and diesel fuels. Startech’s PCG gas is also hydrogen rich.

So it seems alcohol fuels, and hydrogen, can be made from all kinds sources, trash included.

Now lets fly up to Berkeley Labs in Berkeley, California.

Scientists there think they’ve found a far more efficient and less expensive cathode catalyst, a primary ingredient in polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells (a.k.a. proton exchange membrane fuel cells.)

In other words they think they found at least one component that could lead to more powerful and less expensive fuel cells.

Without all the technical details, scientists Vojislav Stamenkovic and Nenad Markovic say that a special platinum-nickel alloy as a cathode catalyst revealed a 90-fold increase in catalytic activity over platinum-carbon cathode catalysts used today.

The cathode catalyst helps put oxygen and hydrogen together to make water in a fuel cell. The 90-fold increase means it’s 90 times better at doing this than current cathodes.

The researchers say in their paper - Improved Oxygen Reduction Activity on Pt_3Ni (111) via Increased Surfaced Availability - that the new cathode catalyst has a thin (very thin) platinum surface skin layer that sits atop an alloy layer made of equal numbers of platinum and nickel. Layers beneath the skin and the top layer are three to one, platinum to nickel. It’s the layered structure that increases the catalytic activity on the surface of the electrode, they say.

So, the connection between sawdust and fuel cells? Gasified biomass waste can be made into ethanol then reformed to hydrogen. Or, gasified biomass waste can be reformed directly to hydrogen. Either one could be used in much better fuel cells, which could be on the way.

It all needs to proven of course and we need the technologies as soon as possible.

Visit the EERC at http://www.undeerc.org/ , Berkeley Lab at http://www.lbl.gov/ and Startech Environmental at http://www.startech.net/