Scientists Say Sunoil Could Power Cars, Homes

[acmavm]

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

Wed Aug 25,12:33 PM ET
By David Cullen

<snip>
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.

In a presentation made to members of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia on Wednesday, researchers from Leeds University said in England said the popular vegetable oil could easily be used to make the hydrogen needed to develop fuel cells, a promising alternative source of energy.

"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.

>snip<

POLLUTION-FREE POWER?

The English scientists also believe that fuel cells, which in principle act like a battery, could eventually be indispensable in providing pollution-free power, taking the place of increasingly expensive sources like oil and gas.

-MORE-

[NickB79]

1. What energy source produces the steam?

It says they mix the vegetable oil with steam, to produce hydrogen. How much energy do you have to use to boil the water as compared to how much energy you get out of the hydrogen?

If you're burning coal or oil to produce the steam, that isn't exactly pollution-free, now is it?

[dweller]

2. just imagine...

the energy for cars and heat and electricity and all the rest....being provided by flowers.


consider the Lily i believe it was said,
dp

[kestrel91316]

3. Use solar power to generate the steam.........................

it won't pollute or produce CO2. The technology is there.

I am still scratching my head wondering why hybrid cars don't have a couple solar panels on the roof to help keep the battery topped off, for even better mileage. Got to think outside the box!

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Why is this better than burning biodiesel directly?

They say it produces 'no carbon dioxide' - but there's carbon in the sunflower oil. Something has to happen to it. So I suspect that it just produces the same amount of carbon dioxide that the sunflowers took in when producing the oil. In that case, why go through a separate stage, introducing another inefficiency, of producing hydrogen? Why not use the sunflower oil as biodiesel - requiring little or no conversion of existing engines?

[amandabeech]

5. How much oil and gas was used to grow the sunflowers,

and deliver the seeds to the plant?

Tractors consume diesel.

Nitrogen fertilizer is made using copious quantities of natural gas.

Phosphorus fertilizers are made from rock formations that do not occur everywhere and must be shipped in.

Pesticides are made with oil or gas base chemicals.

It's not as though modern agriculture produces sunflower seeds with horses and sunlight anymore. Surely we could produce sunflower seeds organically, but many organic fertilizers must be shipped in. Alternatively, farmers could devote a sizeable portion of their land for green manure crops, but that would reduce the land available for growing sunflowers.

I just don't think that biomass will be able to feed us and provide more than a small amount of the transportation fuel that we use today.

I will be happy to be proved wrong in the future, however!