A small company in Madison, WI has developed a novel way to generate hydrogen cheaply and cleanly from biomass.
In the next couple of weeks, the technology, developed by Virent Energy Systems, will be used for the first time to continuously produce electricity from a small 10-kilowatt generator at the company's facility in Madison. The unit is fueled by corn syrup, similar to the kind used by soft drinks manufacturers, says CEO Eric Apfelbach.
The company is also about to begin work on a $1 million U.S. Navy project to build portable fuel-cell generators. The goal is to make self-contained units capable of producing their own hydrogen from a biomass-derived glycerol solution or even antifreeze.
Furthermore, the process uses extremely active catalysts, which allow 15 times more hydrogen to be converted per gram of catalyst, compared with steam reforming, says CEO Apfelbach. This efficiency allows 90 percent of the feedstock to be converted in the first cycle, he says, and the rest to be recycled. As a result, Virent claims it's able to produce hydrogen for $2-3 per kilogram -- competitive with natural-gas-derived hydrogen.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a catalytic method for producing hydrogen from fuels such soy oil and even a mixture of glucose and water.
A new way to make hydrogen directly from biomass, such as soy oil, reported in the current issue of Science, could cut the cost of electricity production using various cheap fuels.
