University of Colorado Boulder researchers have created a new method to produce clean fuel that could someday give consumers a more environmentally friendly option at the gas pump.
“This work is, thus far, the most significant accomplishment of my professional career,” Research Associate Kent Warren said in a news release.
In addition to transportation, the new method could open doors to clean and sustainable energy sources for industries including steelmaking and ammonia production. The method is efficient and economical, using solar energy to derive either hydrogen gas from water or carbon-neutral fuels from water and carbon dioxide.
Warren said the research breakthrough could someday change the options people have when they fill up their car at a gas station.
“The way I like to think about it is some day when you go to the pump you’ll have, for example, unleaded, super unleaded and ethanol options, and then an additional option being solar fuel, where the fuel is derived from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide,” Warren said in the release. “Our hope is that it will be cost-competitive to the fuels sourced from the ground.”
In the new method, researchers used heat instead of electricity to split water. Warren said the thermochemical process has the potential to be more economically viable, eliminates the need for scarce, rare earth materials and can be easily scaled.
The new research, Warren said in the release, marks the first exploration of running this process at elevated pressure, which was found to accelerate the reaction rate and increase the amount of fuel produced.
The researchers found that elevating pressure can more than double hydrogen production. The yields are nearly 1,000% greater than what the existing benchmark thermochemical approach can achieve.
All of the paper’s authors are affiliated with CU Boulder. Professor Al Weimer is the principal investigator, and Warren and doctoral student Justin Tran are the first authors.
The research was supported by Shell Oil and the National Science Foundation.
