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Feature
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Written by Sabrina Deparine
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Monday, 26 July 2010 10:13 |
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Page views: 953 |
A research team from Purdue University has developed a new technique to convert biomass to biofuels through the use of hydrogen.
 The new method is called fast-hydropyrolysis-hydrodeoygenation. If the name is quite long, don’t fret. It has an acronym: H2Bioil. This new biofuel method blends hydrogen with biomass in a high-pressure reactor. The hydrogen and biomass are exposed to fast and extreme heat that rises to as high as 900 degrees Fahrenheit in less than a second. This causes the biomass to break down into smaller molecular units. The addition of hydrogen allows the mixture to condense into liquid oil that can be used as an alternative fuel. The uncondensed light gases like methane, carbon monoxide, hydrogen and carbon dioxide are segregated and recycled back to the biomass reactor.
Early as now, the researchers are expecting H2Bioil to produce twice as much biofuel as current methods do. This is because the hydrogen being used in the process is derived from a portion of the biomass itself when the lighter gases are recycled in the reactor. As such, 50% more liquid fuel is produced from the process without requiring more hydrogen from natural gases.
Aside from this, the research team is also proposing the creation of mobile processing plants around the Midwest to produce alternative fuel locally. Based on their proposal, the mobile plants will utilize solar power to produce hydrogen by breaking down water molecules.
The main idea behind the mobile plant proposal is to address one of the most common problems in biofuels: combating the logistics and transportation costs of biomass and the fuel itself. Although transporting the liquid fuel is relatively cheap, this is not true for bulk volumes of biomass.
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0 a.m. about 30 points,