Amonia Borane - Masa Depan Media Penyimpan Hidrogen

Sumber : energiterbarukan.net

Thursday, 17 June 2010

Struktur molekul amonia borane, mampu menyimpan hidrogen lebih banyak tanpa memerlukan tekanan tinggi.  sumber: greenoptimistic Insinyur kimia Purdue University berhasil menemukan metode penyimpanan hidrogen dan pelepasannya secara aman tanpa memerlukan tangki bertekanan tinggi. Mereka menggunakan ammonia borane (H3NBH3)  untuk menyimpan hidrogen. Material ini termasuk unik, mampu menyimpan 19,6% hidrogen, angka yang sangat tinggi dibandingkan metode penyimpanan lainnya seperti tangki bertekanan 5.000 psi yang mahal dan sangat beresiko.

Tomy Develops Eco-Car Powered by Juice

Copyright Tomy Co.

Tomy Co., Ltd., a leading Japanese toy company, exhibited a prototype of a remote control (RC) toy car that runs on Sony's bio battery that generates electricity from juice at Toy Forum 2010, a trade show for toy dealers and distributors, held January 18-19, 2010, at Tokyo International Forum. The prototype of toy car was jointly made by Tomy and Sony.

The RC car "ene Cargo," a concept model for an environmental educational toy, has a bio battery developed by Sony in 2007. The battery uses enzymes to break down the glucose in the juice to generate electricity. The technology is currently being researched with an aim for practical use in the future. With 8 cc of glucose solution, the toy can run for 80 minutes.

At Tomy's "ene Concept zone" at the forum, many other environment-friendly toys were on display, including a prototype of a generator fueled by cola, a juice-powered propeller, and solar-powered toys.

Sony Develops Bio Battery that Generates Electricity from Glucose (Related JFS article)
http://www.japanfs.org/en/pages/026883.html

A New Way to Turn Plastic Into Fuel?

By MATTHEW L. WALD

 

Envion Envion, a Washington, D.C., start-up, aims to turn plastics into fuel — with minimal mess.

Entrepreneurs have been trying for years to turn low-value wastes into high-value products. Waste plastic is among the lowest in value, and gasoline or diesel fuel the highest, but machines that carry out that conversion usually consume a lot of energy and get gummed-up by leftover materialthat they cannot convert.

Now a company in Washington, D.C., is trying out a new way — heating the plastic to a very carefully controlled temperature range, with infrared energy.

The company, Envion, is expected to cut the ribbon on Wednesday morning on a $5 million plant that it says will annually convert 6,000 tons of plastic into nearly a million barrels of something resembling oil. The product can be blended with other components and sold as gasoline or diesel.

“We are the world’s largest oil consumer and the world’s biggest producer of waste,’’ said Michael Han, chairman and chief executive of the company.

This process will convert one to the other for about $10 a barrel, he said.

Montgomery County, just north of Washington, D.C., apparently agrees, at least to the extent that it is giving Mr. Han a free supply of plastic and a spot at its waste transfer station to set up shop.

Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland was scheduled to speak at a ceremonial opening on Wednesday.

A day earlier, Mr. Han pointed out bales of plastics waiting to be shredded and fed into his machine, including planters, McDonald’s large-sized beverage cups, margarine containers and other materials typical of what suburban residents put out in blue bins once a week for pick-up.

His machine can digest the blue bins, too, he said.

Indeed, the machine will take everything except PET (the bottle with the “1’’ on the bottom) because those have a higher value on the recycling market, he said.

He will process the caps, though.

(Nationwide, 50 million tons of plastic waste are generated annually, according to the company.)

The finished product looks like a slightly murky lemonade and smells somewhere between gasoline and diesel fuel. One company has already agreed to buy the material for blending into motor fuel, and Mr. Han said he is in discussion with others. Envion would like to license its technology for use around the world.

Mr. Han and other company officials were a little vague on some details, which they said were proprietary, but the plant essentially consists of a two-story-high chemical reactor with an internal agitator (for mixing up the soup) and heating elements that give off infrared energy.

Another trick is to limit the amount of oxygen.

Because the process is driven by electricity and not with an open flame, the temperature can be tightly controlled, so most of the material — about 82 percent, according to the company — becomes liquid fuel.

Company executives predicted that they would have to shut down to clean out leftover sludge two to four times a year (conventional processes get clogged much faster).

The sludge can be burned for energy too, but it has much lower value.

Production depends on the plastic used as feedstock, but each ton of waste will produce 3 to 5 barrels of product, according to Envion. Producing a barrel consumes between 59 and 98 kilowatt-hours — two or three days’ worth of electricity for a typical house. The price of electricity per gallon comes to 7 to 12 cents, the company says.

Todd Makurath, the director of global brand management at the company, said that because it was all electric, it could be monitored over the Web, with just two employees on site, one to use a front-end loader to dump shredded plastic into the intake hopper and another to “watch for red lights” on the alarm system.

“This could be transformational in how we handle plastics,’’ Mr. Makurath said.

Ilmuwan Jerman Simpan Surplus Energi Pembangkit Energi Terbarukan Dalam Bentuk Metan

Sumber : Planet Hijau

Setiap tahun pembangkit listrik yang memanfaatkan potensi energi terbarukan seperti surya dan angin bertambah dalam skala MegaWatt. Namun sayangnya hingga saat ini media penyimpan surplus energi yang dihasilkan oleh pembangkit listrik energi terbarukan masih belum menemukan kematangan teknologinya. Baterai hingga kini memang masih menjadi alternatif utama, namun harganya yang mahal dan keterbatasan siklus isi ulangnya merupakan kendala tersendiri yang kini masih dicarikan penyelesaiannya oleh para ilmuwan.

Beralih dari baterai, para peneliti di Jerman telah menemukan metode baru untuk menyimpan kelebihan produksi listrik dari pembangkit energi terbarukan. Jika selama ini gas dibakar untuk menghasilkan listrik, maka proses tersebut dibalik. Kelebihan energi listrik diubah menjadi gas alam sintetis.

Metode tersebut dikembangkan oleh Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research (ZSW) di Baden-Württemberg, Jerman dan bekerja sama dengan Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology (IWES) dan Solar Fuel Technology, sebuah perusahaan Austria yang bertanggung jawab dalam mempersiapkan implementasinya pada industri.

Proses yang digunakan untuk konversi masih mengandalkan elektrolisa dengan methanisasi, yaitu proses pencampuran antara hidrogen dan karbon dioksida. Hasil reaksi kimia yang terjadi adalah metan sintetis. Keuntungannya adalah gas metan yang dihasilkan bisa dicampur dengan gas alam dan kemudian disalurkan ke infrastruktur saluran pipa distribusi gas yang ada, tanpa perlu pembuatan infrastruktur terpisah.

Sebuah sistem untuk keperluan uji coba juga telah dibangun di fasilitas Solar Fuel Technology di Stuttgart dan berhasil beroperasi sesuai yang diharapkan. Rencananya sistem yang lebih besar akan dibangun dan menghasilkan daya hingga 10MW.

esciencenews

New Fuels: An “artificial leaf” for turning sunlight into fuel

Scientists are working to create an “artificial leaf” that imitates a living leaf’s chemical photosynthesis process to convert sunlight and water into a liquid fuel like methanol for cars and trucks. Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (High-resolution version)

Summary Scientists are making progress toward development of an “artificial leaf” that mimics a real leaf’s chemical magic with photosynthesis — but instead converts sunlight and water into a liquid fuel such as methanol for cars and trucks. That was among the topics at the 1st Annual Chemical Sciences and Society Symposium, initiated though the American Chemical Society Committee on International Activities. Listen to Podcast Download Transcript

Leaves are a natural part of our everyday surroundings. But many people fail to appreciate their importance. Leaves provide us with shade, food, valuable medicines, breathtaking scenery, and even the oxygen we breathe.
Scientists are now making progress toward development of an “artificial leaf” that mimics a real leaf’s chemical magic with photosynthesis, but instead converts sunlight and water into a liquid fuel such as methanol for cars and trucks. That is among the conclusions in a new report from top authorities on solar energy who met at the 1^st Annual Chemical Sciences and Society Symposium. The gathering launched a new effort to initiate international cooperation and innovative thinking on the global energy challenge.

Julie Callahan, Ph.D.,
Image courtesy of
American Chemical Society

The three-day symposium, which took place in Germany this past summer, included 30 chemists from China, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It was organized through a joint effort of the science and technology funding agencies and the chemical societies of each country, including the U.S. National Science Foundation and The American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.
A paper describing highlights of the symposium notes that the sun provides more energy to the Earth in an hour than the world consumes in a year. Compare that single hour to the one million years required for Earth to accumulate the same amount of energy in the form of fossil fuels. The paper notes that fossil fuels are not a sustainable resource and urges us to break our dependence on them. Solar energy is among the most promising alternatives.
The scientists pointed out during the meeting that plants use solar energy when they capture and convert sunlight into chemical fuel through photosynthesis. The process involves the conversion of water and carbon dioxide into sugars as well as oxygen and hydrogen. Scientists have been successful in mimicking this fuel-making process, termed artificial photosynthesis, but now must find ways to do so in ways that can be used commercially. Participants described progress toward this goal and the scientific challenges that must be met before solar can be a viable alternative to fossil fuels.
Highlights of the symposium include a talk by Kazunari Domen, Ph.D., of the University of Tokyo in Japan. Domen described his current research on developing more efficient and affordable catalysts for producing hydrogen using a new water-splitting technology called “photocatalytic overall water splitting.” The technology uses light-activated nanoparticles, each 1/50,000^th the width of a human hair, to convert water to hydrogen and oxygen. He said that the technique is more efficient and less expensive than current technologies.

Kazunari Domen, Ph.D.,
Image courtesy of
Kazunari Domen,
University of Tokyo

Here is Dr. Domen to describe the process:

“Scientists have tried for many years to develop a way to split water molecules, similar to what leaves do during photosynthesis. My new process captures light and splits water using one device. It is one of the few water-splitting devices that uses visible light instead of ultraviolet light.” “Current water-splitting systems have still only less than one percent solar energy conversion efficiency. We are trying to achieve a much higher efficiency of between 5 to 10 percent. If we can do that, then we will have an “artificial leaf” technology that is cheap and practical to use on a large scale.” “We are very excited about the future our new “artificial leaf” technology for helping solve the world’s energy problems. My dream is to use the device to collect large amounts of solar energy in a desert area and then use that energy to develop chemical fuels such as methanol and ammonia. These fuels can then be used to power a car or generate electricity.”

Domen noted that the ultimate goal of artificial photosynthesis is to produce a liquid fuel, such as methanol or “wood alcohol.” Achieving this goal would fulfill the vision of creating an “artificial leaf” that not only splits water but uses the reaction products to create a more usable fuel, similar to what leaves do.
Julie Callahan, Ph.D., of the ACS Office of International Activities and principal investigator for the project, expressed hope that the solar energy symposium would be the first of an ongoing series of scientific symposia to tackle global challenges of the 21^st century.
Here’s Dr. Callahan:

“Building on the success of this first symposium, we’re now gearing up for the future, convening top chemical scientists to address other, equally pressing global challenges. It is an exciting time to be a chemist.”

Smart chemists. Innovative thinking.
That’s the key to solving global challenges of the 21st Century. Be sure to check our other podcasts on fuels [Biofuels and The Sun and More]. Today’s podcast was written by Mark Sampson. I’m Adam Dylewski at the American Chemical Society in Washington.

Japanese Research Group Succeeds in Catalyst-Free Biodiesel Production Test

A Japanese research group announced that it has succeeded in the world's first pilot-scale production of biodiesel fuel (BDF) using a non-catalytic superheated methanol vapor method. The research group consists of the National Food Research Institute of the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, the University of Tokyo, the University of Shiga Prefecture and Kajima Corp.

BDF is produced by the processes of extracting fatty acids from oil molecules, reacting them with methanol and thus converting fatty acids to fatty acid methyl ester (FAME). Currently, the widely used method to produce BDF is the alkaline catalyzed method that uses an alkaline catalyst such as caustic soda to accelerate the reaction. This method, however, requires a complex production process and generates wastewater to be treated. Therefore it has disadvantages in terms of cost and environmental friendliness.

With the new method, announced on December 12, 2008, it is possible to produce FAME through the reaction of heated raw oil with high-temperature methanol vapor at near-atmospheric pressure without the use of a catalyst. This makes the production process simple and minimizes the discharge of wastewater, while generating highly pure glycerol which is recovered as a by-product.

The group has confirmed the production of 425 liters per day of FAME from waste oil containing mainly palm oil in a pilot plant which has a continuous production capacity of more than 400 liters of BDF from 500 liters per day of raw oil material. They will continue to collect data in the plant with an aim of commercializing the method.

- The National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO) official website
http://www.naro.affrc.go.jp/index_en.html

Asahi First Brewery in Japan to Produce Beer with Green Power

Copyright Asahi Breweries, Ltd.

Asahi Breweries, Ltd., a major Japanese brewer, announced on April 16, 2009, a plan to manufacture its main product -- Asahi Super Dry Beer (350 ml size) --and other beers included in gift sets using power from green sources such as wind and biomass energy. This is the first time in the Japanese food industry that a manufacturer uses green electricity to produce products in-house.

The company entered into a contract with Japan Natural Energy Co. to purchase 40 million kilowatts of renewable energy per year. This is the largest green power purchase contract so far in the Japanese food industry. Under the contract, the company expects to reduce its emissions by about 18,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), which is equivalent to the annual emissions of 4,500 households.

Asahi Breweries plans to print the Green Energy Mark logo on applicable products from all nine of its breweries in late May 2009 as proof of its green power usage. The company is going to switch half of its total electricity consumption, usually produced from non-renewable energy supplied by power utilities, over to green-sourced power, and also generate the other half of electricity with its private-power facilities using natural gas.

Asahi Breweries, Ltd. official website
http://www.asahibeer.co.jp/english/index.html