Sugar can be used to provide fuels to cars
With exhausting fuel resources, and the threat of global warming from released carbon into the atmosphere looming over our heads, researchers and scientists around the world are looking for alternate sources of energy; and one of them is derived from the common day sugar we use.
A team of researchers has devised a two stage process for turning biomass derived sugar into 2, 5-dimethylfuran (DMF). This is basically a liquid transportation fuel that has a 40% more energy density than ethanol and is a sustainable carbon-neutral fuel that reduces the amount of global reliance on fossil fuels.
This fuel is produced with numerous steps in chemical engineering, starting with sugar. Sugar is passed through acid and copper catalysts, with butanol acting as a solvent and some salt. Presently, the only form of renewable liquid fuel that is produced on a large scale is ethanol.
However though ethanol is so widely produced, it has a low energy density which makes it evaporate readily. In addition to this, ethanol easily gets contaminated by absorbing water from the atmosphere. With this absorption, there is a need of an energy intensive distillation process that separates this fuel from the absorbed water.
This is one of the reasons why dimethylfuran is a preferred fuel over ethanol. It also has a high energy content which addresses all the shortcomings of ethanol. As DMF is not soluble in water, there is no question of it getting contaminated by the absorption of water from the atmosphere.
In addition to this, DMF is stable when stored. During the evaporation stage of its production, you find that it consumes only a third of the required energy for evaporating a solution of ethanol that is produced by fermentation in biofuel applications.
It is now possible to produce hydrogen from visible light
Power is something that is very much required in all spheres of life; in offices, homes, schools and malls. However the present stock of natural energy the earth has and provides is getting exhausted by the minute.
This is the reason researchers and scientists from all over the world are constantly on the lookout for new and the latest sources of renewable energy.
Producing hydrogen from natural gas is a process that has been around for some time. However the process of producing hydrogen from natural gas tends to produce lots of climate changing greenhouse gases. In the process, a nonrenewable resource too is consumed, thus running against the actual intention of the procedure.
This is why a new and more environmentally friendly approach has been found out where hydrogen is produced from water, with the help of the renewable source of energy, sunlight.
Recent studies have shown that researchers have found out that by the fabrication of thin films of self-aligned and vertically oriented titanium iron oxide nanotube arrays tend to show the ability and possibility of splitting water in the presence of natural sunlight.
These same researchers had previously reported the creation of Titania nanotube arrays in the presence of photo conversion efficiency of 16.5%, in the presence of ultraviolet light. The choice of titanium oxide in the creation of long lasting solar cells is that titanium oxide is a compound that is usually used in the manufacture of white paints and sunscreens.
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Think Solar Energy
