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Power Science Technology

Enzymes Make Electricity From Jet Fuel Without Ignition 78

Posted by samzenpus from the spreading-the-power dept.
An anonymous reader writes University of Utah engineers say they've developed the first room-temperature fuel cell that uses enzymes to help jet fuel produce electricity without needing to ignite the fuel. These new fuel cells can be used to power portable electronics, off-grid power and sensors. A study of the new cells appears online today in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Catalysis. "The major advance in this research is the ability to use Jet Propellant-8 directly in a fuel cell without having to remove sulfur impurities or operate at very high temperature," says the study's senior author. "This work shows that JP-8 and probably others can be used as fuels for low-temperature fuel cells with the right catalysts."
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Enzymes Make Electricity From Jet Fuel Without Ignition More

Enzymes Make Electricity From Jet Fuel Without Ignition

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  • where do you get the enzymes? Is it scalable?

    I hope they don't have to squeeze it from baby kittens.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It is a bacterial enzyme. The purification methods in the article are easily scalable to an industrial scale. The only thing that is not clear are what are the yields. However, there is a significant room for optimization of the yield and this is something that is not hard to do. They have also not done any work on optimizing the stability of the enzymes. So I guess there is a lot of room for improvement. Enzymes are used quite a lot on industrial scale in things like laundry detergents for example.

  • Efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Argos ( 173864 ) on Thursday November 06, 2014 @03:15AM (#48323695)

    Important question: efficiency?

    • Re:Efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tulcod ( 1056476 ) on Thursday November 06, 2014 @05:35AM (#48323969)

      That is not how fundamental engineering works.

      What do you think the first solid-state transistor looked like? A neat P-N junction on a silicon wafer, produced by one of those fancy ASML fab machines in Korea? Do you think the first solid-state transistor was capable of speeds anything like what we expect today? Do you think it was "efficient" for any meaning of that word?

      The first solid-state transistor was a piece of plastic jammed into a block of germanium. It was dirty, crooked, difficult to make, and generally a pain in the ass.

      But it was a proof of concept. It took a lot of additional engineering to make it usable in actual electronics. And then a lot more to make it smaller. And then a lot more to make it scalable. And then years and years and years and years of research brought us to what we know today as a transistor.

      But the first transistor was just an impractical oversized proof of concept.

      The research in this article is important. It shows that what was always theoretically an option is actually possible in practice. Scalability, efficiency, effort to produce - none of that matters at this stage. Obviously that would all be interesting next steps, but this shows that the principle works. And that is damn interesting.

      • The research in this article is important. It shows that what was always theoretically an option is actually possible in practice. Scalability, efficiency, effort to produce - none of that matters at this stage. Obviously that would all be interesting next steps, but this shows that the principle works. And that is damn interesting.

        Don't be naive. Of course the efficiency matters at this stage. If this is just as efficient, or more efficient than burning the fuel in a turbine, then it's ready for use now. If it is not, then we know that more research is required. The GP was asking "Is this ready for use, or is this one of those technologies they say we will be using 20 years from now?" He framed that in the question of efficiency because that is how you would measure whether this is a viable method of generation or just a technol

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          it doesn't necessarily need to be more efficient to be usable now.

          first it operates at low temperatures without burning, so you don't have a lot of waste heat to deal with.
          second, it would generate the electricity quietly without a loud generator.

          these 2 things mean even if there is an efficiency hit, it could still be useful at least in some niche areas.

          the real question is how much of this enzyme do you need, and how expensive is it? in conjunction with how much fuel it uses. the answer to these questio

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Don't be naive. Of course the efficiency matters at this stage. If this is just as efficient, or more efficient than burning the fuel in a turbine, then it's ready for use now. If it is not, then we know that more research is required. The GP was asking "Is this ready for use, or is this one of those technologies they say we will be using 20 years from now?" He framed that in the question of efficiency because that is how you would measure whether this is a viable method of generation or just a technologica

      • The research in this article is important. It shows that what was always theoretically an option is actually possible in practice. Scalability, efficiency, effort to produce - none of that matters at this stage. Obviously that would all be interesting next steps, but this shows that the principle works. And that is damn interesting.

        If scalability and efficiency don't matter at this point, then I've got a potato fuel cell that you can build at home. All it takes is a potato and a zinc and copper rod. Works great for running a small clock, for instance. It even has the advantage of being biodegradable. If only I could get a grant, I could work on improving the scalability and efficiency.

      • Very true. I've read a lot about the development of the transistor and the initial prototype was in fact fairly crude. But they'd established a lot of the physics behind solid state before they even built the device.

        When you think about it BJT versus the scads of types of transistors out there now.

      • The process of refining the efficiency of a device or process is not the same as evaluating it's potential efficiency.

        The maximum potential efficiency of a given chemical process is knowable in the same way that the maximum potential efficiency of a given type of solid state solar panel.

      • Sure it is interesting. But there are truckloads of interesting fundamental research results that turn out to not have any useful application in practice because they are either not efficient enough, or cheap enough, or practical enough. I can think of lots of questions like: are the enzymes expended with the fuel, how much does it cost to produce the enzymes per gallon of fuel burned, and how efficient the whole scheme is. If it is not efficient enough it would at best only be useful for stationary applica

    • Important question: efficiency?

      And by-products. Hydrogen fuel cells release water vapor as the by-product. What would a petroleum powered fuel cell release and would it be better than what is released in an engine (particularly when scaled up to provide the same power outputs).

      • H2O and CO2. Which is the same output as a perfect combustion engine. Of course in practice such a thing as a perfect combustion engine does not exist. You use air instead of O2 in the oxidizer and you get NOx. Even if you used only pure O2 as the oxidizer you would probably still get CO, benzene and crap like that in the exhaust. So you remove the CO, benzene and other crap with a platinum catalyst to turn that crap into CO2 and H2O. Which is what we use right now.

  • All we needed was another way to use petrochemicals! The world is saved!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Required Snark ( 1702878 )
      Are you whining just to whine, or is your brain actually the size of a walnut?

      The sponsor is the US military. They have standardized on JP-8 [wikipedia.org]

      Apart from powering aircraft, JP-8 is used as a fuel for heaters, stoves, tanks, by the U.S. military and its NATO allies as a replacement for diesel fuel in the engines of nearly all tactical ground vehicles and electrical generators, and as a coolant in engines and some other aircraft components. The use of a single fuel greatly simplifies logistics.

      By the way, th

  • Not subject to Carnot efficiency limit (Score:5, Informative)

    by stoploss ( 2842505 ) on Thursday November 06, 2014 @05:43AM (#48323993)

    This isn't a heat engine; therefore, it isn't subject to the Carnot efficiency limit [wikipedia.org] that is a key reason that internal combustion engines have such a low maximum theoretical efficiency in terms of extracting energy from the fuel.

    Hydrocarbons are actually a great energy store for a vehicle: they are thermally stable/don't discharge over time, it's fast & trivial to "recharge" the energy store, and hydrocarbons have orders of magnitude more energy per mass than any form of battery, which improves vehicle efficiency by reducing the mass that has to be lugged around. However, the internal combustion engine is a wastefully inefficient, complicated machine. Ideally, we could get the best of both worlds with a hydrocarbon fuel cell that efficiently produces electricity to drive electric motors for a vehicle. There are other technologies that could potentially accomplish this, such as the solid oxide fuel cell [wikipedia.org].

    Don't conflate the energy store (hydrocarbons) with the stored energy (e.g. fossil fuels). There is no reason we cannot create hydrocarbons at will using various approaches. Biodiesel from algae is one example as well as "reverse combustion" via more industrial processes (e.g. the Fischer-Tropsch process [wikipedia.org]). Some catalytic processes [scientificamerican.com] have been created that use solar power [aero-news.net] to create hydrocarbons.

    Personally, I prefer the idea of large nuclear plants creating hydrocarbons from atmospheric CO2. As a bonus, we would get to keep our existing petroleum distribution infrastructure while our vehicle fleet becomes carbon neutral. Backwards-compatible carbon neutrality FTW?

    • either Darpa or the Navy are working on producing JP8 from seawater algae. that way aircraft carriers can make the jet fuel needed for their jets.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by stiggle ( 649614 )

        Sandia Labs have a project creating hydrocarbons using photosynthesising cyanobacteria (easier to genetically manipulate)
        As the hydrocarbons float - they just need to skim the top of the tank to get the product.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nojayuk ( 567177 )

        Get back to us when they can make bombs, missiles, ammunition, spare parts and all the other things aircraft carriers consume on a day-to-day basis. Ditto for all the other fuel-burning ships in a carrier group. Until then you can expect a bunch of logistics ships and tankers to accompany the Big Boys wherever they go.

        Where is this supermagical seawater-algae-avgas plant going to fit into the crowded spaces of an aircraft carrier anyway? Eating into the avgas tankage spaces might suffice but the US Navy rea

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dkf ( 304284 )

          Where is this supermagical seawater-algae-avgas plant going to fit into the crowded spaces of an aircraft carrier anyway? Eating into the avgas tankage spaces might suffice but the US Navy really needs that volume filled with as much avgas as they can carry for an extended operational cycle. Carriers may be big but every cubic metre is already allocated to something, pretty much.

          Strategically, it might make more sense to have these fuel production systems at the depots that the logistics ships/tankers come from, so that you're not critically dependent on having fuel supplies to them. Like that, an unfortunate catastrophe (whether natural, accidental or due to malicious intent) at a US naval base would be less likely to render large parts of the fleet impotent. The key is thinking in terms of ensuring that even if something really bad happens, the operational missions are not compro

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by olau ( 314197 )

      There is no reason we cannot create hydrocarbons at will using various approaches.

      Except for price. Most alternatives when it comes to energy are limited by costs. Although I think you're right that we'll eventually end up creating/harvesting the hydrocarbons from other sources than the ground.

  • So much for developing low carbon fuels - this is just kicking out more fossil fuel based CO2.
    Doesn't matter what method you use to fully oxidise long carbon chains to release energy the results are still CO2 and H2O. There enzymes are only converting available energy at around 30%

  • It's progress. Just get the process to go backwards and solar power *will* solve the carbon and energy problems.

  • Not only is it a 'fossi'l fuel but the JP line of fuels are highly flammable and aromatic ie. they evaporate easily ... and that vapor (surprise) ignites easily.

    • nah, they're kerosene

    • JP-8 is nearly identical to Jet A-1, which is the fuel used in commercial jet airplanes and is mostly kerosene. It's not very aromatic and is harder to ignite than gasoline. You may be thinking of JP-4, which is similar to commercial Jet B. JP-4 and Jet B have naptha in addition to the kerosene.

  • This news brought to you by the same school that came out with cold fusion...
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by osu-neko ( 2604 )
      ...and all the researchers involved are from the same planet as Pons and Fleischmann, too! Surely this is significant.

  • exactly is the byproduct? Is the kerosene completely consumed? If not, what does it change into, and is it usable, or does it become a deadly poison? I read the article but missed that part.

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