Scientists have long struggled with generating and storing hydrogen, the kind that might one day provide the backbone for renewable energy fuel cells that make our cars move, warm our houses and help produce food, in a way that also won’t hasten climate change or otherwise harm the environment.
In research published earlier this year in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, chemists at the USC Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute outlined a carbon-neutral method for doing just that, with a little help from the simplest alcohol known to man: methanol.
Senior author G K Surya Prakash, 1994 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner George Olah in his last major paper and their team at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences devised a way to produce and store hydrogen from methanol, without concurrent production of either carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide, by trapping it in organic derivatives of ammonia called amines.
The well-known steam reforming process usually used to extract hydrogen from methanol, called the methanol reformer, traditionally produces carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide as part of this extraction process. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that causes global warming and ocean acidification.
The research demonstrates just one more way carbon has been freed from the cycle of creating and storing fuels via methanol, supporting Olah and Prakash’s long-standing vision of a completely renewable “methanol economy",
Scientists have long struggled with generating and storing hydrogen, the kind that might one day provide the backbone for renewable energy fuel cells that make our cars move, warm our houses and help produce food, in a way that also won’t hasten climate change or otherwise harm the environment.
In research published earlier this year in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, chemists at the USC Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute outlined a carbon-neutral method for doing just that, with a little help from the simplest alcohol known to man: methanol.
Senior author G K Surya Prakash, 1994 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner George Olah in his last major paper and their team at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences devised a way to produce and store hydrogen from methanol, without concurrent production of either carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide, by trapping it in organic derivatives of ammonia called amines.
The well-known steam reforming process usually used to extract hydrogen from methanol, called the methanol reformer, traditionally produces carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide as part of this extraction process. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that causes global warming and ocean acidification.
The research demonstrates just one more way carbon has been freed from the cycle of creating and storing fuels via methanol, supporting Olah and Prakash’s long-standing vision of a completely renewable “methanol economy",
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