The high specialization and professionalism of Expobioenergía has transformed it into the  sector´s annual appointment and so is it shown by the numbers that have been mentioned during its third edition. Â

Expobioenergía.08 reached the foreseen objectives and it attracted a total of 13.186 visitors, 40% more than in the previous edition. This fact, next to the high grade of satisfaction shown by the exhibitors makes Expobioenergía become again the obliged appointment of the bioenergy sectorduring 2009. Â

Expobioenergía in its third edition has been able to consolidate and has become the biggest European encounter in the sector of the bioenergy, being able to highlight regarding to other events of similar characteristic by its high specialization level, the high number of exhibitors and represented trademarks (a total of 424), the number of professional visitors and the numerous complementary activities that are developed around this fair.Â

The companies of the sector that are interested in participating in Expobioenergía.09 can already reserve space and profit from the different discounts if they do their inscription before December 19th.Â

Cesefor and Avebiom, organizers of Expobioenergía, will maintain during 2009 the objective, that since its first edition was set: to promote the bioenergy and to generate an outline of experiences exchange among companies and professionals of the sector.Â

Source: Expobioenergía/ María Castañeda

INVESTIGATORS OF THE CSIC AND THE UPC

The device could transform ethanol into hydrogen in the own vehicle

Their applications would avoid the high costs of replacing the infrastructures Â

Image of the catalyst developed by investigators of the CSIC and the UPC. (Photo: CSIC)

MADRID. РA team of investigators of the Superior Council of Scientific Investigations (CSIC) and the Polytechnic University of Catalu̱a (UPC) has developed and patented a catalyst to obtain hydrogen starting from ethanol that, according to its designers, could be a definitive solution for the hydrogen based transport.

The device would allow to generate this material inside the vehicle, something that didn’t seem viable until the moment and that would reduce the transition costs of an infrastructure based on gasoil to another based on hydrogen.Â

The work has been co-directed by the investigator of the CSIC Elies Molins, of the Institute of Sciences of Materials in Barcelona, and the investigator of the Polytechnic University of Cataluña Jordi Llorca, assistant teacher in the Institute of Energy Techniques. Students from the doctorate Montserrat Domínguez and Elena Taboada, of the University and the CSIC, respectively have also participated.Â

The catalyst is composed of a ceramic piece with channels in its interior and recovered with an aerogel, a very porous and transparent material. The areogel contains cobalt nanoparticles that are the last responsibles of the transformation of the ethanol into hydrogen.Â

The characteristics of this innovation confers it a great potential for the development of hydrogen fuel batteries, also called cells or fuel cells. It is a similar electrochemical devices of energy conversion to those of a battery, but with the exception that they don’t stop producing energy if the reactives of their interior waste, since they can reestablish them.

Among their applications, they are useful as energy source in remote places, as electricity and light generating devices for housings or offices and for the development of hydrogen propelled vehicles.Â

The viability of the hydrogen

In this sense, the new catalyst can nearer the definitive solution for the transport on hydrogen. At the present time, there exists more than a hundred prototypes of automobiles impelled on hydrogen, that transport the gas in deposits at high pressure, as well as some hydrogen service stations.

However, this model’s extension supposes a great economic investment, not only to replace the whole infrastructure bounded to the gasoline, but also to generate enough safety measures.Â

The big costs of the operation to go from gasoil and gasoline to hydrogen would be reduced if there were a device to generate the gas in the own automobile. In spite of the efforts of the scientific community, until the moment no development seemed viable.

“All the catalysts that have been investigated so far need a reduction treatment, a chemical process destinated to diminish the state of oxidation, what supposes to leave the device with hydrogen at high temperatures during some hours before each use”, Jordi Llorca explains.Â

On the other hand, this catalyst doesn’t need any previous treatment neither to be preserved from the contact with air or humidity, with what it doesn’t need any induction nor aconditioning and it can be reutilized in cycles of on/off in an indefinite way.

For the authors, one of the advantages of the device is its capacity to generate energy. “The energy of each molecule of ethanol corresponds to the energy that generate five molecules of hydrogen. The catalyst that we have developed, on the other hand, obtains six molecules of hydrogen for each molecule of ethanol”. The reason rests in that the device absorbs the residual heat, characteristic of any energy source, what allows to increase the global yield of the system.Â

Compared with vehicles that consume ethanol, and according to preliminary calculations, the consumption could reduce in 25%. Also, the required temperature is much lower than that of other catalysts. And, the production of hydrogen is quick, it only needs two seconds.Â

At the present time, the investigators study the possibility to implement the development in real applications. These can come from the automotion sector as in the generation of energy of static systems, as boilers or auxiliary generators, or in the field of the portable devices.Â

Source: El Mundo/Spain

Translation by Nextfuel/Biodiesel.com.ar