By Rivka Borochov
Combustible fuels for airplanes are made from hydrocarbons in some shape or form. The starting point can be crude oil, ethanol or natural gas. All current hydrocarbons on the market deplete natural resources, but new research from Israel promises an unlimited fuel source: a hydrocarbon feedstock, made from just water and air.
This fuel could be the aviation industry’s “green” fuel in the next 10 or 20 years.
The science has been done before, but in a world first, the Israelis have refined the method, finding a way to make the process commercially viable.
“There is nothing magical about this,” says
Prof. Moti Herskowitz from Ben-Gurion University, who completed the research with Prof Miron Landau, Roxana Vidruk and their team at the university. They presented their concept at a Bloomberg Energy Conference held in Tel Aviv in November 2013.
While it will likely be commercially viable only when the price of the basic hydrogen gas is more affordable, it’s definitely something that could be part of a renewable energy mix, a pragmatic Herskowitz says.
Practically speaking, the fuel reactor uses off-the-shelf equipment. Reactions are made at relatively low and safe pressures of about 20 to 30 bars, says Herskowitz. The output is a clear liquid and clear gas that could be refined as a fuel for the aviation industry. The waste materials are water, mixed with hydrocarbons, which go back into the process.
The secrets ingredients here are the catalyst used in the reaction –– an iron-based medium that contains aluminum and oxygen -- and the sequence of processes involved.
It’s all chemistry
“I am not able to disclose anything else,” says the Israeli professor, who is vice president of research and development at the Beersheva-based university.
Protecting his lab’s IP for commercial reasons, he promises that a paper describing the science shown in the lab will be forthcoming sometime in 2014.
Herskowitz imagines future reactors built onto existing and conventional power plants’ smokestacks so that greenhouse gases emitted as polluting carbon dioxide can be turned directly into a carbon-based fuel.
Herskowitz has the skills of the trade in the bag: He is a professor of chemical engineering and is also a researcher in the fields of advanced materials, catalytic and multiphase reactors.
The path for a chemistry project to be realized in the energy business will largely depend on the world’s governments, which will decide what kinds of alternative energy fuels to put in their gas tanks, he says.
Herskowitz does not believe that non-renewables such as natural gas are “green” energy sources. He also doesn’t believe that the labor-intensive biofuels industry has a leg to stand on in the far future, as our planet gets smaller and our land resources dwindle.
And he doesn’t believe that airplanes will be able to fly on anything but hydrocarbon fuel far into the future. Solar planes and the like are a big dream, “good for PR businesses, but not for planes that fly many passengers or military planes,” he points out.
Looking for strategic partners
Why you, why now?
“It is very simple. It is so simple that it’s interesting why you don’t see more of it. We needed to find a viable solution and we thought that we should go down to the basic materials.”
In the lab, using what is called a fixed bed reactor (an off-the-shelf product), one needs carbon and hydrogen to make a hydrocarbon, Herskowitz explains.
With unlimited access to carbon dioxide in our environment –– it’s a greenhouse gas causing our planet to heat up –– the limiting part of the equation is hydrogen.
On their own, carbon dioxide and the hydrogen found in water are both plentiful and non-reactive. Put them together and nothing happens. But in the last five years, Herskowitz says, advances have been made toward splitting water (hydrogen and oxygen) on a commercial scale. The Canadian company Hydrogenics can produce 750 kilograms of hydrogen per day, he says. Germany’s Siemens is also in the game.
Any of these companies could be perfect strategic partners for Herskowitz’s fuel.
When the cost of hydrogen goes down eventually, “our invention becomes viable. Right now, it is not cheap enough,” he says.
“The key point is to react CO2 and hydrogen, and studies on this have been published for at least 20 years. There is literature out there. Our breakthrough is creating high yields of hydrocarbons and high conversion levels. We are not the first to do this, but so far we are the best at it.”