Sewage could replace petrol in cars (Hydrogen)

i wonder if they will be able to miniaturize it for my septic system.

 

Too perfect...hydrogen fuel from sewage. Endless and growing supply plus it helps at two ends in waste disposal and energy production.

Wonder if this is related to Toyota's announcement of their hydrogen powered car development?

 

Sewage isn't replacing petrol, hydrogen is. Just because an EV runs on electricity gathered from the sun doesn't mean the sun is replacing petrol in that case.
That being said, sounds like a great idea for generating Hydrogen.

I would like to see how much energy it takes to dry the sewage, then to reheat the Methane to free up the Hydrogen.
It will be interesting to see what numbers we get when the study is verified.

 

Every municipality with a sewage plant just struck oil. On a more realistic note, methane from sewage and waste as fuel for electricity never materialized. Not sure what the new process adds to the equation since it is dependent on methane production which has not developed.

 

Sure for about $3M they could probably build one for your septic system For much less you can produce biogas to burn.

There are various methods to turn biomass into biogass - mostly methane. This naturally occurs at landfills, and more is getting collected. Here is a fairly new technique

Biomass and Electricity, Part One - NYTimes.com
Biomass and Electricity, Part 2 - NYTimes.com

The problems are purity of the gas, and location. This begs the quetion if you can no economically build steam reformers for hydrogen from methane pipelines - biogas or natural gas or syn gas, how will doing it from biomass help. The simple answer is it wouldn't except for a pr purpose.

The problem toyota and honda have when pushing fuel cells claiming environmental reasons, is the numbers don't work if electricity is used for the fuel to create the hydrogen. Since imported lng is expensive in japan, they need to come up with another source of methane. This blue hydrogen may get support in Japan. In US biomas->biogas->electricity especially through small ocgt and bloom box fuel cells.

 

Unless one is jonesing on fuel cells, it makes more sense to me to just burn the methane and skip the conversion to hydrogen. As you said, it's already done at some landfills, (our local one included). It is also far easier to use methane as an ICE vehicle fuel than it is hydrogen.

I checked and surprisingly (to me at least), landfill generators can run effectively on methane of as low as 50% purity, so they make more sense using it in vehicles.

 

....yikes I don't think we are talking economically feasible here, except Japan is dependent on LPG imports for nat gas (H2 is made from). This reminds me of the US cellulosic biofuels mandate, yes If you want to say the gov't mandates and subsidizes this activity, then there is chemitsry avail to make fuels from all kinds of things. Japan also makes some H2 from naphtha presumably due to less nat gas availability. Fuel cell is a little harder to make sense for Japan as far as H2 supply - hence the stretch technology for H2-from-sewage.
US the H2 is cheaper right now due to low nat gas prices.

 

Several dairies also do so. Sewage is one of those wasted resources that we will wonder why we weren't using it sooner.

If the company used a thermal depolymerization process vs the pyrolysis, they could make a biocrude and refine that into gasoline and diesel.

 

It may have been a slightly misleading article when it say "methane" it might mean "biogas", which needs to be cleaned before burning, at least for cars. If the process could produce hydrogen directly from the wet gas it would save a step.

 

One issue is simply what do/should we do with biosludge from muncipalities? There are proper ways to deal with it, and less good expedient ways. I am not sure where we stand as county. Suspect this may be one of those wastes like coal ash that EPA does not choose to regulate, but I am not sure.

 

So we are going to be using oil to make fertilizer, and fertilizer to make a substitute for oil?

 

Are you kidding me. Toyota has a huge budget for public relations. This is a public relations piece for fuel cells, nothing to do with reality.

And it will cost way more than anyone wants to pay, which is why the Japanese government will subsidize it.

LPG is liquefied petroleum gas, mainly propane. Japan is now importing a lot of lng, liquid natural gas, mainly methane. It is much more expensive over there, since their is a lack of infrastructure to liquify and ship. In the us, methane is an inexpensive feed stock for hydrogen production, but it just travels in pipelines, and doesn't need to be liquefied. I would guess hydrogen from this process will cost over $15/kg. With the problems with electricity pricing in japan, they need to push a different technology than electrolysis to claim hydrogen is green. Since Fuel cell proponents can no longer claim to be fil

Hey, I said it was fine for japan to pay for it. I'm just pointing out the problems in the PR piece.

Here, we are on a PR piece, and you think its unfair to point out the facts. OK fanboi. Talk to your government and ask what this tech will cost. We have many projects to capture biogas, as its a pollutant. We should be willing to pay more in processing. But it is much more straight forward using it to produce electricity and/or heat than hydrogen.

I'm not sure what lithium batteries have to do with this piece. Fuel cell vehicles also need batteries to improve. Battery technology has been improving at about 7%/year. I would be very surprised if a toyota fcv actually sold in any quantity in 2020, but if it does, it will have a battery at least as big as the one in the phv. I am surprised you keep pushing your ignorance of technology.

 

lol. I think they are talking about human and animal waste

Here is the original Nikkei story. Note this is about japan, where natural gas prices are high, since it must be liquefied and imported.
2012/09/11 01:52 - 4 Firms Team Up To Make Hydrogen From Sewage Sludge
It is about a joint venture that hopes to get lower cost hydrogen, but it should be obvious to anyone, that if they had the technology to make this happen, they would be announcing a plant for next year not 2015. Right now they have the technology to make expensive hydrogen.

It's a great idea to generate electricity from the sludge instead of just burning the waste, we are doing this at a few sites in the US.

 

Right. Fertilizer.

 

Part fertilizer , part methane, our sewage sludge treatment plant is going methane part of the sewage to power itself, and provide some power to the grid.

Biogas To Power Austin Sewage Treatment Process | United States Biogas

Note this is only possible because of government money, and in this case they are federal stimulus funds, but we hope that they will figure out how to bring the costs down.

Yep this is our treatment plant that makes fertilizer. They have been doing that for over 20 years here. It contains some heavy metals so it is not suitable for food, but its used for grass and flowers. If you note the small amount of power at this plant, its less than the amount needed to fuel a thousand cars.

 

The comericial plant I know of using thermal depolymerization is converting waste trimmings and feathers from a turkey processing plant. Along with the biocrude, organic fertilizer is also made as a byproduct.

In theory any organic material can be used as a feedstock. There have been successful batches made with the unrecyclable plastics from scrapped cars.

 

Nice operation!

Sewage gas has been used to run engines for about 100 years. Here's an example from 90 years ago. Too bad it has take so long and increased fuel prices to increase the popularity of sewage gas run engines.
Gas from Sewage Waste Runs City Power Plant | Modern Mechanix