U of A professor develops twist on fuel-cell tech
Project powers through global competition
A University of Alberta professor’s innovative fuel cell technology is climbing the ranks in a competition aimed at identifying the world’s best ways of transforming carbon dioxide into useful products.
Led by professor Thomas Etsell from the department of chemical and materials engineering, the project seeks to continue development of a fuel cell that consumes carbon dioxide (CO2) instead of producing it. Etsell’s research is one of 24 worldwide submissions moving on to the next round of the $35-million Alberta-based competition.
The Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation (CCEMC) Grand Challenge Competition saw 344 submissions from 37 countries. Twentyfour projects were selected to receive $500,000 in development funding over two years. A final project will be awarded a $10 million grant in 2018. Q: Why do you think your project moved on to the next round of this competition? A: “I think because it was a fairly novel idea. Most of the funding of the 24 (applicants) were companies that are probably more along in their ideas than we were at the university, which is more early stage.” Q: What is a fuel cell? A: “The easiest way to think of a fuel cell is just as a continuous battery, but instead of discharging, like your car battery, it keeps on going because you continuously fuel to one electrode and air at the other one. So you basically burn the fuel by not letting the two come in contact with each other. So the electron transfer that’s needed for the combustion is forced through an external circuit — that’s where you get the power from.” Q: How is this fuel cell different? A: “We were looking for ways to get rid of CO2 and this reaction is very favourable. It just involves a 50/50 mixture of methane, which is natural gas, and CO2. They basically react to form CO (carbon monoxide) and hydrogen. The key is we have developed a catalyst that basically favours hydrogen being oxidized rather than CO. When the hydrogen reacts, it forms water. But if the CO reacts it forms CO2. So we try to stop the CO from reacting, and only the hydrogen reacts. So the net result is that it … produces a mixture of CO and water.
“You get rid of CO2, you produce power and you produce a valuable byproduct in CO. So far it’s about 92 per cent efficient in converting only hydrogen and not CO but we’re going to try to improve on that.” Q: How is the CO used? A: “The CO is going to be used as a raw material to make a whole pile of industrial chemicals. It’s quite an invaluable (product.) It’s used for making acetic acid, for methanol, for many polymers, quite a bit of which are done in this province. So basically we are using the CO to produce that, not CO2.
“It can be used in any industry that needs power and wants to get rid of CO2. It’s pretty universal.” Q: How much power can these fuel cells produce? A: “A 500 kilowatt fuel cell could get rid of about 5,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. They are costly — they’re in the ballpark of 10 times more expensive right now than a producing gas-powered power plant for the same number of megawatts or kilowatts. But we’re hoping with mass production, this will bring the costs down. They do have some fairly expensive materials in them, so you can only get the cost down so far.” Q: What are your future plans for this technology? A: “This is a two-year project so we just hope to be able to show how well it works and that we can basically convert the hydrogen to water and leave the CO alone. (We want to show) how well it can be made to work on a small scale. We may try to make a small stack (of fuel cells) just for demonstration purposes. If it looks like it’s successful, we will need company involvement to try it on a larger scale.”