Ethanol - fuel for the future

This news follows in the footsteps of a twelve month fuel cell trial at New Zealand’s International Antarctic Centre. Commissioned by the US Department of Defence and operated by Industrial Research, it was set up to see how a fuel cell combined with a methanol reformer would stand up to providing 24/7 power.

Fuel cells have long been hailed as an alternative power supply and this particular trial involved powering the likes of batteries and outside lighting – ultimately to see if methanol was more viable than the typically used hydrogen when combined with a fuel cell. The theory was that methanol would allow for longer run times while using much less fuel than hydrogen and therefore would reduce the weight that has to be taken into remote sites.

US Department of Defence’s project manager, Frank Holcolm, says the NZ trial provided some valuable information and while they did manage to power a range of activities, the overriding result was that the use of methanol remains complex.

“That said, methanol still has a place for smaller fuel cell applications but for larger fuel cell applications methanol may not be a good choice.”

In contrast, he says that ethanol is now considered a practical fuel for fuel cell and hydrogen applications and the US already has an established infrastructure for it in terms of production, transportation and storage.

“The biggest advantage of ethanol is that it is a renewable fuel. For starters, we’re surrounded by cornfields in the US which makes ethanol widely and easily available. Ethanol can be made from a lot of bi-products, but typically from corn.

“It’s another step towards a hydrogen economy. I don’t think we could completely switch over to ethanol but it does give us an option for reducing our dependency. It could potentially be very efficient – after all, as President Bush once said ‘we have an addiction to oil’.”

Industrial Research’s Hydrogen and Distributed Energy Manager, Alister Gardiner, says the tides are starting to turn in favour of ethanol in New Zealand too.

“Given it’s a common bi-product of the dairy industry, there’s an increasing interest from the NZ government to use ethanol as a transport fuel. On top of this, I see opportunities for using it in stationary applications such as fuel cells as well.”