Technology Breakthrough Archives

Fuel From Water – It’s Finally Here

We live in a time of incredible technological advances. The breakthroughs of the past decade alone make me wonder about what’s to come in the next few years. Many of these advances are aimed at reducing the world’s carbon output, providing us a cleaner planet to live on. This past week German car manufacturer Audi announced that, along with their partner Sunfire, they’ve created e-diesel from water.

It’s not hard to imagine a future where vehicles are powered by batteries and hydrogen technology, but Audi’s discovery opens the door on a potential third way. In addition, many applications exist for e-diesel beyond the automotive industry.

To make e-diesel, water is heated to form steam. The steam is heated to over 800℃ and then broken down and separated into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen using a process called high-temperature electrolysis. The extreme temperature allows the water to break down with greater efficiency. The hydrogen is then sent into a reactor and combined with carbon dioxide, which can be captured directly from the air. In the reactor, high pressure and high temperature cause the hydrogen and carbon dioxide to react and produce long-chained liquid hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are the basic building block of all fossil fuels. These hydrocarbons have been named ‘blue crude’.

Audi and Sunfire have developed the process so it can be powered exclusively by renewable energy. The blue crude is then refined in a manner similar to the way standard crude oil is refined to produce e-diesel. Audi and Sunfire have developed the process so it can be powered exclusively by renewable energy and with an efficiency of around 70%.

One of the most exciting aspects of this development is that the process used carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. Carbon dioxide is known to be created largely by burning fossil fuels, now it can be used in the process of replacing these fossil fuels with a carbon-neutral fuel.

Conventional diesel fuel contains sulphur and other contaminants, e-diesel does not. Sunfire’s Christian von Olshausen is quoted as saying “The engine runs quieter and fewer pollutants are being created.”

“If we can make widespread use of CO2 as a raw material, we will make a crucial contribution to climate protection…” German Education and Research minister Prof. Dr. Johanna Wanka put the first five liters of e-diesel into her official car and, after taking it for a drive, declared to project to be a success. The e-diesel can be mixed with regular diesel or used on its own.

“If we can make widespread use of CO2 as a raw material, we will make a crucial contribution to climate protection and the efficient use of resources, and put the fundamentals of the green economy in place,” Wanka said.

Now before we get too excited production is currently very limited at only about 160 litres a day. Over the next few months the plant is set to produce more than 3,000 litres of the e-diesel but, if the e-diesel receives enough interest, plans are in place for a larger scale production facility.

It should be noted that a lot of energy is required to produce e-diesel and the German model utilizes only renewable resources for that (solar and wind). To truly make this an e-fuel of global proportions the same environmentally friendly power technologies should be applied to the manufacturing process.

The good news is that with larger scale production Audi believes e-diesel can be produced and sold for the same price that regular diesel is selling at.

Fuel from water, it’s finally here. Imagine driving down the highway knowing that all those diesel trucks, vans and cars are being powered by an environmentally friendly fuel. It’s not that far off now.

How LED Works

People in Ontario are really beginning to explore LED (Light Emitting Diode) lighting for business and home, and that’s a good thing. Good for the environment, good for the wallet. But I’m often asked ‘how do LEDs work?’ I think that’s a good starting point for my first blog post.

First a little history, and for that we go all the way back to the last century – the 1900s. LEDs really aren’t a brand new technology that has just sprung up. In the early 1900s a process, later to be called electroluminescence, was discovered when a researcher noticed how applying a current to a specific type of crystal diode created a faint light, and the material was not heating up.

This phenomenon sat idle until it was applied to the creation of the first LED lights in the 1950s. At that time they were called semiconductor radiant diodes. From there, over the next 60 years, scientists and engineers have learned to harness this light and we’ve arrived at the LED lighting technology of today.

Basically LEDs are small semiconductor chips. They are made of two layers, each treated with different materials to give each their own property. One layer contains a lot of high-energy electrons that it wants to give away, this is called the n-type layer. The other layer has spaces for these electrons that it really wants to fill at a lower energy level, this is the p-type layer. The combination of these two layers creates what is called a pn-junction. These two layers form a diode, from the Greek di (two) and ode (way, or path).

….this junction creates a waterfall like effect: they can flow one way but can’t go back up the other way.

To the electrons, this junction creates a waterfall like effect: they can flow one way but can’t go back up the other way. When the negative end of a circuit is applied to the n-type layer, the electrons flow between the two layers easily. If you apply the negative end of the circuit to the p-type layer the flow is blocked. So, like a waterfall the flow can only travel one way and not another.

Unlike a waterfall, which creates noise, the electrons flowing across the pn-junction of an LED release light. As the electrons flow from the n-layer to the p-layer the energy levels of the electrons falls. This creates the release of energy in the form of photons, which we see as light.

So photons sounds very sci-fi, doesn’t it? Well, it really isn’t, all light is made of photons, which are tiny particles of light that are too small to see individually.

How much light this creates depends on the difference of the energy levels of the two layers. This is called the band gap. By learning to control the band gap engineers figured out new ways to make LEDs and create light across the spectrum.

Now, we have LEDs that consume less than 20% of the energy of traditional incandescent and halogen bulbs. Because there is no heated filament or unusual gasses required these LED lights last far longer.

The result is we’ve now moved to an extremely energy efficient method of producing light. Now, we have LEDs that consume less than 20% of the energy of traditional incandescent and halogen bulbs. Because there is no heated filament or unusual gasses required these LED lights last far longer. LEDs do break down over time, but this takes a very long time. We’re now seeing commercial LED luminaries with 50,000 hour and even 100,000 hours life expectancies.

The future looks bright (all puns intended) for LED lighting and if you’d like to explore this environmentally friendly, cost saving technology for your business or organization email us at [email protected]. I’d love to help you lower your carbon footprint and reduce your hydro bill while providing you with better light.