• Question: Will you ever invent a fuel that is 100% safe to the enviorment

    Asked by CoolJcookie48 to Emma, Karla, Shane, Stephen, Yang on 9 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Karla Dussan

      Karla Dussan answered on 9 Nov 2017:

      Hey there! A fuel that is 100% safe to the environment would mean that it does not release any contaminants after combustion, but rather only carbon dioxide and water. Carbon dioxide is not bad in itself, it’s the fact that it accumulates continuously in the atmosphere what is bad for the environment. So, being able to use plants and biomass to produce fuels makes sense to maintain a balance in the environment: combustion of fuels release carbon dioxide, the plants take that carbon dioxide to grow and release oxygen, and then we can use those plants to produce the fuels we need to burn.

      A 100% safe fuel is the result of multi-disciplinary research: Chemist and Chemical Engineers should come out with a chemical process that is efficient and economically possible to convert biomass into liquid fuels. Mechanical Engineers and Computational Chemists can study how new fuels perform in combustion engines, as to see whether the fuel oxidises efficiently (thus not releasing any CO, particulate matter and other gases that are harmful for life and the environment)… They can also work on adapting and improving how engines work, so that they more efficient with the new types of fuels…

      Currently, researchers in the green chemistry field (my field!) are focused mostly on the first part: trying to make new renewable fuels economical and efficient, this in the sense that we will invest less energy in the biomass or organic materials to obtain as much fuel as possible.

    • Photo: Emma Hanley

      Emma Hanley answered on 9 Nov 2017:

      Unfortunately, I don’t think I ever will as all my research is computer based using energy models. I do no research in the labs. I think using renewable technologies like wind turbines is already safer in that they have no emissions when generating energy when compared to coal for example.

    • Photo: Stephen Rhatigan

      Stephen Rhatigan answered on 9 Nov 2017:

      A fuel is a substance in which energy is stored in chemical bonds. Releasing that energy often involves combustion where the fuel reacts with oxygen to produce heat and light (a fancy way of saying burning).
      Hydrogen gas is a fuel. When hydrogen gas and oxygen react together in combustion they produce heat, light and water.
      So once you have hydrogen gas, using it as a fuel will have 0 impact on the environment. The only problem is producing the hydrogen. The methods which are most used today also produce materials which are harmful to the environment. But all is not lost….
      There is a process where solar energy can be used to split water into hydrogen gas and oxygen gas. So we have:
      Sun + water —(water splitting)—> hydrogen gas + oxygen gas —(combustion)—> energy + water.
      The problem is that the technology to split water using solar energy isn’t very efficient (I’m working on finding materials which can do this efficiently).
      But if hydrogen gas can be mass produced using solar energy then we could have a system where water is converted to fuel which is converted back to water. This would be a clean, green and renewable cycle.
      There are already cars which run on hydrogen fuel and in Norway they already have hydrogen refueling stations.

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