Sugar Fuel Cells

Sugar is abundant, and even more so now that people are not buying car containing sugar and carb products like potatoes and wheat. Well what could we do with it? Make sugar for a sugar fuel cell!It was once said that you can make a fuel cell that runs on any fuel as long as it is hydrogen.

This has recently been proven false by the advent of hydrocarbon fuel cells such as diesel and butane fuel cells. My idea would take carbohydrates which are similar to hydrocarbons so i dont see this being too difficult to do. carbohydrates are less volatale because they already have oxygen bounded to them so this may make it difficult to do.

I know it has to be possible because humans use carbohydrates to make electricty, heat, carbon dioxide, and water as well as kinetic energy so why would it be so difficult to make a mechanical process that does the same?

One day they may develop a universal fuel cell that can run on hydrogen, diesel, methane or any hydrocarbon or carbohydrate and generate electricty. This would be great because then you could run your car on enriched sugar and alchohols that maybe the only fuels left after all the hydrocarbons have been spent.

As well as being efficient carbohydrates are a renewable resource. You just grow it! Plant corn, potatoes, wheat, oats, sugar cane you name it and you can power vechicles on it or even houses one day in the future.

Fuel cells work by oxidizing a substance. Lets use hydrogen for an example. There is a membrane that divides the oxidizer from the thing you are oxidizing. So you have H2 on one side and O2 on the other side. Since these two elements are attracted to eachother they move towards eachother and as they get to the membrane they travel through the membrane to make the bounding, while going through the membrane electrons are released (electricity) and heat is given off and water is expelled out of the membrane. This is possible to use with a more suffisticated membrane by using Carbohydrates and Oxygen. You would take the oxygen and oxidize the sugar and C02, H20, heat, and electricity would be relased just like how the human body does it.

You could also syntheticly make sugar by taking the C02 out of the atmospshere (also would clean the atmosphere of it) and take water and reconfigure the 2 chemicals to make sugar using electrolys and solar energy and your biproduct would be oxygen. This is done by plants naturally and i am sure we could do this with either biomechanical processes or just pure mechanical processes. Sort of like a reverse sugar fuel cell.

response to XC_XTC V8s do run on Alchohol but this would use a fuel cell rather than internal combustion. Internal combustion is when you burn fuel to creat expanding gasses and pressure that pushes a piston to power a vehicle. My idea would use a fuel cell instead of an internal combustion engine. Fuel cells are more efficient than internal combustion thus being better. Hydrocarbons like gasoline will be in short supply, and hydrogen is a fantasy that won't be fullfilled for a while. My idea uses a fuel cell that works off of already existing fuels that don't have to be created. To make hydrogen it takes a lot of energy, to make sugar takes a green thumb. To get oil takes a big army to invade middle eastern countries. see why sugar is better?