University of Minnesota has a cool little device that converts veggie oil, sugar&water or other liquid biofuels into CO&H2 without coking.

It's a porous ceramic catalyst disc that is sprayed with veggie oil. An exothermic reaction with the catalyst releases syngas without any nasty residue. The CO & H2 pass through the pores in the catalyst disc and on to the engine. The heat released from the reaction heats the porous catalyst disc to 1800F. Ready for the next spray of veggie oil.

Key is the high heat and low oxygen environment.

You could then aspirate the gases into the engine intake according to strength of vacuum. For varying engine loads, a vacuum sensor could be feedback to the fuel injector controller to increase injector output. Kinda like throttle body injection.
-- danheathmoore, Apr 30 2008

UofM biofuel to syngas http://www1.umn.edu...el_in_a_flash.html#
[danheathmoore, Apr 30 2008]

I thought vegetable oil already worked pretty well in a diesel engine, without any toxic carbon monoxide?
-- DrCurry, Apr 30 2008


certainly, the emissions would only be water and carbon dioxide.

the cool thing is veggie oil could be a mainstream replacement without added cost of diesel cars. which is significant.
-- danheathmoore, Apr 30 2008


Would this thing run on inulin, or rather its constituents?
-- nineteenthly, Apr 30 2008


Sounds like a good idea. You might be able to find a way to separate the CO from the H2 by a centrifuge or other device and then compress the CO into a bottle. This could then be used in carbon sequestration projects. You could also run a fuel cell off the hydrogen rather than an ICE.

I'm not sure whether this would be better than just letting the CO oxidize further into CO2 inside of the engine. CO is more poisonous and I think forms acids in the atmosphere much easier, but from what I understand CO2 is more of a greenhouse gas.
-- discontinuuity, Apr 30 2008



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