Most people have heard of used vegetable oil (or “greasel”) as a diesel fuel alternative.  The idea caught on during the high fuel prices of 2007 and 2008.  Since then, it’s subsided as gasoline and diesel fuel have dropped in price.  A group of researchers at the University of Leeds thinks they might have another use for that used vegetable grease.

Normally, when grease is cleaned out of the grease trap at most restaurants, it goes to a recycler who usually cleans it up and sells it to various industrial plants that will use it as fuel.  A lot of that grease, however, ends up just getting poured into a landfill.

Unless, of course, it can be made to create a fuel alternative that is both viable and useful on many fronts.  The Leeds team has come up with a simple, relatively low-energy way to transform waste grease into hydrogen without giving off carbon dioxide.

The process uses self-generating heat to do most of the work.  In a two-stage process, a nickel catalyst is exposed to air to form nickel oxide.  This is an exothermic process that raises the starting temperature (artificially heated to 650 degrees F) by another 200 degrees.  Used vegetable grease is then exposed to the nickel oxide, reacting by splitting to give hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

A sorbent material is used to capture most of the carbon dioxide, which leaves pure hydrogen behind.  This forces the reaction to continue, as the CO2 takes the oxygen from the nickel with it.  The hydrogen is captured and stored.

Hydrogen, of course, has many uses as a fuel alternative in many industries, including alternative vehicles and transportation.  Finding a way to capture it without using precious resources or burning fossil-based gases is a challenge and this solution is one of the more innovative to come about so far.

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