Austin Engineering Ord Shs V.ANG

Natural gas cars

[Venture100]

Corn cobs may unlock key to natural gas cars TENILLE BONOGUORE Tuesday, February 20, 2007 Farm waste has been turned into a high-density gas tank that could unlock the secret to methane-fuelled cars. Using the waste material from corn cobs, researchers from the University of Missouri-Columbia and the Midwest Research Institute in Kansas City have created carbon briquettes that use tiny complex pores – called nanopores – to store natural gas in unprecedented densities. The methane storage system is slim enough that it could replace gasoline tanks in cars and encourage mass-market natural gas automobiles. Methane is an abundant fuel that burns cleaner than gasoline. The technology is already being used in a pickup truck used regularly by the Kansas City Office of Environmental Quality, and principal project leader Peter Pfeifer says the breakthrough could revolutionize vehicle design. “We are very excited about this breakthrough because it may lead to a flat and compact tank that would fit under the floor of a passenger car, similar to current gasoline tanks,” Dr. Pfeifer said. The carbon briquettes are made from cobs left over from kernel harvesting. The state of Missouri alone could supply the raw material for more than 10 million cars per year, the researchers say. “It would be a unique opportunity to bring corn to the market for alternative fuels – corn kernels for ethanol production, and corncob for natural-gas tanks,” Dr. Pfeifer said. The carbon briquettes can store natural gas at an unprecedented density of 180 times their own volume and a pressure of only 3,450 kilopascals, which is the same pressure as natural gas pipelines. That could mean the end of cumbersome high-pressure tanks that currently keep gas at 24,800 kPa and can fill up an entire car trunk. The test pickup truck, part of a fleet of more than 200 natural-gas vehicles operated by Kansas City, has been in use since mid-October and the researchers are monitoring the technology's performance, from mileage data to measurements of the stability of the briquettes. The briquettes are the first technology to meet the 180-to-1 storage-to-volume target set by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2000. © The Globe and Mail