Engineering Commons^™

Targeted Illumination Strategies For Hydrogen Production From Purple Non-Sulfur Bacteria, John D. Craven

Theses and Dissertations--Chemical and Materials Engineering

The movement towards a more sustainable energy economy may require not only the generation of cleaner fuel sources, but the conversion of waste streams into value-added products. Phototrophic purple non-sulfur bacteria are capable of metabolizing VFAs (volatile fatty acids)and generate hydrogen as a byproduct of nitrogen fixation using energy absorbed from light. VFAs are easily produced from dark anaerobic fermentation of food, agricultural, and municipal wastes, which could then be fed into photobioreactors of purple bacteria for hydrogen production.

The process of photofermentation by purple bacteria for hydrogen production remains attractive due to the capability of reaching high substrate conversions …

Dynamic Sulfur Tolerant Process And System With Inline Acid Gas-Selective Removal For Generating Hydrogen For Fuel Cells, Surjit Randhava, W. S. Winston Ho, Richard L. Kao, Elias H. Camara

Chemical and Materials Engineering Faculty Patents

This invention relates to a sulfur tolerant, dynamic, compact, lightweight fuel process and system that is capable of converting sulfur bearing carbonaceous fuels to hydrogen rich gases suitable for fuel cells or chemical processing applications. The process and system is based on the AHR and WGS reactions, followed by cleanup of byproduct sulfur-containing gases and carbon oxides that would otherwise poison the fuel cell electrocatalyst. Advantageously, this is accomplished via an ASMS and a methanator or an AWMR. The process and system preferably uses a special sulfur tolerant catalysts and hardware designs that enable the conversion in an energy efficient …

Catalytic Conversion Of Hydrocarbons To Hydrogen And High-Value Carbon, Naresh Shah, Devadas Panjala, Gerald P. Huffman

Chemical and Materials Engineering Faculty Patents

The present invention provides novel catalysts for accomplishing catalytic decomposition of undiluted light hydrocarbons to a hydrogen product, and methods for preparing such catalysts. In one aspect, a method is provided for preparing a catalyst by admixing an aqueous solution of an iron salt, at least one additional catalyst metal salt, and a suitable oxide substrate support, and precipitating metal oxyhydroxides onto the substrate support. An incipient wetness method, comprising addition of aqueous solutions of metal salts to a dry oxide substrate support, extruding the resulting paste to pellet form, and calcining the pellets in air is also discloses. In …