快猫短视频

IF YOU want to go green, get out your nutcrackers. 快猫短视频s in Britain say
hazelnuts could provide the hydrogen to power the fuel-cell driven cars of
tomorrow. Fuel cells use hydrogen to generate an electric current, and
researchers are trying to make them efficient enough to power electric and hybrid cars
(快猫短视频, 25 November, p 34).
But no one has decided how that hydrogen will be best produced.

But now Murat Dogru of the University of Newcastle says hazelnuts could be an
answer. He says Turkey, the world鈥檚 largest producer, incinerates around 250,000
tonnes of shells a year. To see if any useful gases could be extracted from this
waste, Dogru and his colleagues fed hazelnut shells into a container called a
gasifier. The chamber contains solid fuel lighters and is fitted with an air
pump. Once you ignite the fuel, the air pump controls the oxygen
supply鈥攁nd so the heat produced in the gasifier. Controlling the oxygen
determines which gases are given off. Dogru says the system is cheap to run.
鈥淵ou don鈥檛 supply a lot of extra energy. You just ignite it for a few minutes,
then the nutshells fuel it,鈥� he says.

Hydrogen makes up 15 per cent of the combustion gases. The remaining gas is a
mixture of carbon monoxide, methane, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. But Tony
Bridgwater of Aston University in Birmingham says these other gases needn鈥檛 be a
problem. Both methane and carbon monoxide can be converted to carbon dioxide and
hydrogen by reacting them with water, he says. 鈥淭hen you can use standard
procedures for stripping out the carbon dioxide,鈥� he adds.

Dogru says a year鈥檚 supply of Turkey鈥檚 nutshells would produce 6000 tonnes of
hydrogen鈥攅nough to allow 1000 of today鈥檚 prototype hydrogen-fuelled BMWs
to travel 32,500 kilometres each.