The FORMFUEL Concept

Formic acid represents an effective means of storing sustainable energy in a form that may be converted to fuels, chemicals or electricity on demand.

Formic acid may be produced from carbon dioxide and water by a variety of methods utilising sustainable energy sources.

Formic acid is a natural, high-energy-density medium.

Formic acid may be stored as a liquid at ambient conditions.

Formic acid may be selectively decomposed either to hydrogen or to carbon monoxide.

Mixtures of hydrogen and carbon monoxide are known as synthesis gas, a proven building block for all of today's liquid and gaseous fuels and petrochemicals.

Formic acid or hydrogen may be used to generate electricity using fuel cells.

The Formfuel Concept is compatible with both present and with future energy scenarios, such as the hydrogen economy or the methanol economy or the electron economy.

The Hydrogen Economy, the Methanol Economy and the Formfuel Concept represent model sustainable energy supply systems against which the existing system and alternate proposals may be compared.

The reasons why the Hydrogen Economy, the Methanol Economy and the Formfuel Concept has not been seriously considered until now include recent low prices for fossil fuels and the failure to seriously consider global warming and its possible mitigation through carbon taxes and sustainable energy technology. The development of very large scale sustainable energy technology requires integration with user technologies that utilise it effectively such an ability to effectively store energy. Hence a "which comes first" situation has developed with neither being adequately developed.

We are aware that fuels and chemicals produced by routes similar to the Formfuel Concept will be significantly more expensive that those produced from fossil fuels without appropriate carbon taxes. However we are not yet aware of an alternate, sustainable, carbon-based energy economy that does not compete with food supply.

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Formfuel Concept Chemistry

Formic Acid Production
CO₂ + H₂O = HCOOH + 0.5 O₂

Formic Acid to Hydrogen
HCOOH = H₂ + CO₂

Formic Acid to Carbon Monoxide
HCOOH = CO + H₂O

Methane Systhesis
CO + 3 H₂ = CH₄ + H₂O

Octane Synthesis
8 CO + 17 H₂ = C₈H₁₈ + 8 H₂O

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Chemistry Concept Diagram

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Energy Storage

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Product Synthesis

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Formfuel Schematic

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Energetics

Why do sustainable energy systems like the Hydrogen Economy, the Methanol Economy and Formfuel require such a large energy input? It is because the substances water and carbon dioxide, that are the inputs to these processes, are at the bottom of the energy valley in our environment. That is, they are naturally very stable. They cannot spontaneously undergo any chemical reactions with the simultaneous release of energy. They cannot be induced to undergo chemical reactions without the input of energy.

Substances that we consider to be energy sources or fuels such as hydrogen, carbon, carbon monoxide, methane, propane, petroleum and coal are at or close to the energy peak in our environment. By interacting with the gaseous elemental oxygen in our environment these fuels release energy that may be directed to achieve useful tasks. In doing so they are ultimately converted to water and carbon dioxide.

While releasing energy, materials move from energy peaks towards energy valleys.

To produce stored energy, or to convert materials into fuels, energy has to be input in order to move materials from enegy valleys towards energy peaks.

This is an analogy with water. Water near mountain peaks has the potential to do useful work. Water in the ocean at low tide has no value to do useful work. Energy can be stored by moving water from a low level to a higher level but this requires the input of pumping energy.

Because all real conversion processes do not have ideal efficiency, all the available energy in fuels does not end up in achieving useful tasks and significantly more energy than is theoretically needed is required to convert water and carbon dioxide back into useful fuels.

This is unavoidable in any real sustainable process.

It is our objective to work to improve the efficiency of converting water and carbon dioxide into useful fuels and materials using sustainable energy and to educate regarding the more efficient use of fuels and materials.

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Article in "The Age" Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Ants Pants / The Age. © The Age. Reproduced by Permission.

TRANSCRIPT

Ants Pants / The Age. © The Age. Reproduced by Permission.

"The Age", Monday 23 January 1989
FUTURE AGE
LEONARDO TECHNOLOGY

Ants Pants

Power stations employ special technology to strip ash and sulfur from their exhaust gases to protect the environment, but the major component of flue gases, carbon dioxide, is vented to the atmosphere where it contributes to the greenhouse effect. Monash University chemist Dr Michael Wadsley proposes a neat, if costly, technological solution to the carbon dioxide emission problem, and one that could provide a novel source of liquid fuel.

Dr Wadsley's proposal is to use a catalyst to convert carbon dioxide into formic acid, the simple organic compound that is the source of the acrid smell of crushed ants - the name actually derives from the Latin for "ant". Formic acid, also known as methanoic acid, can be produced via the reaction

CO₂ + H₂O = HCOOH (formic acid) + 0.5 O₂

The advantage of formic acid is that in liquid form it has an energy storage capacity similar to liquid hydrogen - 7.2 mega Joules per litre, compared with hydrogen's 7.6 mega Joules per litre - but is much easier to store and transport. Bulk hydrogen requires elaborate containment measures to keep it liquid at a temperature of only 20 degrees above absolute zero.

The other prime advantage, he says, is that the fuel produced from formic acid is the same as that flowing from today's petrol pumps. There would be none of the massive capital expense of switching over to, say, a hydrogen fuel economy.

Dr Wadsley says formic acid can be decomposed by selective catalysts into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide produced would then be recycled to produce formic acid. But by using different catalysts, formic acid can also be decomposed into carbon monoxide (CO) and water. By partitioning the process between these alternative chemical routes, a fuel plant using formic acid as its feedstock could produce a mix of hydrogen and carbon monoxide - known as synthesis gas. Synthesis gas is the first step to producing hydrocarbons for industrial chemicals or for liquid fuels. It is the precursor for the liquid fuels produced by the Fisher-Tropsch process, employed by the world's only commercial synthetic liquid fuel plant, the SASOL plant in South Africa.

One such reaction from decomposed formic acid would produce octane, via the route

8 CO + 17 H₂ = C₈H₁₈ + 8 H₂O

The cost of the FORMFUEL process lies mainly in the initial reduction step, which requires energy for electrolysis. In fact, FORMFUEL is more properly seen as a way of storing electrical energy as chemical energy. The ultimate source of that electrical energy, Dr Wadsley says, would be the sun.

He says huge arrays of photovoltaic cells would generate the electrical energy and calculates that under Australian conditions, an array nine kilometers square, operating at an efficiency of 15 per cent, would provide a peak generation capacity of 12 giga Watts, enough to produce 1000 million litres of motor fuel per year - or about six per cent of Australia's annual consumption.

Why go to so much trouble and expense? Ethanol distilled from biomass crops like sugar cane seems an eaier way of producing liquid fuel, but Dr Wadsley points out that to mass produce biomass-derived ethanol would require huge areas of land. Growing plants for fuel would compete with the need to grow plants for food, and already, the world's supply of arable land is rapidly dwindling because of expanding human populations.

Mitigating the greenhouse effect is another good reason for looking at the FORMFUEL concept. By closing the carbon cycle - converting waste carbon dioxide back into fuels - the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere could be reduced. Dr Wadsley says Australia, as the worlds biggest exporter of coal, should begin planning now to tackle the problem of carbon dioxide pollution.

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Selected Bibliography

Inventors: Williams, Richard; Bloom, Allen
"Process for storing solar energy in the form of an electrochemically generated compound"
United States Patent 4160816
Abstract
A process for storing energy from solar radiation whereby solar radiation is converted into electrical current which is supplied to an electrochemical cell in combination with water and carbon dioxide gas to produce formic acid as an electrochemical storage medium. The formic acid can be easily decomposed by catalysts known in the art into carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas which can be burned as fuel or used as a starting material in numerous commercial applications.
Application Number: 857758
Filing Date: 1977-12-05
Publication Date: 1979-07-10

Chiaki Iwakura, Shuhei Takezawa and Hiroshi Inoue (1998)
"Catalytic reduction of carbon dioxide with atomic hydrogen permeating through palladized Pd sheet electrodes"
Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry
Volume 459, Issue 1, 23 November 1998, Pages 167-169

Kugler, Edwin L. and Steffgen, F. W. Eds (1979)
"Hydrocarbon Synthesis From Carbon Monoxide and Hydrogen"
American Chemical Society, Washington, D.C.
Advances in Chemistry Series 178

Ford, Peter C. Ed. (1981)
"Catalytic Activation of Carbon Monoxide"
American Chemical Society, Washington, D. C.
ACS Symposium Series No. 152

Ayers, William M. editor. (1986)
"Catalytic Activation of Carbon Dioxide"
American Chemical Society, Washington, D. C.
ACS Symposium Series 363
developed from a symposium sponsored by the Division of Colloid & Surface Chemistry
at the 191st Meeting of the American Chemical Society New York New York April 13-18 1986.

Fahey, Darryl R. Ed. (1987)
"Industrial Chemicals via C1 Processes"
American Chemical Society, Washington, D. C.
ACS Symposium Series 328

M. Aresta and G. Forti Eds (1987)
"Carbon Dioxide as a Source of Carbon: Biochemical and Chemical Uses"
NATO Asi Series, Series C: Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Vol 206
D. Reidel Publishing, 1987 441 pp.

B.P. Sullivan, K. Krist, and H.E. Guard Eds (1993)
"Electrochemical and Electrocatalytic Reactions of Carbon Dioxide"
Elsevier, Amsterdam/New York

Song, Chunshan, Anne F. Gaffney and Kaoru Fujimoto Eds (2002)
"CO₂ Conversion and Utilization"
American Chemical Society, Washington
ACS Symposium Series 809

Chang-Jun Liu, Mallinson, Richard G. and Michele Aresta Eds (2003)
"Utilization of Greenhouse Gases"
American Chemical Society, Washington, D.C.
ACS Symposium Series 852

"The Future of the Hydrogen Economy: Bright or Bleak?"
Original Version 15 April 2003
Baldur Eliasson and Ulf Bossel (2003)
Updated version 26 February 2005
Ulf Bossel, Baldur Eliasson and Gordon Taylor (2005)

George A. Olah, Alain Goeppert, G. K. Surya Prakash (2006)
"Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy"
Wiley

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