Sunflower oil has more benefits than you might think! This oil has always been used for cooking and known for its nutritional benefits on a healthy diet, but now it’s the protagonist of this article because of a scientific discovery. Not only is it good for our health because it’s a source of good fats, it also is a key element in the future of clean energy.
There’s a new way to use sunflower oil as the basis to generate hydrogen inside vehicles, which would be an alternative to oil and other contaminant sources. These recent studies will strengthen the value of sunflower oil as part of modern nutrition, a powerful source in the prevention of diseases and in the care for the environment. So, let’s see what else this oil can do.
What’s happening with sunflower oil?
A new scientific advance shows the potential of this oil as a possible source of alternative energy for vehicles. This is remarkable because we live in a time when oil is not enough and climate change is damaging our planet, so cleaner and more sustainable fuels are much needed.
It’s true hydrogen has already been tested and considered one of the best options to substitute gasoline engines, but there are some technical and economic issues. Some of the troubles that manufacturers have found during the manufacturing process were the cost of hydrogen production, the generation polluting gas during and difficulties to efficiently keep it inside vehicles.
What scientists found
Some researchers from Leeds University in the United Kingdom, have achieved an important task in the scientific field: using sunflower oil as an indirect source of hydrogen. This would solve all the previously mentioned issues, but how is this possible?
What they want to do is to put a device inside the car that extracts hydrogen from the sunflower oil while the car is functioning. This will be done with the help of catalysts like nickel and other carbon based materials, which will make this process much faster.
Basically, instead of charging our vehicles directly with hydrogen, we will charge them with sunflower oil and the cars will produce their own hydrogen in real time, to then use it as fuel.
Advantages of this
One of the main advantages of sunflower oil in cars is that it takes up less space than pure hydrogen. So, more energy will be kept in less space, which is crucial for vehicles with limited space.
What’s more, sunflower oil matches the requirements of a green energy source. When used as fuel, the combustion products used are water and carbon dioxide. You might be thinking that this mustn’t be as environmentally friendly as we are saying because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, but, in this case, the amount generated is minimum which can be absorbed by plants during the photosynthesis processes.
Another advantage is that this could lead to the study of other vegetable oils with elements similar to hydrogen.
Not everything is as great as it seems
Although sunflower oil has so many positive things for the environment, there is something that doesn’t allow this oil to be used on a large scale: the high costs. For the process it’s necessary to have several things like the equipment to transform the sunflower oil into hydrogen, the catalysts and the specialized engines. All of these elements are very expensive to make and implement.
The technology is there and it works, but it can’t be used commercially. For example, Japan has even abandoned the idea of hydrogen because of these issues. This might have not been very useful in the current times, but it’s an open window to keep researching about other ways to use clean energy and make the world a better place.