Hydrocarbon fuels early developments

Alternatives to coal and hydrocarbon fuels as a source of power have been sought with increasing determination over the past three decades. One possibility is the Hydrogen Economy (p, 40), Another possibility, particularly for secondary, mobile sources of power, is the use of storage batteries. Indeed, electric vehicles were developed simultaneously with the first intemal-combustion-cngined vehicles, the first being made in 1888. In those days, over a century ago, electric vehicles were popular and sold well compared with the then noisy, inconvenient and rather unreliable peU ol-engined vehicles. In 1899 an electric car held the world land-speed record at 105 km per hour. In the early years of this century, taxis in New York, Boston and Berlin were mainly electric there were over 20000 electi ic vehicles in the USA and some 10000 cars and commercial vehicles in London. Even today (silent) battery-powered milk delivery vehicles are still operated in the UK. These use the traditional lead-sulfuric acid battery (p. 371), but this is extremely heavy and rather expensive. 

Processes for the polymerization of hydrocarbon gases to motor fuel were developed to a commercial level in the early 1930 s. Thermal polymerization plants, employing temperatures of 900° to 1200° F. and pressures of 60 to 3000 pounds per square inch, were developed first, closely followed by catalytic units operating at temperatures of 280° to 475° F. and pressures of 200 to T 200 pounds per square inch. Currently, thermal polymerization finds its greatest application in combination with thermal reforming of naphtha. Catalytic polymerization has proved highly successful, as is indicated by the fact that one company alone has licensed over 150 plants to date. 

The oxidation chemistry of small, partially-oxygenated fuels is of great interest in combustion chemistry as these are important intermediates in the combustion of virtually all commercial hydrocarbon fuels. Fuels with long carbon backbones react in their early stages mainly through a sequence of reactions that cause chain rupture, yielding smaller hydrocarbon fragments such as radicals. These then typically react with O2 to produce precursors of aldehydes, ketones etc. Not all of the features of acetaldehyde chemistry are completely representative of hydrocarbon oxidation, but this point is developed in the next chapter. 

As well known, the liquid hydrocarbon fuels contain not only sulfur compounds but also a large number of aromatic compounds that have aromatic skeleton structure similar to the coexisting sulfur compounds. This inherent problem makes a great challenge in development of an effective adsorbent with high adsorptive selectivity for the sulfur compounds. Consequently, many ODS methods for liquid hydrocarbon fuels have been explored. Early work in ODS of thiophenic compounds in the pres-... 

Fuel cell technology, particularly for transport applications, would take a leap forward if a viable system were developed that could use a liquid fuel without reforming. The development of anode catalysts with the activity to operate on simple hydrocarbon fuels is unlikely. However, Shell and other oil companies established in the 1960s that methanol, with anode catalysts such as Pl/Ru, had potential. Early work utilized sulfuric acid as the electrolyte. 

The basic concepts of composite or single-phase MIEC electrodes are equally applicable to anodes. Traditionally, however, the typical anode used to date has been a composite mixture of Ni and YSZ. The presence of YSZ not only suppresses the thermally induced coarsening of Ni, but it also introduces MIEC characteristics. Other anodes currently under investigation are based on cermets of copper, which are being explored for direct oxidation of hydrocarbon fuels [39]. These types of anodes are in an early stage of development and thus their polarisation behavior is not discussed here. In so far as single-phase anodes are concerned, some work has been reported in the literature, most notably on La-SrTi03 [40, 41]. Work on this as well as other perovskite-based anodes is in its infancy, and is not elaborated upon further. The discussion in this chapter is confined to Ni + YSZ cermet anodes. 

In the early days of fimdamental studies of fuel cells, great efforts were made to develop direct-hydrocarbon fuel cells ", light paraffin molecules such as propane and ethane, as well as unsaturated compounds such as ethylene were studies in this context The form in which hydrocarbons are adsorbed on platinum was the subject of controversy at the time, because it was assumed that it would influence the catalytic... 

During the early dust bowl years (1935) they established the oil industry s first research team in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. George Oberfell, hired by Phillips to fight the lawsuit, planned the initial research efforts that involved three main initiatives first, to develop technology to use light hydrocarbons in new ways as motor fuels second, to develop markets for butane and propane and third, to find new uses for the light hydrocarbons outside the fuel market. All three objectives were achieved. 

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