UK researchers use glycerol to produce renewable hydrogen and propane

In the UK, Aston University research has shown the way forward for making renewable hydrogen and propane fuel gases from glycerol. An organic compound, glycerol is produced mainly from fats and oils and is often used in health and beauty products. With crude glycerol from biodiesel production plants cheap and abundant the researchers have explored its potential for making hydrogen gas and biopropane – pioneering work that could benefit the environment and reduce reliance on fuel imports. The HYDROGAS project, supported by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, the European Union’s reference programme for doctoral education and postdoctoral training, has explored glycerol as a raw material to make hydrogen gas and biopropane. Hydrogen is widely regarded as the most promising clean fuel of the future as it has no carbon emissions at the point of use, while biopropane can replace the already low-carbon fossil-derived liquefied petroleum gases. The fuels can also be used for heating remote off-grid buildings. Previous it has been shown that hydrogen can be reacted with glycerol to transform it into propane but using external hydrogen can be expensive. However, HYDROGAS’s innovation was to use some of the glycerol itself to produce the hydrogen needed to transform glycerol into biopropane.