(95g) Production of Hydrogen From Sugar by a Liquid Phase Electrical Discharge

In this study, the authors tested the possibility of producing hydrogen by electrical discharge in a sugar (sucrose) solution. The results have shown that after fifteen minutes, the hydrogen concentration measured from the electrical discharge in sugar solution using gas chromatography is four times higher than that measured from the electrical discharge in tap water. Moreover, when the initial solution conductivity of the tap water and sugar solution was raised by a factor of twenty, the hydrogen concentration from the sugar solution was increased twenty seven times compared to the hydrogen concentration measured from tap water. We hypothesize that the mechanism of hydrogen production is that the electrical discharge in water converts sugar to ethanol, which then further decomposes to give hydrogen. Hydrogen production from the sugar solution was also compared to that from an ethanol-water solution. Overall, these results demonstrate that the electrical discharge in a sugar solution converts sugar into carbon dioxide and hydrogen (ethanol) within minutes, whereas the timescale required for the same reaction under the action of yeast is measured in days. This makes electrical discharge a competitive new technology for the hydrogen production from renewable sources.