2‐Propanol/acetone is a promising liquid organic hydrogen carrier system for fuel cell reactions. Herein, six different concepts for a 2‐propanol/acetone fuel cell system are evaluated in MATLAB simulation with respect to their thermodynamic integration and technical feasibility. Four of the concepts use a direct 2‐propanol fuel cell while the other two first release molecular hydrogen from 2‐propanol and subsequently use a hydrogen fuel cell. The presented liquid phase 2‐propanol fuel cell concept is thermodynamically feasible but cannot be realized technically using commercial Nafion membranes, due to membrane dissolution by the 2‐propanol/acetone/water fuel mixture. Gaseous 2‐propanol fuel cells imply a high heating requirement for the evaporation of the fuel. A direct high‐temperature fuel cell using 2‐propanol is thermodynamically feasible because there is less water in the overall system but is not technically feasible because of the esterification of phosphoric acid. A very interesting option is the conversion of gaseous 2‐propanol to pressurized hydrogen in an electrochemical pumping step followed by a hydrogen fuel cell, because here the waste heat of a sufficiently hot hydrogen fuel cell can drive the 2‐propanol evaporation.
This study presents benzyltoluene/perhydro benzyltoluene as a very favourable liquid organic hydrogen carrier (LOHC) system for potential industrial applications.
Abstract Computer simulation provides an increasingly realistic picture of large-scale conformational change of proteins, but investigations remain fundamentally constrained by the femtosecond timestep of molecular dynamics simulations. For this reason, many biologically interesting questions cannot be addressed using accessible state-of-the-art computational resources. Here, we report the development of an all-atom Monte Carlo approach that permits the modelling of the large-scale conformational change of proteins using standard off-the-shelf computational hardware and standard all-atom force fields. We demonstrate extensive thermodynamic characterization of the folding process of the α-helical Trp-cage, the Villin headpiece and the β-sheet WW-domain. We fully characterize the free energy landscape, transition states, energy barriers between different states, and the per-residue stability of individual amino acids over a wide temperature range. We demonstrate that a state-of-the-art intramolecular force field can be combined with an implicit solvent model to obtain a high quality of the folded structures and also discuss limitations that still remain.
The benzyltoluene‐based liquid organic hydrogen carrier (LOHC) system enables the safe transport and loss‐free storage of hydrogen. At least 26% of the lower heating value of the released hydrogen, however, has to be invested in form of heat to release the stored hydrogen. The low operation temperatures of catalytic distillation (CD) can facilitate waste heat integration to reduce external heat demand. Herein, the continuous hydrogen release from perhydro benzyltoluene via CD is demonstrated. It is revealed in the experimental results that this mode of operation leads to a high hydrogen release rate and very efficient noble metal catalyst usage at exceptionally mild conditions. The hydrogen‐based productivity of platinum of 0.35 g H2 g Pt −1 min −1 (0.7 kW LHV_H2 g Pt −1 ) at a dehydrogenation temperature of only 267 °C is found to be nearly four times higher than for the conventional continuous liquid‐phase dehydrogenation at the same temperature. Furthermore, simulation results of the CD process are described. The feasibility of a fully heat‐integrated process for electricity generation from the released hydrogen via CD using waste heat from the fuel cell for the CD reboiler is demonstrated. The technical potential of coupling the H12–BT dehydrogenation by CD with high‐temperature fuel cell operation is highlighted by the simulation.