Scientists develop vegetable power

Nov 28 2008 by Tony Henderson, The Journal

A SYSTEM which uses vegetable oil to power, heat and cool homes is being developed in the North East. The oil is burned to power a generator and provide electricity for the home, while waste heat from the process is used to generate heating and hot water and is also converted to cool a fridge.

At each step, the waste heat is used to recover the maximum amount of energy from the system.

In addition, the plants producing the fuel absorb carbon while growing – resulting in near zero overall carbon emissions.

Led by experts at the Sir Joseph Swan Institute for Energy Research at Newcastle University, the design also includes an energy storage system. Project leader Professor Tony Roskilly, of Newcastle University, said: “The supply of electricity, heating and cooling can be optimised by this one, efficient and sustainable system.

“The combination of the generator and energy storage provides new ways to respond to changing energy demand in the home.”

One of the potential oils to be used in the system comes from the seeds of the Croton Megalocarpus plant which grows in East Africa. Croton Megalocarpus oil has the advantage of being able to grow on land that is not suitable for traditional farming or food production.

The team will now build a full-scale prototype of the system. Newcastle University’s Dr Yaodong Wang said: “In the past, a significant barrier to the take-up of domestic scale micro-trigeneration systems has been the availability of the right energy at the right time. By integrating new energy storage technology with the micro-trigeneration system we have the potential to overcome this barrier and make an impact on future domestic energy supply.”

The £1.1m project is a joint UK-China research programme, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.