It is the stuff that makes you say unprintable things when you get stung by a nettle or when you get bitten by ants. (In Dutch and German it is called "Ants Acid".)
It is the stuff that makes you say unprintable things when you get stung by a nettle or when you get bitten by ants. (In Dutch and German it is called "Ants Acid".)
But it might also become an attractive form of storing hydrogen (read: excess renewable energy) when you find an economical process to hydrogenate carbon dioxide. A liter of formic acid - that is 1.22 kg - contains 53 grams of hydrogen. That may not sound like much, but the same amount of hydrogen would have to be compressed to 600 bar to fit in one liter (assuming that the ideal gas law still holds at those pressures). But a few problems need to be overcome before we can use formic acid as a 'green' fuel. First find a suitable catalyst and reaction conditions to make the stuff, if you don't want to go the enzymatic route (the way the nettle does it). Coval Energy is working on this. Then you must make an engin or convert an existing one to run on the stuff. This is where Team Fast of the University of Eindhoven comes in. They are building a bus that can drive on formic acid.
The last problem is that pesky carbon dioxide: In a stationary application you could capture the CO2 in the exhaust gas and re-hydrogenate it. But used in a car or a bus the CO2 will still wind up in the atmosphere.....
The symposium in Eindhoven that Team Fast is organizing for the 11th of May might shine more light on this subject.
