Hydrogen Fuel Cell

Gun Monkey

Hi, I'm just wondering if anybody has any experience with hydrogen fuel cells? I'm curious and and have looked into it and found that the technology is not that complex and the advantages fairly obvious but I just want to know if a modification like this might have any adverse effects on my engine (or more to the point, has had on your engine?) In theory it shouldn't but things don't always work out that way, just wanted to hear peoples opinions and experiences!

robtri

Gun Monkey wrote: »

Hi, I'm just wondering if anybody has any experience with hydrogen fuel cells? I'm curious and and have looked into it and found that the technology is not that complex and the advantages fairly obvious but I just want to know if a modification like this might have any adverse effects on my engine (or more to the point, has had on your engine?) In theory it shouldn't but things don't always work out that way, just wanted to hear peoples opinions and experiences!

I would be very curious to know how you are going to attach a hydrogen fuel cell to the engine of your car.....
and why would you want too...

Seth Brundle

Gun Monkey wrote: »

Hi, I'm just wondering if anybody has any experience with hydrogen fuel cells? I'm curious and and have looked into it and found that the technology is not that complex and the advantages fairly obvious but I just want to know if a modification like this might have any adverse effects on my engine (or more to the point, has had on your engine?) In theory it shouldn't but things don't always work out that way, just wanted to hear peoples opinions and experiences!

How is your engine going to be adapted to take hydrogen?
Assuming you manage to adapt it, where do you plan on filling up?
Are you thinking of Nitrous Oxide?

death1234567

kbannon wrote: »

Are you thinking of Nitrous Oxide?

I think he must be, unless he lives in California.

robtri

kbannon wrote: »

How is your engine going to be adapted to take hydrogen?
Assuming you manage to adapt it, where do you plan on filling up?
Are you thinking of Nitrous Oxide?

actually the hydrogen fuel cell is used to create electricity, it combines hydrogen from the tank and basically mixes it with oxygen and in the process it makes Electricity and water....
thats why I was curious on how he was going to link this up to a petrol/diesel engined car....

Biro

robtri wrote: »

actually the hydrogen fuel cell is used to create electricity, it combines hydrogen from the tank and basically mixes it with oxygen and in the process it makes Electricity and water....
thats why I was curious on how he was going to link this up to a petrol/diesel engined car....

If he has a method of doing it I'll put a few bob on him being Irelands next billionaire!

peasant

There are plenty of videos and "instructions" on the net where people use electricity (usually some old car batteries) to produce hydrogen from water in home made fuel cells. That hydrogen is then used to power the car (or blow it up, if things go wrong )

robtri

peasant wrote: »

There are plenty of videos and "instructions" on the net where people use electricity (usually some old car batteries) to produce hydrogen from water in home made fuel cells. That hydrogen is then used to power the car (or blow it up, if things go wrong )

ohh I see, reversing the process... interesting.... very interesting...
would love to see how that one works.....

peasant

ohh, it does work. Problem is, it's not exactly efficient when it comes to energy input vs output ...and then there would be the whole safety issue.

robtri

peasant wrote: »

ohh, it does work. Problem is, it's not exactly efficient when it comes to energy input vs output ...and then there would be the whole safety issue.

let me guess, you need your car plugged into the mains to supply enouhg eleccy...

peasant

google "HHO" and make up your own mind

Gun Monkey

Hi, guys
Sorry for stirring up the proverbial wasps nest! First of all, I was actually talking about a hydrogen generator although they are also commonly refered to (maybe incorrectly or inaccurately!) as hydrogen fuel cells and water fuel cells. It's an arrangement of stainless steel plates some positive, negative and neutral, immersed in water, all contained in an air airtight cell or container. When the electric current passes through the water it causes it to essentially break down into hydgogen and oxygen gas which is syphoned off and put into the engine, making your diesel/petrol burn more efficiently, thus giving you less harmful by products and more power, which should in turn lessen the amount of fuel needed to do the same amount of work. The main concerns i have are, what happens to the excess water produced as a by product of burning this gas, i don't know if the average engine would be equipped to deal with it and how efficient is the generator itself in producing the gas? I think i'm right in saying the current required to produce a useable amount of gas may be quite a bit, which might put your cars battery and alternator under a lot of pressure? So i was just wondering if anybody out there has been tinkering with one of these things and how they got on?:cool:

Alun

It's all a load of nonsense ... see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water-fueled_car. You don't mess with the laws of thermodynamics

Gun Monkey

P.s- As i understand it, you're not producing massive amounts of the gas and not storing it either, because you're burning it as you make it, so the whole exploding/ending the world thing should not be such a huge problem! More of a calculated risk!:D

Gun Monkey

It's all a load of nonsense ... see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water-fueled_car. You don't mess with the laws of thermodynamics

I guess that answers my question! Thats what boards is here for after all! No harm done!

Hal1

OP buy one of those Honda FCX claritys.

greglo23

This does work. A friend has it in his 2.0 Corolla Diesel non turbo and he says it gives it a fair bit more power. It's simple enough to get it working with a diesel. Using it in a petrol engine is a fair bit more complicated as you need to fit a spark arrestor or the Hydrogen will ignite and blow back into the jar causing an awful mess and maybe setting fire to your car. There are loads of YouTube videos showing how to make your own kit but the Spark arrestor seems like a very long and complicated build.

If you think about it you are producing Oxygen and Hydrogen and burning it in your combustion chamber. Fire needs Oxygen to burn so that alone should make your combustion process more efficient leaving out the Hydrogen. The combination of the two gases has to make some difference in efficiency. Too much voltage :eg running direct from the electrics uses up the stainless very quick. My friend uses a rheostat to control the voltage so it does'nt deplete the stainless as fast but still gets the same power. This only works as an add-on with your normal fuel.

jonathan13

hey Gun Monkey, This might help you. Warning it may be advantageous or disadvantageous so up to you if you will believe this.

http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments&v=UVhXrvCCILw&fromurl=/watch%3Fv%3DUVhXrvCCILw

cheers;)

grafter12

I've been messing around with hydrogen in car Engines for a while now so have a reasonable understanding of it.

To clarify a few things that have been mentioned on this forum. The system where you produce Hydroxy (HHO) is called a fuel booster system and does work to a certain extent to increase the MPG of a vehicle of up to about 10% - 15% under certain driving conditions which may or may not be because of the booster. I built and fitted one a while back to see what it was like and it does work a bit but not very well and it is not the saviour technology like some people on the web suggest.

The other method that can be done is to run the Engine using pure hydrogen only. This is stored in a cylinder on board the vehicle, very similar to the old LPG system. The only thing that needs to be done to allow the engine to run on H2 is to change the timing. The problem with this is that the Energy that is needed to produce the H2 is considerably more than the Energy output of the internal combustion engine ( an ICE is only about 20% efficient), so this is only a practical way to run your car if the energy to generate the Hydrogen is done using a renewable source. I have converted a go-Kart engine to run on hydrogen and it works just the same as if it was running on Petrol except it has zero emissions.

Probably the best H2 way to power a car is using an Electric motor with a hydrogen fuel cell generating the Electricity for it. The fuel cell and Electric motor is about 70% efficient so you get a much better return on it. The problem with this is the cost at present for the fuel cell and storage as well as the range of these types of electric vehicles, but I expect these issues will be solved over time once storage and motor technology are improved. I have had the experience of doing a bit of messing around with a G-Wiz that was fitted with a fuel cell which was quite interesting project.

The biggest issue for all this as pointed out earlier in the thread is the hydrogen infrastructure that would be required to make any of this happen does not exist and would be very expensive to implement.

With Oil reserves predicted to run out in approx 30 years the cost of fossil fuels is going to start rising to uneconomical levels long before that, once the point where demand out strips supply is reached the costs will rocket and in my opinion Hydrogen for transport is the only viable option when that happens..