hydrogen engines and making hydrogen D.I.Y.

weedfreedomtinp

is it possible to make a hydrogen motor and basically make your own hydrogen out of water ,, i was looking at a few videos about these types of devices,

looking forward to seeing your comments

5uspect

Sure, iirc BMW made a concept car with a hydrogen powered internal combustion engine.

The down side it that you're going to end up using more energy to make the hydrogen than you can get out of it. Fossil fuels work because they take advantage of the energy stored in oil over millions of years. Hydrogen is one of the most abundant elements and the most simple (a single electron and a a proton). It bonds to lots of things and the energy involved in breaking those bonds is quite large.

Fuel cells are a better alternative because they are can be much more efficient. You're always limited by the laws of Thermodynamics.

weedfreedomtinp

i found a fella on the net called Stanley myers it seemed that is car could run on any water does any one understand this concept and could it be possible for all cars to be like this

5uspect

Looks like just another perpetual motion machine scam like Steorn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Meyer%27s_water_fuel_cell

Capt'n Midnight

Heat engines are limited by the Carnot cycle


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_efficiency
where temperatures are in Kelvin.

BURNING hydrogen won't improve thermal efficiency

The good news is that ELECTRICAL use of hydrogen can be more efficient then burning it.

BAD news is the energy lost in converting water to hydrogen and energy lost in the fuel cell means that you don't actually improve energy efficiency over the original fossil fuel. Normal rechargable batteries are about 60% efficient and don't forget you loose other efficiencies with the control electronics. Hydrogen fuel cells are only about 50% efficient, and that doesn't include the inefficiencies in generating the hydrogen in the first place.



Hydrogen is simply an energy store. And a very poor one at that as it is so bulky, 1g of hydrogen takes 11 Litres of storage at normal pressure and temperature.



You can also make hydrogen from other fuels, all of which are easier to transport and store. You can make hydrogen from spare electricity from wind turbines, but pumped storage is far more efficient in energy terms.




Hydrogen can be made by algae and this is perhaps the only way a hydrogen economy could be worth looking into.




I've wondered if getting a molecular filter , like they use on oil tankers to filter out nitrogen from oxygen to fill the void in the tanks , would be of benefit in a car. By removing the nitrogen you would need a lot less pumping power to fill the cylinders and the engine could run an awful lot hotter. It's just a case of trading one inefficiency for another. Bit like the intercoolers in diesels.

weedfreedomtinp

5uspect wrote: »

Looks like just another perpetual motion machine scam like Steorn.

i think you may find stan myers car was not a scam ,,
hydrogen cells can make electricity

Capt'n Midnight

weedfreedomtinp wrote: »

i think you may find stan myers car was not a scam ,,
hydrogen cells can make electricity

You can use a hydraulic ram to make water flow uphill. What actually happens is that most of the water flows downhill and using that energy some of the water is pumped uphill


It's very easy to make Hydrogen, just put a 9V battery into water with acid/base/salt dissolved in it, it's just very hard to do this efficiently, especially if you use fossil fuel energy. e.g. The fuel cell would give you back only 0.7V out of the 9V you started with.



Note if you burn the hydrogen instead of using it in a fuel cell the final step is about 25% efficient leading to about 15% efficiency overall

BTW: using flywheels might be more efficient then either of the above.

5uspect

weedfreedomtinp wrote: »

i think you may find stan myers car was not a scam ,,
hydrogen cells can make electricity

I didn't say hydrogen fuel cells can't make electricity, NASA use then on the Space shuttle, Honda has a cool production car running on one! What I'm saying is that you'll always get less out than you put in. To claim, as Meyer has, that his hydrogen cells can power a car simply on water is simply not true.
His inventions are nothing like actual fuel cells.
If you read the wikipedia article I linked to you would have seen this.

Wikipedia wrote:

If the device worked as specified, it would violate both the first and second laws of thermodynamics,[1][2] allowing operation as a perpetual motion machine.[2] Meyer's claims about his "Water Fuel Cell" and the car that it powered were found to be fraudulent by an Ohio court in 1996.[1][3]

and

Wikipedia wrote:

Throughout his patents[4][5][6] and marketing material,[7][8][9] Meyer uses the terms "fuel cell" or "water fuel cell" to refer to the portion of his device in which electricity is passed through water to produce hydrogen and oxygen. Meyer's use of the term in this sense is contrary to its usual meaning in science and engineering, in which such cells are conventionally called "electrolytic cells".[10] Furthermore, the term fuel cell is usually reserved for cells which produce electricity from a chemical redox reaction,[11][12][13] whereas Meyer's fuel cell consumed electricity, as shown in his patents and in the circuit pictured on the left.

The video you link to is a great example of what can be done in terms of energy efficiency but has nothing whatsoever to do with Meyer's claims.
It is however a hugely complex undertaking for your average household but an example of what may be achievable at the community level.

The Carnot efficiency Capt'n Midnight linked to is basically a rewording of the 1st and 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics, put simply:

You can't win and you can't break even.

You can move energy from one form to another, wind and solar will let you create heat, electricity to charge batteries, electrolyze hydrogen etc., but you will always generate entropy in the process and no new energy will be created.

Oil is a chemical battery that took thousands of years to "charge". Burning it releases large amounts of thermal energy. We often say that it has a high energy density. Wind and Solar have poor energy densities. The abundance of hydrogen makes it an attractive, clean fuel. We need better ways to produce and more efficient fuel cells to utilize it.

A colleague of mine did his PhD on fuel cell membrane technology where he developed a new low cost, high performance membrane material. Progress is being made but we'll never win or break even.

Capt'n Midnight

5uspect wrote: »

The Carnot efficiency Capt'n Midnight linked to is basically a rewording of the 1st and 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics, put simply:

You can't win and you can't break even.

1. You can't win, you can only break even.
2. You can only break even at absolute zero.
3. You can't reach absolute zero.





http://beyondapollo.blogspot.com/2009/09/propellant-production-on-mars-1978.html
NASA have plans to make fuel on Mars from hydrogen and carbon dioxide, the end result is methane and oxygen. All you need to do is add energy.

Alternatively if you find ice on Mars you can extract Hydrogen from it, again all you need is to add energy.


NASA use hydrogen fuel cells because Hydrogen is light and they usually have lots of it in the spacecraft as propellant.


So yes you can make rocket fuel from water and carbon dioxide, all you need to do is add energy.



As an aside most of our Nitrogen fertilizers, Ammonia and Nitrates are currently made from Air and Water. All you need to do is add lots of energy.

Energy2010

weedfreedomtinp wrote: »

is it possible to make a hydrogen motor and basically make your own hydrogen out of water ,, i was looking at a few videos about these types of devices,

looking forward to seeing your comments

Yes, it is. Basically if you want to make your own you need to find a way of putting a small electric current through water. The easiest way is attach a battery, the more the merrier, to two pieces of graphite (pencil 'lead') then place these in water which has a lot of dissolved salt in it.

The salt is to increase the conductivity of the water allowing more current to pass through therefore breaking more water molecules.

The graphite is used because it is conductive like most metals however unlike most common metals it doesn't have any iron content which would oxidize with the oxygen created.

You could use containers placed over the graphite electrodes (but immersed in the water) to capture the Hydrogen and Oxygen, the container which collects twice as much gas as the other is of course Hydrogen the other being Oxygen. Hydrogen will be created on the negative electrode and oxygen on the positive.
*Please dont create huge amounts without appropriate safety precautions as both Hydrogen and Oxygen are combustible.*

It should be noted that the main industrial method of Hydrogen production is by means of natural gas.

As for converting these back into mechanical energy, you would need to build a fuel cell, which would require buying an expensive proton exchange membrane then connecting this to an electric motor or you could combust the two similar to a normal internal combustion engine.



I notice people have pointed out that battery power is much more efficient than hydrogen fuel cell power however fuel cells have one large advantage over batteries for vehicles, the ability the refuel in minutes just like todays petrol or diesel refueling. But with batteries it would take at least 20 mins (on a high current line) to charge 80% of its capacity and then a further 4 hours to reach 100%.


As for the Stanley Myers argument, yes it is fake. However in the future I can see car companies extending Hydrogen fuel cell cars range by adding a small tank of water which electricity would pass through whilst the car was slowing down, very like the regenerative braking technology used on several cars today. However today the energy recovered is usually used to charge on board batteries.

Capt'n Midnight

Energy2010 wrote: »

I notice people have pointed out that battery power is much more efficient than hydrogen fuel cell power however fuel cells have one large advantage over batteries for vehicles, the ability the refuel in minutes just like todays petrol or diesel refueling. But with batteries it would take at least 20 mins (on a high current line) to charge 80% of its capacity and then a further 4 hours to reach 100%.

options here include swapping batteries at stations

hydrogen is light
hydrogen containers are small,light and gas tight, but not all three at the same time


converting water to hydrogen with regenerative braking is very inefficient, the main reason it's done with batteries is that all the hardware is already present so it costs noting in weight terms to do it , and it also saves on brakes.

Energy2010

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

options here include swapping batteries at stations

hydrogen is light
hydrogen containers are small,light and gas tight, but not all three at the same time


converting water to hydrogen with regenerative braking is very inefficient, the main reason it's done with batteries is that all the hardware is already present so it costs noting in weight terms to do it , and it also saves on brakes.

Battery swapping is a good idea, but I doubt it will ever be commonplace. Most car companies at the moment are developing novel ways of spreading the weight of their batteries throughout the car as well as developing their own battery technology so the idea that all car companies would agree to build their batteries in an easily transferable way and build them with the same technology is hard to believe.

Also battery changing facilities would be expensive and require trained professionals, therefore you will never see it at your local petrol station, perhaps only in large motor factors.

Lastly the business model of hydrogen filling stations is so similar to the current one it ensures minimum disruption to other sectors of the economy.


On the Hydrogen container point, there is no real issues with making them similar to fuel tanks (except reinforced for larger than normal pressures) their is however problems with weight and cost of fuel cell stacks. But in the near future these should be comparable to batteries.

For the regenerative braking Hydrogen cars would have no large batteries on board (to reduce weight) so there would be no place to store energy other than the hydrogen tank, however a tiny increase in possible range is probably not worth the technical issues.

Capt'n Midnight

Energy2010 wrote: »

On the Hydrogen container point, there is no real issues with making them similar to fuel tanks (except reinforced for larger than normal pressures) their is however problems with weight and cost of fuel cell stacks. But in the near future these should be comparable to batteries.

Hydrogen is an energy store. The most convienent way of storing it's energy is as a hydrocarbon or similar.

At present Hydrogen is produced from Hydrocarbons so there is no energy saving , the only thing you might save is having a different excise rate , in much the same way that green diesel is funded by the low excise rate on agri-diesel (it takes about 1kg of oil based fuels, fertilizers, pesticides etc.) to produce 1kg of bio-diesel according to one German study)

Hydrogen is really only useful as a fuel if you can produce it from renewables or nuclear (yes you can produce it from hydroelectric but there is none to spare ). Otherwise you might as well just burn the oil as normal.

If you have energy to burn, other alternatives are converting the Hydrogen into Methanol , which can also be used in fuel cells or internal combustion engines, and it's very similar to petrol except that you can extinguish it with water.

Or you could use boron as a recyclable fuel , the big disadvantage is Turkey has 72% of the worlds supply 3 billion tonnes or so. (midway between Ankara and Izmir - so don't need to worry about the Kurds) Other big reserves are in the US , China and Russia. The good points are it's a non toxic solid with almost no emissions and can be regenerated with heat.

Similar story BTW with Lithium which is also used as a renewable energy store, for every laptop, GPS and mobile phone ( 60% of the worlds population have mobiles now ) and the odd car , half the worlds supply is in Bolivia, ( Quantum of Solace really missed the plot there ! ) but there's only a few Million tonnes and the Bolivians are very concious of having their minerals exploited in the past.

Alunimium could be another fuel, like boron the oxide is a powder so easy to store for reuse, except that you use electricity to regenerate it. Aluminium can also be used in a battery too.

Similar things can be said of zinc-air fuel cell as an renewable energy store.

Try setting boron , aluminium or zinc pellets on fire with a match


Politics and Spin will probably play as much a part in determining the next fuel as anything else.

Two points to remember, average age of cars is about a decade, so you could replace most cars with alternative fuel in that timescale. Cars depreciate very fast so a scrappage scheme could be used or people could just be handed the book value of their cars. Or could convert to the new fuel or buy fuel in fewer outlets , like the way LPG or Kosangas cars work today - actually petrolheads could convert to Kosangas fairly easily and have a fuel storeable in the garden shed, Diesel can already be stored in a garden tank.

Other point is for most of the history of motoring the driver did not fill the tank, it was done by the attendant, in many rural places it still is. There is no problem with a refueling mechanism that requires a semi skilled operator because that's the way it's usually been. And automation is far better than before so more complicated tasks like battery replacement could be done by machine.

hydrogenengine

Energy2010 wrote: »

Yes, it is. Basically if you want to make your own you need to find a way of putting a small electric current through water. The easiest way is attach a battery, the more the merrier, to two pieces of graphite (pencil 'lead') then place these in water which has a lot of dissolved salt in it.

The salt is to increase the conductivity of the water allowing more current to pass through therefore breaking more water molecules.

The graphite is used because it is conductive like most metals however unlike most common metals it doesn't have any iron content which would oxidize with the oxygen created.

You could use containers placed over the graphite electrodes (but immersed in the water) to capture the Hydrogen and Oxygen, the container which collects twice as much gas as the other is of course Hydrogen the other being Oxygen. Hydrogen will be created on the negative electrode and oxygen on the positive.
*Please dont create huge amounts without appropriate safety precautions as both Hydrogen and Oxygen are combustible.*

It should be noted that the main industrial method of Hydrogen production is by means of natural gas.

As for converting these back into mechanical energy, you would need to build a fuel cell, which would require buying an expensive proton exchange membrane then connecting this to an electric motor or you could combust the two similar to a normal internal combustion engine.



I notice people have pointed out that battery power is much more efficient than hydrogen fuel cell power however fuel cells have one large advantage over batteries for vehicles, the ability the refuel in minutes just like todays petrol or diesel refueling. But with batteries it would take at least 20 mins (on a high current line) to charge 80% of its capacity and then a further 4 hours to reach 100%.


As for the Stanley Myers argument, yes it is fake. However in the future I can see car companies extending Hydrogen fuel cell cars range by adding a small tank of water which electricity would pass through whilst the car was slowing down, very like the regenerative braking technology used on several cars today. However today the energy recovered is usually used to charge on board batteries.

Not exactly right,

Hydrogen is easy to make from water although many will disagree simply because its not in the public interest for people to create their own energy
let alone make their own fuel.
I became an unemployed architect some years back and since then I have done nothing else but experimenting with electrolysis devices.
Do they work, the answer is yes but one needs a proper design for efficient operation.
I finally developed a device I called a NuNrg Reformer Injection System,
The electrolysis device has a gas output of 360 litres per KWH, thats roughly 25 litres for just one cent.
I mainly use the device on HGVs, the gas is injected via the air intake just before the turbo and operates only when the engine is running.
Energy consumption of a single device is 4 watts/minute and by adding the gas to burn with the primary fuel improves fuel efficiency by as much as 20%
On stand alone engines like generators up to 30% is possible.
I have also found that it works even better on euro five engines.

I am Irish but my work is mainly UK based as I found the Brits more open minded and they have no reluctance fitting on new trucks etc and better still they pay quickly.
I do not sell the device but on lease and users pay a % of fuel saved etc.
A typical Scania 420 will use just two litres of water per 2000km or refill just once every week. Its a no brainer but has taken five years to get it right.

I have installed on many other vehicles, Ford, Range Rover, Jaguar, Toyota, Mercedes, VW and Lexus, petrol and diesel.
For some reason it will not work on modern BMW engines.
A Ford Transit or VW Transporter can achieve 25% better fuel efficiency with increased power also.
My own Mercedes C220 has been using the device for over 100,000 miles
without any problems and gets 65-70 mpg motorway driving.

For those of you with a genuine interest I can be contacted on dave@NuNrg.co.uk

Capt'n Midnight

hydrogenengine wrote: »

The electrolysis device has a gas output of 360 litres per KWH, thats roughly 25 litres for just one cent.

At 25°C at atmospheric pressure one mole would have a volume of 24.465L
A mole of Hydrogen weighs 2 grammes

The Faraday Constant is 26.801 A·h/mol

360L / KWh ~ 11 moles so 294.811 AH of current is needed

And since it's one KWH that implies a voltage of 3.39V per cell overall. (measure it, but don't forget to take into account the efficiency of the power supply too)

1.55V is the best real word efficiency so there is a lot of optimising to do.

Edit one mole is H2
1.55v x 2 = 3.10V ~ close enough.


But at then end of the day all you are doing is avoiding tax.
What makes this economic is the difference between Revenue and Mark up on petrochemicals to gas, turf, renewables, (coal in UK) etc.

Have a look at producer gas for a way to run internal combustion engines on solid fuel. Like the tractors of old you might need a dual fuel system with a change over when the engine got hot , or in this case when the gas converter got hot.

ScumLord

Whatever about the fuel store used the next breed of cars are beginning to appear and they're electrical. A hydrogen fuel cell could be added in at a later date but the mechanics of the electric car can be developed without hydrogen fuel.

In fact, looking at the way they're incorporating batteries into the design of the car (as a rigid floor plate) I think they might like to stick with batteries over putting a bulky fuel tank back into the mix. Batteries give some big performance improvements because the centre of gravity is so low. The big draw back is the weight, as well as the charge cycle of the battery. Both issues are being resolved with new batteries that are something like a fifth of the weight and battery management get's a much longer lifespan out of the battery.

If batteries continue to develop as they are Hydrogen could miss its chance to be the future fuel.

Capt'n Midnight

This is the future on busy routes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23603751

outh Korean road wirelessly recharges OLEV buses [online electric vehicle]

...
It means vehicles fitted with compatible equipment do not need to stop to recharge and can also be fitted with smaller than normal batteries.

...
A device fitted to the bottom of the buses receives power from the road using a technology called Shaped Magnetic Field In Resonance.

Electric cables installed under the road are used to generate electromagnetic fields which are picked up by a coil inside the device and converted into electricity. The receiving equipment can be up to 17cm (6.7in) above the road's surface.

The researchers say they can transfer 20 kHz and 100 kW (136 horsepower) electricity at up to an 85% maximum power transmission efficiency rate.

They say that the power strips involved only need to be placed under 5% to 15% of the road, meaning that only certain sections need to be dug up and replaced.

They add that because vehicles do not need to stock up on energy before making their journey, the batteries involved can be three times smaller than would otherwise be needed. This reduces the weight of the vehicles helping reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted when generating the power required.

Capt'n Midnight

ScumLord wrote: »

Whatever about the fuel store used the next breed of cars are beginning to appear and they're electrical. A hydrogen fuel cell could be added in at a later date but the mechanics of the electric car can be developed without hydrogen fuel.

Hydrogen fuel cells aren't that efficient ~60% ? and most use expensive materials.

Oh yeah a cheap sodium-sulphur / aluminium / mangnesium / silicon / boron energy storage mechanism could upset the apple cart. And it might be something like a recyclable battery rather than a rechargeable one.

Aluminium-Air can already do this. And there is no shortage of aluminium 8% of the earths crust and #2 of metals used worldwide.

http://news.discovery.com/autos/fuel-and-alternative-fuel-technologies/aluminum-air-battery-1000-miles-130325.htm

The car's lithium-ion battery provides less than 100 miles of range, but the Phinergy aluminum-air cells acts as a range extender to provide up to an additional 1,000 miles.

ScumLord

The top of the range Tesla S can do 300 miles on a charge. With the new fast charge stations they've set up it can take as little as 30 minutes to charge it up too. Those kind of figures would make the Tesla S a useable car in Ireland.

Capt'n Midnight

ScumLord wrote: »

The top of the range Tesla S can do 300 miles on a charge. With the new fast charge stations they've set up it can take as little as 30 minutes to charge it up too. Those kind of figures would make the Tesla S a useable car in Ireland.

except of course for the price

http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2013-tesla-model-s-reviews

Our few miles in the Model S revealed a vehicle that would meet a BMW owner’s definition of a sports sedan.

The 362-hp Signature model we drove, priced at $96,570 before a $7500 federal tax rebate, strained its leash with its prodigious electric muscles and flat-tracked through 80-mph sweepers directed by fast steering with piano-wire tension to the wheels. It pounced from an on-ramp like the jaguar on the hood of the Jaguars it resembles, hitting 100 mph with a whisper of electromotive acceleration. Tesla says the hottest model, the Signature Performance ($106,570), which has the largest available battery and produces the most torque, will hit 60 mph in the mid-fours. At this point, we don’t doubt it.

...




BASE PRICE: $58,570–$106,570

ScumLord

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

except of course for the price

http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2013-tesla-model-s-reviews

I think that car is worth the money though. All the features it has and considering the tiny amount of maintenance it requires, if you get the 10 year life span out the batteries they promise it's going to recoup some of it's costs over the course of it's life.

5uspect

The Nissan Leaf will get you about half of that range at about a fifth of the budget and a considerably smaller fraction of the style.

ScumLord

5uspect wrote: »

The Nissan Leaf will get you about half of that range at about a fifth of the budget and a considerably smaller fraction of the style.

The nissan leaf is still pretending to be a traditional car though. The Tesla S has embraced the fact it's next generation. There are just lots of neat touches and it's more an exhibition piece of technological concept art available at an affordable price than a real consumer product at this stage, but I like just about everything it's trying to achieve and how it got there.

It will be interesting to see if Tesla are a big name in the future by getting the jump start on being a fully electric company.

5uspect

ScumLord wrote: »

The nissan leaf is still pretending to be a traditional car though. The Tesla S has embraced the fact it's next generation. There are just lots of neat touches and it's more an exhibition piece of technological concept art available at an affordable price than a real consumer product at this stage, but I like just about everything it's trying to achieve and how it got there.

It will be interesting to see if Tesla are a big name in the future by getting the jump start on being a fully electric company.

I do like the snazzy door handles.

jumpjack

ScumLord wrote: »

If batteries continue to develop as they are Hydrogen could miss its chance to be the future fuel.

The major drawback of batteries big enought to allow 300-400 miles range is the time they require to recharge: 400 miles means ~100 kWh, which even at 43 kW (the fastest recharge method currently available, apart from Geddafi 100 kW recharge station for his electric Fiat 500...) would require more than one hour.

Having a power source, rather than energy storage, onboard, would be a great advantage!

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Hydrogen fuel cells aren't that efficient ~60% ? and most use expensive materials.

It has been recently discovered/created a cheap alternative material for fuel cells... although I can't find again the link... :-(

I also just read, although it's a "news" from october 2012, of a new metamaterial ("H2-ecomat") allowing storing high quantities of hydrogen at low pressure.

Unfortunately I don't know almost anything about current fuel cell technology, to compare to these new materials...
How much hydrogen (volume, mass) is required to produce, say, 1 Watt electricity? At which pressure can hydrogen be currently stored at ambient temperature?

ScumLord

jumpjack wrote: »

The major drawback of batteries big enought to allow 300-400 miles range is the time they require to recharge: 400 miles means ~100 kWh, which even at 43 kW (the fastest recharge method currently available, apart from Geddafi 100 kW recharge station for his electric Fiat 500...) would require more than one hour.

Tesla are setting up fast charging stations throughout the west coast so that you can drive between major cities. I've heard the charge time is around 40 minutes.

This is just the beta stage so it's pretty good considering. The other thing we have to keep in mind is we don't always fill up our cars with petrol every time we go somewhere so there's probably no reason to have a fully charged electric car all the time either. Tesla have put a lot of work into how the batteries are charged so that you can charge it half way without damaging the batteries. Their expected lifespan of 10 years is pretty huge for a battery that's supposed to be defunct after 5.

As long as you can do 2-3 hours driving each day I think it's more than enough for most people in Ireland. That's going to get the majority of people to and from work and an overnight charge at home is going to do that.