Thread: Hydrogen gas powered cars DIY

Anyone want to buy that big bridge in Sydney?

We are flogging it off for scrap but be quick.

You want more? Pay up by Friday and we'll toss in - at no extra charge - that building with the sails on it.

Originally Posted by Bob38S

Anyone want to buy that big bridge in Sydney?

We are flogging it off for scrap but be quick.

You want more? Pay up by Friday and we'll toss in - at no extra charge - that building with the sails on it.

Bob, it explains a pig I saw today with a tube stuck in its snout and the other end somewhere fundamentally different. It was mobbed by magpies as it flew too close to their nest.
Cheers,
Jim

I personally think its just a matter if time. All the major manufacturers are out to produce such cars. Even my least favourite cash for comment program is optimistic about the future for hydrogen vehicles. New Hydrogen Car Set for 2011 Release - BBC Top Gear Australia

Looks like another sinclair to me.

Hydrogen does a perfectly good job in a conventional internal combustion engine. The problem is carrying a tank of highly pressurised hydrogen in a vehicle which may get hit hard by another vehicle at any time.

There is a simple answer to this. You carry a tank of water and pelletised pure aluminium with some gallium to prevent the oxide coating sealing the pellets. The aluminium strips the oxygen out of the water releasing hydrogen in a controlled "on demand" fashion. The problem on course is when your wehicle gets low on juice you've got a tank full of aluminium oxide to swap out. It can be done easily enough but you have to build infrastructure to do that. You then return the AlO to a source of cheap (or green if you care) electricity to strip off the oxygen and reclaim the aluminium and gallium for reuse.

Easy peasey and the car works just like the ones we're used to. The cost is compatible too, again assuming the infrustructure is in place.

And it'll never happen, just like the other options won't. At least not until oil gets so dear it becomes economically viable.

Meh.

Originally Posted by damian

Looks like another sinclair to me.

Hydrogen does a perfectly good job in a conventional internal combustion engine. The problem is carrying a tank of highly pressurised hydrogen in a vehicle which may get hit hard by another vehicle at any time.

This is not as big a problem as is made out, especially for larger vehicles where conventional tanks are already being used.
See here.
http://www.global-hydrogen-bus-platf...fProject/Buses
47 busses in 10 cities on 3 continents all running on Hydrogen

Even on a big 4WD a conventional steel H tank is feasible and is well under the weight of any form of comparable battery storage requirements for such a vehicle.

And like all technologies, things can eventually be made smaller.

If one looks at the total cost of change from oil to any other transport fuel, Hydrogen is the lowest cost and lowest impact.

Originally Posted by damian

Looks like another sinclair to me.

Hydrogen does a perfectly good job in a conventional internal combustion engine. The problem is carrying a tank of highly pressurised hydrogen in a vehicle which may get hit hard by another vehicle at any time.

There is a simple answer to this. You carry a tank of water and pelletised pure aluminium with some gallium to prevent the oxide coating sealing the pellets. The aluminium strips the oxygen out of the water releasing hydrogen in a controlled "on demand" fashion. The problem on course is when your wehicle gets low on juice you've got a tank full of aluminium oxide to swap out. It can be done easily enough but you have to build infrastructure to do that. You then return the AlO to a source of cheap (or green if you care) electricity to strip off the oxygen and reclaim the aluminium and gallium for reuse.

Easy peasey and the car works just like the ones we're used to. The cost is compatible too, again assuming the infrustructure is in place.

And it'll never happen, just like the other options won't. At least not until oil gets so dear it becomes economically viable.

Meh.

Gallium is about $800/ Kg , so this is a fairly expensive way of producing small amounts of hydrogen.

The vehicle used in this process would have to be capable of carrying a lot of water to produce enough hydrogen in a hurry to fuel the vehicle. It would also need a lot of aluminium and galium on board.

Burning hydrogen at atmospheric pressure does not produce anywhere near the the same amount of energy as petrol . There fore it IS NOT a direct replacement. In order to extract the same amount of energy litre/litre hydrogen must be compressed to about 350 atmospheres (a very difficult process). The tank to store compressed hydrogen at about 5500 lbs/square inch is , necessarily, very heavy. To store the equivalent of 50 litres it would probably weight around 2 ton with current technolgy and be quite large. The vehicle that carries this would have to be strong enough the carry this tank safely and would there fore need to be fairly heavy itself.

We have now made a vehicle that, when fueled, would weigh easily 5 ton , maybe closer to 10 ton. In order to move vehicle of that size we would need a bigger engine, more hydrogen and therefore more water, aluminium, gallium and a bigger compressed gas tank.

It all starts to get very silly very quickly.


Hydrogen is not and never will be a replacement fuel. At best hydrogen is an energy carrier. You put in a lot of energy to produce, compress and store the gas. Some of that energy can then be released by burning it.

It is all very silly really!

About 300 kg of extra weight and power output comparible to a slower conventional car. The gallium does not have to be solid state grade purity and of course it's reclaimed and reused. The cost of mass producing them is comparible to current vehicles.

All the numbers were done long ago. the process was stumbled upon in the late 60's.

Yes it's an energy carrier, big deal. It's efficient and most of our really good energy generation systems don't lend well to small mobile vehicles. So it's an enabler, and a good one.

There are also some promising electrochemical hydrogen generator processes being developed which might make it a viable energy _source_, so watch this space.

BobL:

And like all technologies, things can eventually be made smaller.

I'm not sure what your referring to but I wouln't hold my breath waiting for the tanks to be made smaller. I'm not saying those aren't feasible, afterall people lug around LPG tanks, but there is complication and cost involved.

You may remember the cng cars that were having a run some years back at the lpg market. For a while they looked like they might fly but eventually the lack or refueling stations and the comparible cost to lpg saw it pretty much die off. This is the bigger issue. Lots of stuff can work but it has to get momentum, has to reach critical mass and get the infrastructure required to support the technology. The technology isn't the problem, plenty of that. Economics and market are what kills most of these things.

There seems to be nothing in this case that would put it in the same class as other innovative hydrogen powered cars. It appears to rely solely on electrolysis to provide hydrogen on demand (no storage) and so is using the power of the engine to provide electrical power to create hydrogen to help power the engine.
Cheers,
Jim

Originally Posted by damian

I'm not sure what your referring to but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the tanks to be made smaller.

Well - a 2 minute search of the web shows they are already here
100L H in a 50 kg tank
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogen...s/32405b27.pdf
All this was done pre 2001!

The technology isn't the problem, plenty of that. Economics and market are what kills most of these things.

Yep I agree.

Originally Posted by Avery

. To store the equivalent of 50 litres it would probably weight around 2 ton with current technolgy and be quite large.

Apparently not so, see my post above.
and how does 129 L at 10,000 psi for only 92 kg sound?
see http://www.qtww.com/assets/u/129LTankBrochure.pdf

There is a lot of fooling around with this. My friend who ran a business involving towing a trailor, was into this in a big way. He built a smacks generator. This is a glass jar with stainless steel plates ands I forgret what the rest was. Now he had to adjust the intake between cold and hot engine, being into electronics he figured that out. But his find was he saved fuel if he had a load, not as good if his engine was ticking over. He also found altitude was a factor, sea level on the flat, forget it. In the mountains pulling a load and he saved about 50%. But you have to understand the computer system of your car, You have to fool that into believing that a weak mix plus hydrogen is OK. So if you have no electronics or engineering skills, dont try this. My friend found his maker before he had all the answers, so no, iM not much help, and no it didnt blow up, his heart valve replacement failed.

Wouldnt it be easier to brew up alcohol and use that instead?

Alcohol has a much lower energy density than petrol or diesel and you have to process (distill) it. If you want to go down that route a hectare of oil palms will yield about enough biodiesel to run a car and with very little post processing. Just harvest, crush, small chemical modification and drop it in your tank. Much less work than distilling.

You have to remember that about 1/3 of your petrol cost is excise. Commercial ethanol production runs to nearly the cost of petrol including all the taxes (ethanol doesn't attract excise - yet).

As I've said before there are plenty of ways to fuel your car, but they are ALL dearer than fossil fuel. Some get close if they don't attract the taxes, but set aside excise and ALL of them are dearer, except maybe mains electricity, but you've got to be careful about how you do your sums - cost of car/batteries and disposal, that sort of thing.

Lets say we magically had the infrastructure to support one of the ideas above and everyone switched over to the hydrogen/magic/electric or whatever car. How then does the government replace the lost fuel excise revenue ? They either dump it on the new power source or up your rego or your income tax or GST or whatever. You know they aren't going to take a revenue cut, taking your money is what they live for.

The only reason the hybrid has enjoyed the sucess it has, apart from feeling smug and green, is it fits well within the existing infrastructure. It works like a normal petrol car, pull in, fill up, drive on. Right now you've got petrol, diesel and lpg. Maybe if charge stations get common the electric car will fly, but I can't see the hydrogen infrastructure being deployed any time soon. Might happen, would be nice, but I don't think so, not soon anyway.

Originally Posted by Harry72

Wouldnt it be easier to brew up alcohol and use that instead?

probably not

the easiest oil substitute is probably coal.

The technology is well established and proven at large scale and the output -- liquid fuel -- can be distributed by the existing liquid fuel infrastructure.
In terms of scale, approximately half the liquid fuel used by the Germans during WW2 was produced from coal using the Fisher-Tropsch process. Take coal, add some water, cook it, and you’ve got a liquid fuel -- BobL may have a better number, but from what I read the economic break even point (compared to oil) occurs when oil is around USD$150 per barrel.

Scary, if your concern is limiting CO2 emmisions.
Plausible give that Australia's carbon tax wont be levied on coal exports