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Hydrogen-based Rotary Engine?

Posted by michael on from the partially-hydrogenated dept.

Seabird99 writes: "I came across this article at one of my car related forums and thought that I'd pass it on here. I have always been intrigued by "alternative" technologies where they relate to artificial locomotion." For some reason Slashdot gets a lot of submissions of wacko energy concepts - power from nothing, power from sand, power from a black box, engines that get 500 miles to the gallon... Perhaps this is more of the same, but at least it's an interesting write-up.

3 of 349 comments (clear)

  1. Wacky? by tomknight · · Score: 5, Informative
    I guess that'd explain why Mazda have bothered to push money into researching this....

    Here's a little more info if you weant to do some research.

    Tom.

    --
    Oh arse
  2. McMaster Motor site by kryzx · · Score: 5, Informative
    Here's the McMaster Motor site complete with a little animation of the engine.

    Looking at it helps me understand the way it works. I don't know if this will ever come to fruition, but I sure hope it does. Even if it doesn't, he's a revolutionary thinker with a significant record of success, and deserves our praise and respect for that.

    --
    "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
  3. Hard to compress hydrogen by AlpineR · · Score: 4, Informative
    LPG stands for Liquified Petroleum Gas. It's a mixture of propane and butane. The advantage of these gases is that it takes only a moderate pressure at ambient temperatures to convert them to liquids. Liquid fuel is great because it's compact and easy to transport.

    Hydrogen, on the other hand, has a boiling point of 20 K at atmospheric pressure (a bone chilling -423 degrees F)! So tanks would need some serious insulation in addition to handling high pressure. Due to its smaller molecules, it also leaks easier than LNG.

    The best way to store hydrogen is probably in a hydrogen-rich compound like methanol, which is liquid at ambient conditions. My research group, among many others, is studying ways to efficiently convert methanol to hydrogen + carbon dioxide + water at the point of use. This would allow us to fuel our cars, RV's, or cell phones with convenient methanol and then run hydrogen fuel cells.

    Don't worry about the carbon dioxide from that reaction. The methanol would presumably come from biomass or nuclear/solar-powered synthesis that consumes carbon dioxide. The carbon is just a carrier for the hydrogen, and there is no net CO2 pollution.

    AlpineR