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Hydrogen Vehicle Generates Its Own Fuel
An anonymous reader writes "Our friends at The Arizona Republic have the scoop: 'The truck is hydrogen-powered and creates its own fuel from solar energy and water, a technical feat that rivals the advanced technology being researched by major auto companies and universities. The four-cylinder engine is tuned to run on hydrogen, which is produced by a hand-built electrolysis system mounted in the bed.' You can also help this project."
Although the truck performs as planned, it's more of a demonstration project than a practical vehicle. The four solar panels and hydrogen-generating system create only enough fuel per day to travel a few miles.
:-)
And it's not going to go any farther. On an average day, you're lucky to receive about 200 watts/m2 of sun power. The rest of the energy (about 1.3kw/m2) is lost to diffusion and blockage by the atmosphere.
We've discussed this before on Slashdot, and it has been felt that Sun power could be a great "fuel saver" idea for hydrogen cars. But moving something the size of a modern car is going to require more energy than you can collect from sunlight. (IIRC, ~2 kw to cruise and 10kw to accelerate a small car.)
That being said, I applaud their efforts in the direction of alternative energy sources. Hydrogen is simply not as powerful as petroleum products, but it's pretty close. Concepts like creating fuel with a built-in electrolyzer could be the key to making hydrogen cars seem just as powerful and efficient as petroleum vehicles.
Now if they wanted to prove that hydrogen fill stations could use large Solar Power arrays to power their electrolyzer, then I'm with them all the way.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Recycling fuel is anathema to the petroleum industry--BP commercials ("it's a start") aside.
Sigs cause cancer.
can i get mine with hoverlift?
Solar power woohoo... lets put it on a vehicle that weighs as much as a small house!
Brilliant!
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
From http://centralphysics.com/discuss.htm before it was slashdotted...
History
Since the Mid 1990's Central High School in Phoenix has been involved in Alternative Fuel Vehicles. Originally the club was called "The Electric Vehicle Club" and we built and raced an electric car. Over the last 10 years our interests have broadened to many areas of environmental technologies and thus we are now the E-tech Club.
During the 2000-2001 school year, Senior Laci Blackford, president of our club (then the electric vehicle club) proposed that we design and build a hydrogen vehicle. Laci began research and some electrolysis design that year. Over the next 3 years several students were involved, but it was club president Soroush Farzin who, with Sponsor Mr. Waxman, coordinated the progress and turned Laci's idea into reality!
This project, to make a cleaner transportation vehicle, was motivated by the threats to our health and environment due to automobile-related pollutants. The hypothesis was that a vehicle can be powered by water and sunlight. The ultimate goal of this four-year project was to design and build a vehicle powered by hydrogen, which is generated on the vehicle from water and sunlight. The basic components of this include electrolysis cells, solar panels, a hydrogen purifying system and a storage system, all of which are mounted on a vehicle with an internal combustion engine that has been modified to run on hydrogen.
In fall 2001, we began by building a 5-watt solar-hydrogen unit and researching many safety issues associated with this technology. During the 2002-2003 school year, a 4-cell solar-hydrogen producing unit with over 320 watts of power and a purifying system were built.
In school year 2003-2004 an entirely new electrolysis unit was assembled, various components such as float valves were designed, built and tested. A storage system was also designed and tested. Ultimately, a 1998 Chevy S-10 pickup truck was purchase and modified to run on hydrogen. The solar-hydrogen system was mounted on the truck and the first vehicle in the world to run on sunlight and water was working.
Conclusion
Solar-Hydrogen Transportation Vehicle was motivated by threats to our health and environment. It was planned to build a self-sufficient vehicle that was powered by a renewable source of energy, hydrogen. This three-year project proved that a vehicle can be engineered so that it is capable of creating its own fuel by using water and sunlight, which are literally free.
This project proves that it is possible for a vehicle to produce its own fuel from sunlight and water. A Solar-Hydrogen Producing Unit has been made, which is capable of producing, purifying, pressurizing and storing hydrogen. Also, a vehicle has been converted to run on hydrogen, which is capable of doing whatever a regular vehicle can do. This project gathered known technologies and put them together to make a new field of technology.
The members of this project understand that this vehicle is not the ultimate solution to conventional gasoline-powered cars, but if it is shown that a car can run on water and sunlight, improvements may eventually lead to a practical alternative to fossil fuel powered vehicles.
The first air plane flew a few feet before it landed. Today, airplanes fly between continents. This is the example the club has kept in mind throughout the whole project.
Note: Soroush has moved onto studying mechanical engineering at Arizona State University and is interested in high performance engines. Laci is in her final year of her undergraduate program in mechanical engineering at Cooper Union College in New York City. She has continued her research in hydrogen production as well as storage in metal hydrides.
This concept isn't new by anymeans. The challenge to projects like this lay in the efficiency of solar cells. One would almost think that wind generators, with a combination of dynamic breaking (sticking a generator on the axles to slow the viehicle) woudl generate more hydrogen and do so more efficiently.
One of the questions I've seen regarding hydrogen is "OK, less pollution - but how are we going to get the hydrogen without using up even more energy?"
I keep wondering why solar can't provide some of this. Build a series of solar panels, collect water (say from a local river), break down the water into H2+O, let the latter out into the air and keep the former for fuel.
Is solar not strong enough/inconsistent enough for such an endeavor? Sure, you'd need a large area with a local water supply (again, a river might be nice), and probably a backup generator for when there wasn't enough sunlight, but overall you'd probably have a very efficient and low-pollution system.
Though perhaps there are engineering issues I'm not aware of. Any energy geeks out there want to help me out?
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"What have I done?!?!?"
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Doesn't it make sense to just run a small electric motor with, wich would make the vehicle weigh much less. I guess this would work only if they plan this to be an add-on modules to the already existing hydrogen cars.
Holy shit, that's like drinking your own urine.
Letter
This looks like a waste of energy converting
it back and forth.
It seems to me the thing we need is a hydrogen to methane (natural gas) converter.
The widely acknowledged problem with hydrogen is the storage density stinks. The tank is too big and too pressurized for safety, size, and weight concerns.
This vehicle, and many other applications, would be well suited to having a hydrogen to methane converter. Many existing fleets use natural gas in their ONLY SLIGHTLY MODIFIED internal combustion engines.
Methane is CH4, a fairly simple molecule; could we come up with a carbon source to use here? Ethane is C2H6, etc.
Likewise, there are Nitrogen compounds to use. Can someone in chemical engineering comment on the possiblities here of creating more energy-dense storage using some kind of catalyst and raw H or H2 hydrogen?
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
While I agree this is a nice step in the right direction - until we can get cars that 100% fuel themselves (not likely to happen) or can fill up with hydrogen/whatever at the local corner - I fail to see how these will get mass market appeal.
Vision of geeks dancing filled my head. Not something I would wish on anyone.
As to the idea of having a solar-powered 'gas station' for the hydrogen recharging, why bother doing the solar collecting at the gas station? Wouldn't it be a lot more practical to just hook up to the electrical power grid, and then let the power company run a large farm of solar panels. That's pretty much the main reason electricity is such a useful form of energy - you can put the machinery that produces it quite far from the consumer that uses it, and thereby consolodate the energy production into a few places. And if you're concerned about the environment, keep in mind that checking for pollution at a small number of large facilities works better than checking for the sum of all pollution made by each individual's own usage.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
So what you got? Free fuel when you park the car at your house. Will enough be generated? Well depending on the money and eviromental cost of the setup it might make a difference not just because of less fuel consumed but also in less fuel consumed getting the fuel to you.
A few miles isn't that impressive yet but if you can save a few liters of bought fuel per day it might start to add up.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
a quote from thier web site:
"COMING SOON!
Conversion technology like any other."
Well, I am for one impressed that this techology is just like any other technology.
Presumably they could also have used batteries and an electric motor rather than hydrogen and an engine.
I only bring this up because I find it annoying when people refer to hydrogen as an energy source.
From what I've seen, the answer is no (electrolyzer @ ~70%, engine @ 25%, overall efficiency ~18%; batteries ~70%). It appears that you could get 4x as much range out of a solar-battery system, even more than you can get out of an electrolysis/fuel cell cycle.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
it still uses water. That's as scarce as gas in Arizona.
BC
Going directly from electricity to mechanical energy is much more effcient that using electricity to liberate hydrogen, then using the chemical energy from the hydrogen to creat mechanical energy. in the latter process a significant amount of energy is lost to heat and a very mechanically in-effcient system (52% See link below.) also solar panels are only about 22% effecient as is. So all in all this makes a cool science experiment for the kids but it isn't proactical by any means.
http://ecen.com/content/eee7/motoref.htm
http:
And at night, they can use a lamp connected to the battery to power the solar panels on top of the car.
:>
Sure it would look strange, a car with a lamp mounted on the roof to shine down towards the roof surface, but think of the possibilities, we may never have to stop for gas ever again!
You can't handle the truth.
Then, given 125,ooo BTU/gallon of gasoline, and around 3400 BTU/kWh (from here), you're looking at 37 kWh/gallon of gasoline. No current gasoline-engine car I know of burns less than 1.3 gallons per hour under any normal driving conditions.
Now, obviously, Seattle is the worst-case location in the continental US, but even in the best location (AZ, at 5.7 kWh/m^2), you've got to have a car which burns less than 2.3 gallons per hour. The more fuel-efficient of modern cars hit this pretty well, but I don't think the average is near that.
Or am I making some gross, embarassing error in my figuring?
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Just have a group of other cars follow it around with mirrors pointing more light on the solar panels.
Problem solved.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
that movie about 10 years ago named "The Water Engine" where some guy in the 30's invented an engine that ran on water and some shyster lawyers screwed him around and stole his invention then he ended up dead.
hmmmm...
At least, to me. Why have this stuff installed on the vehicle at all? All you're accomplishing is adding weight to the vehicle and limiting the maximum size of your solar array. Doesn't it make more sense to install the solar panels on the roof of your dwelling and put the electrolysis equipment in the back yard?
Does anyone have complete information on building one's own electrolysers, from disassociation to storage? I really don't want to figure it out myself, I just want to build something.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Detroit sees large H2 gas stations as a hazard. They see cars with H2 tanks as a hazard. This avoids the gas stations. How about plugging this in at the house to run the electrolyzer? Or set up a solar panel at the house and fill the tank at night? Keep the regular fuel option for long trips, but use H2 around town. Very much like the hybrids use electric.
Not as long as we've slashdoted the webserver of the high school I can't (link in summary returns error 500).
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I'd put this system on a blimp, to power the rotors.
Given the right design, a blimp has a very large surface to put solar panels on, and it can fly above the clouds for optimal sun exposure.
Now, cue the Hindenberg jokes...
In practice you don't want to carry an electrolysis system around with you, it produces very little hydrogen. I think if there was a need, huge electrolysis systems could be built centrally and hydrogen then could be distributed by gas pipes.
You can't handle the truth.
to get the power required to generate the hydrogen gas. Guaranteed that 10kw would not be enough for the truck to be truly useful. Of course, if you have enough solar "sail", you really only need a steady wind. (Just watch out for low overpasses, hanging branches and wires, etc.) oh, nevermind. Just not practical.
But what kind of horsepower is the truck putting out? You can make a car run 100% pollution free using water if you want. If it takes me more then 8 seconds to get to 60mph, I don't want it. I'll stay dependant on my fossil fuels, thank you.
Although, this is using a modified IC engine. So is this putting out HP similar to the stock engine?
It is like price fixing, keeping the prices high by making agreements between all the parties only works if all the parties keep to it. This is hard as in it will also make it extremely lucrative to then go under the fixed price and get all the business.
So the fuel companies are researching very hard because to them it is better to be in the future the hydrogen industry at the cost of some profit to their current petroleum industry then risk a future where they will be the petroleam industry when the market has gone hydrogen. Further more there will still be a market for oil, just what do you think plastics come from?
Such a system as this would still have to be built by someone. BP/Shell doesn't care how they make money. Who does care? Goverments, no fuel tax on hydrogen yet. Same with bio-diesel. Or how about the arab nations. Without the dependency of oil exactly who would give a shit anymore?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
one day, some of our (i live in az) fellow citizens are bitching about people snooping their wireless access points, the next day we're out inventing a hydrogen vehicle
vodka, straight up, thank you!
The energy it takes to seperate water is the same energy released when water is combined. Except a combustion engine is a lot less efficient as it doesn't create pure mechanical energy, but heat and light as well. While this is cool, and maybe the H2 tank is capable of storing more energy than a battery. Eventually it would be more efficient to use a batter combined with an electric motor.
I believe the problem with this setup is storing the H2. Hydrogen molecules are so small that they leak out of normal containers. I don't know if they will actually diffuse through a steel tank, but the fittings to get the stuff in and out will be problematic.
My car uses stored solar energy. But instead of using the solar energy that falls on it now, it uses solar energy that shined millions of year ago, and captured on efficient solar panels called "leaves" on "plants". Those "plants" then died and released their stored energy into the ground.
My car simply takes that stored energy from the ground and uses that very densely stored energy in its gas tank.
Stored solar energy at its finest!
But hey, there are easier ways to make cars less polluting and everyone less dependent on oil! Take alcohol for example, you can produce it cheaply, even in your own backyard from some potatoes or grain, it is way easier and safer to handle than hydrogen and typical car engine can be easily modified to run on it. Same applies to vegetable oils and diesel engine (which was originally designed for vegetable oil).
The vehicle is hydrogen-powered. The hydrogen is what is burned during the combustion process to make the vehicle drive down the road. The solar panels are used to get the hydrogen out of the water. You could just as easily remove the solar portion of this system and fill the tank from another source that used coal to generate electricity that was then used to crack the hydrogen from the water.
:-)
If you want to take it to that length though, lets apply it to what we have now. That makes our cars not gasoline-powered, but dinosaur-powered. After all, the gasoline is just a way of internally storing and transmitting the energy of the dinosaurs.
So, say you have something the size of a ford explorer, with a good bit of the space reserved for a semi-Sealed system.
Add water, the solar power splits it to H and O... when the engine runs, the water is recycled back into a storage tank.
You could use the same water over and over again, only adding a little bit of water to compensate for evaporation loss...
Not having to ever stop at a gas station again, and only feeding it water would be great!
get in contact with the guy in the article... he's obviously done a little work in this area :)
Wow looks like the Republicans are getting all the mod points today!
Yeah, because we all know that stockpiling large amounts of gasoline is so much safer! Just imagine the reaction if the terrerists start stealing tanker trucks and blowing up kindergartens. NOTHING !
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Hopefully they've got some electric generators hooked up to the wheels. Since they're going to be turning, you might as well use them to get a little juice for the electrolysis and not be solely dependent on the solar cells.
The energy is coming from the sun. All of it is. The truck takes solar enegry uses it to split water into hydrogen and oxygen and then recomines them when needed to power the car. So he's doing a calculation that is overly optimistic by neglecting the amount of energy lost due to the transformation from and to water.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Hydrogen will never be able to hold the power that petrochemicals (gas, diesel) are able to hold. And creating hydrogen costs energy and everytime you change the state of your energy (electricty to hydrogen, hydrogen to electricity, etc), you lose a lot (thermodynamics).
What we need are more efficent ways of burning our petrochemicals to get the most efficient energy out of them, as well as releasing the lowest amounts of pollutants while doing so. Or come up with an alternative source that has even more energy in it.
All of these hydrogen cars are like taking a step back to steam engines. It didn't work then, it isn't going to work now. We need steps forward, not backwards. If you are going to replace the internal combustion engine, you have to take a magnitude step forward, especially as we're not going to be running out of oil in anybody here's lifetime.
If yuo want the masses to adopt it, it has to be better. If you want people to manugacture it, the masses have to adopt it. These are like the battery cars, cute, looks good on the surface, but when you get down to brass tacks, a '64 buick still beats it.
This truck is a poor-efficiency solar vehicle using hydrogen tank as a battery to store power generated during the day.
I still don't get why people imagine that hydrogen will solve anything. If you have to make the hydrogen by electrolyzing water, you've already lost. Water is an ash, turning it back into gases and recombining it severly limits the efficiency of your system : you're losing around one third of the energy when electrolyzing water, and losing again when making it back into water. And you still need an energy source... so why shoot the already poor efficiency of the whole thing to hell by using solar power ?
Save up on the high solar panel costs and weight (unacceptable on a vehicle !) by storing the hydrogen in a more convenient, easy to use way than water, like methanol produced externally. If you really want to use solar power, then extract it from plants, that's the dirt cheap way.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Since they are spliting water, are they making any effort to store the Oxygen in addition to the Hydrogen? I'm not an expert on IC engines, but mixing Oxygen into the combustion chamber is supposed to give you more power right? Maybe they could increase the efficiency that way.
Answer: NO. First of all, the idea of building a solar-hydrogen internal combustion vehicle is neither new or original. As far as we know, nobody has built one before this since the production rate of hydrogen is so low. Secondly, one of our main goals is to promote this technology, and contribute to this field without putting any restrictions on others.
AC comments get piped to
The original poster is right. The primary energy source entering the truck is solar energy. While the engine is a combustion engine, the fuel for the truck is created via solar power. The Hydrogen tank is nothing more then a battery to store energy from the solar power. It isn't terribly efficient either, and would be more efficient if it was an electric motor instead. Though the Hydrogen tank may store more usable energy then conventional batteries.
There are so many issues here, I can't believe that someone would even consider releasing such a vehicle.
1) What does it take to produce solar cells such as these? If it's anything like producing most other semiconductors, there are a lot of byproducts, and these byproducts are not very friendly to the environment.
2) Name a major manufacturer that wants to slap a 3yr, 36000 mile warranty on a car like that?
3) While this thing might do ok in Phoenix, how about Seattle? Or anywhere else where it is cloudy at least 100 days of the year?
4) The solar cells aren't enough power to keep up. As someone else pointed out, it's not even close. So why pay extra for these worthless solar cells? Just so you can say you're doing your part?
Look at what it takes to build the average semiconductor. There's quite a bit of hazardous waste. You could say that you are saving xxxx amount of tons of fossil fuels per hour/day/week, but how many tons of hazardous waste are you generating when manufacturing all of these solar panels?
Think people. Think.
outstanding answer! "Have You Patented This Idea? Answer: NO. First of all, the idea of building a solar-hydrogen internal combustion vehicle is neither new or original. As far as we know, nobody has built one before this since the production rate of hydrogen is so low. Secondly, one of our main goals is to promote this technology, and contribute to this field without putting any restrictions on others."
I sooooo went to the wrong high school....
What does it mean to wake out of a dream
and be wearing someone else's shorts?
BNL, Born on a Pirate Ship (1998)
I would like to see this in a 2 wheel scooter, you know the cool type where you sit on the engine and have your feet relaxed in front behind the frontwheel. Put the collectors on the bike-shed and collect full for a windy day when you don't want to bike yourself.
Is anyone else impressed just by the simple fact that these are all high school kids? This is fantastic to see high school students working with technology like this. I applaud their efforts.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
Where was the editor on that one?
Decomposition releases all sorts of gases, possibly methane and carbon dioxide, although I'm not a biologist.
Obviously then, dying isn't green. And since you suggested it, I can tell that you're an evil RED spy masquerading as a GREEN supporter.:-)
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
Big whoop.
Why not use Lithium Polymer batteries that can be recharged from solar cells while the car is parked, or recharged from the power grid anytime.
The other advantage of Lithium Polymer batteries is energy can be captured from regenerative braking. Hydrogen cycle is a complete waste of energy.
Industry should be concentraing on Lithium Polymer car battery mass production and lower costs, not riding the hydrogen fantasy that will never amount to anything for the mass public!
I wonder if Home Depot has realized that their cart is missing yet.
It's lost to the efficiency of the cells which are usually only about 15%-18% and it's lost to the angle of incidence of the energy from the sun, unless your panel is at 90 to the sun's rays you'll only get sin(Ø) of the rated output.
Deleted
You're right. The Germans might moderate it as "Flammeköder" and the French might say "amorce de flamme"
On an average weekend I ride over 100 miles on a bicycle, averaging about 20 mph. The amount of food and water required for these rides is actually very minimal and close to what I normally consume. My metabolism doesn't just store unneeded energy and make me bloated, it's just chucks it (it's called Inefficient Metabolism) so however much you normally eat, if you don't store it, you waste anyway for whatever level of activity you engage in which may be limited to sitting on a chair all weekend fine tuning your drivers, playing d00m 3, or hitting Reload.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Going to riff on this a little--sorry about that.
Quite a lot of alternative fuel/renewable energy ideas place a big emphasis on solar. It's a great idea--sun's shining anyways.
The problem is, if this gets widespread enough, then we're potentially impacting the earth's climate in other ways...
Widespread use of solar would reflect some sunlight, and capture the rest, rather than having it absorbed into the ground. This would, at a certain scale, cool the earth--less enegy being converted to heat.
"That's great! It fights global warming!" Well, sort of. But remember the reason the ice ages progressed for millions of years is believed to have been due to just this property--glaciers reflected sunlight off into space instead of letting it be absorbed/converted to heat, thus cooling the globe, leading to more snowfall further south, leading to larger glaciers, leading to more sunlight being reflected....
Note that I am NOT predicting widespread solar power would lead imminently to a new ice age. Just pointing out that any significant and widespread way in which we alter the ebb and flow of nature on the planet WILL have potential climactic effects that probably need to be considered...
There's no such thing as a "zero impact" way to get energy.
Since he's using a fairly conventional internal combustion engine, no high temperature ceramic kit he's only getting around 30% of the energy from the hydrogen that he's put in to elextrolyse the water.
Deleted
Solar Panel's do not take more energy to make than they produce in their lifetimes.
You'd merely be adding inefficiencies by doing that. Solar cells only capture a certain percentage of the energy from the Sun's light, and an engine converts only a small amount of the energy from fuel into motion. The rest is wasted as heat.
You'd be much better off storing the electricity from the solar cells in a battery, then driving an efficient electric motor with it. Electric motors convert energy into motion much more efficiently than an internal combustion engine does.
I'd think "a hand-built electrolysis system mounted in the bed" is NEVER a good thing!
They say they have four solar panels. Suppose they're Shell Solar SP150 units. Four of those would about cover a truck. You'd get about 600 watts in bright sunlight, about a tenth of what they need to move the truck at all. They might get 5KWH per day, or 18 MJ, if they're lucky. One gallon of gasoline is about 100 MJ. So they're getting no more than 1/5 of a gallon of gas equivalent per day.
With batteries, you'd get about 80% of that energy out of storage. Electrolyzing hydrogen and then burning it is less efficient. Probably a lot less efficient.
They're pushing a pickup truck around, so they'd get maybe 15-20MPG. So it looks like they can drive maybe two miles on the flat on a good day.
Of course, if you park it all week, you can go maybe ten miles on the weekend.
With super-light cars and ultra-expensive gallium arsenide photocells, things look better. But no way is putting some solar panels in a pickup truck ever going to accomplish much. The energy just isn't there.
... we can take this new car, pack up our GPS, laptop, and Pringles can and go piss off some Scottsdale snobs.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
This is not a viable solution for a practical road vehicle. It is a nice demonstration project, but it won't be useful unless there is a MAJOR breakthrough in solar panel efficiency.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
Time, patience, and city planning. That's how these will be mass market appeal, by going through the same planning means cars had to do with gas stations.
Show a profit to be made in the market, and companies solve that problem (lack of recharge stations) for you.
"We're breaking out the ramen noodles. . . "
"Really? Is it someone's birthday?"
The project is cool overall, but the thing that interested me the most was the dashboard switch. How hard is it to make an IC engine that can run off of two different fuels without sacrificing much efficiency? The reason I ask is, people often say that a large problem for the adoption of hydrogen fuel cars is the chicken or the egg problem of popularity and infrastructure. I'm not saying there aren't other problems, but you hear that one a lot.
If we started out with switchable IC engines, then people could buy the cars as long as there was some chance of using hydrogen part of the time - regular gas would always be available for backup. I bet the state of California would be interested in conceding some CAFE (do they still use that?) points to manufacturers who came out with such vehicles.
Rome wasn't bilked in a day.
I swear, the X-prize seems to have put some steam back into commercial space exploration and opened up a market that has been idle for years or controlled by a single few.
Why not start the "E"nergy prize with a 10 million dollar reward for someone who makes individuals independant from corporatate/governement energy policies.
Some people on /. pissing on this story like big deal.
:P G
I think the really cool thing here is a bunch of high school students with a teach have created a semi-self sufficient truck. All of this for less then $10K. What is not to like OR applaud?
I'd love to see the one's flaming this do anything this cool.
In and age when it is tough to get high school students to do non-destructive activities, this is awesome.
Congrats on the good work.
I wonder if cars that produce things like water for waste or oxygen will result in a reduced number of successful suicide attempts.
What is sad is that people will probably still try with those cars that do not produce anything you could asphyxiate on. I realize if you got into a car that produced something other than oxygen, you could still kill yourself when the amount of oxygen drops below a certain point, but what if...
It's easy to stand out when the general level of competence is so low.
OMFG people!
Have you built a car that runs on sunlight and water?
How far did the first airplane fly?
Are you saying this proof of concept is impractical?
Congratulations CHS kids!
Yeah I'm talking to you Creative, Amazon, Microsoft, insert any other company that patents other peoples ideas as a source of income.
They should use the hydrogen powered solar truck to teach drivers ed.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Why do they move the whole hydrogen producing system with the car? In a power palant hydrogen could be produced more efficiently. Why not just fill the tank with hydrogen produced somewhere else? I can't find any reason why they move the whole thing with the car.
All these alternative energy things are un-American and un-manly. Developing them, much less using them, is an admission that America can't stand up for itself and take what it wants, and that Americans can't drive whatever they want, whereever they want, over anything they want.
Do you really want to live in country where limp-wristed effeminate scientists and environmentalists tell you what to do? You want the real score, listen to a petroleum geologist, or someone from the Club for Growth. They're the ones who know the score and really care.
The way forward is larger, less efficient, and more damaging to things you run into.
Just what the sun dried, water starved southwest needs -- More water use!
Racing stripes.
I was just looking around the net for the best Solar Powered Water Purifier. This electricity solar/wind power stuff is the future. It also helps 3rd world countries develop who can't afford the fuel or clean water.
Anyone know the best way to purify water using the sun?
God spoke with me:
www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA
God spoke to me.
Simply have an array of solar panels/Windmills to use for home electricity.
Not only is it used in for your house's power, but you could drive your car up into the car charger. People know how to use cellphone chargers now, so its no problem.
God spoke to me:
www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA
God spoke to me.
- the first gasoline engine to give 100mpg (sustained) in normal driving conditions (heck, even a highway) for a medium-sized sedan.
- First electric car that can take 4 adults 300miles on 4 hours of charge
etc.
Some good-old competition combined with good-old American ingenuity should do wonders for these projects.
I'm sure you will have no problem lighting up in HELL.
Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics
What everybody forgets is there is a problem with water, and that is that its a significant green-house gas. There are four major greenhouse gasses; Sulpher Oxides, Methane, Water and Carbon Dioxide. The contribution to global warming by CO2 is arguable on a scientific basis, but the others are pretty solid. I'm not sure if trading a weak green-house gas for a stronger one is wise; and definately not something we should rush into based on emotional pleas from people who treat "environmental concerns" with religious zeal.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I would if this would be practical for somebody who only drives on weekends. Somebody who takes public transportation to work on weekdays, and then drives for errands on weekends. The car could separate more than enough hydrogen throughout the week to run the car for typical weekend errands.
Why not use Diesel-Electric as an alternative? By this I don't mean a hybrid solution as is currently being used by Honda & Toyota, but rather a miniaturized version of a diesel-electric locomotive. This being a small common-rail diesel engine connected directly to a generator. The transmission would be replaced with by an electric motor which would use electricity generated on demand to drive the wheels. This would solve the fuel storage issue present with hydrogen, replaced by diesel (more efficient than gasoline). The electricity would be generated on demand which wouldn't require bulky batteries or complex circuitry of current hybrid systems.
So what are the barriers preventing a setup like this from working? Is it simply more efficient to drive the wheels directly from the engine? Would the generator/electric motor add too much weight to the vehicle in order to achieve similar performance levels?
www.brownsauce.org
Some might consider this flamebait, but it makes me wonder what we could have developed if we had spent the billions we'ved poured into the Iraq war on projects such as this.
More efficient, safe low oil-consumption hydrogen cars in mass production by 2025? My ass.. try like by Xmas 2006. I'm serious.
Most of the research/design has been done. It's just the cost of switching over the production. In an emergency (such as a World War) most major manufactuers can completely change production lines in a few months. They just need that incentive.
5. Infrastructure. When is the last time you say a hydrogen station?
did it occur to you that society wouldn't need a billion ugly gas stations on every corner if everyone owned a water-electrolysis hydrogen machine in their car/home for 50$?
Actually, the average insolation in American cities is about 4.095 KWh:m^2, 14.742Mj:m^2. Using your 2KW/10KW cruising/acclerating numbers, that's 400s (6M:40s) accelerating, interspersed with 5000s (1H:23M:20s) cruising, per meter. A small car, 1.5m x 2.5m, would get about 55.3Mj:day. Even at 20% efficiency solar panels, we're talking about enough power to run daily errands, especially with regenerative braking.
Of course, these panels more easily track the sun from a fixed location, like a roof, accumulating the charges in storage like hydrogen/ethanol, that adds inefficiencies. But the sun's power at the Earth's surface is surprisingly strong. And opening our minds to possibilities brings the realizable ones closer to reality. Like coating road surfaces with solar panels hardened with new transparent aluminum. And your solar electrolyzer H2 fill stations. After getting over the hump of undeserved pessimism, the economies of scale in solar powered transport will make petro fuels look as barbaric as bonfires.
--
make install -not war
You watch myth busters way too much!
Got Code?
The step of creating hydrogen still requires electricty. Hydrogen isn't a natural resource on this planet, it must be created, and it is created via electricity. Electricity is normally created via combustion of fossil fuels, typically in plants that are not as environmentally efficient as combustion engines in cars. As a result the use of hydrogen in a car is a pipe dream, the efficiency of the conversion of electrical to chemical to mechanical energy is horrible. Electrical straight to mechanical is much more efficient. What we need is electric cars, not a car that relies on combustion of any fuel. This is nothing but a solar powered car with chemical battery.
I would be more than happy to send them my original Redhat 8 CD's for computer engineering purposes!
Wow, now I have that warm and fuzzy happy feeling all over thing going on.
Why embed the solar / electrolysis system in the vehicle? It adds weight which would require more energy for movement. It might be useful for military vehicles ( a long range recon vehicle for instance ), but seems less useful for civillian use.
Also:
The four solar panels and hydrogen-generating system create only enough fuel per day to travel a few miles.
Which indicates for this to be practical either more efficient solar panels or a lower energy electrolysis system would be required. Heck, if it gets effiecient enough the weight of the solar / electrolysis system might not be a factor.
Still, great progress. I'd love to see power production become more distributed although I'm sure some *cough*oil companies*cough* would hate the idea.
A Human Right
Another byproduct are biosolids, which are used as fertilizer, which is used to grow more food, which is used to create more poop, which is used to create more food, which . . . infinite loops, argrgrgr
Your internal combustion engine is only 25% efficient, the gearbox, transmission and traffic/idling drop that efficiency to around 10-12%.
m
Current lithium batteries have a broadly comparable energy density with a tank full of compressed gaseous hydrogen (or are you going to spend extra solar energy liquifying it?), electric motors are 90%-95% efficient and batteries are 90%-95% efficient at storing the electrical energy.
So, are you going to use 10% of 400Wh/l or 80% of 250 Wh/l?
Bottom line is that a current generation electric car (Say a Solectria Sunrise) with current generation batteries (Say Thunder Sky Li-ions) will perform better than a car with a hydrogen powered internal combustion engine. Course, you can always give your money to the oil companies to fill up your big hydrogen tank every 200 miles when your solar cells can't keep up.
http://xtronics.com/reference/energy_density.ht
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you can find a really interesting 184 pages PDF file here http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/downloads.html
that talk about all you want to know about oil, war, and other form of energy like hydrogen and why it will fail...
"Try and build a car that will go 200+ miles on a charge."
It's been done, a decade ago.
Deleted
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
I discovered that some folks are tried to split water thermally using solar energy to heat the water. Check out http://www.pureenergysystems.com/news/2004/07/09/6 900033_Solar_Hydrogen/ for an example (couldn't find any efficiency ratings, alas).
the goal is for a zero (bad) emmisions vehicle, which your solution would not be.
Ummm no because that is dumb. Sorry but you will be lucky to get a 150 mile range from a hydrogen car due to the density issue with hydrogen not to mention the safety issues that high pressure tanks or cryogenic storage. No hydrides are a potential solution to those problems.
Tell you what buddy. Pick one gas station and ONLY use that to fill your tank. No exceptions allowed. Then think about trips or just driving to another town to shop or for some event. Then think about your $50 water electrolysis machine and and in the cost of a compressor and keeping it all working if you use Solar you will need tanks as well and they will have to be inspected regularly to keep them safe. You would not want a high pressure hydrogen tank blowing up in your house. Then the cost of power to run it. Don't forget that it takes a lot more energy to crack the hydrogen than you will get back from it.
Over all I nahhh... Not a good plan. If it was just that simple then it would already be done.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Does that 'used' hydrogen and 'waste' oxygen get to recombine again some how?
If hydrogen fuels (obtained from water) catches on, will we have a water shortage in a few millenia?
I know there is a lot of water on, in, floating around the earth, but its still a static quantity its not made is it?
Going even more extreme, this solar energy that the panels collect, would it have been reflected back out into space if we hadn't collected it? thus were still increasing the enery that stored up in earth atmosphere =)
John Kerry: The clear choice for the undecided.
Who would you propose people who think Bush is the worst president in their lifetime vote for, if not Kerry?
So what if you run out of hydrogen AND water, can you use the left over mountain dew in your cup, or what about converting urine?
I'd piss on a sparkplug if I thought it'd do any good
First point is that 200 W/m is what you get after the 20% efficiency of the cells. There's on average approx 1kW/m insolation.
Second point is that electrolysis can be 98% - 99% efficient depending on the rate you want to do it at and the cell design.
Third point is that current generation Li-ion batteries can have a higher energy density than hydrogen at 150bar, approx 405Wh/l. PolyPlus have a Li-S battery demonstrating 420Wh/l.
But I think your conclusion is otherwise correct.
Deleted
An end should have been put to it a long time ago.
... wait for it ... ten billion barrels of oil per year.
The last USGS/DeptInt survey done of ANWR suggests there's about ten billion barrels of recoverable oil. That's a lot of oil, but if we started today, we wouldn't be recovering oil until around 2025. And, by 2025, DepEgy has estimated that American demand for oil will be
All this sturm und drang for enough oil to fill our needs for one year.
That has solar panels on its roof, It has a sign in front showing how many houses it is generating power for, on cloudy days, 5, up to as much as 12. Thats a fairly large amount of power, from a fairly small roof.
The figures in this "Sun and Hydrogen to fuel the future" article seem much more realistic to me.
Oh, and don't forget about the newest flexible solar cells!
Ok., so I did some research and it is really better than I thought. They were wise enough to start a program for biomass fuels after the first fuel crisis in early 70-ties, since 1979 there were 5.4 million cars running on ethanol in Brasil. Wow! This source (PDF) describes the program. It turns out that combined effect was beneficial for the environment, but it wasn't cost effective in the late eighties and early nineties due to low oil prices. But now, prices are rising again so...
Some other links: 1 2
Anyone ever watched the 2002 remake of the movie "Time Machine"?
In that movie, the Morlocks killed the Eloi who resisted FIRST . This led to successive generations of complete French pussies who surrendered. This is using Natural Selection to do the work for you; the ones who live are the ones who breed.
We need to wipe out all our fucking treehuggers. Then we'll be able to actually build some nuclear power plants and setup an orbial collector, at the risk of a complete fucking meltdown or a microwave mis-alignment.
Progress is risk. If you don't risk, you don't make progress. Start killing treehuggers, now, so they don't breed.
Nonsense. I hope I get to meta-mod this one.
Clean burning, and you can BBQ on the drive! Brilliant! :)
"which is produced by a hand-built electrolysis system"
Does it output well groomed customers as its exhaust?
--- What?
I'd bet you'd get better efficiency by using the solar cells to boost the alternator instead. You wouldn't need to carry the electrolysis gear, the storage tanks, etc (less weight).
By taking the load off the alternator, you'd boost your fuel economy, and you wouldn't be wasting the power in a H2O->H2->H2O conversion. The H2 created probably doesn't make up for the additional loss caused by carrying all that extra weight around.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I want to see humans that excrete their own food! Never again will I have to rely on McDonalds again!
Another one bites the
Anyway, Ogle was found dead in 1981 of an apparent suicide. Conspiracy theories abounded. This was in my neighborhood, and I often went by the garage he worked at. I may have even met him once, but he was a few years ahead of me in school. There are patents of his device. Here's a link: http://www.rexresearch.com/ogle/1ogle.htm
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
I saw a real world test and bio-diesel didn't produce less emissions.
That's dirty.
Speak truth to power.
Venting the O2 into the combustion chamber will greatly increase the power output just like a supercharger or turbocharger or NO2.
As a cyclist, I can tell you that the waste products from biking everywhere are far greater than the water vapor produced by a hydrogen vehicle. In addition to producing much larger volumes of urine from massive water intake, my feces production is also increased dramatically as I eat more to compensate for a huge loss of calories. On top of that, the human body is terribly inefficient at extracting energy from the food it consumes. 99% of it passes through unprocessed only to be flushed down the toilet and out into the river. Sheesh!
Why bother.
Just stick the sun+water=hydrogen doohickey on the roof of your house and fill up your car every morning with the previous day's lovely free fuel. I'm sure the likes of Texaco, Esso, BP et al will be *tripping over* themselves to develop it. Oh yes.
I have had this idea of a car that can produce it's own hydrogen fuel for years now. Considering I live in Vancouver, Solar energy is not the most plausible choice to produce hydrogen. This is my idea: What do you think of the idea plugging in the car to 240volt source while parking and using built in electrolysis in the car to convert and store both hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is the main source of energy, while the oxygen is used to boost the combustion. Some of the energy from the engine would be generated to power electrolysis separation of H20. The other idea is to use Ballard fuel cell technology which converts hydrogen to electricity to power electric motors. Braking could be used to assist to create hydrogen. Other ideas to harness energy is to use turbines to create electricity and therefore assist in the creation of hydrogen.
Typical slashdot, I make a comment based on my experience and the facts that go against the PC feelings and I get called a troll.
Yeah, so much for science and debate on slashdot.
What would happen if everyone switched over to hydrogen fuel cells and everyone was emitting water vapor 24/7? Sure less smog, but would it mean more rain? Higher sea levels? maybe thats how water world happened. Everyone switched to hydrogen fuel cells because they were so good for the invornment, but it put more water in the atmosphere which in turn raised the sea level..
i do believe I am trams!
It would be much better to just electrolyse off the grid overnight, and use spare off peak power. Then use wind/solar/tide/wave to run the grid - off-peak hydrogen generation helps mke use of unwanted power.. By all means have solar on the car too, it will give you a few free miles every day..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Ed Begley(sp?) Jr. drives off in a small go-kart sized vehicle "powered by [his] own sense of self satisfaction."
This may be true, but living humans also use up OTHER resources and put off other wastes that are harmful to the environment (respiration, anyone?)
Therefore, I would propose that you are an evil human-hugging commy, which is much worse than I, a tree-hugging hippie.
It's only a matter of time before the UnmarkedBlackHelis is coming....
Think what this could do in the hands of TheTerrorists... They could destroy the American economy (and the American way of life as we know it). IT HAS TO BE STOPPED - SOMEONE CALL ASHCROFT!
Saw it on a PBS show. They just make the hydrogen right there on demand in an addition built onto a regular gas station. You pull up, you can get either hydrogen, gasoline or diesel, your choice. The gasoline tanks *could* be liquid ethanol, the diesel *could* be biodiesel, and the hydrogen is what it is, and the grid supplied electricity could come from a windfarm say, or solar, or whatever. The grid delivery is cleaner than having fleets of transport trucks for that matter, (cleaner in that pollution isn't concentrated like it is now) especially into and near large cities, and the electricity to do this is already there at the existing gas stations, along with the piped in water. It was quite a nifty rig they had, not very large, able to pump out a lot of hydroigen quickly, negating the need for a lot of large and costly compressed hydrogen tanks.
And I agree, rooftops all over should have solar panels on them, anyplace where they can get at least medium good sun. Every little bit helps, and the energy "solution" is here already, it's the combination of existing alternative sources and techniques taken in total. Now all we need is more people to take advantage of them. We went through the 60s to y2k waiting for the next century to arrive, and shazzam, it got here on schedule all that stuff got developed, you can get it, it's at the retail level now, same as universal personal computers, video game consoles, large screen TVS, in dash DVD players, Personal Digital Assistants, cellphones, jetskis, hybrid vehicles, and that marvelous foyer that yuppies seem to need in their homes in order to feel "complete". all of that and more, we got technology up the wazoo avaialble to anyone with a mind to get it. Just depends on where anyone wants to drop their loot, but for everyones sake, I sincerely hope a lot more people realise that this energy deal is something we all have to deal with, we can't just rely on this "they" guy to do it for us, it just ain't gonna work that way for much longer, IMO, and I think the "snooze ya lose" principle will come into play shortly.
Old saying we used to have,just generally speaking:
"you are part of the problem, or part of the solution", everyone gets to pick one, there are no neutrals.
Here's the practical solution: cover your garage roof with solar panels, and charge an electric car with lithium-ion batteries. Some of the rich folks in Scottsdale are actually doing that today. The problem is that large enough lithium-ion batteries are only beginning to become available, and still quite expensive (10's of thousands for a typical car) despite the fact that they are being made in China. But I think they will come down quickly enough. (The fact that the large automakers are building hybrids now will force that to happen; they need the same kinds of batteries, just not as large.) In the mean time a couple of high-performance cars (the TZero, and that new Fetish, both extreme-performance cars) have been put into production with massive numbers of laptop batteries. Range in excess of 100 miles/day is possible that way, covering nearly everyone's commuting needs (and you still need something else for cross-country trips, or else pull along a trailer with a generator. That's been done too.)
This process sounds a lot like the BMW 750hL, which does basically the same thing: uses solar panels on the roof to suck in water vapour, split it into hydrogen and oxygen, supercool the hydrogen and store that to power the engine.
The BMW, however, also has a gas engine, making it a Hydrogen-gas hybrid.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
I know about the guy who made very useful device, but with clasicall acumulator. No matter that solar cells are too week for road vehicle, they are quite sufficient for a small boat. So the guy took small boat, made a "roof" of solar panells. With small electrical motor and standard car battery, it is quite useful during the summer.
Ok, he does not use on the open see but on river Sava (tributary of Danube). It is very quiet, too, unlike standard motor boats.
No sig today.
How could this possibly be more efficient than simply using the solar cells to charge a storage battery to power electric motors? Not only is splitting water inefficient, but burning it in an internal combustion engine is even more so.
I'm really happy when I read things like this. They make me think that maybe, when the oil crunch really hits and the government starts pouring some serious money at the energy problem, maybe we'll have some alternatives besides starving to death.
Have you ever thought about what would happen if oil production ceased today? There would be mass famines. As in "not enough to eat" famines. There's simply not enough "bandwidth" on the roads of cities to support horse-and-buggy food transport that would feed the number of people living there.
I think we need to do something about oil PRONTO.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
pee-yoo
Solar losses on a clear day amount to about 1/4, so your ~1350 watts at the top of the atmosphere becomes about 1000 watts at the surface (normal to the incoming sunlight). The numbers I get for 47 degrees N, 90 W and July 1 claim ~482 W/m^2 average over the day (that's AVERAGE). If 75% of that reaches the surface, that's ~360 W/m^2; at 15% conversion efficiency, you'd get 54 W/m^2 * 24 hr/day = ~1.3 KWH/m^2/day. At 340 WH/mile (EPRI's number for energy required to run an electric car) you'd get about 3.8 miles per day out of each square meter of collector. If you can use something like the ballistic-electron scheme to boost efficiency to 50%, that becomes 4.3 KWH/m^2/day and 12.7 miles/m^2/day; at that rate, 3 square meters of collector on the car could power the average daily commute with energy left over. Food for thought.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
I thoght the process of extracting hygrogen from water was called electrophoresis. I am probably wrong as I am not a chemsit. Can anyone elucidate?
The gates in my computer are AND, OR and NOT; they are not Bill.
Actually, everyone has talked about this system giving off water as a byproduct, but I see no reason not to recapture the water and re-separate it into H2 and O2. If you make it a closed system, there is no reason to add or subtract anything. You add energy in one side as sunlight, and take it out the other as power. It's sort of like an Air Conditioner. The fluid just goes around and around at different temperatures and pressures, transferring one type of energy in to another type of energy out.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
This is interesting. Similar concept to the Pogue and Yunick designs, pre heating of the fuel, getting a lot of vapor, etc. How you get the increases is from getting the liquid fuel down to single molecule size, normally the vapor contains a lot of macromolecules (fuel molecules still in clumps) that only partially burn. That's why they use catalytic converters now, to try and burn the inducted fuel/air vapor one more time before it's exhausted. Pity it can't be done inside the cylinders better. The best they have now is timed fuel injection, even there they waste some, that and just what engines are made out of, no matter what you will get waste heat. This ogle design seeks to reduce the waste part near as I can see.
There was a twist to this "vapor induction" method that is still in use around farms all over (some), although it's fairly outdated now with just normal diesel powered equipment. There used to be a lot of tractors that were designed to be started on gasoline, then once reaching operating temp, the fuel was switched to kerosene. The kerosene was dripped onto an extension of the intake manifold, where it vaporized from the heat of the engine, and the vapors would get sucked in and then burn in a normal fairly low compression gasoline engine. They were used extensively in ww2 to free up gasoline for the war effort. The ford n series tractors come to mind there, still quite a few around. Probably googleable as well.
I have a single cylinder old engine (cast iron B&S on an antique but still quite functional walk behind bushhog)that can be adapted for this kerosene burning as well,it's right in my manual for it actually, but I don't have the adapter yet.
This project shows what an inspired teacher can do with students. Taking 14 - 18 year old kids and have them conceive, design and build this is remarkable. This is what high school education should be - engaging, thought provoking and inspiring.
I have this image of nerds crawling around under the pickup right next to the grease monkeys from shop class.
Bravo.
Obviously you have never lived in Phoenix. This newspaper is just another pawn in the large Gannett propaganda machine.
If I were able, I'd take the electrophoresis equipment & the hydrogen engine to make a hydrogen-electric hybrid. I'd leave the option for solar cells. I'd also route the exhaust back into the fuel tank saving on fuel. (Hydrogen forms water when combusted, meaning that if the exhaust is dumped back into the fuel tank the tank would just have to be topped off every now and then.) I'd use the energy generated from the hydrogen engine to charge the batteries for the electric motor and to assist in the electrophoresis.
I'd use the electric motor to save on fuel usage. The batteries for the electric motor could be used in start the process of electrophoresis.
With the solar option one could charge the batteries and/or convert fuel for the hydrogen motor.
If you attached your name to anything that dumb, everyone would know who the idiot was.
By your convention, all current internal combusion vehicles are solar powered.
And he'd be correct too. All of the power we use in any form is ultimately solar powered, with the exception being nuclear fission/fusion. And the elements we use for those once came out of stars too, you know.
In this particular case, however, it's generating it's own fuel. Therefore you can consider it to be like a closed system with only one energy input: solar power via the solar panels. Considered that way, this truck is solar powered.
Now, if you yank off the electrolysis bits and put them in a fueling station somewhere, then it's not a solar powered truck anymore. It's a system that gets its power from the hydrogen you pump into the tank.
Almost energy we use ultimately comes from the sun. It's just a question of what part of the total system you are talking about. I don't think that it's unreasonable to include the electrolysis device as part of the system of "this truck" because a) it's hauling the thing around with it and b) they expressly designed it to be part of the truck in the first place.
Therefore this truck is solar powered, because "this truck" includes the electrolysis equipment.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
From the FA:
When the vehicle's tanks are filled with compressed hydrogen from an outside source, it has the range of a conventional vehicle, though that defeats the purpose of showing that hydrogen can be created from clean, sustainable sources, then used to fuel vehicles.
The truck runs on hydrogen which it has the ability to create through electrolysis and solar panels. Alternately, you can simply inject compressed hydrogen into the tank and run the truck from that. It's a hydrogen powered truck.
We'd do much better exploring biodiesel than trying to pursue solar/hydrogen as a fuel system.
From the article:And that's not including the subject of efficiency. Solar/hydrogen is extremely inefficient.It's a neat project - I'll grant that easily. However, the end result is that at this time, it's just not feasible.
However, biodiesel is competetive (or close to competetive) with diesel at today's prices. It requires NO modification to your car (assuming your car runs diesel, of course) and can be mixed freely with diesel.
So, there's no penalty for using biodiesel. That's where the money should be put!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Why hasn't anyone tried my idea yet?
Here it is:
You take a hydrogen (fuel cell, not combustion) powered car. Since it emits water vapor, you take this vapor and put it in a small condensing tank. While it is condendsing, you use the heat to power a sterling engine. You then take the power from the sterling engine, as well as a bit more from the motor, and use it to create more hydrogen from the water vapor.
In a perfect world, you would have a perpetual motion machine. However, this world is far from perfect (Bush, Windows, etc...) so it wouldn't be perpetual, but it would last quite a bit longer. (I think - IANAE (I Am Not An Engineer))
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
Of course, the Sun (large fusion reactor you see in the daytime), actually powers everything. It makes the plants that you eat. It makes the plants that the animals eat that you eat. So then using this logic: no car (or anything else) is gasoline powered, its actually fusion powered, as another post says above this one. And how does fusion work? Fusion is the process that powers the sun and the stars. It is the reaction in which two atoms of hydrogen combine together, or fuse, to form an atom of helium. In the process some of the mass of the hydrogen is converted into energy. :p
SO! dude, im afraid the car is hydrogen powered after all, and so are you
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My sig was stolen - the insurance company replaced it with this one.
It's solar powered, and derives its power from the sun.
" I am 100% positive because I have not spent the time it would take to research it for certian."
So, are you sure because you have done the research, or not sure because you have not done the research? Please clarify.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Hmm. So something you saw, but can't provide any information about. Lets stop the world.
While at the same time, Myself and many people are actually USING Biodiesel, and I can show you my emissions test results.... I could probably record you video of my car's tailpipe with Dino compared to Bio. But why bother?
Do you work for Exxon or something?
Here is a summary of a study(pdf) (google html) that the EPA did, which shows that Bio does in fact produce less emissions that regular diesel. Here is another summary of the study.
Why is there a need to have all the solar panels and electrolising equipment carted around with the car? Why not just cover the top of your garage in solar panels and then you can fill up with hydrogen when you get home? More surface area for solar panels... more storage space for fuel if you're temporarily making more than you need... permenant water supply... you can fall back on mains electric if it isn't sunny or you need to make a bit more.
Surely you should try and make this kind of thing work first? Seems like trying to run before you can walk.
Otherwise... good stuff...
--
cHris
In the future, You shouldnt need to worry about even producing it yourself, it is just something spiffy you can do if you really want to. Most people will opt to get their hydrogen at a gas station. I already fill my propane tanks at the gas station, I wouldnt be hard for them to adapt to distributing hydrogen.
http://www.bmwworld.com/models/750hl.htm
for a short while i worked at hager in grou, the netherlands. while i was there we builded a solarpoweredboat (PV) called 'blaustirns' for a nature preserving organisation 'it fryske gea' ( http://www.fryskegea.nl/ ) .
a catamaranhull-boat which worked above expectations. ( http://www.hagerbv.nl/ (go to 'elektrisch varen' and then choose 'excursieboot')).
sorry, websites are all in dutch
IN Oz we get about 7 kWh of electricity per day from a horizontal 8 square metre panel, of 20% efficient cells is spring summer or autumn.
Worst day I have ever seen was about 40% of that (continuous gloomy cloud).
Why couldn't you combine the two, so when the car was parked sun would convert the hydrogen and when the car was moving wind power would convert the hydrogen? -- Or better yet have a large water tank with a small fuel tank and they are used alternately depending upon wind speed and direction. One could even put a device that is similar to a weather vane on the roof of the car so the strongest source of wind is always turning the turbine. I don't understand any of the science of it. so it is probably a stupid idea, but one that in my mind begs to be asked.
Pngwyn
Inventor killed in freak accident. Garage disappears.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
I think although it's not that practical, it's a nice accomplishment and I'll bet they learned a lot.
I think they should take their experience and put it into a new project -- adding solar panels to a hybrid vehicle.
Hybid vehicles like the toyota prius have small batteries that store up energy and augment the gasoline engine. I wonder if you wouldn't be able to top them up when you're at work and come out with 1/2 mile of transport that didn't come from gasoline.
This wouldn't be super-practical, but i'll bet Prius owners would buy them.
There are many factors for oil prices.
1. first its in US dollar terms, so if the USD falls, (and it will since confidence in US to service its debt levels will fall) price of oil will rise when the USD goes down since more people would rather have euro's or if they are real nasty, can demand gold rather than some numbers in a bank account which can decrease in value yearly, rather like negative interest rates, ie lika a hidden tax.
2. china/india is demanding LOTS of oil, they need HEAPS OF IT, not just for their cars/trucks, but a lot for fertilizer, they have to feed 1.2b people you know, and that takes a big-ass amount of ferts, which btw china is using too much of, so they are probably 'overdosing' the soil and setting themselves up for a big food failure in 2010.
3. people are for the first time installing LIGHT BULBS upgrading from kero lamps, then they get a radio, a washer, then a tv. Doesnt sound like much, perhaps 1kw max or less usage, but multiply that by say 5,000,000 new connections monthly as a 'guess'. and thats a giga-watt number that can only be serviced by coal/oil/gas turbines.
4. To make all those cheap plastic toys/shrink wrap, everything that walmart sells, needs lots of plastic, ie oil based compounds.
So its catch 22, the more you enrich/modernize the 3rdworld or china and india for more profits, the more resources they need like fuels/metals thus driving up costs at 3x inflation rate.
The other main problem is that there is few new oil fields or cheaper extraction techniques so finding new supplies is hard or maxing the current ones out is not possible since they are already running at peak.
And dont suggest pumping out oil at 2x the rate, since you need large oil tankers, and they take years to build so if there ARE NO tankers to pick it up then thats it.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
You've obviously never been to Ottawa. If it were that easy we'd just all roll down our windows and be done with it instead of freezing our 'nads off.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
But will they be able to get it up to 88 mph?
many years back (quite likely before internet era), had read a small article about some inventions of a local indian simpleton where he had demonstrated to some newspaper person, his stove running on water. principles were similar. as per the article water was decomposed and generated hydrogen was used as the fuel.
didn't hear much about that later. the beaurocracy in indian setup is good enough to kill local talents.
your not kidding! in the last year i've had to filter water... pour that into a pitcher... then filter the filtered water so it doesnt waste like lead... go phoenix!
Even if this idea does get to the point of real practicality, it won't be getting off of the ground for quite a while. There's still too much money that could potentially be lost in the fossil fuel area. Until we begin to really run out of global oil, hydrogen-powered vehicles won't be making much of an appearance.
It was on a canadian TV program. Probably marketplace. They had on a biodiesel advocate who drove his jetta down to the USA to get the bio-D.
They ran his car through an emissions test once on regular and once on Bio. The results were not statistically different ( many categories where higher on Bio).
No I don't work for Exxon. But I do hate Diesel in any form. I cycle on the roads a lot and I would much rather get stuck behind a Honda Civic (most are LEV or ULEV these days) than even the most in tune VW diesel. Diesel sucks.
Gas burns a heck of a lot cleaner. Yeah more greenhouse gases, but more breathable than the crap that comes out even the modern "clean" diesels.
When you show me a ULEV diesel, I am in.
If anyone does come to market with a working non-traditional energy source, you can bet the established corporations will quickly reveal that they have discovered all those technologies before, and promptly sue the innovator out of existence. That's how modern revenue streams work, isn't it?
Free market? What free market?
It seems to me that you only know young and healthy people. Nothing wrong with that, but let me just remind you that a lot (25% or more) of the driving population is too infirm in one way or another to have any realistic chance of travelling by bike.
The data I can find for Cd-Te claims a peak of about 16.5%, about the same as silicon. Gallium-arsenide cells have been the real efficiency champs for some time, but they're far too expensive for anything but space applications and the like.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
While this argument could be used if the car wasn't producing its own Hydrogen, it cannot be used in this manner in this case. The operator of this vehicle supplies water and sunlight to fuel this car. Since water is not an energy source, and solar power is, then this car is solar powered.
The fact that it converts solar energy into electricy, into chemical energy, and into mechanical energy, instead of solar, to electrical to mechanical is irrelevant.
Rubbish. Sure the hydrogen may be an efficient way to store the power, but how are you going to extract it? With a ~25% efficient internal combustion engine? You simply don't have that much energy to waste. Store it in a battery and use ~90% efficient electric motors to drive the wheels. Hell, I bet it will even weigh less than the electrolyser, IC engine, hydrogen tank and water tank that it replaces. Less pollution, too, because you won't be creating NOx from the high compression engine.
While I agree that you're not going to get as much power out of converting to hydrogen to motion as you could with a nice, clean, efficent electric motor and some batteries, the question isn't quite that simple. You need to consider the total system.
Batteries are heavy. Yes, a battery has a much higher storage density, so you can carry a lot more power around with you, but is the total system more efficent than the hydrogen method? While the answer is probably "yes", I'd like to see it considered as a whole.
-With this hydrogen combustion method, you can't store as much power, but you don't have as much weight to haul around all the time.
-With the simpler solar panels charging batteries to drive a motor setup, you have a lot more weight due to the batteries which is going to reduce your mileage as well.
Which is better considered as a whole? That's the question you need to examine.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
--just about all of these concepts are variations on the "lean burn" ideal. The biggest drawback isn't necessarily pulling that off, it's materials science, as lean burn makes a LOT of heat in most cases. You can lean out an engine to a ridiculous level and get a lot more mileage, but it'll waste your engine quickly. It's a tradeoff, that and havng to design an engine that has to be used a a wide range of conditions, start and stop, high speed, low speed, etc. Tradeoffs.
Then it gets into gearing, overall weight of the vehicle, all sorts of stuff.
Anecdotaly, the best I have done is to apply mild racing level engineering to an engine, but not trying to force more horsepower out by widely altering the cam or greatly increasing compression ratio. I just weanted a better daily driver, more reliable and smoother, so that's what I got. Took a regular carbureted 4 cylinder motor in an old fiat I had (a 1969 rear engine spyder). Exchanged the stock pistons for very good quality very slightly oversized aluminum forged pistons, then balanced them myself by gradually reducing weight along the bottom of the skirt so that they all matched within a couple of grams. Did the same to better quality connecting rods. This is called balancing. Then they were shot peened for better hardness and strength. Nowadays as pointed out you can get them cyro treated as well, sometimes useful, sometimes not. The cylinders in the block were rebored to fit the new pistons individually, pistons 1,2,3,4, marked. Had that done at a shop that specialises in it. The head had was recut slightly and really made flat to seat better, had the chambers cleaned well, valves got special treatment, really nice cuts and lapping. could have got better quality valaves but didn't afford it at the time. Went to carbon pushrods (told ya it was an old engine). The crankshaft was re lapped and polished and the entire assembly was done correctly to fit the correct size bearings. That baby was TIGHT, took dragging it around in gear to get the new hard chrome rings to seat properly, the stock starter wouldn't hardly turn the thing. But once broken in that way,coupla tows around the block is all it took, man, varoom! Got lots mo powah,_plus_ better mileage, redline went to ridiculous if I wanted to push it,and it was *quiet* at idle and very very smooth running as I retained al the stock timing, etc. it was a very smallengine in a very small car, but it got between 50-60 MPG, and would do highway speeds, although that was it, around 70 tops. It wasn't even a one liter motor, I think it went to around 960 CCs total displacement after the work done on it.
There's a lot of other tricks too, racing guys already know them, they just don't design daily driver cars. They machine to better tolerances, use better materials, etc, but then design for maximum power, frequently they don't care if the engine only lasts for the duration of one race. If you take the same philosophy in engineering, but only design the engine parameters for normal street use, you get the best of both worlds then, plus your engine would last longer. It just costs more, that's all, and people can't see it, they want flashy stuff and car entertainment systems and paint jobs, etc. And with todays multiple computerised fuel delivery and ignition systems, I don't see any quickee bolt on gizmo really helping out or being easy to install. If I was to attempt to do this and try out some of those exotic designs as mentioned in the patents, etc, I think it would be prudent to start with an older really simple non computerised non electronic hardly nuthin engine and car.
Anyway, the net is slap fulla interesting projects like that if you want to look for them, my favorite was smokey yunicks adiabatic engine designs, his actually worked and were tested out, you can find some pages on them with google..