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."

Comments

It's near performance already

[AKAImBatman]

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. :-)

Re:It's near performance already

[Fred_A]

It seems to me that someone who lives in a tightly knit community and only drives a few miles to work and school should invest in a bicycle.

Much cleaner.

Re:It's near performance already

[TykeClone]

I live near work and walk most of the time, but there are instances when it is handy to drive because I'm planning on carrying around more than what would be easy to carry.

There are cases where a commuter vehicle like this would make sense.

Re:It's near performance already

[evilpenguin]

The 200w/sq. m is based on monocrystalline silicon PV. This is the cheapest but also almost the least efficient PV solution because the actual absorption is in the indirect bandgap energy of silicon.

There are thin-film PV solutions with much higher efficiencies (and much higher costs, and much higher toxicity involved in production). But there is also research going on on other semiconductor materials the hold out promise of high efficiency at fairly low cost. (I don't think we'll ever make thin films where there aren't some danged scary chemicals involved.)

Even so, your point is well made. Insolation is such that even if you could acheive 100% PV efficiency, you would still only have about 2kW/sq. meter.

Any realistic ground-based fuel production will require large arrays of PV. You'll need a lot of area to power your car.

But there are plenty of people powering their homes entirely off PV (entirely is a bit of stretch -- they use Propane or other combustion for a lot, including, often, for refrigeration).

People also have entirely solar charged electric cars, but again, they require a fairly large of field of PV panels. The real advantage here is that the efficiency of hydrogen as the energy storage is much greater than the efficiency of chemical batteries.

And, oh yeah, there are 100% solar powered cars right now that run on what they generate at the moment. But these are the cars in the American Solar Challenge which are a long way from practical household commuter cars.

But we have barely begun to put resources and research and capital into energy alternatives. I have always said that it wouldn't begin until oil prices went way up. I'm not even sure that we'll a lot of progress now. But I'm quite confident that the stability and price of oil will not steadily increase anymore. We're already seeing wind power become a fairly significant energy source. PV will follow. I think it will become common for homes to have grid-intertied solar power systems.

Alternative fuel cars are coming. Hybrids are just a first step. I don't know which technology will catch on, fuel cells or hydrogen combustion, but I'd bet we'll see petrochemical powered vehicles in the minority in my lifetime.
(I'm in my late 30's).

Re:It's near performance already

[daviddennis]

What's the point of being so rude to this nice fellow?

The odds are pretty good that in a town of 600, there aren't two people who want to go to exactly the same place at the same time. And as long as that's the case, a bus or carpool simply won't work.

I'm in a large urban area and there STILL aren't two people who do anywhere near the exact same commute as I do. And often I want to shop or run errands on the way to work and back. Carpools don't work well if you like flexibility.

You can be as anti-car as you want, I suppose, but it in terms of time, it's still by far the most efficient way to go around. And if you can eliminate the ecological impact of driving, why not do it instead of wasting away your life at bus stops or waiting to be picked up or dropped off?

D

PS Note that traffic congestion is not a problem in a rural community of 600. It's not a problem in Los Angeles, either, if you simply live close to where you work, as I do. I have a trouble-free 10 minute commute.

Why convert electricity to H

[drgonzo59]

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.

Re:Conflict of interest?

[antifoidulus]

Well, one caveat of private research, you only hear about their successes, never their failures. For instance, for a university, a truck that goes a few miles is quite an accomplishment, but could you imagine the PR disaster if Ford unveiling something like this?
Not saying you are wrong, I agree that private sector research and development has lagged for a long time(well, ever since the term ROI became a buzzword really, everyone is focused on short term) but I don't think it's fair to say they are doing nothing, they just don't publicize as much as universities do.

Not hydrogen powered

[rumblin'rabbit]

This is not a hydrogen-powered truck - it's a solar-powered truck. The hydrogen is just a way of internally storing and transmitting the energy.

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.

Re:Conflict of interest?

[LWATCDR]

"I find it curious that the commercial fuel/automotive manufacturing sector can't (or maybe won't) make significant, transparent headway in the arena of alternative fuels and vehicles."

That is because it is hard. Liquid fossil fuels do have a lot of advantages over every alternative fuel so far.
1. Cost. It is a lot cheaper than any of the alternative right now.
2. Power to weight. It beats the daylights out of batteries. Try and build a car that will go 200+ miles on a charge. It is easy to with gasoline.
3. Density. You can pack more energy in a smaller volume than Hydrogen, Natural Gas, or Propane.
4. Ease of use. It is a lot quicker to just fill your tank than to charge an electric car. It is a lot simpler to pump gas into your tank than to refuel a tank of Hydrogen.
5. Infrastructure. When is the last time you say a hydrogen station?

Bio DieselD is the best alternative fuel right now but then you have the moral issue of is it right to use that land for fuel instead of feeding people?
Frankly the first car company that makes a car that does not use fossil fuel but works as well as gas car they will make a mint.
The idea that all the auto makers in the world are including Japan "Japan has to import 100% of its fuel" are keeping a workable alternative powered care a secret is well into the realm of the tin foil hat crowd.

Re:Conflict of interest?

[plover]

It really bothers me to find people believing that the car companies aren't already researching this already. For example, Daimler-Benz (now Daimler-Chrysler) has been working on a hydrogen powered fuel cell car for over 10 years. I'm going to focus my argument on fuel cells because I'm most familiar with that topic, but most of the argument remains true regardless of the technology that the alternative fuel drives.

Daimler's first fuel cell vehicle started as basically a large mobile laboratory in the back of a panel van (even larger than this school's truck.) They then installed one in a bus, and another in a minivan, and they now have one in a car the size of a Cooper Mini.

The problem isn't getting a vehicle like this on the road. The problem isn't even getting a fleet of them deployed to a single commercial customer (like a bus transit line.) The problems they're encountering now is scaling the entire transportation system so that Joe Sixpack can afford to buy one, drive it home, and fill it up every week.

The most efficient fuel for fuel cell (electric) cars is raw hydrogen. Compressed hydrogen would require an entire new infrastructure to deliver, and would be probably the most hazardous product ever sold to consumers. Liquid hydrogen would be even worse, because of the dangers inherent in delivering tanks of products at 3 degrees Kelvin. So, because of the fuel delivery problems one of the first compromises they had to make was to figure out how to fuel these vehicles with easily delivered, stable-at-room-temperature liquids, instead of compressed gasses. That took time and research. The next problem is that the catalyst required to crack the liquids into raw hydrogen is based on rare precious metals like platinum. Besides taking enough metal to make these engines prohibitively expensive, there simply isn't enough of it on earth to build the number of vehicles that a big car maker like Chevrolet builds every year. So, they've had to experiment with different ways to get the liquid fuels cracked into the base hydrogen.

The vehicle these kids built only cost $10,000, but much of the expense (solar panels) was donated. And it still won't scale, because the solar panels are already operating at something like 30% of their theoretical output. Making a vehicle go from 3 miles per day to 10 miles per day still isn't going to sell.

And despite the best conspiracy theorists determinations, it is far and away in the best interests of a car company to be the first to market selling a truly revolutionary fueled car. Think about what would happen to Ford's stock price if they announced a "sunlight and water powered car" were available. It would truly be a license to print money. The petroleum companies could offer no bribe in the world big enough to slow down a cash cow of that magnitude.

WTH With The Complaints!

[Anonymous Coward]

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!