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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.
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Recycling fuel is anathema to the petroleum industry--BP commercials ("it's a start") aside.
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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.
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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.
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?
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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.
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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.
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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?
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.
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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.:-)
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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
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.
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!
No. Thermodynamics. All energy eventually ends up as heat. Unless you intend to permanently store the collected energy, it will eventually end up as heat again. We just had the opportunity to do something useful with it before that happened.
Now, let's look at the total energy available from the sun, and compare that to what we use. The earth's radius is 6378 kilometers. Its cross sectional area is therefore 127,800,491 square kilometers. Assuming a solar constant of 1370 watts per square meter, this means that, on average, 175,086 terawatts of solar energy fall on the Earth's surface.
In comparison, the current rate of power consumption by humans (and this includes gasoline and other fuels, not just electric consumption) is about 5.5 terawatts.
Thus, we are only using about 1 part in 32,000 of the available power at the surface of the earth. If we produced the entire 5.5 terawatts using solar energy, we would have to intercept 1/32,000 of the incoming solar radiation -- in other words, we would change the Earth's albedo by 0.003%. Now, given the fact that solar panels are only about 25% efficient, we must multiply by 4. So, ultimately, we change the albedo by 0.012%.
The albedo of Earth fluctuates by much more than 0.012% due to natural causes. Thus, any affect we would have on the solar energy balance at the surface of the Earth would be indistinguishable from natural random variations.
In short, we don't have jack to worry about.