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

[officepotato]

For someone that lives in a tightly-knit community, and only drives a few miles to work and school each day, this seems like it could really be a "free fuel" solution though. Expecially with the switchable conventional gas system for longer trips.

Re:It's near performance already

[carlos_benj]

Our average day here in the Phoenix area is a little better than the average elsewhere. Still not enough to make this practical for now. If this is the same guy I talked to a few years ago, he's building a hydrogen "refinery" and they're looking into all kinds of ways of generating hydrogen for automotive use.

He had a hard time getting his truck to pass emissions at first since the exhaust was so much cleaner than the air around the test station. The machine just said he registered "off the scale". Finally got a waiver from the state.

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

[justanyone]

Bicycles are NOT cleaner. WARNING: SATIRE ALERT! SATIRE ALERT!

The power from bicycles comes from humans eating food and producing poop. The food production takes an unbelievably large amount of energy intensive fossil fuel burning machinery to produce, and quite a bit of value-add from packaging, marketing, etc. (grin).

Likewise, the 'CLEAN ENERGY' aspect of this ignores POOP. Humans that bicycle would use more energy and create more Poop. This would in turn create proportionately more feces, which would have to be processed in an energy intensive sewage treatment plant.

Manufacturing the bicycles, paving for the roads suitably, etc. is very inefficient and Anti-Green (shall we say RED?). The most GREEN thing we can do is stop emitting greenhouse gasses ("farts"), poop ("feces"), and consuming valuable resources by eating things. I recommend all humans should hold their breath until they die and save the planet.

SATIRE ALERT! The above is Satire. Any correspondence between this and a valid opinion would be in the direct opposite direction, ideologically speaking.

Re:It's near performance already

[AKAImBatman]

No matter how many ways I try to parse your post, you're not making any sense. Allow me to explain:

The energy used by the car for propulsion is the energy already stored in the water.

No, it's stored in the hydrogen. The water is "pre-burned" hydrogen and oxygen. At a perfect conversion rate, it takes exactly as much energy to convert water to hydrogen and oxygen as you get from making hydrogen and oxygen into water.

In other words, you add energy to the system and it gets stored in a fuel form. The energy doesn't already exist in the system.

The energy from the solar panels is not the limiting factor.

Eh? Let's say we get 200 watts/m^2 of sunlight. The solar panels are only going to be ~20% efficient. That brings us down to 40 watts of energy. The electrolyzer is probably about 50% efficient, bringing our final storage rate to ~20 joules per second. That works out to about 72 kilojoules per hour. Which at a "mere" 2kw of constant use would provide exactly 36 seconds of driving time. (Actually less due to further inefficiencies.)

They'd actually get more power by storing the solar power in batteries, then using an electric drive. The only trick is that batteries tend not to be as energy dense as hydrogen.

Now, it might be true that even at perfect efficiency, you'll never get enough hydrogen from the water using solar power, but that's a different calculation that what you're doing.

What calculation am I doing? Energy is energy, and power is power. You've only got so much of it in a system, so you have to make the most of it.

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

[Xaroth]

I recommend all humans should hold their breath until they die and save the planet.

I could not agree more! Save the planet! Kill yourself!

http://www.churchofeuthanasia.org/

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.

Text of project description page

[greg_barton]

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.

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.

Hydrogen to Methane Converter?

[justanyone]

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?

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.

No performance comparison to batteries

[Engineer-Poet]

And it makes you wonder. When you've got a very limited amount of power input, you want to get it to your load (the axle) as efficiently as possible. Is electrolysis and an internal-combustion engine even remotely competitive with batteries for that purpose?

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.

Well...

[BigChigger]

it still uses water. That's as scarce as gas in Arizona.

BC

Dying isn't green

[nathan s]

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.:-)

Ok, It's Satire, But..

[ackthpt]

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.

Re:Ok, It's Satire, But..

[hankwang]

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.

At that kind of speed (pretty impressive, unless you're doing that in a flock), your muscles deliver 200 W to the bicycle, which is about 800 W in terms of burned food. For those 100 miles, that is 14 MJ, equivalent to 0.9 kg carbohydrates, or 0.4 kg of fat/oil. A normal daily consumption for an inactive adult male is around 10 MJ. I strongly doubt that your inefficient metabolism is converting 14 MJ per non-weekend day into heat. It is more likely that you use your body fat (a couple of kg) and the glycogen storage in the muscles and liver (up to 700 g carbohydrates for a trained athlete). The rest of the week you replenish your fuel stock.

My experience is that I feel too tired to be hungry after a single day of cycling, which seems to agree with your observation. However, during a cycling holiday (3 weeks, 5-7 h per day) I surely eat massive amounts.

Anyway, fat and gasoline have about the same energy content, so a fast cyclist does 400 km per liter (1000 miles per gallon). Which is quite efficient compared to a car.

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!