Slashdot Mirror
The Car That Makes Its Own Fuel
Spy der Mann writes "A unique system that can produce Hydrogen inside a car using common metals such as Magnesium and Aluminum was recently developed by an Israeli company. The system solves all of the obstacles associated with the manufacturing, transporting and storing of hydrogen to be used in cars. And it's completely emission free."
In all seriousness, I wish them success. It remains to be seen whether they can create an efficient system for collecting the corroded/expended metal. How often do you see puddles of leaked material under a car? No mention of how much "metal oxide" this venicle produces, but I cannot imagine it's something we want leaked onto the ground.
I'd put my money on the H2N-Gen, but then again that guy's being sued for patent infringment.
The superheated water and H2 come from the magnesium metal reacting with water. The metal oxidizes, gives off heat, and releases the hydrogen part of the water. However, there's still the problem of obtaining the metal in the first place.
Spokesbossy for ominous cow herds everywhere.
Yes, you can get hydrogen out of acids by combining them with metals like aluminium or magnesium -- or hell, even sodium with water. But the cost of refining these metals in the first place is very high.
For instance, aluminium is produced by electrolysis: the ore is dissolved in cryolite, and the pure metal produced by passing an electric current through it. (Details)
There's a number of aluminium smelters in Australia (my home country); at least one of these has its own dedicated power plant, burning brown coal to produce its electricity.
So no, it's not "making its own fuel". The fuel is the refined metal and the acids (or water) that are combined with them to make the hydrogen gas. The fact that burning the hydrogen is what generates the useful energy is irrelevant to this point. The pollution is shifted to wherever the power to make the metals is produced.
When it comes to energy, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
I don't get it... What does a built in vacuuem have to do with fuel?
remove the used magnesium oxide. Essentially, the waste is contained in the car instead of spewed out, and I think there is a use for magnesium oxide. Also they need to change the water. Since they have to take stuff out of the tank, refueling is a bit more complicated.
One thing I've learned over the years: Slashdot editors aren't much interested in science. The publish a lot of pseudo-science articles, or nonsense science articles like this one.
The issue here is that the process works, but it is very expensive in energy, because the metal oxide must be refined.
Anyhow, there is nothing new in the referenced article. The fact that it is possible to produce hydrogen using reactive metals has been known since perhaps 1860, maybe much earlier.
If I remember correctly, there was an explosion in Antoine Laurent Lavoisier's lab caused by hydrogen released by heating with metal. Mr. Lavoisier died in 1794, and not from the explosion.
Read about magnesium on wikipedia. It's a very reactive metal. Put it this way - you don't want to have a pile of magnesium shavings sitting around your house. If it catches fire, there's no way of putting it out. It can 'burn' without oxygen, in a pure nitrogen atmosphere.
Spokesbossy for ominous cow herds everywhere.
The Weizzmann Institute (from TFA) doesn't list it on their Press Release page
They did figure out how to get hydrogen using solar energy, but that was announced back in April.
I nominate the entire DOE Handbooks, not only for the /. editors but for the most part of /.ers overall, myself included. DOE-HDBK-1012/1-92 will cover Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer, and Fluid Flow. The math and science DOE Handbooks are a great free, downloadable resource. The basics of Physics, Chemistry, Electricity, Materials science, Reactor science and attendant math are all covered.
The DOE Handbooks are a rich resource that cover every aspect of implementing and running an organization. The books cover disputes, roundtables, the list is very nearly all encompassing.
Nothing speaks to independence like your own in house nuclear reactor and the DOE Handbooks guide you through nearly every step of the way.
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Cohen
There is currently not a distribution system for delivery of gaseous fuels direct to consumers at the scale required to power our cars. There are some small-scale delivery systems (propane, for example) but those still require a trained handler and other special steps -- you typically can't pump your own propane, propane needs to be stored outdoors in a ventilated cabinet, etc. And the infrastructure for propane is small: a couple hundred gallons per homeowner per winter up here where it's cold, maybe a few tanks for cooking in the summer, that's it. There aren't nearly enough trucks and tanks required to provide fuel for all vehicles if they were suddenly converted to propane.
Even if the safety issues were handled technologically, neither propane nor natural gas are ready for "the final mile". Most homeowners don't have an existing gas "tap" where they can hook a hose up to their car, so they'd require new plumbing. For that matter, home delivery of natural gas is pretty much restricted to metro areas in northern states: it's not currently available in the far south or in rural areas. To make it available everywhere else would require a huge investment in pipes.
Then there's the problem with the storage of hydrogen or any gaseous fuel. For there to be enough energy to power a vehicle for any useful distance, a fairly large quantity of it needs to be highly compressed. Where do you put a large pressure vessel in a car so that if it's in an accident it has the lowest risk of rupturing? If you've ever seen even a small tank of high pressure gas rupture, you'll realize some of the danger. Now, make that gas highly flammable, and you'll be even more unhappy.
The idea of a magnesium coil as a fuel source is a good one. It could distributed in user-replaceable reusable metal boxes, each containing a humanly-portable 20kg of fuel, and having room for an equal amount of oxidized waste. Assuming a well-designed non-sparking container it would require no special handling, and would be remarkably inert. It would also be quite safe in most accidents, even those involving the fuel containers themselves.
These boxes can be carried by ordinary trucks. They would not require specialized tankers like propane or even gasoline. Any existing trucking firm could safely handle boxes of this product as is. And you could buy and sell them anywhere, not just fuel stations: a grocery store, discounter, convenience store, wherever. They would have no foul or toxic smells or hazardous liquids, and would run the same risk of accidental ignition as any other flammable metal, which is to say: not a lot. If you've ever tried to ignite magnesium or aluminum, you're probably aware of the amount of heat required to get it to sustain flame.
The part of the story that requires the most handwaving is the "mining" of the fuel. Both aluminium and magnesium are naturally found in the oxidized state (much like the spent fuel from the vehicle itself.) The amount of energy required to refine the metal is immense. Keep in mind that you cannot get something for nothing; that means the energy required to refine it must be higher than the amount of energy retrieved from the metal when it is burned. And that means huge amounts of electrical energy will be needed to produce a fuel stream. With an emphasis on reducing costly oil consumption, with today's technology that would basically mean lots of new nuclear reactors will be required.
Think of the magnesium more like a "rechargeable battery", storing electrical energy in the form of unoxidized metal. It's still going to require energy that comes from somewhere else.
John
Actually the link I submitted was a physorg one. IIRC, physorg doesn't publish BS articles.
:-/
Or am I wrong?
A plant in Troutdale Or. I had done work for in 2001 was leveled.
I have more information on that.
The plant operated with reduced energy costs. They bought excess BPA power wholsale, not retail. This included shutting down operation when surplus power (spring runoff from hydro power, low residentual heating demand, not yet heavy AC season in LA) was in short supply. Even with cheap energy costs, the cost of operation finaly failed to make economic sense.
Sounds like a great way to save energy, reduce alumina to aluminum and then reduce aluminum to alumina.
If anyone thinks aluminum and other metal prices are not related to the rising price of energy, they have not been paying attention.
When gas prices then electric prices go up, so does smeltering costs.. This is not a breakthrough in high fuel prices.
The truth shall set you free!
Man, are you stupid. The entire freaking Sun is filled with metal oxide.
Sorry, there ought to be a Godwin's law about calling people stupid.
My grandmother was G. R. Caughlin (as in Fowler, Caughlin, and Zimmerman-- the authors of s seminal paper on the generation of elements in stars). Some of their figures have been refined by others but the general theories seem to hold. So while I may not be an astrophysicist, I am not entirely unfamiliar with the field either.
Part of the problem with your theory is that metal oxides don't exist in the sun in any way you might think. First, stars are powered by fusion of hydrogen and helium (in terms of alpha capture-- you have the possibility of three helium nuclei fusing to form Carbon12). C12 can then capture another alpha particle (helium nucleus) to form Oxygen. Although I don't really understand the rest of the physics, I gather that many of the heavier elements are generated in the stars through other processes as the star ages. So for the sun, I would expect most of the sun to consist of Hydrogen, Helium, Carbon, and Oxygen.
(Hydrogen is fused into helium, 3 heliums become carbon, carbon + helium becomes oxygen. The Oxygen does not seem to fuse at these temperatures though one wonders about neutron capture.)
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Aluminum doesn't spontaneously oxidize when you leave it out in a 21% oxygen atmosphere, does it?
Actually, it does. In all likelihood, you've never actually seen pure aluminum, just aluminum oxide. The reason that we can have things such as aluminum foil or aluminum can is that aluminum oxide forms an airtight barrier, preventing the underlying aluminum from further oxidation. Aluminum is exposed when you tear the foil, but it (nearly instantly) oxidises and reforms the protective layer. This becomes an issue in bulk processing of aluminum for powder (for things like paint and some pyrotechnic compositions). If the aluminum is not "burped" in the process of breaking down the particles, the powder will absorb all of the oxygen in the container, and the newly exposed surface area will cease to oxidise. When the lid id opened, "poof!" all of the unoxidised Al is suddenly exposed to a supply of O2, and a fast, exothermic reaction takes place. Being a highly reactive metal in a finely powdered state, this is BAD, but I digress...
That's right, I read at +2 and post at +1. Not even I care what I have to say.
Seconded.
It has emissions and of a very ugly kind. True, Al will happily give hydrogen when whacked with a hyperheated steam. It is the well known firefighters rule of "never try to extinguish burning Aluminium with water".
There is a problem though - under controlled condition the reaction results in colloidal Alx(OH)y/AlxOy suspension which is a right mess. Its mechanical properies are all over the place so you cannot filter it, separate it or deal with it by any reasonable means. So the idea is a BS for most applications.
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Only up to Iron. After that they're all made in supernovae, as iron fusion is endothermic.
And the First Post that didn't deserve to be moderated OT too.
The car, contrary to the Slashdot editor letting this one through when they shouldn't have in its posted form does not make its own fuel. It runs on water and aluminum or magnesium.
Now if it mined those elements and refined them in the process and still had a postive energy output then yes, the article summary would have been accurate.
It doesn't. It's not!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Using metals as a fuel source is the cover article on the current New Scientist:
Metal: The fuel of the future
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18825221.10
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
The main bullshit of the article boils down to this sentence:
The fuel, i.e. aluminium or magnesium, is neither inexpensive nor abundant, in fact Al and Mg are completely nonexistant in nature in their unbound form. Since pure Al and Mg are so reactive, they don't last long in nature, and must be produced by electrolysis in liquid-metal, power-intensive plants. There's a reason why bike frames in aluminium are more expensive than ones in steel.
Since the article says also that the car "... needs a metal coil three-times heavier than an equivalent petrol tank.", one wonders why in the world we should not then use simple pressurised hydrogen-gas tanks then.
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It works too. It was used by the Nazis to produce hydrazine for a rocket propelled plane.
That counts as irony.
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Here is the link to the Article the Parent Submitted. Note that at the bottom of the page, it says that the posted was not the original article, and links to the original - which was the one that the Slashdot editor used.
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The photo of the car on the web site suggests this technology is ready to go. IMHO it has a LONG way to go.
That car is actually a Ford concept car it is the Shelby GR-1.
"I know you can get a LOT of hydrogen out of a little water"
.11 g of hydrogen. By comparison, though, 1 gram of methane (natural gas) yields .25 g of hydrogen, ethanol (sweet sweet alcohol) yields .13g of hydrogen, and gasoline will give on average .16 g of hydrogen. So really, water is not all that efficient if you want hydrogen. Overall, this implementation of a hydrogen vehicle doesn't seem that workable, especially compared to others I've seen.
Not really. 1 gram of water will yield
a) yes Al takes a lot of energy to make. we would call this a "high energy density" material. This is a good thing, not a bad thing.
It would be a good thing if it were true. The massive ammounts of energy used to reduce bauxite are mostly lost as waste heat. If they were actually stored in the material, this might be an efficient system to transport energy.
Water will add to the weight, yes. I don't know all the physics, but in general I know you can get a LOT of hydrogen out of a little water.
Well, I do know the physics involved. No, you can't get "a LOT" of hydrogen from water. Water is only 2/18 hydrogen by weight. So you only get 111 grams H2 per kg H2O. That's elementary chemistry. The heat of combustion of H2 is about 141 MJ/kg (IIRC), and the heat of combustion of gasoline is about 44 MJ/kg. But if you're only getting 11% H2 from water, then the effective heat of combustion from the products of electrolysis is about 16 MJ/kg of H2O. Therefore, even neglecting the weight of the metal, this is not a very energy dense system as you claim it to be.
There so much wrong with the rest of your post, but I don't feel like addressing it. The FP had it right: this is bullshit.
You're very right when it comes to hydrogen carrying capacity. You also need to haul around 24g Mg to make 2g H2, or 27g Al/3g H2. That's a big difference, though volumetrically may be competitive compared to the very low density of liquid H2 (0.13 g/cm3), or NiMH/Pt/Pd type hydrogen storage that achieves the same volumetric density, though at much higher weight. /4g H2, but reactivity is the worst, plus, unlike any of the other stuff up to carbon, carbon oxides are gaseous and emittable. Methane is also gaseous, problematic to carry just like hydrogen gas was. As far as solids go, lithium borohydride has probably the highest hydrogen carrying capacity in a solid form that results in solid waste lithium borate, though it's expensive to make, and to recycle the lithium/boron back to the hydride.
Lithium you'd need 7g Li/1g H2, beryllium(toxic) 9g Be/2g H2, and Boron 11g B/3g H2(though spontaneous reactivy is worse, so there is a reason why organic electrolyte lithium ion batteries use lithium.) Guess what? As you say it, carbon you need 12g
The obvious question with this metal solution is what do you do with your metal oxide? Dump it out on the asphalt behind you? Or haul it around with you? You certainly wouldn't be able to dump lithium borate, because it's so expensive, but if we're at dumping, you might burn metallic silicon (cheap, metallurgic grade purity prepared by non-carbon routes) to make quartz which is sand, which should be OK to dump behind you. You need 28g Si/4gH2, compared to 12g C, but the energy density of Si, on a weight basis is still close to that of C, because the Silicon oxide formation releases more heat than carbon dioxide formation, on a molar basis. Problem with silicon is that it's unreactive (also meaning that it's very safe,) and barely anything bites it at room temperature, while at high temperatures (molten silicates) your engine parts would wear out. (If these engine chambers are cheap, such as graphite molds, you might have a cheap consumable engine cavity that burns silicon, somehow harvests the energy, then recycle your whole engine cavity.) So anyway, dumping silicon dioxide would create a mess on the roads, and probably cause silicosis in all the drivers, so solid effluents from your car would suck. Even a carbon dioxide effluent is preferable to silicon dioxide, but hydrogen oxide is always the most preferable.
Probably the best solution with such metals is to keep the "effluent" with you and haul it around, and exchange it at the nearest gas station. Lithium/boron stuff would still be expensive, would need recycling, but aluminium oxide capsules that you can just toss in the garbage would probably be more cost effective, even given the 27g Al/11g B ratio, because aluminum is more abundant, nontoxic, other than some correlation with the aluminum fluoride in it that may be causing Alzheimer's. As far as this Alzheimer's threat goes, there is an expensive nonfluoride aluminum production (carbochlorination), by the Alcoa/Toth aluminum company, that can even process clays into aluminum, silicon, etc, but nobody has bothered commercially so far to recylce the CO from the carbochlorination back to C and O2 via zirconia electrolysis, and even fluoride aluminum production these days releases mole per mole stoichiometric quantities of carbon, so you might as well just burn gasoline instead of aluminum, (or even silicon, pidgeon process magnesium. In fluoride/cryolite aluminum production they are coming up with new anodes (titanium diboride instead of graphite) that will require more electrical energy and be more expensive compared to cheap coal, but generate direct oxygen instead of carbon dioxide. The problem is that burning coal/carbon to carbon dioxide is the cheapest thing on the planet, replacing that with expensive electricity (hydro, nuclear, solar, wind,) well, it's just not cost competitive these days without some government push, either via regulations or via tax credits.
Still, you waste a lot of available energy just converting the metal