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."
first post to call bullshit! :: cough ::
Scott
From the article referenced by the Slashdot story: "The metal atoms will bond to the Oxygen from the water, creating metal oxide. As a result, the Hydrogen molecules are free, and will be sent into the engine alongside the steam."
This is just an example of moving the pollution elsewhere. The metal must be refined, at great cost to the environment. Then it is oxidized in a "pollution free" car.
This seems way too good to be true. Anybody with some credible knowledge care to debunk it?
Reading the article it says the way it works is by superheating water and using a metal catalyst to seperate H2 and O using the super heated steam and hydrogen to fuel the car. The problem not mentioned at all in the article is where does the super heated water come from?
Pretend you are in Minneapolis, 5 am, 20 below fahrenheit, the sun won't rise for at least two more hours. It is rush hour. All the cars are putting out steam, which billows white in the frigid air. Ice coats your rear bumper and the streets, an ice fog reduces visibility to a car length or so.
Actually, a lot of Hydrogen Economy True Believers need to enroll in that same class. Nothing against hydrogen per se, but half the nation seems to think of it as an energy source, which of course it isn't..
This just in, perpetual motion machine developed as well and the laws of thermodynamics are no longer safe in this house.
Seriously though, the title in the article and the summary is misleading. The car isn't making it's own fuel. There's still a fuel station, it's just using a novel idea (I'm guessing) at producing hydrogen. I'm not sure how effective it is but it's a pretty neat trick, and if all the things the article says (which must be taken with a teaspoon of salt) come true, this could be a real breakthrough (chances are it comes 10 years too late with half the performance.)
As far as I can see, you would still need to refuel the car. Except this time, instead of oil based gasoline you will be using metal coil made from light metals like magnesium and aluminum. So although the article says the cost of running this car would be the same as today's gasoline-based cars I somehow suspect that those estimates will rise if it's ever used on a global scale...
100kg of aluminum costs around $200 at ~$2/kg. Looking at the graph on this page for Aluminum manufacturing costs, about 75% of the cost is raw materials and supplies (mostly the aluminum). So that's at least $50 net to fill up your "tank" assuming perfect effeciency in converting that aluminum.
Neglecting the costs of taking the recycled aluminum oxide out of your car and turning it back into Al rods, the maintaince costs for the fuel station, infrastructure costs to build all this, and so forth. Shipping costs will of course astronomically climb since metal can only be transfered in by train, truck or ship unlike cheap pipelines and is also no longer an easily moveable liquid. Nevermind the cost of your aluminum powered car itself, or the engineering difficulties inherent in moving a 100kg metal coil into your engine, this "upgrade" is already going to break the bank.
I think I'll leave the hydrogen production outside of the vehicle, thank you. Nice try, but no dice.
And it's completely emission free.
Ah, so the processes for gaining the aluminum and magnesium are completely green! The mining does no damage, getting the the metals out of the ore releases no pollutants and the process takes no nasty chemicals or fuel.
What a revolution!
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Then again if sodium was cheap and common this type of system would have been in every home years ago.
Completely ignoring the fact that Sodium in its pure state is highly explosive when any piece that's even relatively small touches any water, and the fact that the possible quantity and extent of the lawsuits that it would bring the first time a kid decided to crack open one of those balls of Sodium to find out what it "tasted like," yes, it would have been in every home years ago.
That said, this is a bass-ackwards way to do something that was done better at Livermore perhaps 30 years ago ( you can find a reference in the old "Access to Energy" newsletter by Petr Beckmann, if any of those are online ). Some Lawrence Livermore scientists developed a metal-air battery, which produced electricity directly from the reaction of the metal (aluminum or zinc plates, IIRC) with air via some catalytic electrode system. Like the Israeli system, you ended up with powdered metal oxide. Unlike the Israeli indirect-combustion system, the metal-air battery efficiencies were high and direct drive electrical power was produced, so you could control power to the wheels, do regenerative braking, etc. Since the metal-air battery produces electricity directly, the energy efficiency is probably 4X to 5X better than a hydrogen generator feeding a heat engine. With the metal-air battery you also can get the additional efficiency of a hybrid-type vehicle, so my guess is that you have 10X to 20X more energy efficiency than the Israeli Metal / Hydrogen / Internal Combustion / Mechanical Linkage system.
The Livermore engineers did not use magnesium, or sodium, or lithium, or other light metals. These metals pack higher energy density than aluminum. They also easy to ignite and burn very easily, with flames that are impossible to put out in air (sodium even burns in water). Yes, hydrogen burns faster (Hindenburg! Hindenburg! Oooooh scary!). But hydrogen burns UP, while burning metal just stays around and does a thermite/napalm number on you and your car. A magnesium slab in a car is NOT safer than a hydrogen tank in a car.
Even with the much better efficiency, Air-Metal batteries are not practical. It takes far too much energy to refine the metal, and handling metal and debris, cleaning the system, etc. are all far too much work. Now divide the value by 20, and wonder what those Israelis are smoking ...
P.S. Some researchers claim that the Hindenburg caught fire because of the ignition of the highly volatile doped fabric, which in turn set fire to the metal in the dirigible frame. The hot hydrogen vented upwards, remember, heating up the air far above the Hindenburg, but not affecting the passengers underneath. They got roasted by the burning dirigible body.
Keith Lofstrom server-sky.com
Well, as a member of the American public, I can say for sure that I certainly would (if it were for real, which it looks like it isn't). My husband has a long commute to work, none of his co-workers live near us so there can't be a car pool, and the high gas prices are really hurting us financially. We have to spend more than three times to pay for one week's gas than we did two years ago, and that's just for the minimum necessary. There are a lot of ther people we know who are also hurting financially due to the high price of gas. Not all Americans are well-to-do folks talking on their cell phones while driving their SUVs; some are still poor, hard-working people.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
I'm GUESSING that using that metric, this car will probably be in the "more than $20/gal equivalent" range, sorta like hydrogen cars are today.
The only thing that could possibly save this (and the hydrogen boondoggle) is the development of nuclear power plants that are an order of magnitude cheaper than they are today. That is possible, but until that can be implemented, this is all nonsense.
In conclusion, I'm glad that they solved all those problems, they just haven't solved the problem of making it anywhere near being economically viable.
If money is no object there are so many problems you can solve!
On another topic, Slashdot needs to have a "bullshit" category for things like this, or the battery life extender sticker. This is just painful.
It would 'work'. That is to say, you would get hydrogen to burn in a conventional engine. But, if you take one step back, look at the real process. I'll use aluminium as an example, as it is the worst case scenario.
1) Make aluminium from bauxite and electricity and stuff. Lots of electricity. Really big amounts of electricity.
2) Burn aluminium in water, releasing hydrogen, and creating aluminium oxide/hydroxide.
3) Burn hydrogen in a normal internal combustion engine, max efficiency 40%, say.
Unless you have any idea of how aluminium is being produced of course.