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."

Comments

FP BS!

[schematix]

first post to call bullshit! :: cough ::

Re:FP BS!

[ElBorba]

No, seriously, I don't think you can mod this troll. This "article" is pulled from some sort of promotional flier or something. Not only is there a complete lack of any type of criticism but there's no hint as to what sorts of infrastructure would really be required to implement this "thing". I'm all for supporting the sciences and research and hey, I'm even psyched for the eventual advent of hydrogen or other yet unnamed types of personal transportation, but this piece makes it sound like a done deal when there's nothing at all in the article to make any judgement about...
 
...other than the fact that the fuel coil will be 3 TIMES THE WEIGHT OF A CONVENTIONAL PETROL TANK.

Re:FP BS!

[yog]

The problem with "solutions" like this H2-from-Mg idea is that it doesn't solve the real problem, which is cars. We badly need alternatives to private automobiles in the U.S. for both energy reasons and for safety. 37,000 people dying a year in automobile accidents in the U.S. alone is ridiculous. If the U.S. went to war over 3,000 deaths in 2001 then surely it can get more worked up over the ongoing slaughter on the roads (albeit largely alcohol-induced).

Take some of that aluminum and magnesium and make bicycles out of it. Paint stripes on all the regular city thoroughfares reserving space for bike lanes. Give people health insurance discounts for riding bikes, and give them secure, covered spots to park at work. Let them carry bikes on public buses and trains.

Speaking of buses and trains, put hundreds of billions of $ into public transportation and solar power panels on all public buildings rather than defending some oil fields in some miserable patch of desert in the middle east.

I see these online discussions about how many years it would take to make a hybrid's cost pay for itself. I suggest taxing the heck out of gas guzzler cars and *make* the fuel efficient versions worthwhile. It's crazy that you have to pay a $3000 surcharge for a hybrid electric vehicle, for example, over a regular gas guzzler that is literally funding war and terrorism in the Middle East.

Example of moving the pollution elsewhere

[Futurepower(R)]

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.

Re:Example of moving the pollution elsewhere

[shmlco]

Not to mention that, according to TFA, each "coil" lasts about as long as a normal tank of gas. As such, I still have to build an entire refining, distribution, refueling, and recycling network from scratch. In which case the summary is wrong, "The system solves all of the obstacles associated with the manufacturing, transporting and storing of hydrogen to be used in cars."

Sounds like there's still an obstacle or three in the way...

Re:Example of moving the pollution elsewhere

[shmlco]

You're being very reasonable here, but I think you need to go back to the article as there's a small detail lurking there that you seem to have missed. We're talking about boxes three times the weight (220 pounds) of an equivalent tank of gas. As such, I don't see a gas station attendent or driver casually unloading a standard delivery truck full of "gas".

From TFA, "Refuelling the car based on this technology will also be remarkably simple. The vehicle will contain a mechanism for rolling the metal wire into a coil during the process of fuelling and the spent metal oxide, which was produced in the previous phase, will be collected from the car by vacuum suction."

So, functionally, we need to load a "pump" with several tons of metal wire, and then suck the waste back out again for disposal.

That being the case, I suspect the infrastructure requirements in terms of loading, transportation, unloading, fueling, and recovery might be a bit more involved than you, or the author or the article, make them out to be.

"Remarkably simple," indeed.

Sounds like BS

[pinkocommie]

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?

Where do Slashdot editors come from?

[Ancil]

The Hydrogen car Engineuity is working on will use metals such as Magnesium or Aluminum which will come in the form of a long coil.

Is there any posibility we could send the entire slashdot editorial board to a class called "Thermodynamics 101"?

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..

Let's do some math...

[Darth Cow]

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.

"Emission free", my ass!

[Kymermosst]

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!

Metal-Air batteries

[klic]

There are already systems that convert metals into oxides, producing power. They are called batteries. They are heavy, because metal atoms are a lot more massive for a lot less energy per reaction than hydrocarbon fuels.

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.