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.

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.

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..