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

Re:FP BS!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're working for big oil, aren't you?

Re:/. editors played video games in science class.

[Max Romantschuk]

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.

This is the very kind of article that belongs on Slashdot. The whole point of posting something like this is having it taken apart and scrutinized by the Slashdot community.

How much fun would an article be was bullet proof? There would be nothing to say about it.

Translation into chemistry:

[william_w_bush]

This is a horrible tfa for a simple concept: Instead of producing the H2 through electro-hydrolysis at a production facility, then trying to distribute it to cars, they simply use the electro-positivity of light metals to produce H2 within the car itself via chemo-hydrolysis, which can then be burned in the engine.

The reason people don't do this now, is that pure light metals are hard to come by, and are often difficult to handle. Sodium and lithium are excellent light metals which are too expensive to refine as pure metals to make effective fuel supplies. Their process likely uses incomplete oxidation with the weaker, but cheaper metals magnesium and aluminum, with some form of reaction catalyzer to increase the rate of H2 production.

A. Are Mg and Al cheaper /kCal than petroleum based fuels?

B. Toxicity vs. Petroleum, is the "goo" produced /kCal more toxic than that of Petroleum. Cheaper to handle? Since you have to carry it around instead of throw it into atmo you can't use much fuel to go places.

C. What is the magic catalyst?

This whole thing seems like a japanese or european concept car, with maybe 30-50hp and more a replacement for an electric car than any competitor to current models, at least not in America.

Re:FP BS!

[Technician]

.other than the fact that the fuel coil will be 3 TIMES THE WEIGHT OF A CONVENTIONAL PETROL TANK.

Anybody want to venture the supply problems of supplying about 100 Lbs of magnesium wire per commuter per week. The article seems to claim it won't cost more than petrol. Petrol is delivered by pipeline or tanker. Pumps and hoses won't deliver the wire. In reality, is there enough of this metal to support a fuel infrastructure?

what kind?

[Quadraginta]

The entire freaking Sun is filled with metal oxide.

It is? Which metal oxide?

Re:FP BS!, Al smelters? Not in the USA

[jimmydevice]

Aluminum plants are being demolished at an amazing rate. A plant in Troutdale Or. I had done work for in 2001 was leveled. Likewise most of the existing aluminum plants in the USA have been flattened due to energy costs. Sounds like a great way to save energy, reduce alumina to aluminum and then reduce aluminum to alumina.
I doubt there is enough smelter capacity to supply beer can and airplane part requirements without recycling the metal that is in the system.
BTW: Beer can metal is a top grade alloy. Last I heard, 27 cans/Lb.

Re:Example of moving the pollution elsewhere

[User 956]

A little searching tells me that the popular type of cell used in automotive applications is the PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) type. These seem to peak out at just over 50% efficient. Not bad, but a well build IC engine can get into the upper 40's, so "much more efficient" becomes a point of contention.

Then consider that the PEMFC's output is electricity, which must be put through a motor to drive the vehicle. If we're generous and assume the motor is 90% efficient, you are now on par with a well built ICE powered vehicle...

This says nothing about the cost of the fuel. Even if you could "generate" the fuel yourself, the primary source of power is still fossil fuels. The only difference is the problem isn't in your back yard anymore. To add insult to injury, the best method to produce hydrogen (energy-in versus yield) is reforming of natural gas (methane) - as the home-refueling station in the article does. Guess what? You'd get more energy if you just burned the NG straight and you're still releasing CO2 into the atmosphere from the reforming process. At least they recover some energy for domestic hot water with their system, so it's not a total waste.

Spike in Israeli companies?

[cgenman]

Not to be too pessimistic, but has anyone else detected a spike in BS from Israeli companies? There was the vocal lie detector, the compression algorithm that could compress arbitrary data, unbreakable encryption, etc, etc. Are Israeli companies earning a bad reputation, or is it just a Slashdot filter?

Re:Example of moving the pollution elsewhere

[plover]

Reread my post. Each container would have two sections: one part containing the metal coil, and a collection part for reclaiming the oxides. The two sections would not mix, and I know the oxide would be collected in a powdered state (I had forgotten it would be wet, which would certainly be detrimental to the coiled magnesium if they did mix.)

Your point about structural fires is valid (and no, I don't know how to extinguish a magnesium fire, either. Perhaps a liquid nitrogen spray?) It's possible that these fuel containers would be restricted to "licensed vendors" who would be certified and equipped to handle them. Actually, given the current political climate here in the U.S., it's more than likely that the petroleum lobby would push hard to make service stations be the only licensed handlers.

Re:Where do Slashdot editors come from?

[NoMaster]

Nothing against hydrogen per se, but half the nation seems to think of it as an energy source, which of course it isn't..

And, just to straighten it all out (and make a point ;-), neither is oil. It's just that the time difference between energy input into the carrier/medium, and energy output, is measured in millions of years, not hours/days/weeks/months. And somebody else - Mother Nature - put in all the hard work of converting hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and sunlight into a recoverable energy storage medium.

That is, of course, assuming that the oil industry & apologists are wrong, and there aren't huge colonies of bacteria producing millions of barrels of oil right now under our feet...

Perpetuum mobile or what?

[haraldm]

The article doesn't say a couple of things:

a) The metal industry will need energy to make the wires. Al, for one, uses a hell of a lot of electrical energy to be produced (not sure about Mg). Where does the electrical energy come from? Some more nuclear power plants? Thank you. (1)

b) What about the infrastructure needed to carry the wires along? More trucks on the road? Powered by what? In Europe: Thank you.

c) How much water is needed to make enough Hydrogen to get the power of a conventional car? Has this amount of water been added to the additional weight and size of the car? Even if the weight of the coil does not affect the performance of the car, the coil and the water will add to the weight, and hence reduce the overall efficiency.

d) What is the efficiency behind the in-car process?

e) What overall ecologic efficiency can be reached, as compared to other technologies?

I admit the metal industry and the large energy corporations may not be that interested in answering all these questions. The photo of the car on the web site suggests this technology is ready to go. IMHO it has a LONG way to go.

OK, let's move on.

(1) And an excellent idea for the developing countries as well, where the track record of safe nuclear power plants is that long.

Re:Perpetuum mobile or what?

[v1]

Lets just address these in order.

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 means we can put more energy in a smaller (or lighter) package. Gasoline is not incredbily energy-dense. One way or another you have to put energy into the process of creating fuel. The only difference with petrolium is the energy has already been put in, and it just needs to be processed for us to use easily. Since you have to put energy into it, a source like nuclear power actually makes a great deal of sense. It's highly renewable, low pollution, and provides a very large amount of energy.

b) um, the trucks can be wire-powered too, y'know. It'd be kinda silly for them NOT to be wire powered.

c) 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. A system like this may require occasional refilling. On a guess I'd say you might need to tank up on water every 100 miles or so. The water is after all the source of your hydrogen, the wire is the source of the energy. This also greatly increases the safety of the vehicle, because there is no need for a very high pressure hydrogen tank, and the associated hazards of refilling and transportation of hydrogen.

d) As for efficiency, there is always heat. Since the system uses heat to crack the water, it's not going to be too far off in efficiency from a regular car. It actually may be less efficient, since there are two heat losses - you have to burn the hydrogen after all, and that too releases heat. This may not matter as much since the fuel source is more easily renewable.

e) it's an interesting system when you examine it. You are using a wire to generate heat, to turn water into oxygen and hydrogen, and then BURNING that hydrogen (presumably with the oxygen you make, to improve efficiency) and that actually gets you... water. I suppose technically it may not need water refils because of this. But then if you look at that, you've come full circle. The only addition has been the wire being turned into physical motion. It's too bad they need to go through the water-to hydrogen-to water conversion but it provides a buffer that allows for fast accelleration etc. Considering the zero emissions and loss of reliance on fossil fuels, it sounds like a very good move, environmentally.

Re:Perpetuum mobile or what?

[MythoBeast]

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.

Actually, this is true. Thermite is a substance that burns at around 5000 degrees, and is capable of welding metal plates and destroying metal machinery. I've always wanted to see someone put a thermite grenade on top of one of those really big soda machines and watch it explode.

Thermite is a mixture of aluminum shavings and rust. The heat is produced by the oxidation of the aluminum as oxygen is transfered from the rust. There's a car in the St. Louis Science Center that is entirely powered from that reaction. It's an experimental thing and I've never heard about why it wasn't practical, but I know it works.

Haraldm is, in fact, correct in that they're just moving the energy production back to a central power plant, and the efficiency of the process is in question. Until they figure out how to turn bauxite into aluminum in solar furnaces, I'd say that this solution is not terribly effectual.

In response to the "where do they get the water?" comment, distilleries figured out how to condense fluids from gasses centuries ago. Properly designed heat exchangers and condenser coils should notably limit the loss in that direction.

All things said and done, either this isn't a complete idea, or they're hiding the rest of it because they think they're clever. It's certainly not a NEW idea, it's just feeding off the hype of "hydrogen fuel!", and propogating because people don't understand the thermodynamics of the process.

Re:Perpetuum mobile or what?

[cloudmaster]

Why would you get a 'Vette when you could get a CTS-V (or even a "regular" STS) for similar money? You're still able to get .90G and a 4.8s 0-60 on the factory rolling stock, you've got a 'Vette underneath you (watch them being built while you tour the Corvette plant), and you get something where "fit and finish" or "I stopped at the store on the way home and bought more than just a gallon of milk" can be mentioned in a description which doesn't also involve [possibly stifled] laughter. And no one expects to have their ass handed to them by "Grandpa in his Caddy"... :)

Then there's that thing where 'Vette people frequently tend to be mostly pompous asses who are more concerned with preserving their "future classic" and telling people how expensive their car was rather than really enjoying the drive.

Dr Horvath I presume?

[dbIII]

There was a con a few years back involving a car that ran on water to produce hydrogen - using a method so simple that any technical type could apparantly have stolen the idea themselves and made millions if they got a close look at the machine. One enterprising head of a school of Chemical Engineering walked up to the rope barrier, dropped to the dirt, and spotted the easily available commercial hydrogen gas bottle strapped underneath that was presumably powering the thing instead of water.

We are in an age of confidence tricksters and in many places led by those who rely on inner circles and are thus easily tricked by such types - so unless some details are available and it can be reproduced elsewhere by disinterested parties it is safest to assume it is just another confidence trick.

Re:Bollocks.

[jazman]

> The pollution is shifted to wherever the power to make the metals is produced.

True. But how does it compare with zillions of cars worldwide being started in the morning on full choke? If Al/Mg/Zn/whatever can be produced at a power plant that runs continuously at peak efficiency, then ok it's still polluting but it's better than what we currently have.

One enormous benefit of this approach is that the raw materials are completely recycled. Burn oil, you have no oil left. Convert Mg to MgO and back again and you still have your original Mg.

A completely pollution free solution this is not. But it's an improvement, no?

Re:FP BS!

[senatorpjt]

I deal with organoaluminum reactions all the time, which produce aluminum hydroxides on workup. The colloidal aluminum hydroxide sludge can be treated with sodium hydroxide to convert it to a filterable consistency.

In fact, I think that lithium aluminum hydride (and various other light metal hydrides) has been mentioned as a possible hydrogen storage source. I don't know anything more about it than it's been mentioned (specifically, how they plan to regenerate it, LAH isn't exactly cheap)

Low-cost sodium from equatorial coastlines

[Morgaine]

or hell, even sodium with water. But the cost of refining these metals in the first place is very high.

There are many places in the world where intense sunlight is available pretty much every day, all year round, and which also possess a coastline. Many countries already run water or salt extraction plants in such locations. (I've seen one myself.)

In principle, such sites can provide an inexhaustable supply of sodium from salt-water, and a "free" source of energy from the sun to power the extraction. (And salt-free water as a byproduct is often highly valuable too.)

So, what you say needn't be true in the general case. What's missing though is the right combination of technologies to harness this, especially a sodium-based fuel technology. However, despite saying that, I think that all such fuel-based ideas miss the point.

If solar energy is free in the sense of supply cost, then forget the intermediate fuels and just store electricity directly. We "simply" need better batteries, or indeed flywheels or other energy storage mechanisms. That's the future, in my opinion, whereas transporting physical fuels is not.

Re:Example of moving the pollution elsewhere

[InvalidError]

Who says one would have to swap spools?

Just pull the wire from the feed, push it through your car's input and start the winder. If the feed is hose-like and the input is tube-like with the hose's nozzle fitting in it, the feeding process can be completely automated to have a very gasoline-like overall feel. The nozzle/hose could also have a vacuum pump to collect expended fuel and top off the water tank.

As others have said though, processing Mg and Al to locally generate H2 and O2 is pretty energy-intensive so it makes little to no sense unless there is excess hydro+wind+solar (clean) potential.

Re:Big deal.

[Gadgetfreak]

Actually, it's not usually you that makes the methane, it's the bacteria that took up residence inside feasting on what your body didn't finish breaking down. Which is all fine and normal, but raises the question of why more research isn't done into using bacteria to produce useful fuel. Particularly if you used something like solar energy to provide the bacteria with warmth. IANA biologist, but I think it's something to look into, at least.

Re:Example of moving the pollution elsewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny thing is, the automobile was seen as a solution to polution caused by the above mentioned 'self replicating transportation device' in densely populated areas.

what about refueling?

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the questions of chemistry have been discussed, but how about a simple problem. How the hell do you refill it with a 220 lb coil of Al wire. Is my wife gonna push a 220 lb piece of Al into the trunk? Or will all the "aluminum stations" have big burly dudes to do it for you. Also they mentioned little need for changing infrastructre. Thats a piece of bull$#!^ if I ever heard one. Lets rip out all the gas stations and put in places to refuel Aluminum metal. And nevermind the increased capacity needed to mine and extract the ore. If anyone gives money to these idiots, well , a fool and his money are easily parted.

Already been done - but they killed it

[Phil Karn]

The really sad thing about articles like this is that they're written by and for people who don't know that we already had a commercially available, hydrogen powered car that really worked. It produced its own hydrogen on-board from an external electrical power supply and stored it in a compact solid form. As the car was driven, the oxidized hydrogen (i.e., water) was kept on board so it could later be recycled back into hydrogen with more external electrical energy.

Not only did this avoid the need for a massive hydrogen production and delivery infrastructure in favor of an electrical supply grid that already exists, but the overall end-to-end energy efficiency of the process was vastly greater than the proposed "hydrogen economy" can ever be.

The car in question was the GM Gen 2 EV1 with nickel metal/hydride batteries. I drove one every day from 2000-2003, when GM pulled them all off the road and sent them to the crusher even though everyone who had one would have gladly continued to pay real money to drive them.

The hydrogen-powered car is pure hype. In every respect (cost, range, energy efficiency) it is inferior to the battery EVs that could be had now. So why have the automakers pushed the hydrogen fuel cell so much? Simple. California had a mandate on the books that 2% of cars in the 2002 model year would be zero emission (that mandate had already been delayed from 1997). Automakers like GM, as well as the oil companies, loathed that mandate, but they couldn't say so right out loud. So to a gullible public they dangled the promise of "something even better" -- hydrogen -- at some indeterminate time in the future in exchange for killing the mandate that was here and now. And sadly, they succeeded.

Just one of the many benefits brought to you by a horrific degree of scientific illiteracy among both average Americans and their leaders.