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Hydrogen Fuel Balls from a Gas Pump?
navalynt writes "New Scientist reports that the Department of Energy has filed a patent for hydrogen fuel balls. From the article 'The proposed glass microspheres would each be a few millionths of a metre (microns) wide with a hollow center containing specks of palladium. The walls of each sphere would also have pores just a few ten-billionths of a metre in diameter.' They are supposedly safe and small enough to be pumped into a fuel tank in the same manner as gasoline."
My balls run on diesel. I guess I'm doomed to a life of ball-ular pollution... Plus if I use the wrong grade, they knock.
big balls?
Great balls of fire!!
Say everybody, have you seen my Hydrogen Fuel Balls?
.
They're big and salty and brown.
If you ever need a quick pick-me-up
Just stick my Hydrogen Fuel Balls in your mouth.
Oooh, suck on my chocolate, salty Hydrogen Fuel Balls
(Put 'em in your mouth!)
Put 'em in your mouth and suck 'em...
H2 is so damn small that keeping it from escaping through seals and the walls of hoses is very difficult (same reason helium escapes so quickly from balloons, except H2 is even smaller.)
Hydrodgen just wants to be free.
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What if the fuel tank always was full of paladium pellets?
1. Setup fake gas station.
2. Substitute hydrogen gas pump for vacuum cleaner.
3. Profit!
Supposedly that's how cold fusion works. It's said that the hydrogen atoms become so crowded together inside the paladium that they fuse together into helium.
...so imagine you are driving down the highway when suddenly cold fusion reactions start in your tank and you go up in a ball of flame. After all, if we are to believe the reports on cold fusion, the reactions always seem to start and stop in an unpredictable manner!
Uhh, no. That would be platinum that cats are catalyzed with.
It'll eventually suck them back into the mantle.
You'll contaminate the core (of the Earth). Sounds dangerous.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!