I dont think that weight has anything to do with cost.
Many sports cars are light and they cost a sh!t load more then SUV's.

I cant wait to see this in mass production. Many interesting products could be made with this.

We had a thread on this very same topic a couple months ago.

It may become a reality, but it just came into its prototype stage. It has to be tested and make sure it passes regulations, and has to get a stable financial backing, etc. I wouldn't doubt if we saw some of these guys hit the roads in 4-5 years, but for now we have to wait and see. An idea, nor a prototype, is enough to make good business sense for world-wide use. It takes time and money and proof (social and scientific) before it becomes popular and widespread.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
We used to blow up hydrogen balloons at school with this...in the late 70's. We got it from a book. It's not new.

We did that in the 90's, too.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam

Originally posted by scoobdude

Drop-outs Patent Hydrogen Production Method Take drano, add scrap aluminum cans and you get novel way to make hydrogen gas. Source: Nashua Telegraph [Nov 29, 2003] A 69-year-old, 10th-grade Canadian drop-out and his 58-year-old Norwegian cousin, who himself left school in the eighth grade, have just been granted two U.S. patents on a process that produces hydrogen by throwing discarded aluminum cans or foil into water laced with Drano.

We used to blow up hydrogen balloons at school with this...in the late 70's. We got it from a book. It's not new.

It's also not an energy source. Do you have any idea how much electricity it requires to make that aluminum? You'd be far better off using a hydrolyzer on the water in terms of efficiency. And hydrolyzers suck.

I was going to say this, as well as to point out that Drano doesn't last forever in a chemical reaction either.

On the other hand, exactly this hydrogen-generating process is conducted around the clock in literally hundreds of U.S. locations, and the hydrogen is allowed to merely escape into the atmosphere.

The process of anodizing aluminum involves a chemical etch bath as one of the first steps in the process. The etch bath is nothing more than a heated Sodium Hydroxide solution (same as most drain cleaners - also called lye and/or caustic.) Perhaps this hydrogen could be recovered. It's being generated anyway!

Originally posted by Tom BedlamYou guys DO know that hydrogen is an environmental issue, right? It's got that one-two punch...it destroys ozone AND forms high-altitude water vapor that's a greenhouse gas...

Recovery of hydrogen generated in industrial processes like anodizing (there's probably other processes that also generate hydrogen, but I don't know of any) would then also have a one-two punch. Since the hydrogen is today allowed to escape - it must already be doing the damage you claim.

However, water vapor as a greenhouse gas is a non-issue, really. There is so much water on the planet, the atmosphere only holds the amount that it can hold. If it warms up, it can hold more. But if it does warm up, it won't care where the vapor comes from. It would just as easily obtain vapor in the natural way (from the ocean) if we didn't provide it through the oxidation of hydrogen.
Harte

Harte:

No, no I'm not talking about ground level water vapor. What happens with free hydrogen is that it ascends to the stratosphere and recombines there, cooling the lower stratosphere and forming very high altitude clouds that wouldn't naturally exist.

There was a Caltech/JPL paper on it back in 2003.

I've been going through the guy's site...

does he ever actually RUN the thing? I've seen him crank one over, I've seen them running from compressed air, but does he ever show one running from fuel? If so, which clip was it?

Originally posted by Long Lance

Originally posted by Harte

However, water vapor as a greenhouse gas is a non-issue, really. There is so much water on the planet, the atmosphere only holds the amount that it can hold. If it warms up, it can hold more. But if it does warm up, it won't care where the vapor comes from. It would just as easily obtain vapor in the natural way (from the ocean) if we didn't provide it through the oxidation of hydrogen.
Harte

that's hilarious, mate, i'm sorry really, don't feel offended but that's was a good laugh

See, now this I don't get. I'm not in any way speculating on the reality (or unreality) of global warming due to any greenhouse gasses. I just said that water vapor as a greenhouse gas is a non-issue. Seems like what you say here:

Originally posted by Long Lance
global warming or not, but we don't know much about it (or those who do keep it very secret) and shouldn't pretend we do. CO2 is not toxic and trees like it, so direct your fear elsewhere...

Pretty much agrees with what I said.


No man, I was talking about recovering hydrogen that is just going to waste right now, as we speak. Hydrogen as a fuel. If you are of the opinion that burning hydrogen is a bad idea, fine. Say so. I don't advocate it myself as a way to abate any global warming, I tend to agree with you on that issue.

I have doubts that water vapor could cause any problem at all in that area. Which is basically what I said. Why is that funny?

Harte

well, people screaming about greenhouse gas while ignoring clouds is funny, don't you think? especially when said greenhouse gas is already present at saturation levels (meaning the wavelength is blocked out already, so more gas won't change squat). as the saying goes, anything can be made the credo of a society no matter how ridiculous, with appropriate media and government action.

sorry for partially derailing this thread i started my own on fragile earth.

My extreme interest in this was due to the fact that this could be the BEST way to incorporate, fuel efficiency and less pollution into our society's normal way of living without upsetting the powers that be...too much.

I looked at this MYT engine as a possible way to improve upon the current ways we get around, not completely ratify it. I do honestly believe that that is our ONLY option right now, improvement, not overthrowing the oil/government/corporation alliance that actually runs our world. That won't work...and maybe for good reason. If free energy or near free energy were to become public, then our world economies would actually break down. So, maybe the key is to continue to bring about R&D on more controversial or lesser known energy sources and use more efficient "conventional" sources to improve the infrastructure already in place right now.

That's why I like this, it has had exposure, there has already been money placed into it's development and it has actually been tested, it's not just a theory. On top of that, wll it would need is a progressive thinking auto company to license the tech, throw it in a car and it could catch on. Our world's transportation infrastructure wouldn't have to be changed.

Originally posted by LordOfBunnies
I'll throw in my two cents. I think ethanol will be the next fuel. Guess what's up with hydrogen? You're still getting it from a non-renewable resource. The way they do it at the moment is run natural gas (methane) through the end of a steam cycle in a powerplant.
2H2O+CH4 --> 4H2 + 2CO2
Now you have to get natural gas from somewhere, it'll eventually dry up as well. Ethanol is renewable indefinitely as long as plants of certain types grow. Now we need to refine the pre-existing internal combustion engine. Start running compact chamber, 14:1 compression, and turbo the hell out of it. You'll get much better efficiency and more power out of smaller engine. We need real technology in cars, not this crap the car companies are throwing around. That means all of them, they're all idiots. They don't want to do real engineering work to do some friggin' good. They'd rather sit on their @sses and make what little money they can without any real advancement. I hate the car companies, every last one of them is friggin' stupid. Sorry, rant over.

ethanol cant be the next fuel unless they start using solar power to produce it. right now it takes more than a 1:1 ratio of energy to produce ethanol, just like petroleum based fuel. even though its renewable, you would run out of energy to produce it.

Solar power or any other renewable energy source...solar cells and wind power efficiency have made great strides recently. By using either one of these to help produce bio-diesel, cellusic ethanol or hydrogen, we could pretty effectively cut down on the tons of gases we emit into the atmosphere every day.

I personally think instituting a design change first (running on gasoline), then incorporating newer fuel sources down the road is a more feasible answer.

Remember, the engine I posted can run on ALL of the fuels I listed!



[edit on 8/13/2006 by ledbedder20]

ledbetter:

He says so, but is there a video of him actually doing it?

I see hand-cranked visual models, I see it running on compressed air, but amongst the videos, is there one of them actually running?

I gave up after a while.

Apparently, there are no videos of it running on any fuels. I do remember him speaking about them doing it in one of the films of him at an auto show, but he said they haven't recorded it yet. Which seems kind of odd to me.

Even so, the science behind this thing is basically the same as the first combustion engine over a hundred years ago, which leads me to believe that the timeline behind idea to production on this thing is based on fine tuning the mechanics. So, I do think this is more plausible than most new energy or transportation based inventions we read about on the ole' internet!

Ya, I thought he said he had one of them running for a while but he never shows it. I was hoping I had just missed the film amongst all the others he has on his site.

What better way to sell the thing than to mount one in a tractor rig, or a car? Wouldn't YOU? He says he has running models, then why not show one?

I would have one outside the show running on a stand. Hard to ignore it then....but he doesn't ever show it. No film, no demo, no one's seen it go but him.

I was sort of interested in it but now I think I'm smelling a rat.

Yep yep...I think a climate of change is approaching. These guys are just going to have to figure out a way to make money off of a more economical and pollution free way of getting around. Too many things are becoming more well known. Too many technologies are becoming mainstream.