Car running on home-brewed hydrogen

Car running on home-brewed hydrogen

news.bbc.co.uk

UK Firm ITM Power has developed a way of making hydrogen at home to fuel a car.

Chief executive Jim Heathcoate says it has made a new type of plastic for the production process.

ITM believes the plastic could be mass produced relatively cheaply and would allow people to create the gas at home using their normal electric supply or greener sources such as solar power.

(visit the link for the full news article)

in the end the stress of high priced petrol will be stronger than the Corporate interest. I believe that petrol-free solutions will mushroom in the next few years. Maybe the last few weeks of petrol shock will turn to be for our benefit!

If I would have this kind of car i would choose wind energy in order to generate the energy necessary in order to split the water. Even if you loose during the H2O to H2 conversion, i believe the Hydrogen car is still better (at the moment) as it could give a longer range for the car. Next step would be built-in hydrogen generator - plug it in the main , fill with water - wait for a few hours and go!

news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

ps: hope the video will work outside the UK, as BBC can be quite restricitve on it..

You typically need oil or natural gas to create plastic. I think the whole thing is a gimmick. Besides, producing highly explosive gas in your house can't possibly be easy to get a license for

reply to post by buddhasystem


I was thinking .. maybe they should have super-safe tanks for the car. Also , you would not need to store the hydrogen at home, you could have a very powerfull electrolysis system that produces the hydrogen stright from the water, so you put water on your generator , press the button and you get the hydrogen right while you feel it with petrol. This would require some super-capacitor batteries and a special way of splitting the water using high amounts of energy.


ultracapacitor news here:
thekneeslider.com...

[edit on 9-7-2008 by sty]

As I said, I suspect that any electrolysis system of that scale would be a dangerous device that has the capacity to kill the owner and level his house. H2+O2=BOOM!



[edit on 9-7-2008 by buddhasystem]

These guys and gals have been working on this for a while:

www.switch2hydrogen.com...

reply to post by buddhasystem


well, the idea was to produce the H2 right away when you use the "pump" . I would not store H2 at home haha

Originally posted by buddhasystem
As I said, I suspect that any electrolysis system of that scale would be a dangerous device that has the capacity to kill the owner and level his house. H2+O2=BOOM!

People keep cannisters of butane, natural gas, petroleum, kerosene, alchohol and cooking oils.

How come we're all not dead already?

Its negative thinking like that which keeps us all relying on that black stuff that comes out of the ground.

[edit on 9/0708/08 by neformore]

Yeah, the ability to store hydrogen safely is not an issue. We've got the storage thing worked out a long time ago.

As another poster mentioned, if it were dangerous to store Hydrogen, then we would have likely killed ourselves by now with propane, 02, oxy-acetylene, etc.

So no. It's not a safety concern to store hydrogen or produce it at all.


Now, I've noticed allot of people stating that the efficiency of hydrogen isn't on par with gasoline.
You are correct. It's no-where near the efficiency of gasoline. However, due to the cost of gasoline, the savings from using hydrogen greatly outweigh the efficiency factor.

On top of that, there are no carbon emissions.

Again, some would argue that you would in the end be burning gas to generate the electricity to electrolyze the water, this isn't so.

Only in the event that you live on a grid that uses oil to produce electricity, and in that event, you use your household electricity, would you be using oil in the end.

Places that use nuclear, solar, wind, hydro-electric dams, etc. You can use household electricity, safely knowing that no oil was burnt to produce it.

On top of that, the advantageous part of this new electrolysis system is that you can use solar panels in direct combination with the electrolysis system (for the event that you are linked to an oil fueled electricity grid).


The advantages totally outweigh the disadvantages. So, yes, it's a feasible power supply.


However, I still lean more toward purely electric vehicles. Of which the efficiency is much greater than Hydrogen.

But that's for another discussion.

Originally posted by neformore
People keep cannisters of butane, natural gas, petroleum, kerosene, alchohol and cooking oils.

How come we're all not dead already?

Its negative thinking like that which keeps us all relying on that black stuff that comes out of the ground.

Neformore, I am of technical background. I know that most of my neighbors are using propane in their BBQ rigs. That's fine. IMHO it's little different to produce H2 and O2 in close proximity -- more dangerous. I'm not saying it won't be possible to do safely at all, but difficult.

By the way, in your example you cited mostly liquids, which is waaaay easier... Also, H2 has a tremendous tendency to diffuse and leak, much more of that of propane.

reply to post by buddhasystem


Yes, you are right - H2 has the best explosive proprieties, however I guess there must be a way of storing the H2 as a part of other chemicals , then release it when needed. And people would not need to store H2 at home , they can produce it right when it is needed but I would be concerned on walking bombs across the streets indeed. Maybe electric cars are still the way to go as electricity can be used directly without loosing when converted to H2 .I gave a link with some guy claiming 500 KM range using a new ultra-capacitor as battery , I hope we will see this commercially available very soon..

Originally posted by neformore
People keep cannisters of butane, natural gas, petroleum, kerosene, alchohol and cooking oils.

How come we're all not dead already?

Its negative thinking like that which keeps us all relying on that black stuff that comes out of the ground.

[edit on 9/0708/08 by neformore]

Starred! These are the same kind of people who say, "Oh, but I can't participate in a gas strike. I have places I need to go!"

Wake up people!

Originally posted by neformore
Its negative thinking like that which keeps us all relying on that black stuff that comes out of the ground.

Sheesh. By neformore's grace I'm now on the list of negative thinkers.

How about critical thinkers? I would like to see green energy everywhere but I don't want to buy into a half-baked solution.

One example is corn-based ethanol. People were gang-ho about it, and in the end it brings about more harm than good.

Here is a web page address that clears up all the mystery about the proven new microwave of salt water claim ( given near the middle of this web page & titled: "Water-related discovery" ) of more efficiently producing hydrogen from salt water by using only microwave directed energy. This method was accidently discovered just a few years ago by John Kanzius.

en.wikipedia.org...