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Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
 Posted: 05-02-2004 18:58 Post subject: Hydrogen powered vehicles |
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Hydrogen from old fizzy pop cans?
| Quote: | Canadian inventor patents way to make hydrogen fuel
Last Updated Mon, 19 Jan 2004 15:48:06
SAINT JOHN, N.B. - A New Brunswick inventor thinks he has found a new, cheap way to produce hydrogen gas. If he's right, we may someday use old pop cans to help fuel cars.
Hydrogen gas is often touted as the fuel of the future, but freeing up the gas can be difficult and expensive. The fuel is also difficult to store and transport.
Jim Andersen of New Denmark, N.B., may have come up with a solution. Andersen says he can make lots of hydrogen gas by mixing caustic soda, water and aluminum over a wide range of temperatures.
"We use pie plates, aluminum foil, car block wire that is coated, pop cans," said Andersen. "All we have to do is shred it and put it in our process."
The discovery flies in the face of what chemistry textbooks predict will happen.
Since Andersen never finished high school, he had trouble convincing the patent office he was right.
With the help of chemist George Jenkins at the University of New Brunswick, Andersen got the U.S. patent and the attention of auto makers developing hydrogen-fuelled cars.
Scientists knew metals can produce hydrogen, but the reaction normally stops. In Andersen's invention, corrosive sodium hydroxide acts as a catalyst that doesn't break down so long as more water and aluminum are added.
Jenkins says the invention solves the problem of having the hydrogen where you want, when you want it.
"With our system, all you'd have to do is move the aluminum around," said Jenkins. "If you had water, you could make it wherever you wanted to, so you'd have hydrogen on demand, on site."
The inventor says the product is also of interest to the aluminum industry, which is looking for some way to recycle old pop cans.
Written by CBC News Online staff |
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/01/19/hydrogen040119
Last edited by Mighty_Emperor on 18-03-2005 03:52; edited 1 time in total |
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| brianellwood MAD HATTER
Mad Hatter Joined: 10 Nov 2001 Total posts: 823 Location: kernow,u.k. Gender: Male |
| Posted: 06-02-2004 13:23 Post subject: |
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When I taught the boys at home we made hydrogen gas from cooking foil, coke cans and pie dishes with dilute caustic soda. ( didn't have iron filings and battery acid etc to hand) Makes a nice impressive pop when you light it. Kids love chemistry lessons where things go bang! |
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| filcee Beer Monkey Joined: 12 Jun 2002 Total posts: 889 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 06-02-2004 13:42 Post subject: |
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 Cynical head on:
How long before Shell / Exxon, etc, sit on this so the western world remains dependant on black gold... |
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| Anonymous |
| Posted: 06-02-2004 20:43 Post subject: |
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Another hydrogen source::
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers said on Thursday they had taken another step toward understanding how plants split water into hydrogen and oxygen atoms -- which may provide a cheap way to produce clean-burning hydrogen fuel.
Producing hydrogen from water is the stuff of science fiction -- and some comments by President Bush (news - web sites). But the team at Imperial College London and Japan Science and Technology Corp. in Yokohama said they had taken the best pictures yet of the plant structures that do it every day.
They used high-resolution x-ray crystallography to make an image of the tiny atomic splitter that separates the two hydrogen atoms from an oxygen atom in a water molecule.
"Results by other groups, including those obtained using lower resolution x-ray crystallography at 3.7 angstroms have shown that the splitting of water occurs at a catalytic center that consists of four manganese atoms," said So Iwata of Imperial's Department of Biological Sciences.
"We've taken this further by showing that three of the manganese atoms, a calcium atom and four oxygen atoms form a cube-like structure, which brings stability to the catalytic center," Iwata added in a statement.
"Together this arrangement gives strong hints about the water-splitting chemistry."
Writing in the journal Science, Iwata and colleagues said they looked at a plant bacterium called Thermosynechococcus elongatus. "Without photosynthesis life on Earth would not exist as we know it," Jim Barber of Imperial's Department of Biological Sciences said in a statement.
"Oxygen derived from this process is part of the air we breathe and maintains the ozone layer needed to protect us from ultraviolet radiation.
"Now hydrogen also contained in water could be one of the most promising energy sources for the future. Unlike fossil fuels it's highly efficient, low-polluting and is mobile so it can be used for power generation in remote regions where it's difficult to access electricity."
Water has always seemed a logical source for hydrogen but the only known feasible method to separate it, electrolysis, costs ten times as much as natural gas, and is three times as expensive as gasoline, Barber said.
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| Anonymous |
| Posted: 06-02-2004 21:50 Post subject: |
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| Filcee wrote: |
Cynical head on:
How long before Shell / Exxon, etc, sit on this so the western world remains dependant on black gold... |
i dont think its a new thing... stuff of school chemistry lessons and juvanile bomb makeing. |
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| brianellwood MAD HATTER
Mad Hatter Joined: 10 Nov 2001 Total posts: 823 Location: kernow,u.k. Gender: Male |
| Posted: 06-02-2004 22:04 Post subject: |
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Bush is reported as having said that he is right behind hydrogen fuel as the new clean alternative ( without signing up to the Kyoto agreement) and went on to re-assure his fellow Exxon shareholders by saying the source would be natural hydrocarbons. Of course!
Last edited by brianellwood on 06-02-2004 22:07; edited 1 time in total |
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| naitaka Realistic action figure Joined: 21 Aug 2001 Total posts: 437 Location: Fort Rouille, New France Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 06-02-2004 22:14 Post subject: |
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Fun with Dangerous Chemicals - my favourite childhood pastime.
Seriously, I don't see the practicality of making large amounts of hydrogen this way. For example, the cost of aluminum:
"The inventor says the product is also of interest to the aluminum industry, which is looking for some way to recycle old pop cans."
They already have a way to recycle old pop cans. They, er, recycle them. Scrap aluminum is worth about $1600 a ton, so metal firms are usually looking for ways to get more of it, rather than looking for a way to get rid of it. |
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| Jerry_B Great Old One Joined: 15 Apr 2002 Total posts: 8265 |
| Posted: 06-02-2004 22:19 Post subject: |
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| It seems to me that this process would entail too much waste material in it's manufacture (i.e. all that acid, etc.). makes much more sense to get hydrogen by 'cracking' water using solar power, as I've said before. The current oil-rich states are well-positioned to do this as they have large, open, sunned areas and are near a ready water supply (i.e the Gulf of Persia). But then again, any place with a half-decent amount of sun could do the same, so it could all be very cheap. But I guess, as is the case with home-made spirit alchohol nowadays, there will be prohibitions against private manufacture of hydrogen. |
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| Anonymous |
| Posted: 06-02-2004 22:21 Post subject: |
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| yep aluminium is one of the comonest eliments on earth.. our chemisty teacher claimed 30% of clay soils are Aluminium... but its bound up and is perfectly satisfied to stay where it is...so you have to use huge amounts of electricity to get it out... hydro electric power sations round the world have Al Smelting works that import Boxite (Al Ore) and export Al ingots useing only the cheep electricity. |
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| Anonymous |
| Posted: 06-02-2004 23:44 Post subject: |
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| sidecar_jon wrote: |
...so you have to use huge amounts of electricity to get it out... |
I was having exactly the same thought myself. Oh well, back to the drawing board. (Now where did I leave that zero point energy generator?...  ) |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 09-10-2004 03:20 Post subject: The solar powered hydrogen truck |
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| Quote: | Powered by sunlight
Student project leaps into future
Bob Golfen
The Arizona Republic
Oct. 1, 2004 12:00 AM
The ungainly looking Chevy pickup parked in the courtyard at Central High School, with a huge set of solar panels mounted on top, may not look so futuristic.
But it certainly points the way.
Hand-built on a shoestring budget by a Central physics teacher and a team of students, the truck is one of a kind, a demonstration of how future transportation can be self-sustaining and pollution-free.
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The truck is hydrogen-powered and creates its own fuel from solar energy and water, a technical feat that rivals the advanced technology being researched by major auto companies and universities. The four-cylinder engine is tuned to run on hydrogen, which is produced by a hand-built electrolysis system mounted in the bed.
Teacher Cory Waxman and his students took four years to build the experiment, believed to be the only self-sustaining hydrogen vehicle that uses a conventional internal-combustion engine.
"Nobody has ever made a car that runs on sunlight and water," Waxman said. "There are other cars that run on hydrogen, but they don't make their own fuel."
Built for less than ,000, the project has caught the attention of experts in alternative-fuel research.
"Over the past three years of research in hydrogen, I've been more impressed with what they did than anything else I've seen around the world," said Scottsdale inventor Bryan Beaulieu, who is building a hydrogen-powered house in north Scottsdale. "With practically no resources, they are doing something everybody says it's going to take 20 years to do."
Although the truck performs as planned, it's more of a demonstration project than a practical vehicle. The four solar panels and hydrogen-generating system create only enough fuel per day to travel a few miles.
But that was expected, Waxman said, and the students have a motto that underlines the pioneering nature of the project: "How far did the first airplane fly?"
When the vehicle's tanks are filled with compressed hydrogen from an outside source, it has the range of a conventional vehicle, though that defeats the purpose of showing that hydrogen can be created from clean, sustainable sources, then used to fuel vehicles.
The truck also can be shifted to conventional power using a dashboard switch, which changes the fuel system over to a gasoline tank and fuel-injection.
The students in the Environmental Technology Club who built the hydrogen truck recognize its experimental nature.
"We want to inform the public that there are different alternative fuels and what can be accomplished," said Nicolas Paredes, a 17-year-old senior.
Most of the club members are new this year, the previous years' members having graduated. Nine students attended a recent after-school meeting to access the condition of the hydrogen truck, which was parked all summer and requires some repair, and make plans to advance the project.
During the meeting, Waxman said the group plans to make improvements to the existing solar-hydrogen truck plus tackle a new project: a self-sustaining solar-hydrogen vehicle that uses fuel cells to power an electric drive system.
The main challenge of building the solar-hydrogen truck was research, with much of the hydrogen-generating system designed by trial and error, Waxman said.
"The problem is there's no manual that says how to do this," the 39-year-old teacher said. "We had to investigate how to make hydrogen for this."
Last spring, the project won a first prize and grand prize at the Central Arizona Regional Science and Engineering Fair and was a finalist in May at the International Science and Engineering Fair in Portland, Ore. Graduating senior Soroush Farzin, a leader in the project, entered it in the fairs.
Much of the solar-hydrogen truck project was completed through private donations and volunteer labor, including solar panels donated by Beaulieu. Mechanical work and technical assistance was provided by Kevin Fern of AFVTech, which stands for Alternative Fuel Vehicle Technology.
Waxman and Fern gave a tour of the vehicle, showing how the solar panels create energy for the six electrolysis units mounted in a complex-looking maze of tubes and wires that make up the solar-hydrogen production unit. From there, the hydrogen is filtered for impurities and stored in two large air tanks.
The hydrogen is fed into the engine using stainless-steel lines, a pressure regulator and fuel injectors similar to what might be found in a vehicle powered by propane or natural gas.
An electronic control unit had to be specially tuned so that the four-cylinder engine could use the hydrogen efficiently.
"It's really a simple process," Fern said of the engine conversion. "The programming (of the electronic control unit) was the only difficulty."
Beyond learning about solar energy and hydrogen power, the club provides a lesson in teamwork, said Tiarra Campbell, 17, a senior.
"Besides understanding the system, this is an opportunity to work with people who are all different, who don't know each other as close friends, and create something like a hydrogen car," Campbell said. |
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/1001hydrocar01.html |
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| Rubyait Great Old One Joined: 10 Sep 2004 Total posts: 1783 Location: Not telling Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 09-10-2004 10:02 Post subject: |
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| That is pretty impressive,especially being able to create your own fuel.I just hope this and other energy saving and pollution preventing transport projects really get off the ground sooner rather than later! |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 09-10-2004 11:53 Post subject: |
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| sjoh9 wrote: |
That is pretty impressive,especially being able to create your own fuel.I just hope this and other energy saving and pollution preventing transport projects really get off the ground sooner rather than later! |
It does have overtones of those claims for water-powered combustion engines which disappeared so where they on to something or just cranks? |
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| Rubyait Great Old One Joined: 10 Sep 2004 Total posts: 1783 Location: Not telling Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 09-10-2004 12:51 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | It does have overtones of those claims for water-powered combustion engines which disappeared so where they on to something or just cranks? |
Now that would be impressive! Personally i dont think this is possible.I understand the concept involved, splitting water into Hydrogen and Oxygen and when burned the only exhaust would a little CO2 and water. Wouldnt you need a seperate power source to do that though?-using more power than it produces? |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 09-10-2004 14:35 Post subject: |
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That is my understanding of how it runs anyway although they are a bit vague:
| Quote: | | The truck is hydrogen-powered and creates its own fuel from solar energy and water, a technical feat that rivals the advanced technology being researched by major auto companies and universities. The four-cylinder engine is tuned to run on hydrogen, which is produced by a hand-built electrolysis system mounted in the bed. |
As far as I can tell they are claiming they will use the solar power to split the hydrogen from the water. As you say this would require a lot of energy and I'm unsure how solar power could provide enough (although someone more techncially minded could probably assess the feasibility of it better). I think we'd have to see some independent tests on it, etc. before being conidnet that it works as they imply it does - this field does seem beset my loonies and cranks who demonstrate something impressive and are never seen again so.......... |
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