Hydrogen Fuel Cells

AdrianHi

thescouselander wrote: »

I remember seeing a prototype hydrogen generator that would be small enough to fit in the corner of a standard garage. The idea was you could leave it running on mains electricity generating hydrogen from water. This could then be used to fuel a hydrogen powered car. Not sure what happened to it though.

The other thing is I'm not sure fuel cell technology is advanced enough to reliably provide the sort of power required for a car in the space available. Cost of production is also a major factor. could this be why there aren't any production fuel cell powered cars around at the moment?

The technology is solid and workable for vehicles.
What's lacking is commercially viable hydrogen production (too much electricity needed with current moethods) and then the infrastructure to deliver it to the customer. You local petrol station is not set up for hydrogen storage.
Nissan have an all electric X-Trail powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, there are many commercially available power generator applications (emergency power for hospitals etc.), buses, military vehicles all in small numbers right now.
Buses: http://www.hydrogenics.com/invest/News_Details.asp?RELEASEID=400883
Mercedes are at it about to release this to market: http://www.daimler.com/dccom/0-5-7145-1-1232162-1-0-0-0-0-0-11979-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0.html

Engineers in the automotive field see the future as a real mix of vehicle power solutions with combinations of battery, hybrid petrol / electric with and without plug in recharging overnight. Then increasingly hydrogen in combustion engines and then hydrogen fuel cells on all electric vehicles. And throw in the odd solar panel for good measure (optional on latest Prius *I think*).

AdrianHi

Going back to the orginal question on this thread.
Some months ago I found a web site that claimed to do an independant test on all the magic fuel savings device (magnets and so on) and every single one of them made no difference or made fuel consumption worse.... except this one.
Their only reservations were the modifications you had to make to the car, in particular with reference to manufacturers warranties.
Car manufacturers are falling over themselves makign cars more efficient. May be they don't go for a system like this because they don't want to design in the "water" fuel tank or more likely they have no quality control over what water people put in to use.
With petrol or diesel from a pump or a plug in charger at the wall for the battery in your hybrid, the power source has a standard that it complies with which the vehicle can be designed for and the manufacturer offer warranty on.
How does the manufacturer prove or deal with muppets who might put ditch water in their "hydrogen" producer?

KeithP

AdrianHi wrote: »

How does the manufacturer prove or deal with muppets who might put ditch water in their "hydrogen" producer?

In pretty much the same way as they deal with people who might put used vegetable oil from their local chip shop into their nice new diesel engine, I would imagine.

:beer:

thescouselander

AdrianHi wrote: »

The technology is solid and workable for vehicles.
What's lacking is commercially viable hydrogen production (too much electricity needed with current moethods) and then the infrastructure to deliver it to the customer. You local petrol station is not set up for hydrogen storage.
Nissan have an all electric X-Trail powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, there are many commercially available power generator applications (emergency power for hospitals etc.), buses, military vehicles all in small numbers right now.
Buses: http://www.hydrogenics.com/invest/News_Details.asp?RELEASEID=400883
Mercedes are at it about to release this to market: http://www.daimler.com/dccom/0-5-7145-1-1232162-1-0-0-0-0-0-11979-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0.html

Engineers in the automotive field see the future as a real mix of vehicle power solutions with combinations of battery, hybrid petrol / electric with and without plug in recharging overnight. Then increasingly hydrogen in combustion engines and then hydrogen fuel cells on all electric vehicles. And throw in the odd solar panel for good measure (optional on latest Prius *I think*).

Yes, good points but with busses there is a lot more room for the fuel cells. The only fuel cells I have seen on military vehicles are low power ones that drive the equipment inside (not the actual vehicle itself). In a car there isn't actually that much space to put a fuel cell unless you can fit it under the floor or something.

Even then you'll need to develop something like 100 kw which is quite a lot of power and it will need to work in all temperatures (very cold to very hot). From what I have seen and read fuel cell technology on this scale doesn't seem mature enough for the mass production market.

vaio

On the OP….the physics doesn’t hold up but in any event if it did work it would be standard fitting on every car manufactured

Slightly off topic but why are they waiting for fuel cells before launching the hydrogen economy rather than just burning the gas in an internal combustion engine?

Viper_7

Hate these so called "Emission free" fuels!

As said, to produce the Hydrogen one needs to split water, and to do so uses more energy than the resulting product produces. Where does that energy come from? since the majority of power still comes from Fossil fuels it's still producing emissions! Just moving them from one place to another. However sure - having lots of seperate emission creators is more polluting than just having the emisions from the power stations.

Same for electric vehicles using batteries, they are grossly inefficient. The chemical fossil fuel energy turned into electric, then back into chemical for the batter then back into electric, resulting in massive losses.

They will only be truly emission free when the input energy has come from renewable sources.
However these renewable sources such as wind turbines use more energy to manufacture and maintain than they output in their life time.... oops.

thor

Viper_7 wrote: »

However these renewable sources such as wind turbines use more energy to manufacture and maintain than they output in their life time.... oops.

Is there any evidence for this? I have heard this mentioned quite a lot but have always put it down to oil companies trying to bad mouth their competition(at least until oil runs out in a few years time).

Jackz

A fully efficient and cost effective hydrogen powered vehicle is something we may see in the future ... I don't know, but this method advertised is merely utilising the gas produced by the cell's reaction to make the diesel burn more efficiently, which sounds good in theory.

LPG is something that can be used in much the same way with diesel, but not really cost efficient, so why not something else?

I believe there are a few filling stations that have hydrogen pumps in the UK - not many but they are there, in much the same way LPG started and now that is widely available.

Someone out there must have tried this method? I did find a thread a while ago, but couldn't find any follow up after fitting regarding economy.

Thank you to everyone for all the information - a lot of food for thought:T

AdrianHi

vaio wrote: »

On the OP….the physics doesn’t hold up but in any event if it did work it would be standard fitting on every car manufactured

Slightly off topic but why are they waiting for fuel cells before launching the hydrogen economy rather than just burning the gas in an internal combustion engine?

The hydrogen fuel cell is fine, in an X-trail as an example.
Producing the hydrogen is the problem right now.

Pew_Pew_Pew_Lasers!

thor wrote: »

Is there any evidence for this? I have heard this mentioned quite a lot but have always put it down to oil companies trying to bad mouth their competition(at least until oil runs out in a few years time).

I do wish people would stop assuming that oil is going to run out.

It isn't.