Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Technology => Topic started by: Koogern Govender on 10/05/2008 21:26:12
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Koogern Govender asked the Naked Scientists:
Hi Chris
I have been listening to your show on Talk Radio 702 and had a nagging question I was hoping you could help me with. Please see the URL http://www.water4gas.com/2books.htm
I would really like to know, is the whole concept of running ones car on “Hydrogen on demand” is it possible.
I know running on hydrogen works, but theres a danger of explosion on impact with compressed hydrogen.
If this is possible what would be the easiest way of generating hydrogen and temporarily storing it in a chamber then having it absorbed by the cars vacuum pipe into the intake manifold for combustion.
I would really appreciate your feedback on this.
Kind regards
Koogern Govender
What do you think?
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Is this basically a question about storing Hydrogen safely?
This has been discussed at length and is the make or break factor in H powered vehicles
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No you can't. Look its about none of those things!!! The main fact is that free hydrogen isn't available on earth, period! This means that you have to get it from somewhere else and water isn't the most practical solution!!!!
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Yes, you can. There are so called metal hydride systems that store it at relativey low pressure. They have other technical problems but it's certainly not impossible.
Of course you could also produce hydrogen on demand by, for example, electrolysis of water . To do this you would need a power supply. Unfortunately, this aproach doesn't get very far. Whatever power supply you use could, more efficiently, run a motor to drive the car.
Getting hydrogen is easy; the problem is getting energy.
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Yes but there seems to be some particular 'cachee' about using H! Somehow, it's got to be better.
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Purdue researcher Jerry Woodall has found a way to produce very large amounts of hydrogen by reacting water with aluminium granules. He found, by accident, that adding small amounts of gallium to the aluminium prevents aluminium from forming the protecting oxide film that normally prevents the metal from reacting with water.
When water is added the aluminium turns into aluminium hydroxide, yet the gallium is not consumed and can be recycled. The aluminium hydroxide can then be converted to aluminium oxide and then aluminium again, by electrolysis.
His proposal is to use electricity from a carbon-neutral source such as wind, hydro or nucler power to drive the electrolysis process. The resulting aluminium, mixed with gallium, can be used as the convenient way to produce hydrogen on demand in vehicles. By altering the supply of water being piped over the aluminium the rate of hydrogen production can be controlled.
Here's a link to the interview we did with him in 2007:
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/757/
Chris
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So, what he is doing is using a novel way of storing energy. Could be the answer to the Maiden's prayer. There seems to be a fair amount of gallium available in the World, too.
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Seen the price of gallium?
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Three dollars a gram, according to Wiki and it it wouldn't be a consumable. Platinum is much more pricey, but you find it all over the place in catalysts.
Do you have some other information about cost / possible total quantity available? It could make a big difference to the scheme.
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Isn't getting aluminium from ore going to use many times the energy released through the hydrogen?
Also, what's the power density of this 'fuel' compared with say a Li-ion cell?
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Well yes - the same as building a new, highly efficient, car is a bit of a nonsense when it takes so much more energy than you could ever save compared with keeping and using your old one.
But that's what the Government seem to be encouraging.
The hope would be that the Aluminium extraction would produce a storage medium which would last for a long long time, presumably, before being thrown away.
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Well yes - the same as building a new, highly efficient, car is a bit of a nonsense when it takes so much more energy than you could ever save compared with keeping and using your old one.
Ahhhh, well that sounds like an argument of ideologies rather than science/technology!
(as if science could ever be free of ideological bias in the real world! lol!)
Rightly or wrongly, the modern world seems to be addicted to the exponential growth of consumerism - I can't see anyone throwing this ideology out any time soon!
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Green consumerism; now there's an oxymoron, if ever there was one.
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Surely it is hydrogen itself that is the problem! Sure, hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the Universe by far!!! But.......sadly, there is, for obvious reasons, no free hydrogen available on earth. To extract it from existing hydrocarbons, is going to be extremely dirty and extremely wasteful. So why talk about it until and unless some solution to make pure hydrogen economically and efficiently comes along. Till then all this is moot.
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Surely it is hydrogen itself that is the problem! ... So why talk about it until and unless some solution to make pure hydrogen economically and efficiently comes along. Till then all this is moot.
Here's a post I started a few months ago...
"Tiny porphyrin tubes developed by Sandia may lead to new nanodevices"
www.sandia.gov/news-center/news-releases/2005/renew-energy-batt/nano.html
sunlight + water + catalyst = hydrogen.
Better than making electricity from sunlight, yes?
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Purdue researcher Jerry Woodall has found a way to produce very large amounts of hydrogen by reacting water with aluminium granules. He found, by accident, that adding small amounts of gallium to the aluminium prevents aluminium from forming the protecting oxide film that normally prevents the metal from reacting with water.
When water is added the aluminium turns into aluminium hydroxide, yet the gallium is not consumed and can be recycled. The aluminium hydroxide can then be converted to aluminium oxide and then aluminium again, by electrolysis.
His proposal is to use electricity from a carbon-neutral source such as wind, hydro or nucler power to drive the electrolysis process. The resulting aluminium, mixed with gallium, can be used as the convenient way to produce hydrogen on demand in vehicles. By altering the supply of water being piped over the aluminium the rate of hydrogen production can be controlled.
Here's a link to the interview we did with him in 2007:
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/757/
Chris
Why the need for Gallium? Put an aluminum foil in a glass of water + sodium idroxide (or carbonate) and after a few seconds you can see hydrogen bubbles coming out (by the way, this is the method I have used to inflate with H2 a small balloon which then I released...in the free sky (hope it didn't find a smoking pilot! [:)])).
2Al + 6H2O --(OH-)--> 2Al(OH)3 + 3H2
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Purdue researcher Jerry Woodall has found a way to produce very large amounts of hydrogen by reacting water with aluminium granules. He found, by accident, that adding small amounts of gallium to the aluminium prevents aluminium from forming the protecting oxide film that normally prevents the metal from reacting with water.
. . . . .
But where do you get the aluminium granules from?
The only source of aluminium is in the ores, which requires Energy to extract it (by electrolysis). This energy will be on of the same order as the energy you would get in the form of chemical energy in the hydrogen gas you produce by this method.
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well if u even make a process to generate hydrogen on the go the weight of ur car will be so much which the generated hydrogen wont be able to move.
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Hi Everybody
Am a newbie here and would like ask permission to add a small contribution to the forum here .
I been reading a lot on the net about the water 4 gas idea and the HHO ( or brown gas ) theory sounds fascinating .
Most people also get the wrong impression and idea about these devices . People believe that after such a device is fitted then you can simply drain the fuel tank of its gasoline and fill it up from the garden hose . Yes that would have been wonderful . That is the wrong impression - engines will still run on gas , the HHO gas should ( hopefully ) improve the combustion and then improve the fuel consumption . But we will still use gasoline .
There must be lots of these devices on the market now , but I guess one has to also be careful of scams .
Some of the “invertors” claim from 30% to 107% improvement in fuel consumption!!!
Regarding the 107% improvement - there are some people who do believe that the Easter bunny does exist ! That is wishful thinking .
I would appreciate any advice regarding the water 4 gas concept and would also love to hear from anybody who had some degree of success with these devices .
I do live in Namibia and am a mechanic by profession , Am teaching at a training centre for mechanical apprentices .
We have build such an electrolizer and are busy experimenting with it so any advice will be highly appreciated .
Here is what we done .
We used an old 12 V battery box having 6 cells and made it into an electrolizer using 2 stainless steel electrodes in each cell . As an electrolyte distilled water was used with baking soda added till the total current drawn reached around 7 amps . Increasing the current flow we found generates too much heat .
The battery top was then sealed with a Perspex plate and the gasses from each cell was fed into a manifold junction which then was fed to the PCV valve connection above the carburetor of a Toyota Corolla engine .
The cells were then connected to a 12 V battery . We have tries all sorts of connections and found if we connect 3 cells in paralell to form 6 v and then connect the 2 groups in series to form a 12 V worked the best .
The device was then tested on a stationary engine running at 3000 rpm and we found that the device was saving a mere 300 ml of fuel per hour .
Which is NOT a lot !!!
We have not tested it on a road test yet , but will do so in the next week and will let you know what happened .
If anybody has any ideas - please fill us in .
PS living here in Africa the network is not always what it should be and sometimes it is hard to log into the site , so if you could please mail me as well on johnjnam@yahoo.com
All the best
John
Koogern Govender asked the Naked Scientists:
Hi Chris
I have been listening to your show on Talk Radio 702 and had a nagging question I was hoping you could help me with. Please see the URL http://www.water4gas.com/2books.htm
I would really like to know, is the whole concept of running ones car on “Hydrogen on demand” is it possible.
I know running on hydrogen works, but theres a danger of explosion on impact with compressed hydrogen.
If this is possible what would be the easiest way of generating hydrogen and temporarily storing it in a chamber then having it absorbed by the cars vacuum pipe into the intake manifold for combustion.
I would really appreciate your feedback on this.
Kind regards
Koogern Govender
What do you think?
-
Hi Everybody
Am a newbie here and would like ask permission to add a small contribution to the forum here .
I been reading a lot on the net about the water 4 gas idea and the HHO ( or brown gas ) theory sounds fascinating .
Most people also get the wrong impression and idea about these devices . People believe that after such a device is fitted then you can simply drain the fuel tank of its gasoline and fill it up from the garden hose . Yes that would have been wonderful . That is the wrong impression - engines will still run on gas , the HHO gas should ( hopefully ) improve the combustion and then improve the fuel consumption . But we will still use gasoline .
There must be lots of these devices on the market now , but I guess one has to also be careful of scams .
Some of the “invertors” claim from 30% to 107% improvement in fuel consumption!!!
Regarding the 107% improvement - there are some people who do believe that the Easter bunny does exist ! That is wishful thinking .
I would appreciate any advice regarding the water 4 gas concept and would also love to hear from anybody who had some degree of success with these devices .
I do live in Namibia and am a mechanic by profession , Am teaching at a training centre for mechanical apprentices .
We have build such an electrolizer and are busy experimenting with it so any advice will be highly appreciated .
Here is what we done .
We used an old 12 V battery box having 6 cells and made it into an electrolizer using 2 stainless steel electrodes in each cell . As an electrolyte distilled water was used with baking soda added till the total current drawn reached around 7 amps . Increasing the current flow we found generates too much heat .
The battery top was then sealed with a Perspex plate and the gasses from each cell was fed into a manifold junction which then was fed to the PCV valve connection above the carburetor of a Toyota Corolla engine .
The cells were then connected to a 12 V battery . We have tries all sorts of connections and found if we connect 3 cells in paralell to form 6 v and then connect the 2 groups in series to form a 12 V worked the best .
The device was then tested on a stationary engine running at 3000 rpm and we found that the device was saving a mere 300 ml of fuel per hour .
Which is NOT a lot !!!
We have not tested it on a road test yet , but will do so in the next week and will let you know what happened .
If anybody has any ideas - please fill us in .
PS living here in Africa the network is not always what it should be and sometimes it is hard to log into the site , so if you could please mail me as well on johnjnam@yahoo.com
All the best
John
<<The device was then tested on a stationary engine running at 3000 rpm and we found that the device was saving a mere 300 ml of fuel per hour>>
...using the equivalent energy of much more then 300 ml of fuel per hour...