Posted on 03/07/2005 10:45:56 AM PST by JeffersonRepublic.com
United Nuclear is currently in final testing, and will shortly be producing Hydrogen Fuel Systems & Hydrogen generators for several late model, fuel injected, Gasoline powered vehicles.
Powering a vehicle by Hydrogen is by no means a new idea, and in fact, almost all automobile manufacturers are currently developing a new generation of vehicles that run on Hydrogen as opposed to Gasoline. This new generation of vehicles are essentially electric cars that use a Fuel Cell instead of a battery to run the electric motor. Using a chemical process, Fuel Cells in these new vehicles convert the stored Hydrogen on board, and the Oxygen in the air, directly into electricity to power their electric motors. These new vehicles are very efficient, and in fact are more efficient than any internal combustion engine. The problem is that these new vehicles are years away from production, are very expensive, and converting to using Hydrogen fuel in this manner requires you to buy a new ( and expensive ) vehicle. All Hydrogen/Fuel Cell systems currently under development by large manufacturers have you purchase Hydrogen as you would Gasoline. Our system comes with its own "in-home" Hydrogen generator which allows you to manufacture fuel yourself at near zero cost. Our Hydrogen conversion is an intermediate approach that simply converts your existing vehicle to burn Hydrogen or Gasoline. The Gasoline fuel system remains intact and is not modified. This allows you to switch between running on Gasoline or Hydrogen at any time. The engine itself is only slightly modified, the conversion makes substantial changes to the computer & electrical system, ignition and cooling systems. Since they never have to be removed, Hydrogen fuel storage (Hydride tanks) can be installed in virtually any available space within the vehicle.
(Excerpt) Read more at unitednuclear.com ...
Personally, I wouldn't have anything to do with United Nuclear. Do a quick Google and the reason why becomes clear.
I stand corrected...
"United Nuclear converted a 1994 corvette to burn hydrogen or gas, and got 650 miles on a hydrogen tank."
What's its 0-60 and quarter mile time?
Hmm like I said I wonder how performance changes?
Also I saw 4 tanks in each vehical so I presume they really mean 650 per "set" of tanks(4).
And that's all great, but where do we get this cheap source of hydrogen? Currently the possibilities are from reforming fossil fuels, typically natural gas, which is inefficient as a significant part of the energy contained in hydrocarbons is thrown away in doing this, and there's no net reduction in greeenhouse gasses (if that's a concern), or by hydrolosis of water using electricty, which again is not a particularly efficient process overall (taking generating and transmission losses into account). If natural gas is going to be the source, it would appear to me to be even more efficient just to burn it directly in the engines, something that is already done.
A big issue is dependence on foreign sources. I'd rather pay a little bit extra and not have funds going to the middle east and know that our energy sources are independent.
I get one after all the members of congress and the administration, buy them for their kids...
if we had a sane energy policy in the US, part of it would include a floor on the price of oil. no lower then $40 a barrel, if the market prices for it goes below that, a tax is imposed to bring it to $40. this way, any alternative sources of energy would have some floor to work with - no one will invest billions into new technology, if they know that OPEC and the oil majors can run the price back down to $20 to make their inventions economically un-viable.
Everything comes with a price.
"you're saying an efficient hydrogen car defies the laws of physics? more like it defies the laws of exxon."
Getting a BTU's worth of hydrogen without an input of more than a BTU's worth of electricity (which is already more expensive than a BTU's worth of gasoline or natural gas) or natural gas defies the laws of physics.
So the question here is...how often do you fill up your tank? I only fill up once a week...which leaves me an overage...and that is on a ~300 mile week. If you figure the 650 mile they claim, I wouldn't have to fill up for 2 weeks. That leaves me 2.5 tanks in storage every time I fill up. End of the month I have enough for 5 more tanks...I can turn off my generator for 2.5 months.
Probably a good deal -- but if we are going to be really serious about reducing emissions, we'll build a bunch of nuclear plants to provide the electricity (hint: ain't gonna happen).
"Zero cost?"
Let's see the data.
What they should do is tax pollution. To some degree, we do that already with the gas tax, etc. The Dems would never stand for any effort to do it more, though, because the rich don't pollute any more than the poor do, so it would be a regressive tax.
"It's a fun science experiment."
Its true, electrolysis is very easy, and it is an experiment done in every high school science class in America. If you don't store large amounts of hydrogen in gas or liquid form, there is little danger from producing it in your garage. That's the beauty of the United Nuclear system: the hydrogen is chemically bonded to the hydrides.
Holtz
JeffersonRepublic.com
this was interesting about the limitations:
" You can produce your own Hydrogen from electricity using either common "household current" or directly from solar cells so your energy cost is zero. It does however take a substantial amount of time to produce sufficient Hydrogen to fill even a small tank.
As an example, it takes over 2 days of our generator running at full power, 24 hours a day, to fill our smallest "short range" tank."
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