Posted on 05/17/2007 4:09:52 AM PDT by saganite
Researchers Succeed In Fueling UpThe principle behind fuel cells is not new-it was discovered in 1839... Basically, a fuel cell is a device-think of it as a high-tech battery-that converts the energy of a fuel (hydrogen, natural gas, etc.) and an oxidant (air or oxygen) into useable electricity... There are no moving parts and it produces little noise. Unlike traditional combustion engines that currently dominate the energy market, fuel cells do not produce any particulate matter, nitrogen or sulfur oxides; when fueled by pure hydrogen, they have only heat and water as by-products... To date, hydrogen has been the conventional fuel for a fuel cell. But practical generation and storage of hydrogen has been a problem-it's expensive and inefficient. The model developed by Gorte's team aims to get around this dilemma... Previous attempts to use hydrocarbon fuels to run a solid-oxide fuel cell failed because the electrochemical process that generates electricity caused a buildup of carbon, which ruined the cell. In a solid-oxide fuel cell, oxygen anions are transported through an oxide membrane and react with the fuel at the anode... The Penn researchers were looking for an anode material that did not result in fouling... Eventually, they settled on a composite of copper and ceria. Ceria is an important catalytic component of automotive catalysis, which is why the researchers focused on its properties... Says Gorte, "Running a car is a transient process and you've got to have a pretty big fuel cell to power it, something on the order of 50kw as opposed to a 5kw cell to power a house, for instance." ...At least one major automotive manufacturer is seriously studying this technology... Their work has generated a great deal of excitement and was touted in Nature magazine (3/16/00). Professor Gorte has been interviewed by MSNBC.
by Jane Brooks
Don’t worry about this.
American car companies will continue to make big heavy lumbering V-8 gas powered cars.
Europe will have a hydrogen powered speedster on the market by next March.
Chrysler will be sold again to Europeans, by the end of next year.
Am I wrong?
Whatever happened to American innovation?
Why are we stuck?
I blame it on first the education system and second the lawyers.
You misunderstand me. It's not that I lack the vision for new transportation technology; rather, I think that by the time we got all the issues resolved satisfactorily to make this particular technology viable, we will have already solved the problem of cheap portable energy with other methods, rendering this approach moot.
If you think Europeans can out innovate us you’ve been drinking some koolaid I’m not familiar with. You screen name is appropriate.
And the process of emptying the beer cans will produce a water source. It's a perfect fuel system.
Been doing some musing over this. Years ago, just for fun, did the aluminum strips/lye-in-water/balloon number. It WORKS at producing H2 of course but how would it stack up against your Ga/Al/H2O unit in terms of initial cost for the system and over the long haul?
Lye is widely available right now, as is scrap aluminum; one doesn’t need to wait 5 years and pay $50K for a mass-marketed Ga/Al unit-system, wheather w/an IC engine or fickle H2/air fuel cell. This could be an item made by Mother Earth Home tinkerers, the same guys who do their own solar systems(the sun don’t shine in nuclear winter).
So, where does one find hydrogen IC fuel injectors?
I told the group about lye when it first formed. Students
often do that with 2-liter pop bottles which usually gets the police riled up. Strong lye might be a problem in
a wreck if it gets loose or splashed on someone.
For hydrogen injectors, a propane carb should work with
minor changes. It may even be possible to have a carb
without a throttle plate due to the very wide ignition
limits of H2. Big volumetric effeciency boost.
I havent heard much on the glass BB’s to store H2
for a few years now.. anybody else heard?
For a nuke winter, biomass gasifiers make more
sense. They don’t need an infrastructure in place
to ship the fuel and recycle the spent fuel for
regeneration.
I havent been to a group meeting for 2-3 months.
I just volunteered for awhile to give ‘em a hand.
I have 3000 computers to worry about for my
‘real’ job...
—ghg
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