Posted on 05/18/2007 10:29:42 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
It would have to be a net loss. Otherwise you could contain the whole process, capture the vapor coming out the exhaust and build a perpetual motion machine.
This heads in the right direction, but why not just use water to power an internal combustion engine?
He’s not the only one that has done this, he’s just the one who got pattents on it. The Ausies use H2O2 generated from water to run the generators on their ‘stations’. The engines aren’t designed for it, and have to be replaced now and then, but it does work.
The same technology could be used in an automobile if the engine was modified slightly to burn H2O2. The problem is in keeping the valves and seats from melting and keeping the exhaust manifold from rusting out.
Shhhh. You are raining on their parade!
Well, true, there is no perpetual motion machine. I meant does it require lots of energy from other sources to produce these pellets?
The weight issue isn’t that big a differential compared to gasoline. Gasoline weighs 7 lbs per gallon, so a full tank of gas is adding 100 lbs to a vehicle’s dry weight. And the tank adds only another 40 lbs. To drive that same distance would require oxidizing only 60 lbs of aluminum, but the water and apparatus adds another 300 lbs.
Not a major factor when most vehicles are over 3,000 lbs to begin with.
The other source for this article gave more detailed numbers.
The pure aluminum pellets must be mixed with water in a controlled fashion, otherwise you just get all your hydrogen gas at once. That defeats the benefit of this solution — not having to store the hydrogen.
To me, that doesn’t sound like ‘modules’ but more like a tank of aluminum pellets and a separate tank of water — then the pellets are added a few at a time into a reaction chamber, water is added, hydrogen gas produced and pumped out to the engine, and finally the water and alumina slurry moved off into a reclaimation tank.
Both the fresh pellets and waste alumina slurry would be so fine as to be ‘pumpable’. So a filling station would suck out the used alumina slurry while it was pumping new aluminum and water into their own separate tanks.
Thanks for the plausible engineering.
How would you run an internal combustion engine with your method ?
The point of the article is that this is a method for producing hydrogen on demand that would be useful for internal combustion engines as well as fuel-cells. The Purdue researcher specifically mentions converting existing gasoline engine vehicles to burn hydrogen gas. Which is less efficient than fuel-cells, and much less efficient than an all-electric vehicle, but for which there is a huge base of vehicles.
The energy density here seems to be 800wh/kg which is 4 times what li-ion batteries will carry. So as an energy carrier it is pretty impressive.
A lot more complicated than charging a battery, though. And an infrastructure required to deliver the recycled aluminum to filling stations and take away the alumina to be recycled.
By my previous comment, I meant that it must use more energy than it delivers (more not equal because of losses along the way). Think of it as another battery technology.
Even if we could cover America with enough inefficient solar cells to provide the bulk of our electricity, all those hot solar cells would contribute to...global warming. Plus we might be starving some ecofriendly plants from getting their share of the sun, and the spotted owls won't like the solar cells at all.
We could produce more of our resources, including investing in Shale oil and methane hydrates.
I have looked into this. Here in the US, we are not allowed to buy a “kit” and install it ourselves. This is probably as it should be, but professional and legal installation adds considerably to the cost.
But the increased range is considerable - and there is very little contamination of the crankcase oil. Very common for forklifts. The modifications are completely reversible so as to add flexibility.
Easy solution, and no shooting necessary.
As you mine the aluminum ore you backfill the mine pit with Greenie whackos. After you fill the mine pit with greenie whackos, you spread a 2 foot deep layer of soil over the top and then sow it with grass seed. Six months later you open a Walmart Super Store on it and hire some non-union workers.
Problem solved.
Why in the world would you want to run an internal combustion engine on hydrogen?
They are not terribly efficient running on a primary fuel like gasoline. Trying to take a primary fuel like coal or nuclear, carry ore to it, convert that energy into another chemical for such as aluminum, transport that, then convert that energy into hydrogen then put that into an internal combustion engine engine makes no sense at all.
Each step looses energy. I’ve read about using aluminum in a mechanically rechargable battery which at least cuts out a number of steps and allows about 100% of the aluminum’s chemical energy to be converted to acceleration. But even that is not practical.
Keep your eye on solid oxide fuel cells. It would allow equal performance to current vehicles with twice the miliage. You could burn a variety of fuel varying from fuel oil to your choice of biofuel.
Supercapacitor “batteries”. If it pans out, it would allow superior performance, rapid recharges and a lifespan longer than the rest of the vehicle.
New generation lithium cells. Similar advantages as supercap batteries.
Direct thermo-electric conversion. 50-400% more efficient than ICE. Can be driven on any combustable fuel, solid, gas or liquid. The 50% more efficient model is a working prototype, they are working on bulk packaging. The one with the 400% advantage is further down the line and currently is in the experimental stage.
Pyrolysis directly into bio-oil using biomass, garbage, etc. Is available now and less expensive than current petroleum but fuel needs to be blended with methanol for extended shelf life and requires a modified diesel engine. Pyrolyis producing syngas producing synthetic fuel, technology exists now but too expensive. South Africa has used this method to make fuel from coal for years.
Plug in hybrid. With newer battery technology would allow the average driver to use no gasoline except when going on vacation.
The huge base of vehicles on the road will be mostly gone in 10 years. We are a throw-away society and they will hit the landfills soon enough. Have you looked under the hood of your car, where do you think the hydrogen generator would fit? Our current cars will drink gas until they die but die they will.
No problem...I figured this fit well with the Zubrin thread from last week.
I didn’t say I would want to run an ICE on hydrogen. I said the author of the article mentioned that.
There are some reasons, however, why you might NEED to run an ICE on hydrogen gas.
1) Legislation goes wacko and decrees a ban on gasoline and any other fuel that contains carbon
2) Eco- (or other) terrorists set fire to every oil well on the planet all at once, creating a severe shortage that takes years to get back up to current levels
You shouldn’t be looking at the space under the hood, you should be looking at the space taken up by your gas tank. That is where the hydrogen production apparatus, aluminum tank, and water tank would fit.
Your timeline for ICE vehicles disappearing would only be true if all the automakers were prepared to build all -electric vehicles starting tomorrow. They aren’t. They’ve got ICE plans out at least a decade. Those vehicles will still be on the road for 15 - 20 years from when THEY are built. So ICE vehicles will be around for another 25 - 30 years minimum.
Those ICE vehicles could run on hydrogen without any other modification to the vehicle — swap out the gas tank for the hydrogen on-demand unit, and the gasoline fuel injectors for hydrogen injectors, and you’re done. No designing a whole electric vehicle from scratch, no expensive battery or fuel-cell, no extreme light-weighting of a vehicle to get decent range.
Most of the talk about a hydrogen economy involve completely impractical methods of producing, transporting, and storing hydrogen as a highly compressed gas or liquid. Hydrogen on demand systems are a solution to some of those problems.
I still have hopes that EESTOR is not vapor-ware, and that A123 and Altairnano can get a cheap battery solution for electric vehicles. But even those technologies do not have the energy density quoted by this author for aluminum oxidation — 2KWH per pound of aluminum, plus 2KWH of heat ? That is far ahead of any battery or super-cap I’ve heard of.
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