Hydrogen Fuel Systems (Corvette!)

Status: Manufacturing Facility Nearing Completion
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United Nuclear is currently in final testing, and will shortly be producing Hydrogen conversion systems / Hydrogen generators for most 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..
The system consists of two parts, the Hydrogen fuel system in your vehicle, and a Hydrogen generating system that remains in your garage. The Hydrogen generator is either powered by solar panels on the roof of your house, a wind turbine set-up ( both of which makes your Hydrogen fuel at virtually no cost ) or with standard 110 volt AC power for rapid refueling.

United Nuclear's 1994 Corvette converted to run on Hydrogen.
Driving range is over 700+ miles per fill and fuel cost is near zero.

What's Real?

A lot has been written about converting vehicles to run hydrogen. Unfortunately, a lot of what you'll find on the internet is simply untrue.
ANY claim of fueling a car with water, and having the water converted to Hydrogen quickly enough to power a passenger vehicle is pure B.S. The bottom line is simple physics. It takes electrical energy to break the Hydrogen-Oxygen bond in water and release the free gases... and that takes time. The more energy applied to the water, the faster the gasses will evolve... up to a point.
It is not possible to create sufficient amounts Hydrogen gas from water (on board the vehicle) fast enough to idle the smallest passenger vehicle. If your towing a nuclear reactor behind the car, along with a motor home-sized Hydrogen generator, you might have sufficient power and volume to accomplish the task, but that kind of defeats the purpose behind the conversion.
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.

Storage

Since you can't make Hydrogen quickly enough to power a car in real time, you must produce it separately, and store it as you store your Gasoline fuel supply in your vehicle now.
There are but 3 ways to do this:

1. Store the Hydrogen as a compressed gas.
2. Store the Hydrogen as a liquid.
3. Store the Hydrogen chemically bonded to a chemical.

We'll cover each option in order.

1. If you choose to store the Hydrogen as a compressed gas, you'll need HUGE tanks, and many of them, since Hydrogen isn't very dense, so a tank really can't hold all that much. In addition, you'll be driving a giant bomb. In a collision, expect to die in a huge fireball/explosion.

2. Choosing liquid does solve the density problem since liquids are far more dense than gasses, so you can reduce the amount of tanks and their sizes required to power the car. The new problem that pops up is the fact the liquid Hydrogen in cryogenic... in short REALLY cold. It requires vacuum-thermos ( dewar ) tanks and vents to exhaust the boiling Hydrogen gas. You'll also have to find a source for liquid Hydrogen which is far more expensive than Gasoline. You've also now increased you danger factor when it comes to a collision. Not only will you have more Hydrogen gas spewing around that's going to explode and burn, but you'll also have a liquid spraying about that's over 400 degrees below zero. Once you add in the added complexity of the system due to the cryogenic liquid, your vehicle will wind up being a giant, low efficiency, rolling bomb that costs more than your house, and costs far more to run than it did on Gasoline.

3. The 3rd option is simply the only way to go. There are materials call Hydrides that absorb Hydrogen like a sponge absorbs water. Typically, the tanks are filled with granulated Hydrides, and Hydrogen is pressurized into the material. Hydrides have many advantages over liquid & gas. One is that the density of the Hydrogen stored in the Hydride can be GREATER than that of liquid Hydrogen. This translates directly into smaller and fewer storage tanks.
Once the Hydride is "charged" with Hydrogen, the Hydrogen becomes chemically bonded to the chemical. Even opening the tank, or cutting it in half will not release the Hydrogen gas. In addition, you could even fire incendiary bullets through the tank and the Hydride would only smolder like a cigarette. It is in fact, a safer storage system than your Gasoline tank is.
Then how do you get the Hydrogen back out? To release the Hydrogen gas from the Hydride, it simply needs to be heated. This is either done electrically, using the waste exhaust heat, or using the waste radiator coolant heat.

Our vehicle starts on Gasoline and runs for about 5 minutes to heat everything up ( including the Hydride ). The time it takes to heat up the Hydride is about as long as it takes the heater in your car to warm up and blow out hot air. As soon at the Hydride is sufficiently warm, Hydrogen is released from the tanks and the on-board computer detects the presence of Hydrogen pressure.
The fuel system then seamlessly switches over to Hydrogen and remains in that mode until no more Hydrogen is released from the tanks. Leaving the Gasoline fuel system intact also enables you to run on Gasoline should you ever run out of Hydrogen.

The only exhaust products from using Hydrogen as a fuel are steam ( water vapor ) and a tiny amount of Nitrogen Oxides. It's about as clean burning as you can get.

Perhaps you are deluded enough to believe that it is about NOTHING BUT oil, and that what I had to say about oil versus alternatives was either incorrect or irrelevant. Crude oil will be the fuel for 95% or more of the world's transportation for many years to come. We are a western, Christian country, and will not transform ourselves into what the Islamists want in order to beg for their oil. But we will, and we do, pay the market price for it.

Nobody knows what form any new technology might take, which is exactly what I said - although I mentioned several possibilities. Do you have the answers to the questions I raised? Real answers, not just guesses based on wishful thinking? Research and development is needed, along with the time to get it done.

Oil's replacement might just turn out to be synthesized petroleum instead of hydrogen. Or perhaps we will learn to extract and process Canadian tar sands, an immense resource pool that dwarfs Middle East oil. But the kind of supersized, multicycle nuclear facility I mentioned has never been designed, and that task will take years if it is ever done.

Perhaps you are deluded enough to believe that it is about NOTHING BUT oil, and that what I had to say about oil versus alternatives was either incorrect or irrelevant

Actually, no, but you said that it was a small thing. It's not. It's the major thing, and it should be. National interest should be the only determining factor in doing things like invading other countries. If it isn't, then everyone in the Capitol is stark raving mad.

Crude oil will be the fuel for 95% or more of the world's transportation for many years to come

Probably, but largely due to the inertia of such a prevalent technology and the willingness of the various governments to actually go to war over it. And because there may be more oil around then previously thought, and because engineering efforts to improve overall efficiency has and will produce improvements (specific fuel consumption, mass of an equivalent vehicle, combined cycle engines, etc), which will allow less oil to be used for the same amount of activity or the same amount of oil but with increased activity.

We are a western, Christian country, and will not transform ourselves into what the Islamists want in order to beg for their oil

Not for long if illegal and legal immigration keep up at the current rates.

Real answers, not just guesses based on wishful thinking?

The standard retort. It's all just wishful thinking, right? Something as simple as running a vehicle on gaseous hydrogen has been around for decades. It's not "wishful thinking" in that it physically can't work. It's merely not "optimal", at least under the current assumptions. There are a zillion different flavors of alternative vehicles and methods, all of which require a change in the assumption set containing range, size, overall cost, etc. Hard to compete against the economies of scale currently enjoyed by the existing technology, especially when it is subsidized.

What is happening now has almost nothing to do with the 'science' of 'How do we do it', but rather the systems engineering problem of 'which way is best?'. That's the real answer.

Or perhaps we will learn to extract and process Canadian tar sands

Oh yeah. The Athabascan fields. Which is already turning into Synfuels the Remake. Hey, I was there for the first movie. It was hilarious. But a lot of people out in Vernal and Craig made some money. Whatever.

But the kind of supersized, multicycle nuclear facility I mentioned has never been designed, and that task will take years if it is ever done

Don't worry, be happy. Inertial confinement will save us all, right?

Perhaps you are deluded enough to believe that it is about NOTHING BUT oil, and that what I had to say about oil versus alternatives was either incorrect or irrelevant

OK, I exaggerated somewhat, but do you believe that if the alternative fuel problem were solved tomorrow that we would suddenly be safe, and the Middle East countries and people would be our friends? You know that envy at our success versus their failure is far too strong for that.

Crude oil will be the fuel for 95% or more of the world's transportation for many years to come

Yes, it is important to our economy, but we are willing to pay market prices for it and have no desire to steal it. That does not mean that we will submit to blackmail, or be forced to pay prices far above market to obtain it. We have not taken a single dollar's worth of oil out of Iraq without paying for it.

We are a western, Christian country, and will not transform ourselves into what the Islamists want in order to beg for their oil

Not for long if illegal and legal immigration keep up at the current rates.

Irrelevant to this discussion.

Real answers, not just guesses based on wishful thinking?

Run a stationary engine? Sure. Not economically viable, but technologically possible, with either a continuous, piped supply or a very big tank. Of course, you still have all of the inefficiencies of an IC engine, but it HAS been done. The question that matters is how to make the fuel supply convenient and portable, as well as economically viable. Those answers are NOT YET KNOWN, but we do know that producing pure hydrogen is going to require about THREE times the energy as input that the resulting hydrogen can produce as fuel. Gasoline delivers about 80% of the energy in its raw source to the vehicle tank.

There are a zillion different flavors of alternative vehicles and methods, all of which require a change in the assumption set containing range, size, overall cost, etc. Hard to compete against the economies of scale currently enjoyed by the existing technology, especially when it is subsidized.

Existing transportation is heavily taxed, not subsidized. Infrastructure is subsidized, in the form of roads, bridges, rights of way, etc, but not gasoline. You are probably thinking of the army stealing oil, but I do not buy that argument.

What is happening now has almost nothing to do with the 'science' of 'How do we do it', but rather the systems engineering problem of 'which way is best?'. That's the real answer.

Or perhaps we will learn to extract and process Canadian tar sands

Nevertheless, it is a hydrocarbon source that could be tapped, if the price is right. Economics rules.

But the kind of supersized, multicycle nuclear facility I mentioned has never been designed, and that task will take years if it is ever done

Don't worry, be happy. Inertial confinement will save us all, right?

Maybe it will someday. Or maybe not. We have enough fission fuel for centuries, so that is not the critical issue. The designing I am talking about is the nuts and bolts stuff of flows, temperatures, bursting strengths, and all of the other engineering necessary to build something that works. It doesn.t exist today.

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"Short Range" Hydride tank placement in Corvette. We just added an additional tank to the configuration shown here. Range with these smaller tanks is now just under 300 miles and leaves some luggage/trunk room. ( not that the Corvette really had any room to begin with )	Close-up shot of the updated Hydride tank installation.