fuel batteries

[Thunderchild]

ok so how does the battery work that combines oxygen and hydrogen to make elctricity work ? can they be made/bought ?

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

ok so how does the battery work that combines oxygen and hydrogen to make elctricity work ? can they be made/bought ?

Isn't that a fuel cell?, I suspect they are VERY, VERY expensive - assuming you could find one to buy?.

In any case, where are you going to get the hydrogen and oxygen?.

 

[Thunderchild]

yea ok idea scrapped...

 

[justDIY]

I dunno about hydrogen oxygen fuel cells, but you can buy alcohol + oxygen fuel cells. the oxygen comes from the atmosphere, so you don't need dangerous oxygen cylinders around.

I cant find the site right now, but there was a lab supply store that sold small cells for research / teaching.

 

[3v0]

Isn't that a fuel cell?, I suspect they are VERY, VERY expensive - assuming you could find one to buy?.

In any case, where are you going to get the hydrogen and oxygen?.

Of course they are expensive, low productiona and prototypes are. Large scale production will do a lot to cut cost but research to get the cost of production down may still need to be done.

When I mentioned fuel cells at our local donut shop I got trashed by one of the locals who insisted they were 20, maybe 50 years away. It may take a few more years to get them on the market I hope for the planets sake it is not 50.

Last night NOVA (IIFC) reported that in China's major cities the top source of carbon dioxide is now autos. They will soon surpass the US in generation of the same. Cars built in China are dirty compared to either in that they only conform to the EU2 standards.

Ford, GM, Honda, and Mazda are all working on fuel hydrogen fuel cells for their cars. I suspect there are others.

Ford/Mazda has a plug in hybrid that use a fuel cell with batteries to provide a 200 mile range and up to 85 MPH in a zero emissions package.

I do not know what the schedule is for the above. Honda was talking about some sort of increased distribution of the hydrogen powered FCX in 2008 at the LA auto show.

 

[HarveyH42]

https://www.sciplus.com/singleItem.cfm?terms=11665&cartLogFrom=Search

$139.95 kit, little expensive for a classroom toy, but might be worth it to learn about fuel cells.

More info at:

https://www.thamesandkosmos.com/products/fc/fc2.html

It would at least show you what's involved, and give you some ideas on what you'll need to build a larger one.

 

[Thunderchild]

ford already produce green cars obviously unless goverments get off their asses and the top bods owning the petrol comapnies agree to loose out and retire on their already millions nothing will happen, I am not sure whether it is combustion engine running on hydrogen or a fuel cell but ford do produce fleets of such cars for companies that have the resources and need (what with 100 odd cars) to set up their own fueling solutions, until there are hydrogen (and possibly oxygen) pumps along with what I hope will become the old fashioned petrol nothing is going to happen. WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY RIGHT NOW but money is more important to some people, a standard combustion engine in ALL cars today can quite easily run on hydrogen and pollute NO MORE

 

[Thunderchild]

and as the kit you link to shows solar power is a green and redily available method of making the gasses, right at the pump, it is difficult and expensive to store power in batteries but what easier method of accumulating power than as gas !

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY RIGHT NOW but money is more important to some people, a standard combustion engine in ALL cars today can quite easily run on hydrogen and pollute NO MORE

Petrol is a nice safe fuel, easily transported, and simple and safe to use - hydrogen is EXTREMELY dangerous, both to transport and to use - it's not really a practical alternative. The other problem of course is where do you get the hydrogen?, electrolysis? - then where do you get the power for that?, all you're doing is moving the pollution from the car to a generating plant.

 

[Thunderchild]

petrol apart from running out in 60 odd years is also dangerous and very very poluting. We have solar power stations ? why not directly use the power on site to produce hydrogen and oxygen ? it will cost less if necessary to pipe gas to where it is needed than set up cables for electricity that will partly be lost in the wire too due to resistance and for any distance needs a lot of apparatus like transformers etc.

 

[Hero999]

Petrol isn't so bad if it's used in a modern engine with a catalytic converter, I agree it isn't a renewable source but the best alternative to it is biodiesel not hydrogen.

 

[Thunderchild]

yes biodiesel is a good idea as well.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

petrol apart from running out in 60 odd years is also dangerous and very very poluting.

No where near as dangerous as hydrogen - think airships and massive disasters!.

We have solar power stations ? why not directly use the power on site to produce hydrogen and oxygen ?

Because solar power is inefficient, and so is converting it to hydrogen and oxygen.

it will cost less if necessary to pipe gas to where it is needed than set up cables for electricity that will partly be lost in the wire too due to resistance and for any distance needs a lot of apparatus like transformers etc.

You are completely wrong on that thought! - do you think gas magically moves through pipes on it's own?, not even considering the disasterous effects of a leak - far worse than gas currently used.

 

[Sceadwian]

That depends Nigel, Hydrogen is lighter than air so it doesn't stick around, it'll basically go straight up as soon as it's warm enough to turn into a gas. Gasoline vapors are denser than air and will collect in low areas. The Hindenburg was filled with hydrogen gas not liquefied hydrogen and the self combustion temperature of hydrogen is slightly higher than gasoline (even high octane versions) The fact that it's usually stored as a compressed gas is a problem. I don't know what they plan on doing to fix that, but the fact that it's a gas under pressure is more dangerous than the fact that it's a combustible gas. That doesn't make switching an entire country or countries over to a completely different energy source any more practicle. Even if hydrogen fuel cells were 5 times more efficient that gas and safer the logistics and legality of simply switching to it are enormous.

 

[Thunderchild]

well being a more environmentally friendly energy source we need not worry to much about efficienzy but i am sure it is good after all all of the gas burns and leaves no fumes that were originally part of the petrol, the air baloons were not safe because the gas was quite exsposed and heck that was many years ago they just did not take the necesary precautions

 

[Sceadwian]

Thunderchild, you can't have an 'environmentally friendly' device that's not energy efficient, you're either polluting via a chemical means or by adding extra energy to the system. Things like carbon dioxide allow more energy to be trapped by the earth, but if we remove carbon dioxide and simply supply that energy directly what's the point? Aside from things like CFC's which directly damaged the environement so little is known about the carbon cycle on earth that we can't even be sure that the extra carbon we're adding to the environment is actually causing an increase in the overall carbon levels. For as much as we know plant life could be absorbing the carbon we're outputting and the carbon could be coming from some other source, we simply do not know.

 

[Thunderchild]

I was refering to hydrogen, if it is produced with say solar pannels then there is practically no environment damage ok even if it were "not quite" as efficient as petrol say it weighed slightly more for example then thats not a big deal as we are not poluting to produce the hydrogen or burn it but I am sure it is far more efficient because to start with it is pure combustible gas no junk is turfed out, for example methane is made of carbon AND hydrogen and the carbon that is much heavier is dumped into the air as CO2 now apart from polluting it is also extra weight in the gas that is not used to produce power

 

[dknguyen]

I think what he was getting at is that all energy production pollutes in some form. If it's more environmentally friendly, but less efficient it means you have to use more of this more environmentally friendly stuff (that still pollutes) to produce the same amount of useful energy, which still ends up creating the same amount of pollution, it not more.

It's like if something is 99% environmentally friendly, but only 1% efficient, you need may end up needing to produce 100x of that 1% harmful bit to get the same amount of useful energy which is the same amount of pollution as if you went with something that was 50% efficient and 50% environmentally friendly.

"Environmentally friendly" is a rather vague term, when in reality, it's the pollution produced per watt of useful energy produced.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

I was refering to hydrogen, if it is produced with say solar pannels then there is practically no environment damage ok even if it were "not quite" as efficient as petrol say it weighed slightly more for example then thats not a big deal as we are not poluting to produce the hydrogen

How are you hoping to produce enough hydrogen from solar panels?, you need VERY bright sunlight, and an area considerably larger than a car to produce enough energy to drive a car directly. Converting it to hydrogen, then converting it back adds many more losses, so would need even bigger panels.

You must have seen the solar powered car races across Australia?, using VERY high tech cars completely covered in VERY expensive solar cells - yet they produce really poor performance.

 

[Thunderchild]

no I meant you have a solar power station but instead of storing it in batteries directly use it to split water into H and O2, these can then be fed into cars at a fuel pump, many cars run on methane gas what's wrong with using hydrogen instead ? it is the same as methane without the polluting carbon that makes up good part of the weight CH4, carbon is a much heavier element than Hydrogen so methane is not as efficient as hydrogen. So if we already use gas propelled cars what wrong with changing gas ?