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Hydrogen Generator Project

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cobra1

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After working on a new Hydrogen Generator Project on a small scale i have decided to scale it up to a useable level.

I have started the project today and will be posting pictures and results etc as they come about.

The Hydrogen Generator comprises of 5 cells that hold around 125l of water each, in these cells algae is grown. When the algae is subjected to certain conditions they will produce Hydrogen gas.

The cells are being designed to use the suns energy, both for lighting and heating, at night the cells will be suplimented with artificial light.

This project involves a lot of both mechanical and electronic parts.

I hope you guys find it interesting.
 
Is hydrogen not fairly inexpensive to purchase in large quantities?
will you be able to produce enough Hydrogen to fuel the nighttime artificial lighting?
 
Hydrogen is quite cheap, but to produce it you require fossel fuels.

The night lighting isnt powered by the hydrogen, the night lighting is required to produce hydrogen around the clock. The night lighting is powered by batteries or if possible super capacitors
 
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The night lighting isnt powered by the hydrogen, the night lighting is required to produce hydrogen around the clock. The night lighting is powered by batteries or if possible super capacitors[/QUOTE]

Actually that was sort of the point of my question, will you be able to generate Hydrogen efficiently/cheaply enough to offset the amount of energy being used to actually generate the Hydrogen.
 
on a small scale it works, it uses solar panels to charge up the batteries for nightime, during the night the lights will come on to ensure photoproduction. they will be given a 4 hour dark period during the night, the leds used are pretty efficient due to the colours used. Only blue and red leds are used as white light is inefficient.

on a very large scale i think wind and solar generators would be required

the way the reactor is made it is designed to give maximum efficiency so the algae get exactly what they need when they need it, and its all controlled by a program that will monitor optimum conditions
 
Hmmmm...VERY COOL, make with the pictures!
 
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To make the hydrogen useful, doesn't it need to be condensed/pressurized? You could probably use a windmill to turn a compressor pump, to avoid using the grid power, and cheaper than solar. What sort of yield do you expect? And what are your plans for the hydrogen you produce? This sounds really cool, something living producing fuel, just a little skeptical about whether it could produce a useful quantity. I can see there could be a lot of stuff going on to keep the algae healthy, happy, and productive. The water would need to be changed and monitored often, nutrients add, waste products removed. Bacteria might be a tough battle to fight. Climate control, you'll want to keep the temperature in sort of a tight range. Algae is way more active at a specific temperature range, tends to die out when it gets a little to hot or cold, and with GW about to kick in any time now, it might be a concern. But this is the ultimate green energy source, so I hope it works out.
 
and with GW about to kick in any time now, it might be a concern.

Winters coming so this years GW trend is over, once again, but come next May it should be starting up again! :rolleyes:

As far as hydrogen goes it more a matter of how its being stored and used that determines the practicality of it as a fuel source. Too often the hydrogen based energy schemes take the basic concepts and principals then over engineer them to the level of impractical due to all the unnecessary additional junk or design complexity they attach to it.

Hydrogen as a fuel source for internal combustion engines is practical and of reasonable efficiency BUT, to be so the engines themselves are considerably different in mechanical design aspects when compared to ones built for gasoline fuel operation. They both use the common four cycle combustion process but after that all the parameters of operation are far different.

A fuel cell based vehicle with an all electric drive system may be more energy efficient but the catch is the complexity and limited power capacity make it a poor choice for bigger higher powered vehicles that are necessary for long range driving and hauling heavy loads which is as big of fuel consumer as all of the grocery getters and go to work and back driving combined.

To me a 35 Hp 100 mile range vehicle that costs $50,000 is a pointless waste of money and the efficiency of it power source will never offset its cost in fuel savings during its realistic working lifetime. However give me a 350 HP 1000 mile range hydrogen engine and fuel storage system that can fit into and power a semi for $50,000 and its a practical investment even if it has only half the working efficiency of a fuel cell based electric drive system.
 
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I havnt really got a plan of what to do with the H2 yet, i will store the H2 in a Iron-Titanium hydride. these hydrides can store 500 times there own volume in Hydrogen. to release the Hydrogen heat is required so might not be a good option, however storing hydrogen in boron hydrides may be better, boron hydrides will release stored hydrogen when placed in water.

im not sure what to expect in terms of output on this large a scale, the aim is to have a home based system that can produce 1kg of Hydrogen per week (11,000 litres @ STP)

Time will tell i guess, im sure it will be fun trying
 
I dont think its interesting because its producing Hydrogen, the Jury is out as to weither it will produce enough to be useful.. I think its fascinating in the sense that you have a little self-contained eco-system that is actually alive.
 
i also find this interesting, i think the numbers will be rather impressive tbh. From my 1Litre tests hydrogen is produced on a decent scale. Will see what larger scale brings along.
 
I was under the impression that to do the blue-green algae hyrdogen generation thing, there was something about needing to provide CO2 as part of the cycle (I remember the day/night thing)...? Got any links to further info on this process? Where did you get the algae, btw - common pond "scum"? Maybe I just need to read the info I've found on the process so far a little closer...

I heard this morning on the radio about some kind of similar system was being investigated here in Phoenix (at ASU or something like that)... I immediately thought of your posts...heh.
 
After working on a new Hydrogen Generator Project on a small scale i have decided to scale it up to a useable level.
I have started the project today and will be posting pictures and results etc as they come about.
The Hydrogen Generator comprises of 5 cells that hold around 125l of water each, in these cells algae is grown. When the algae is subjected to certain conditions they will produce Hydrogen gas.
The cells are being designed to use the suns energy, both for lighting and heating, at night the cells will be suplimented with artificial light.
This project involves a lot of both mechanical and electronic parts.
I hope you guys find it interesting.

Really looking forward to some nitty gritty on the component parts and some photos. Hows it going?
 
so far im still making the former for the reactor itself, its a custom design that is made from fibreglass. the reactor stands 1.5m tall and is 40cm in diameter.

i will post a pic of the finished former in a couple of days. it will give a good idea of what it will look like. The finished system will have 5 of these reactors running together.

The algae used is not common pond scum nor is it blue green algae, blue green algae is in fact bacteria, certain bacterias can be used for H2 production but there not too good at it. The algae that do it best produce what is known as a hydrogenase enzyme, this enzyme is able to use hydrogen ions as a source of food in order to survive when the oxygen supply is interupted for long periods, when metabolising the hydrogen ions hydrogen gas is formed as a waste product.

this process can only last for a short time, (around 10 days) before the algae need to return to normal photosynthesis. The CO2 that algae require is only really required for growth, the CO2 i will be supplying from the air, as it is simply growth i am looking for i dont need large amounts, if i were making bio-deisel then larger amounts of co2 would be required.

I have observed during tests that once this particular algae reaches a certain density it still produces the same H2 therafter. im not sure why this is yet, but my system is able to monitor the density and will put the algae into "hydrogen production mode" at optimum parameters.

For those who would like to read further on the algae im using it is Chlamydomonas reinhardtii this strain is the best known strain for hydrogen production, another good strain is C. moewusii
 
While a but off-topic, it remins me of a Science air project I did in grade school on closed environmental systems. It was a large pickle jar with a few tiny fish, a underwater plant, and a few small snails. The plantprovided food and oxygen the fish ate the plant, the snails ate the fish poo...and everythin coexisted without any external food.
Everything lived for months, until I got bored with it, and dumped everything into our large fish tank.
 
so far im still making the former for the reactor itself, its a custom design that is made from fibreglass. the reactor stands 1.5m tall and is 40cm in diameter.

Did you decide to go this route because of cost, or was there no off-the-shelf solutions (that could be modified) near you?

For those who would like to read further on the algae im using it is Chlamydomonas reinhardtii this strain is the best known strain for hydrogen production, another good strain is C. moewusii

I looked this up - found a couple of places selling it. What was strange was that the cultures seemed kinda expensive, and it wasn't really apparent exactly what you were getting (one site said you got "4" - "4" what, I don't know). Also, on one site (Algae Depot), it cost like $30.00 for the culture, and then they also sold "nutrients" and other items. I guess I am wondering - how did you start? Where did you get yours, what did you do to turn what you had into enough to do your basic experiments with (do you just take your culture, drop it in some water in a jug and add some nutrients, and shake?)...

Do you care to share instructions, links, etc - detailing how you went from "zero-knowledge" to "building a bio-reactor in my garage"...?
 
Have you considered other containers like a 20 litre plastic drum or 225 litre plastic drums ? With a disposable knife I cut slots from the side of 20 litre drums and store things in them . They are only a few dollare each from Mitre 10 etc . The larger 45 gal drums are usually about $25 but are blue . There are a lot of 1000 litre opaque square containers around now used for transporting detergents and oils around the country . These can be purchased from transport coys and are advertised in local papers for about $100 but they have a convenient steel tubular frame around them. They can be sliced in half horizontally toowith an angle grinder or cutoff wheel to make two 500 litre containers open topped. About 1 M x 1 M square

Making them seems a costly approach at $10 a kilo for resin + cloth and all the mould and makeup work.However I can offer acvice here if you need any.
 
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The cultures were started from a 100ml sample, the sample cost me £80 (bit of a ripoff if you ask me) using the sample add it to 1 litre of RO water add your nutrients and vitamins/minerals (hutner solution) and add some light and CO2 (air is good)

the water at first looks like there nothing in there, but this stuff grows extremely fast. within 3 days you see a good culture growth, within 1 week under optimum conditions the culture is dense enough for H2 production.

There are a few reasons why i chose to make my own reactor. First off, being an engineer its easier to build from scratch and get exactly what you want, than to settle for a modified barrel that might not work as planned.
I have been able to choose every aspect of this reactor. In terms of cost i estimate each reactor to cost around £100 once my mould has been made, this cost includes all facrication and electronics etc, there will be 5 reactors in total.
 
Just thought id post a pic of the former for the mould, its a work in progress but its getting there slowly.

**broken link removed**
 
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