make petrol from water...

[akku]

OK, not those scams that sell you DIY electrolosis kits...

But as I was lying under the Oldsmobile cleaning the pan mounting rail on the box I was listening to radio 4 and they have some science/environment/we're all doomed type show on there and this time it was about a future without oil and gas dependancy.

And hydrogen was pimped as the answer.

Now we know already than the internal combustion engine, domestic central heating and your gas cooker can all run on hydrogen. And if I've got this right you can make hydrogen from water be electrolosys with no harmful byproduct at point of production - the problem is that you need to use more electricity to make the hydrogen than the hydrogen gives, this is conservation of energy law and such. But we'll come onto that in a moment...

The next thing I think I have right is that when you burn hydrogen in your central heating, gas cooker or internal combustion engine there is zero polution - just water vapour.

OK, in a real world there will be a small contamination of the burn by oil from the sump in a car engine but thats so minimal we are talking practically zero emissions here.

And the fun part is that this is tried and tested - it works. On the programme they were road testing a Ford Focus 2.0 petrol car which had been "adapted" and kinda like LPG they just flick a switch and it runs on hydrogen not petrol and according to the presenter there was no difference in the way the car drove, although the scientist guy says that the calorific value is lower and thus there is a performance drop in theory.

OK, this is fine, but hydrogen ain't easy to come by.

Aha, now this is where it gets good! They were talking to a company who have a hydrogen generator almost ready for market. It is about the size of a phone box and they reckon it will sell for about £2K when it goes to market. It can make enough hydrogen to run your cars, your central heating, your cooker... OK - but how much electricity does that need?

Well, a mate of mine is an environmental consutlant and tends to practice what he preaches, his house has recently been fitted out with solar panels. New generation ones (sorry for that pun) which work bloomin' well, and canheat his water tank etc even on a overcast day. I mention these because thats how Radio 4 suggested you might generate the electic for your hydrogen generator. My mate's solar install was £7K. Now you have to do that for the love of the planet at the moment, but...

for about £9K you could have a free supply of hydrogen made from water and solar power, enough to never have to buy petrol again and never have to pay another gas bill....

OK, I'm sceptical, but if that works, SIGN ME UP.

My question is this really...

The programme was quite light on details of the mods done to the car. Anyone know what is needed to be done to make a petrol car run on hydrogen? Also anyone know what the octane of hydrogen is and how the charge and burn temperature compare to petrol or LPG?

You see where I am headed with this muse?

[Odin]

From what I understand there are two methods of harnessing solar power for home use, thermal and electrical. The former heats water directly whereas the latter uses photovoltaic cells which aren't very efficient and you would probably need a vast number to supply enough electricity for electrolysing hydrogen.

I suspect your mate has solar thermal water heating rather than photovoltaic cells and an immersion heater.

[Obsol33t]

I think on an episode of mythbusters they just sprayed the hydrogen straight into the carb, it worked fine until it caught on fire

[lewist123]

odin is spot on!

your mate has solar thermal water heating, not solar photo voltayic (spelling skillz poor!) and as odin said, solar pv is not great!

Normal coal fired electricty production produces about 10 times more co2 per kw of power compaired to gas! so using to make hydrogen is worse than burning normal natural gas in a boiler!

If you have green electricty though, its all good. Some places in canada run a huge amount of hydro power stations, so in some areas their leccy is almost all good and so it might work out better!

[VW]

They can, and have, made perfectly good hydrogen cars.

the technology is there, its all fine and dandy.

the problem is they cant come up with a system for storage/movement/dispensing of hydrogen. Once they have sorted out how to practialy dispence hydrogen at the forecourt then its all sorted.



Apparantly, so ive heard (seen on tv)

[dollywobbler]

This is very deep and technical for a Friday night - but very interesting! Although losing power is not something that appeals to me, a lover of all that is feeble!

So, we get hydrogen to run our cars, and oxygen to heal the planet. How long with that setup before environmentalists find out that too much oxygen is now killing everything?!

[paulmi16]

Sept 26, 2008 19:32:54 GMT akku said:

You see where I am headed with this muse?

Is it that the transmission on the Olds is now fluid tight?

[misteralz]

Sept 26, 2008 20:07:02 GMT dollywobbler said:

How long with that setup before environmentalists find out that too much oxygen is now killing everything?!

Dunno - the lead times used to be quite long. Plastic bags were our saviour from mass deforestation but now they're the work of satan himself. Biodiesel was the best thing everer until the deforestation started again. Let's just plant a big forest somewhere that they can go and live in and us normal folk can get on with our lives safe in the knowledge that nothing we do will have any real impact on this planet in the grand scheme of things...

[milfordcubicle]

I think it's safe to say that we can't do anything right, and we're all doomed, etc.

[scaryoldcortina]

meh, I could start explaining about the problems of storing hydrogen (an inflammable, highly reactive, lighter than air and extremely permiable gas) or I could take issue with the whole CO₂ is bad argument by saying the planetary ecosystem is, at heart, an equilibrium reaction (a complex one, but an equilibrium system none the less) and Le Chatelier's principle applies re changes in concentration, and of course the whole !st law of thermodynamics thing surrounding converting solar into electricity into fuel thing that, frankly, plants have had sussed for 60 odd million years now.... but as dolly points out, Its friday night, and I'm too curse word to come up with a constructive argument

Keep hugging trees, that will help ;D

[jettadeluxe]

1. The CO2 we emit into the air is not contributing to climate change, so stop worrying about it.

2. There is enough oil to last well beyond our motoring days, so relax and keep driving.

[PandaSelecta]

Main problem - Hydrogen is not very dense, unlike oil. The only way to make it dense enough is to have it as 'hydrogen slush' as Slush tanks make hydrogen 16% more dense than it's pure liquid state, but I think that needs to be frozen even in the car, so unless you have a refrigerated van, it doesnt sound very practical.

edit - Hydrogen slush has to be stored at close to absolute zero and in a cryogenic state at 4000PSI, so there goes storing some in the garage

[misteralz]

So? 4000psi isn't really that high a pressure. The PAS system (I think) in late 80s Audi Barges runs that sort of pressure. Divide it by 14.7 and you've got your pressure in bar, and that's a much smaller number so it's less scary.

[PandaSelecta]

Sept 26, 2008 20:45:18 GMT misteralz said:

So? 4000psi isn't really that high a pressure. The PAS system (I think) in late 80s Audi Barges runs that sort of pressure. Divide it by 14.7 and you've got your pressure in bar, and that's a much smaller number so it's less scary.

4000 PSI = 275.78 BAR

[misteralz]

Yes. 275's a much less scary number!

[Shortcut]

Hydrogen isn't a primary fuel source. It will always take more energy to convert a primary fuel source into hydrogen than the hydrogen gives in energy.

[PandaSelecta]

Sept 26, 2008 20:51:40 GMT misteralz said:

Yes. 275's a much less scary number!

rats, my foot pump doesnt go that high ;D

[Datsun4Life]

The fundamental problem with running vehicles on hydrogen, is that to carry enough in the car to go any distance requires a seriously high pressure storage tank. Which will gradually leak hydrogen. Plus, getting the hydrogen to that pressure takes a whole lot of energy. So much, in fact, that it almost negates the advantage.

The best solution at the moment is purely electric vehicles, running on batteries until someone sorts that lot out...

[scaryoldcortina]

yeah, don't worry about that... I mean, the stuff boils at 20 kelvin (-253C) and even as a liquid poses storage problems cos it dissolves in some metals and reacts with many others.... Thats why all the large industrial users generate at source from methane, coal or CO and water (making hydrogen and CO₂.. boo hisss). Come to think of it, your car uses hydrogen anyway. Its part of the process of refining crude oil (hydrocracking etc).

[akku]

Sept 26, 2008 20:28:26 GMT @jettadeluxe said:

1. The CO2 we emit into the air is not contributing to climate change, so stop worrying about it.

2. There is enough oil to last well beyond our motoring days, so relax and keep driving.

Others are hinting at similar things but I'll pick on you 'cos your points are well defined... ;D

1. thats an opinion not shared with a vast number of scientists.

2. the price of petrol + domestic gas is enough that I could recoup the £9K investment quite quickly, even at todays prices... Who knows where it wll be in 5 years time. Regardless of whether theres plenty left or not.

without going into a rather predictable eco arguements about is it all a con or have you got your head in the sand I'm interested in the real actual issues on running a petrol car on hydrogen.

Hydrogen cells and battery vehicles are not interesting to me at this point.

There have been issues on storage raised - we store gas for heating, LPG, nitrous - so why not hydrogen?

There have been issues on vehicle range raised - what kind of range reduction are we talking compared to say 250 miles off a 100 litre LPG tank what would my car do on Hydrogen (all things being otherwise equal?)

Anyone know what other mods are needed? Or is it just like an LPG kit?

What about valve lubrication and the like?

Oh, and Paul - not put any fluid in it yet. I'm leaving at least 24 hours for the goop to set this time!