Hydrogen..a little off topic

[wade]

I have a car which is set up to run on gasoline or propane. If I wanted to run it on hydrogen, would it work or would I need to ceramic coat internal engine parts, etc. Anyone know? I think there is hydrogen fuel available in California and vehicles (BMW, for example) made to run on it. Thanks.

[6cuda6]

I would have to say NO....very different set ups.....

[O.B.]

I think hydrogen in an internal combustion engine is extremely unconventional. Most of the concept cars I've heard of convert hydrogen into electricity through a power cell via a catalyst, not actually combust the stuff. I think the Hindenburg tried that once

[keptin]

actually ive heard the opposite....that it doesnt take much to convert a vehicle that combusts fuel to combusting hydrogen gas instead. On that big alternative fuel drive they do every year or something....they always have people in vehicle that are just plain combusting hydrogen.

...it was on the history channel.....this one guy did the whole thing with a bunch of tanks in the back of his ford f-250. By combusting the H2 and O2 you produce water and oxygen.


O.B.....your right though....the way that a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle uses hydrogen is different. Its basically the opposite of electrolesis (separtaion of H2O by using electricity)....its the combining of H2 (hydrogen gas) and oxygen gas (O2) to "harvest" the electricity from it by using a special membrane cell thing. The products are still water and oxygen....


but a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is more efficient because combustion itself is inefficient due to the nature of burning something-----it looses energy in the form of heat.

[Bene]

in reality, its not all that efficient, it takes a lot of energy to seperate the hydrogen and oxygen molecules.

[keptin]

Originally Posted by Bene

in reality, its not all that efficient, it takes a lot of energy to seperate the hydrogen and oxygen molecules.

Is it?

The idea is that you do that at the pump...not in the vehicle. You could have your entire setup at home. Using solar panels, or wind power.....or a combination of the two, you would slowly separate the H2 from water and collect it all week...then at the end of the week you would fill up your fuel cell vehicle. The only cost would be the water.

Yes it takes energy to separate them....but they give off exactly that much energy when combined. On paper the system sounds very good.

[Bene]

yeah, for personal use that might work, if you dont drive all that much during the week. but i couldn't really tell you for sure, im just going off of something my dad told me a while back.

[keptin]

its efficient enough. The winning thing would be that it would be reusable.....you would just keep separating it, then combining it again, all to separate it once again.

because we can do this (unbalenced):

O2+H2 ---> H2O+O2

H20 ---> O2+H2

we just cant go:

O2+C8H18 (gasoline) ---> H20 + CO2

and back....easily (or at all? )




Since energy lost = energy gained in the opposite reaction, putting them together (H2+O2) would yield just as much energy as taking them appart. Essentially it almost is like a battery powered vehicle....the advatage over that is that the fuel could be obtained anywhere and would be used instantly (ie. no charging).

[pavel]

A few years ago, I think in Road & Track mag, there was a Wankel Mazda RX8 that the factory had set up to run on gasoline and Hydrogen (two tanks). The testers said it worked beautifully except you realized exactly 50% the hp when running on Hydrogen. Being an experimental super light weight vehicle, this was not a problem but a Disco with 90 hp instead of 180 (120 ft/lbs torque instead of 240) would be pretty lazy indead! Still this may end up being an extremely practical and cheap way to keep our Landies going when American and Canadian gasoline prices reach $5 per gallon (soon?). I guess it's time to start saving up for some good solar panels......

[wade]

Well, I like to experiment, so here are some thoughts I'm following and researching.

1. If I can generate fairly small quantities of hydrogen/oxygen (I'm aware of the explosive potential) and feed the oxygen into the intake, the gasoline will burn more completely improving mpg some.

2. My brother bought diesels (VW and a Ford truck) and is going to make biodiesel to run them on (I can't find any recent LR diesels?). He lives a ways out of town and says he can make it for about 70 cents per gallon.

3. Just like the energy that was wasting on brakes, now being used to generate electricity (hybrids), gasoline engines also are very inefficient. Think of the gasoline wasted in traffic jams, sitting in parking lots, etc. It might as well be generating hydrogen while it is sitting there. There are some issues with storage and making sure the hydrogen is pure and dry. I don't know about the hp; perhaps a mixture.

One of my cars is set up for gasoline with a switch to change to the propane tank. I plan to experiment, safely. If I get any results worth sharing, I'll post them (unless I run into something I want to show a patent attorney first). If we all wait on the oil and gas companies to come up with a solution, I expect we will be waiting a long, long time.

[me.guevara]

Originally Posted by wade

If we all wait on the oil and gas companies to come up with a solution, I expect we will be waiting a long, long time.

Or at least until most of the fossil fuels are all used up...

You should research a way to make our LRs run on processed beer