Water powered cars?

[BaldvinE]

I know this may sound stupid, what what are the technical problems with the old dream of powering cars with water?

It seems that with the current push for hydrogen powered cars they have settled on electric motors powered by hydrogen fuel cells as the answer.
The main problem seems to be the storage of the highly flammable hydrogen gas on board a car and in pumping stations.

But BMW and others have built prototypes of internal combustion engines running on hydrogen, so what is the main problem with running an internal combustion engine on hydrogen obtained from electrolyzing water from an on board tank?

Couldn't enough power be produced using an alternator, regenerative brakes, solar panels on the roof and maybe even small wind turbines working at speed?

Is the problem with the quantity of water needed?


I know this would probably not be efficient, and a much better and easier idea would be a pure electric vehicle, but I'm just curious ...

 

[Asa]

a lil while back i posted a thread about someone who designed a six stroke engine that ran partially on water

http://fordsix.com/forum/viewtopic.php? ... highlight=

 

[Bort62]

Electrolyzing water takes a large amount of power.

I imagine that at best you would have a very inefficient process, and at worse a negatively efficient one.

IE takes more power to electrolyze the water than you are generating.

 

[rbohm]

8) so far the easiest way to split the water molecule is with rods made of aluminum and gallium. even then at this point the process is inefficient. there may come a time, hopefully fairly soon, that the process will be improved.

 

[Alfred Lord Tenniscourt]

The problem is that you don't get any extra energy from the water. What happens is that you put energy in when you split the water molecule, making O2 and Hydrogen, and then get it back when you use a fuel cell to combine the O2 and Hydrogen (which gives you electricity, and water as exhaust).
The cycle of producing Hydrogen and then using it in a fuel cell is almost more like using a battery than running an engine. One uses a lot of electricity to make the Hydrogen, and then recovers it later by pulling the electricity back out.
So, using an onboard system to make hydrogen and then using the hydrogen to power a fuel cell runs into the same theoritical problems that I am sure many of us discovered as children trying to figure out how to put a generator on one wheel of our bicycles and a motor on the other, that is that one can never generate quite as much energy as one uses to propel the vehicle.
I would like to say that I don't think Hydrogen is dangerous when compared to gasoline. It must be stored under pressure, which is kind of scarry, but the trade off with that is that it will go away if it leaks (as oposed to gasoline which stays around waiting for an ignition source), it wont stick to you (by this I mean that you can spray me down with Hydrogen and I can walk ten feet away and light a cigarette, I would not recommend this with gasoline), it is much less toxic, it won't leach into ground water, it burns at a lower temperature, and does not require the complicated and dangerous rotating assemblies found in our fossil burners.
I hope this was helpfull, don't let anyone give you any grief for thinking about things like this. They wouldn't think it was stupid if they hadn't thought about it themselves first

 

[Thad]

In the late '60s worked on the cyrogenic tanks for Apollo.
The Ford truck (you guessed it 300ci) that delivered tanks to Stapleton AP to ship to the Cape for assembly into the space craft ran on hydrogen. Using a early prototype cryo tank.

Vanilla fudge simple, tank pressure drops heater kicks on cooking off some liquid H2 to gas until pressure comes up and switches heater off.

Yes H2 much safe than gasoline, any compressed gas is safer. Very narrow band of mixtures that will ignite and when vented to atomsphere almost instantly desperses. For a ruptured tank to explode the ignition source has to be there at the same time as rupture and long enough for fuel to air mix to weaken to the point of ignition.

Whereas gasoline just lays there evaporating, continuely giving off ignitable vapors until all is evaporated.

 

[Patrick66]

The cycle of producing Hydrogen and then using it in a fuel cell is almost more like using a battery than running an engine.

how it was explained to me was that hydrogen was not a power source, just a power carrier. however much energy it takes to split the molecule is as much energy you will retrieve when the atoms are combined. the advantage of hydrogen vs batteries, is that you can store more energy and it takes much less time to refill.

 

[BaldvinE]

My point was not to use fuel cells, but to run an ic engine off the electrolyzed hydrogen, as BMW and others have done already.

I know it will not be efficient, but I was just wondering if enough hydrogen could be obtained via on-board electrolysis to run an ic engine.

A much easier alternative would, of course, be to obtain the electricity and use it to power an electric motor, maybe topping it off from the main grid now and then...

 

[ludwig]

Your electric up there in I-land comes from subterranean thermal steam vents, right? In fact, if I remember, y'all heat the whole stinking city of Reykjavik and environs with remote hot water heat. So, yeah, of course you want electrolyzed hydrogen cause the electric is so dang cheap. It comes from a hole in the ground. Now, if you could get something from breaking down sulphur too, you could use the whole business, with no sulphur extraction. Right? Could be good. Why not?

 

[Patrick66]

I know it will not be efficient, but I was just wondering if enough hydrogen could be obtained via on-board electrolysis to run an ic engine.

no. the amount of energy that it takes to electrolyze (<-spelling?) the water and turn 'make' hydrogen is the same amount of energy that the engine would put out. you could do it, but you would only be able to power the electrolysis, and not be able to put any energy toward motion. and thats not counting the loss due to the inefficiencies of the system. it takes a certain amount of calories to make the hydrogen, when you combine the hydrogen with oxygen that same amount of calories is released and powers your motor. then you take some of that energy to power an alternator which powers the electrolysis, you would only be getting a fraction of that power to the electrolysis and most of it would be lost in the process when it could be used to turn the wheels. hydrogen does not contain any energy on its own, it just stores the energy that is used in the process of electrolysis to be used later.

think of hydrogen as the battery in a car that runs on an electric motor. if you hook up an alternator to the electric engine you could not expect to recharge the battery and power the car with the electricity you get from the alternator. you can not convert water to hydrogen and oxygen, then convert it back to water and have energy released in the process.

you could not do it unless you are getting the power from a source outside of the car (such as solar power or something).

sorry if some of my stuff is mixed up, its late,but i think i made some sense.

 

[wagon]

Energy is neither created or destroyed.... I think these 'hydrogen generators' and such are a con job. I talked to someone recently who was convinced one such device could save him 50% or something on his fuel bill. What next, politicians telling the truth?

 

[BaldvinE]

It seems that some of you guys have misunderstood my question, I'm not talking about fuel cells, which take hydrogen (that has already been electrolyzed from water), mix it with oxygen to make water again and some how harness energy from the process, reclaiming energy already used elsewhere in the electrolysis.

I know that energy is always conserved, but there is a considerable amount of energy in Hydrogen itself, I know this because pure hydrogen is capable of oxidizing very rapidly, producing large amounts of heat, just ask the passengers of the Hindenburg.

Now, this gaseous element has been used as fuel for an internal combustion engine by first electrolyzing water, splitting water into Hydrogen and Oxygen.

This is done with electricity, my question was, can enough power be produced on-board a car, through an alternator, solar panels, regenerative breaks and maybe small wind turbines working at speed, (the alternator only producing a part of the electricity), to produce sufficient Hydrogen from an on-board water tank?

And of course I know that this would be terribly inefficient and you'd be better off using a pure electric car running off those solar panels and whatnot, but I'm just curious because this has been a dream for so long to run cars off water, and I'm beginning to think it could be done.

Sorry if I'm ranting ...

 

[Thad]

On board electrolyzing water. No energy gain over amount of energy needed to strip H2 from water when H2 is burned for energy.

Think of an electric motor driving an electric generator making electricity to drive the electric motor. Won't work.

Have working model in my shop ( ) developed while working in Nigeria, (new source of di-lithium crystals). Anyone interested? :roll:

 

[BaldvinE]

No, naturally there wouldn't be a gain in energy, only transference, but would the energy transferred be enough to power an ic engine? Could on-board generators (solar, wind, brake friction) generate enough electricity?

I realize this is a moot point from any logical viewpoint, but could it be done?

Personally, I don't believe in this dream of a "Hydrogen economy", all it will really do is transfer emissions to power plants via electrolysis factories.
Why not use the power generated in power plants directly to power electric vehicles, and concentrate on building cleaner power plants?

Because then the oil companies wouldn't make money, that's why.

Who's currently at the forefront of this Hydrogen revolution? SHELL ... :roll:

Who bought the factory making revolutionary batteries that could have extended the range of electric cars manifold, only to shut it down? EXXON MOBIL :roll:

 

[Patrick66]

I know that energy is always conserved, but there is a considerable amount of energy in Hydrogen itself, I know this because pure hydrogen is capable of oxidizing very rapidly, producing large amounts of heat, just ask the passengers of the Hindenburg.

yes it does combust very quickly, but the amount of energy (heat) released in the process is the SAME AMOUNT of energy used to split the molecule.

as you know, heat powers an IC engine, therefore the amount of energy that the engine will me making is no more than the amount used to split the water. you could recover some of the energy from the brakes, rather than letting it disperse, but it would only be able to make a little hydrogen and you would still have to fill up from an outside source. the same way that hybrid cars still have to fill up at gas stations.

 

[rbohm]

8) you cant make enough hydrogen from an on board water supply to power an internal combustion engine. for hydrogen to be used in an automobile, it needs to be pressurized to a liquid state.

 

[Patrick66]

On board electrolyzing water. No energy gain over amount of energy needed to strip H2 from water when H2 is burned for energy.

Think of an electric motor driving an electric generator making electricity to drive the electric motor. Won't work.

Have working model in my shop ( ) developed while working in Nigeria, (new source of di-lithium crystals). Anyone interested? :roll:

here is your answer baldvine. an engine (Internal combustion or electric) cannot power itself.


hydrogen powered working model? or electric?

 

[BaldvinE]

Yay, I got my answer ...

The very answer I thought I'd get ... it's just that it would be a cool thing to do, even if it were barely enough to power the car and horribly inefficient, just for the hell of it.

Of course, an electric car with the same generators would be a much better idea, one that has been proven to work, and could be topped off from the main grid ... this whole hydrogen thing as it is presented now is so redundant ... :roll:

 

[Patrick66]

if you hook up generators to the electric motors the system would be working against itself. the generators have drag on the electric motors, and again the amount of energy gained from the generators/alternators would be 'recycled' to the batteries, but you would not be creating any energy. just like the alternator on your internal combustion engine, it does not make any energy, just converts the energy from the gasoline into electricity. no energy would be gained, just diverted from motion and returned to the batteries. energy would be lost in the process too. however if you retrieved energy from the heat at the brakes, which would be wasted otherwise, you could get some electricity back but you wouldnt be creating any.

 

[wallaka]

Of course, an electric car with the same generators would be a much better idea, one that has been proven to work, and could be topped off from the main grid

You talking about regenerative braking? Most electric cars do this now.