Is there a good application for hydrogen?

[jss06]

the only practical application of using hydrogen I have seen was a man who used cheap solar panels (they did not meet specs and were sold cheap) to run a hydrogen generation plant at his house in the country. He stored the hydrogen in gas form in large containers simular to propain for a house. Several of these. Again he bought them on the used market. During the day he also drew energy direcctly from the solar panels. At night he would run the gassious hydrogen through fuel cells to provide electricy for the house.

He had also converted his car to use hydrogen fuel cells. His on board storage capacity was enough to go about 20 miles. Enough to get him into town and back.

Yes the man is an enginner and obviously had the $$$ up front to set all of this up.

I have 2 books. One gives step by step instructions to build and test hydrogen fuel cells. The other is how to build an efficent electrolosis machine to seperate the hydrogen and pipe it to storage. As long as you are storing it in gassious form it is not difficult to do.

[SteveW]

jss06, thanks for answering my previous question and addressing Mike's original intent of the thread (rather than belittling the ideas of some new guy and ranting about laws of thermodynamics...remember, Copernicus was scoffed at when he went against the laws of his day as well). So it is doable to use solar to collect the hydrogen for future use. Sounds like this guy is using a pretty large storage facility to contain the hydrogen for home use, which obviously isn't going to make much sense for a teardrop. I wonder if one would be able to store enough in a propane tank (gas grill, not house) or two to run the basics (fantastic fan and some LEDs).

[SteveW]

By the way, I'm not saying Martin is or isn't a troll. He very well could be, or he might be genuine. Doesn't really make any difference one way or the other. If you think he's a troll, just don't feed him.

I also wasn't trying to argue that the laws of thermodynamics are or aren't valid.

I'd just like to find out, as Mike hinted at in his original post, what ARE the practical uses of hydrogen as an energy source? How COULD it be used for camping?

[absolutsnwbrdr]

Thermodynamics seem to always win. If hydrogen energy was going to be easy enough for one of us to use in a teardrop trailer, then it would already be widely used other places. Oh but wait, it must be a government conspiracy!!! Why would they want the people to have access to massive amounts of "cheap" energy that requires even more MASSIVE amounts of energy to generate?! Shenanigans.

I'm gonna go over on that hydrogen forum and start forcing teardrop camper theory on them. "Hey hydrogen guys!! Hey hydrogen guys!! Build a teardrop camper and you'll save the world from gargantuan motor-homes one little trailer at a time!!"




(Just kidding about trolling on the other forum. I have much better things to do with my time)

But, to answer Mikes question, no hydrogen has no practical uses that can be easily achieved and applied to camping and teardrop trailers.

[jss06]

jss06, thanks for answering my previous question and addressing Mike's original intent of the thread (rather than belittling the ideas of some new guy and ranting about laws of thermodynamics...remember, Copernicus was scoffed at when he went against the laws of his day as well). So it is doable to use solar to collect the hydrogen for future use. Sounds like this guy is using a pretty large storage facility to contain the hydrogen for home use, which obviously isn't going to make much sense for a teardrop. I wonder if one would be able to store enough in a propane tank (gas grill, not house) or two to run the basics (fantastic fan and some LEDs).

Using Solar, I could see you being able to generate enough hydrogen to run the LEDs. But I don't think you could practically create and store enough in a teardrop to run the fan for a long period of time. Its easier and more practical to store the energy directly in a battery.

[Forrest747]

all those tree huggers are going to be pissed when celebrating thier win in shutting down the last power plant and then cant get thier iphone to work anymore.

[Tumbleweed_Tex]

For the record…

It was not THAT long ago…if you had one of the following far fetched ideas, you were seen as strange:

A lightweight, handheld, electric drill with no cord that will drive several hundred screws into a solid oak board without recharging.

A device the size of a credit card which will allow you to find and talk to virtually anyone, anywhere in the world, within a few seconds.

A camera that will fit in your pocket, has no film, and will store a thousand high resolution pictures, not to mention 10,000 of your favorite songs…with viewing and playback capabilities.

A small camping trailer made of FOAM.

And perhaps the most far-fetched idea of all…a Man who walks around claiming His Father is God…

In light of these things, I personally have no problem seeing a small, internal combustion engine-powered generator which uses a hydrogen/oxygen mixture as fuel, with water vapor as a combustion conditioner, and generates more than enough electricity to produce its own fuel by electrolysis.

And there are enough people, scattered all over the world who claim they have done it (and who have absolutely no reason to lie about it), that I refuse to continue to believe the world is flat. Maybe, just maybe, it’s not…

I want one of those generators, because yes, there is a teardrop application…it’s called plugging in the power cord.

[jss06]

The big problem I can see with a portable version of this generator is the water supply. they are not capturing the water vapor form the exaust. they are hooked into a municiple water system to keep the tank full. this would not be a problem in a camp ground with water hookups but it could be a problem in remote areas where there is little water.

As far as I can tell the basic principle of this generator is: The hydrogen burns and flashes the water to steam. This steam expansion is what turns the crank not the actual buring of the small amount of hydrogen. the down side is all the water is lost through the exhaust. You could build some kind of vapor condensor coil to try and recapture a certain amount of the water. But you would not be able to recover all of it.

[eamarquardt]

For the record…

It was not THAT long ago…if you had one of the following far fetched ideas, you were seen as strange:

A lightweight, handheld, electric drill with no cord that will drive several hundred screws into a solid oak board without recharging.

A device the size of a credit card which will allow you to find and talk to virtually anyone, anywhere in the world, within a few seconds.

A camera that will fit in your pocket, has no film, and will store a thousand high resolution pictures, not to mention 10,000 of your favorite songs…with viewing and playback capabilities.

A small camping trailer made of FOAM.

And perhaps the most far-fetched idea of all…a Man who walks around claiming His Father is God…



In light of these things, I personally have no problem seeing a small, internal combustion engine-powered generator which uses a hydrogen/oxygen mixture as fuel, with water vapor as a combustion conditioner, and generates more than enough electricity to produce its own fuel by electrolysis.

And there are enough people, scattered all over the world who claim they have done it (and who have absolutely no reason to lie about it), that I refuse to continue to believe the world is flat. Maybe, just maybe, it’s not…

I want one of those generators, because yes, there is a teardrop application…it’s called plugging in the power cord.

Yes you can absolutely build a generator to run on hydrogen. We, currenly, understand the physics and chemistry regarding the use of hydrogen as a fuel and it simply consumes more energy to make it than you get out when you use it as fuel. This "fact of life" is never,ever, in a bazillion years or more, gonna change. So, the limiting factor is the ability to produce hydrogen with energy that is far cheaper than any energy today. The focus of our efforts to produce hydrogen should be improving the technology to produce hydrogen using other forms of energy and finding ways to produce energy that will be used for hydrogen production for less (solar, wind, fusion, etc).

There are even more issues around storing both liquid hydrogen and gaseous hydrogen (as in hydrogen embrittlement of storage containers causing failures of the containers/pipelines and explosions). It ignites over a very wide range of concentrations and can be very dangerous. Liquid hydrogen takes up four times as much room as gasoline to produce the same amount of energy. So, my van with a 24 gallon tank would require a 96 gallon tank to go just as far as it will on gasoline. That is one big tank. The tank is storing liquid hydrogen at −423.17 °F/−252.87°C which is darned cold. The tank wall will have to be thicker to insulate, and if you'er in an accident and the tank ruptures you may turn into a humansicle (a human popsicle) and then be shattered into a gazillion little pieces when the hydrogen explodes because it can do so in such a wide range of concentrations.

These are facts, they ain't gonna change, and as they say: "that is that".

So, if you want to play around with hydrogen, fine, but you ain't gonna save any money, yer gonna spend a lot more for the energy you do get out of the hydrogen, and you may blow you and others up if you don't do it right.

I'm not sure if this is a "hoax" of sorts but it's time to face the facts/music and move on to something with potential in the foreseeable future for use while teardropping.

Cheers,

Gus

[Forrest747]

are there any chemical guys that have a therm table on the therm output og hydrogen vs other hydrocarbons. i havent been able to find it. i still say convert over to CNG cars.

[eamarquardt]

are there any chemical guys that have a therm table on the therm output og hydrogen vs other hydrocarbons. i havent been able to find it. i still say convert over to CNG cars.

See my post above. Liquid hydrogen required 4 times more storage volume compared to gasoline for the same amount of energy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_economy

The liquefied hydrogen has lower energy density by volume than gasoline by approximately a factor of four, because of the low density of liquid hydrogen — there is actually more hydrogen in a liter of gasoline (116 grams) than there is in a liter of pure liquid hydrogen (71 grams). Liquid hydrogen storage tanks must also be well insulated to minimize boil off. Ice may form around the tank and help corrode it further if the liquid hydrogen tank insulation fails.

Cheers,

Gus

[Forrest747]

Oh i agree Gus, thanks for teh info. THat is why all the pre shuttle launches had ice falling off the rocket as it launched. Also think Hindenberg. As Scotty use to say "I cant change the laws of physics" Although his physics and our are two totally different things. As i always say keep it simple dont jump into something too quick but embrace change. reading an article about how Reno Nv bought all these wind turbines promised so much energy then come to find out they put them in places where there is no wind. Also another great thing about wind is that in Texas its blows at night and produces most energy at night but the most energy used is during the day.

[Tumbleweed_Tex]

You are absolutely correct in everything you say about hydrogen, when used (conventionally) as a stand alone fuel.

But in the case of the generator, the steam powers the engine, not the hydrogen combustion.

Um…internal combustion steam engine?

And if you generate the hydrogen at the point of use, and only as it is needed, most of the hazards and difficulties of storing the stuff are mitigated.

[mikeschn]

Hmmm... I sense that this thread is winding down. Not enough energy eh?

Mike...

[SteveW]

Ah well, looks like back to the idea of using solar to recharge a marine battery, and toting a small propane tank for cooking. Fun to play with the idea though. I definitely would like to be off the grid when we go on our extended stays.