Chemical Forums
Specialty Chemistry Forums => Citizen Chemist => Topic started by: P-man on December 11, 2005, 08:04:12 PM
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Hey I've been working on this system and I need feedback to make it better. I've basically thought of using the heat that the fuel cell in a car generates to boil water and use the steam to run a turbine. Then I could either use the electricity form the turbine to make more hydrogen or help run the motor. I dunno if this would be practical, but it sounded like a good idea, so I started working on it.
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Good idea but lookup gas turbine engines in cars. They were great concepts. Worked wonderfully at higher RPMS. They had one flaw though. Coming from idle there was a lot of lag. I have a good feeling the same thing would happen with your turbine idea also. The only way to avoid this problem that I can think of is keep the "engine" at high RPMs. This idea may proove to be bulky also. I like your thinking though P-man.
Thinking about it though. If you had a significant amount of steam, really light fan blades, and a small steam turbine this actually could provide a lot of energy without the lag. I actually think this may be worth looking into though. You'll have the energy coming from the fuel cell also. Costs might hold this back too. Also are you sure your/a fuel cell that would be put in a car can produce enough heat to boil enough water.
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i like the way you are thinking, about having a use for previously thermal waste energy, but yeah will it really get that hot, it does release heat, but the fuel cells that i have tried, which have the containers right next to the fuel cell, the water never does boil, in any of them. though your idea made me think of the way that the thermal energy is used in a car, they put it next to the fan, so that if you want warm air on winter, well you really are only using a fan blowing on the hot engine and giving you the hot air that is produced by the combustion of gasoline by the car.
but i am very curious as to how you will complete this? are you making a large car with a fuel cell stack, or a very small one with one fuel cell?
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P-man - you started working on the idea, so perhaps you will be able to answer simple question:
assuming your fuel cell has 100 deg C (enough for boiling) and the air surrounding your vehicle has 20 deg C, what is maximum theoretical percentage of the heat that can be converted into work?
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a PEM fuel cell (which i assume from the previous posts that i have read from you is the fuel cell that you are working on) generally is considered a fuel cell that works at low temperature, generating heat as high as 200oF (79.1oC).
here is a list of fuel cells available in the market:
-phosphoric acid fuel cells, these cells are generally used in nursing homes, hospitals, hotels, office buildings, utility power plants, etc., etc. and operate at about 190.2oC, they have a 40% efficiency margin, the reason i bring this one up is because the heat that is produced is also used, it uses 85% of the thermal energy it gives up to steam water and be used in cogeneration, though i would also assume this system to be very expensive, bulky, and heavy.
-Molten carbonate fuel cells: they use molten carbonate at about 634.6oC, however, the fuel cells are mostly for stationary applications, and use hydrogen, carbon monoxide, natural gas, propane, landfill gas, diesel, and simulated coal gasification products
-Solid Oxide fuel cells: the efficiency of this system is about 60% and can be used for very large applications, requiring high-power applications, they have hard ceramic materials instead of liquid electrolyte, and operate at 968oC.
-Alkaline fuel cells: They usually use potassium hydroxide as the electrolyte and are used by NASA on space missions with a 70% efficiency. (no mention on temperature though)
-Direct methanol fuel cells: they use a polymer membrane as the electrolyte, from the anode the catalyst draws the hydrogen from the liquid methanol, eliminating the need for a fuel reformer, and operate between 34.6-73.6o at 40% efficiency. (now there is something interesting about these fuel cells and that is that they are being taken by the cell phone and laptop industry, they are going to be in the cell phones in the future and will increase the time that you can use your battery for example in a laptop by about 10 hours, they almost paper thin and the methanol is the catalyst)
-Regenerative fuel cell: basically this fuel cell uses a solar panel in a process of eletrolisys, to break water into hydrogen and oxygen, is used by NASA, pratically new technology, it uses if i am not mistaken the PEM fuel cell to generate the electricity and is basically a good method to create hydrogen and store the hydrogen for emergency use of some kind, as it is being implemented into ships
-there is another fuel cell that i can't recall the name, but it uses propane to gasify the water and then split it into Hydrogen and Oxygen using the hydrogen to generate electricity and has an efficiency of about 70%. it is the primary reason that platinum is used in fuel cells and that is because this process produces CO and CO2 both of which can cause damage to the fuel cell, the platinum will not let this happen.
-Now something interesting about PEM fuel cells, according to my teacher they have reached 90% margins, making them probably one of the most efficient energy application in current existence, off curse breaking the water does require energy, and i really do not know if she took that into consideration.
most of the information here was basically sumarized from a packet that my teacher handed out to us. though some i found from researching for my project also dealing with PEM fuel cells...
hope this helps ::)
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And to think..
A gasoline engine is what like 10-20% efficient at best. Has tons of moving parts. Every moving part is a likely place for failure.
I'm like the idea of just stopping by the gas station. Filling up your extremely air tight "gas" tank with liquid hydrogen. Then you can (in theory) bypass anything complicated in theory and set up your fuel cell to use elemental Hydrogen and Oxygen. Only problem is the water vapor. People who live in places that regularly see freezing temps (like me) would have a problem with ice build up on the roads in the winter.
On second thought why not just put the refilling station in peoples homes. Sell it with the car. It'll put quite a few people out of work though. I also can't find a digital article about the Hydrogen Car the students at MIT are/have devoloped. I read it in PopSci. Very intresting, smart, futuristic design. I'd buy one.
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well you can produce the hydrogen at home to fuel up your car, the problem is getting it compressed into the car, the costs immediately rises easily to hundreds maybe a few thousand dollars to assumre maximum safety. but you can have hydrogen gas stations to do this. there is the theory of using metal hydrates.
right now you can see for example the bl-120 which holds about 120 liters of hydrogen and is the size of almost a pen, cost around $1500± . the primary element in the metal hydrate is palladium, which is expensive, but it has the amazing ability to hold 900 times its volume on hydrogen. however, there is also research going along graphite, which according to some articles that i read, says it could hold 30 liters of hydrogen per gram of graphite, if this is so, then that would mean that the graphite would be capable of holding dozens of times more hydrogen for the same mass of palladium, and that it would be extremelly cheap, and the possible solution that will start the hydrogen economy, and the production of cars, that will be very safe, there is only one draw back, the temperature that is needed to extract the hydrogen from the graphite is very high, i think it was 327oC, as for palladium its at about 27-33oC basically room temperature (in South Florida atleast) :D
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Well thanks for the feedback, guys.
Borek- I think it would be something like 80%. But in Canada, the air in winter can get to -35.
I was thinking, if we accumulated the heat in a thermal kind of "room", then it wouldn't matter the temperature outside, because the thermal "room" would block out the cold.
I'm not actually building anything yet because it's too expensive, but I'm designing a lot and thinking a lot as well.
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Borek- I think it would be something like 80%. But in Canada, the air in winter can get to -35.
Don't guess, it can be easily calculated. And it will be much less.
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But what about my thermal "room" idea?
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they actually have applied a thermal idea kind of like what you are talking about in thermos. what they have is an evacuated area between the wall is inside the cup and the outside of the cup, capable of maintaining more heat and having less escape of heat.
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Do you think it would work? How could I trap the heat form the engine?
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You could incase it in Reinforced Carbon Carbon(RCC).
Just joking. Way to expensive for anything economical.. I forget what the underside of the space shuttle is made out of. I know the nose and leading wing edges are made out of RCC though. I think useing like fiberglass threads (like some types of building insulation) may work somewhat, but probably not that well.
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3.314's post is very interesting.
Although the fuel cell may beat the combustion engine in terms of efficiency, it does not generate enough horsepower. Can a fuel cell car go accelerate from 0-100km/h in less than 10s?
P-man's suggestion of trapping the waste heat and use it to generate steam remind me of the golden days of the steam engine. haha.. It's a wonderful idea to make use of the heat, but water has such high heat capacity and I don't think the fuel cell would actually generate so much waste heat. Hence, we will end up with a case where there is a negligible steam or stream with negligible kinetic energy to run the turbine. Perhaps we can use another another fluid for this application - carbon dioxide.
Are there other means of converting heat into electricity? After-all, we have a heat source and therefore a temperature gradient which can be used to generate electricity.
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After thinking about the different issues of my system, I have thought of using the water vapour that is the exhaust form the fuel cell to run the turbine, then use the heat in a Stirling engine.
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Electric motors produce a lot of torque though usually. Torque is good in the low end and helps with acceleration when you first start, but the horsepower is what'll bring you up to those high speeds.
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After thinking about the different issues of my system, I have thought of using the water vapour that is the exhaust form the fuel cell to run the turbine, then use the heat in a Stirling engine.
it really depends on the type of fuel cell that you are thinking of using, because in order to turn a turbine from steam you need to accumulate large amounts of pressure and will require large amounts of heat, some of the systems that i explained may be able to do this, but they are generally very large and expensive and bulky.
Although the fuel cell may beat the combustion engine in terms of efficiency, it does not generate enough horsepower. Can a fuel cell car go accelerate from 0-100km/h in less than 10s?
it is possible if we research more. currently there is a 5 kilogram system used in a bike and its capable of accelerating to 50 mph (which is about 80.5 km/h), and has an amazing range of 100 miles on 5 oz. of H2, i want to get that fuel cell for a project that i am doing but have been unable to find it, it has also made it into the top 100 inventions of the yeat in time magazine.
the fuel cell is actually a fuel cell stack, but think of the stack in nano terms, they place perhaps hundreds of diminute fuel cells in a certain arrangement that will increase the voltage or the amperage, thus increasing the power, and with this said the power of the 5 kilogram fuel cell is an astonishing 3500 watts, i have heard about a 5000 watts system from from NOVars but have not been able to find it, and the 3500 watt you find it in pictures atleast but no information as to were it can be found.
if you could make the system even smaller it would still deliver the same power output, its all about the number of series and parallel connections that you make that will control the amperage and the voltage of the system.. though i would suspect that there would be some problems when it comes to delivering high amounts of energy on wires that are significantly small and would carry such high currents of energy.
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More research in turbines could help, but I'll leave that up to someone else.
Anyways I've designed two slightly different systems and I'll get some pictures of the drawings that I did when I can.
Quote from: geodome on December 18, 2005, 06:43:27 PM
Although the fuel cell may beat the combustion engine in terms of efficiency, it does not generate enough horsepower. Can a fuel cell car go accelerate from 0-100km/h in less than 10s?
it is possible if we research more.
Absolutely. Think outside the box. "Imagination is more important than knowledge"-Albert Einstein
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this got me thinking, i did see an article about a car that just beat the speed record, i even did research on it a long tim ago, and its called the BMW H2R, looks ugly but nonetheless its a very powerful machine working only on hydrogen. its the fifth edition from BMW of a hydrogen powered vehicle, and an interesting challenge that they have of making a more power and better approach towards the interest of creating a more efficient vehicle and someday may prove to be commercialization safe. it has 232 horsepower and reaches from 0 to 100 kph in only 6 seconds, 3440 pounds (1560kg) with full tank and a driver, and works on liquid hydrogen.
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/bmw-h2r.htm
i warn you the exterior of the car may be anything but marketable but that can always be changed ::) ;D
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Yeah I know that car, and it's proof that hydrogen cars can be powerful.
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there are also several car manufacturers that are joining the research on hydrogen powered vehicles as an alternative, and even in several parts of the world the commercialization of hydrogen powered cars is starting to go. for example in the US, on California (why is it always there and not where i live) they have fueling stations for hydrogen cars, in Europe (under new regulations that surely place their cars to stricter measures as to the wastes that they produce) they have bio-diesel, (for some appliactions on cars), ethanol, LPG (liquified petroleum gas), electricity, and i would suspect that if we have hydrogen powered alrleady they should too, though i did not find that but then again i wrote a report for my school about 2 years ago.
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Think outside the box. "Imagination is more important than knowledge"-Albert Einstein
Are you sure you read Einstein correctly? He never stated "knowledge is not important".
Pure imagination helps in writing bad sf books, but to make something usefull you need solid knowledge base. Physics - work/energy/power comes probably first if you want to design a car. Are you able to calculate how much hydrogen your car will need to drive 100 miles? Or is your plan
I'll leave that up to someone else.
I appreciate your enthusiasm, but you better use it to learn, not to dream :)
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http://www.theaircar.com (http://www.theaircar.com)
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How about working on processes to generate hydrogen via low energy input?
After years of reading articles and a limited amount of home-experimentation, I've reached several conclusions about fuel cells and their capability of powering automobiles, for example. First, one must define the problem. In my opinion, the primary issue is CO2 emission (which the US seems quite disinterested in) reduction and the secondary issue is the finite resource issue. My conclusions are:
1. Using an energy balance, there is little or no benefit in the use of a fuel cell. The only benefit is an artificial benefit in that the end user (ie the person heating their home or the driver of a car) does not emit CO2. However, the provider (energy company) emits an equivalent amount or even more CO2 in generating the hydrogen. The only country positioned for a potential fuel cell market is France (80 % of their energy comes from nuclear plants).
2. The "efficiency" of a fuel cell is actually about equivalent to that of a diesel internal combustion engine (~35 %). Many authors will bluff you by neglecting losses in the fuel cell. Read the books "Fuel Cell Systems Explained" and "Fuel Cell Technology Handbook".
You might as well start experimenting with anti-matter, because the energy balance indicates fuel cells won't replace gasoline engines. If they do, it will be due to marketing, not physics. As for the bicycles powered by H2, again physics comes into play. Each year there is a race in the Nevada desert. It was described in a recent journal of Scientific American. Pedal-powered bicycles can reach 80 mph. The key is the knowledge that above 20 mph, > 80 % of the energy input goes into overcoming air drag.
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Are you sure you read Einstein correctly? He never stated "knowledge is not important".
Or is your plan I appreciate your enthusiasm, but you better use it to learn, not to dream :)
I read Einstein correctly and I am not dreaming.
I never said that knowledge is bad, I think knowledge is good, but I agree with Einstein. I always do and always will.
I am not dreaming. I am designing fuel cell systems and trying to prove them wrong. When I do, then I work on it more, and try to prove it wrong again. The best way to prove something right is to try and prove something wrong. Thanks for raising another issue to test my systems on. Thank you.
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How about working on processes to generate hydrogen via low energy input?
After years of reading articles and a limited amount of home-experimentation, I've reached several conclusions about fuel cells and their capability of powering automobiles, for example. First, one must define the problem. In my opinion, the primary issue is CO2 emission (which the US seems quite disinterested in) reduction and the secondary issue is the finite resource issue. My conclusions are:
1. Using an energy balance, there is little or no benefit in the use of a fuel cell. The only benefit is an artificial benefit in that the end user (ie the person heating their home or the driver of a car) does not emit CO2. However, the provider (energy company) emits an equivalent amount or even more CO2 in generating the hydrogen. The only country positioned for a potential fuel cell market is France (80 % of their energy comes from nuclear plants).
2. The "efficiency" of a fuel cell is actually about equivalent to that of a diesel internal combustion engine (~35 %). Many authors will bluff you by neglecting losses in the fuel cell. Read the books "Fuel Cell Systems Explained" and "Fuel Cell Technology Handbook".
You might as well start experimenting with anti-matter, because the energy balance indicates fuel cells won't replace gasoline engines. If they do, it will be due to marketing, not physics. As for the bicycles powered by H2, again physics comes into play. Each year there is a race in the Nevada desert. It was described in a recent journal of Scientific American. Pedal-powered bicycles can reach 80 mph. The key is the knowledge that above 20 mph, > 80 % of the energy input goes into overcoming air drag.
interesting but have you considered electrolisys by using solar panels, the energy provided by the solar panel would not contribute to the emission of CO2 with the exception of course then the solar panel is produced, but it has in most cases a warranty of 25 years (almost as old as the technology has been in existence), as is every energy process when you think about it, nuclear power, well until researchers perfect a way to get rid of the nuclear waste, the nuclear waste will just continue on accumulating, most nuclear power plnats are running out of space, they are even going through risky methods to maintain the waste, in giant 20 feet by 8 feet cilinders that are placed outside (vulnerable to a missile [as reported in a newspaper in my area recently]), weighting several tons, and a very thick layer of several feet of cement and steel, and that is because the projected construction of a storage facility that was supposed to be made by 2003 or 2005 is running extremely late and there is even an uncertainty that it will ever be finished (it was supposed to store all the nuclear waste from all the plants in the US, most every plant will either have to minimize energy production on the energy hungry society, or stop function all together). other sources would all produce CO2 in the process of generating electricity.... well except wind power and hydroelectric power plants but there are some other issues along there too, such as space and environmental obstructions, thought i admit after seeing some wind generators i was impressed at the amount of electricity that a single system is capable of producing, but the cost was also high. fuel cells are amongst the most efficient systems around, not 30% (the fact that platinum is used as a catalyst increases the speed that hydrogen is produced from water, and never gets used up) but actually there are several different kinds of fuel cells, some with higher efficiency and some, well they will produce CO2 but will yield more energy then almost any other CO2 emitting process. the point is that there is not system that is perfect but there are some systems that will prove to be more beneficial than other systems in the long run, some systems which will have a high price tag now but they will end up producing more energy and contributing minimal if no emission into the atmosphere, rememmber that the point is not in reducing the CO2 emission only.
there is actually some confusion about that matter, the fact is that CO2 is actually required to maintaing life, the greenhouse effect is required to maintain life, but the elements that cause health hazards and global warming to extraorinary levels is really at what programs like the Kyoto Protocol is really aiming at. a combustion engine will produce carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide as well as sulfur, we are primarily worried about the effect of nitrous oxide on the global warming issue, carbon monoxide and sulfur in the health issue, and sulfur in the fact that it contributes to creating acid rain and destroys several forests and causes fish kill in lakes. CO2 is generally goes through the process called the carbon cycle where the earth will consume the carbon dioxide, as will the plants as a process of generating energy, carbon dioxide contributes to the greenhouse gases but our worry is about too much greenhouse gases not about the greenhouse effect itself, because it actually helps us stay alive by regulating global temperatures between night and day, it traps heat so that we will not face a scenario that is seen in other planets, on one side is several hundreds of degrees celsius but on the other is below freezing temperatures.
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Absolutely. Think outside the box. "Imagination is more important than knowledge"-Albert Einstein
i agree with the quote, and taking into consideration that einstain found the famous E=mc2 or actually just got the idea by imagining the light energy as a form of waves that would be moving at the speed of light, he imagined that the waver, no matter if you were actually going at the speed of light and if you were to theorically be able to see the light particle, you could never capture that light particle but you would expierience the light particle slowly moving away from your grasp. imagination and the fact that he was capable of combining several allready existing equations and combine them into E=mc2 was actually quite significant, he was capable of explaining light as actually containing mass and energy going as the speed of light squared.
when you think about it, with out imagination we would not have a lot of knowledge, because no one will dare to imagine a different view to the same situation and challenged theories that have been considered true by the science community.
what i said above about einstein i actually saw in a very interesting movie that was shown in class by my chemistry teacher, i believed it was titled "E=mc2: the world's most famous equation" and explains the process from each individual step in the equation; E is for energy, m is for mass, c is for the speed of light, and 2 is for squared (those are the subsections in the movie) at the end it combines them, its a pretty interesting movie.
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http://www.fuelcelltoday.com/FuelCellToday/IndustryInformation/IndustryInformationExternal/NewsDisplayArticle/0,1602,5683,00.html (http://www.fuelcelltoday.com/FuelCellToday/IndustryInformation/IndustryInformationExternal/NewsDisplayArticle/0,1602,5683,00.html)
here sit eh bike, hmm, it can run for 4 hours apparently at a speed of 50 mph, minimum range is 100 miles, but if the above is true then it has a max range of 200 miles, but apparently the system it uses is a 1 kw fuel cell stack, should be more powerful with:
http://www.hawkassociates.com/mhtx/3kfc.htm
the 3 kw fuel cell at about the same size, the 1 kw system is the size of a shoe box....
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i agree with the quote
You are not alone.
the fact that he was capable of combining several allready existing equations and combine them into E=mc2
Imagination was needed later. He learnt these equations first and he was very skilled mathematician - I can assure you he spent a considerable time to polish his math.
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I am designing fuel cell systems
What equation describes dependence between electromotive force of hydrogen fuel cell and hydrogen pressure? Fuel cell generates DC, what will be better in your car - use DC motor, or convert DC to AC loosing some energy and then use AC motor? What parameter of the cell decides what is a difference between EMF and useable voltage? Hydrogen in a fuel cell is a donor or acceptor of electrons? You have 22.4 L of hydrogen at STP, how long a single fuel cell will be able to give 1A current assuming 100% efficiency?
Don't get me wrong, but if you don' know answers to these questions, you are not designing your fuel cells. You are dreaming :)
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Please remember that I'm only in grade eight and 13 yrs old. And my "dreams" will follow me through high school and university and I will help them materialize into actual designs.
Pi: I have considered solar panels on the car for electrolysis.
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there are three different kinds of solar panels and they all differ in the efficiency that they will produce electricity, you will have to take into consideration the conditions that the car will be operating. there are three kinds of solar panels, there is the crystalline, polycrystalline and the amorphous solar panels, their primary difference is the cooling process and their efficiencies are a direct cause to the cooling process.
*the crystalline forms uniform bonding caused by the slow cooling process and thus has the highest efficiency of all, under experimental conditions they have reached 24% efficiency.
*the polycrystalline solar cell cooled faster than the crystalline and thus tends to not form uniform shapes such that when photons hit the surface they will actually get deflected to some angles and some of the electrons will be lost, this brings the efficiency down to a mere 18%
*the high cost for these two solar cells is mainly due to the fact that the cells are very thin and generally have to be assembled (makes you wonder how do they get the intrinsic layer in a solar cell which is only a few atoms thick and separate the positive and negative layer :-\ ) and they both take long to produce because they have to be cooled slowly. but they genreally have a warranty for 25 years and will operate with out the need of having anything or anyone checking up on the system regularly (if you get a suntracker it will seek the angle to operate at its higher efficiency)
the third type of solar cell and probably the one that i think will have the most future ability is the amorphous solar cell, the advantage of this cell is the fast cooling process, that it does not have to be generally hand aseembled, can be mass produced, and the number 1 reason you can bend this one its not brittle at all and i have seen them in a roll, but under experimental conditions they have only reached 10% effieciency, however....
an interesting feature of this solar cell is that if you put one on top of the other it will increase the efficiency, but only to a maximum of only 15%
i advice that if you do get a solar panel you get an amorphous solar cell, which you can actually put around the project to generate electricity from the sun (and they are very cheaper you could easily get several for the price of one crystalline, the only difference is that a crystalline generally has a 25 year warranty and amorphous does not because it will lose efficiency over time faster), but you will probably need a higher voltage, and solar cells have to be placed in i believe series in order to achieve this, or in other words the negative has to be connected to the positive end for all the cells, and each cell produces 0.5 volts, no matter its size, the size only defines the current. if you connect the solar cells in parallel, however, you will get a higher current but a lower voltage, due to the fact that the solar cells you will be connecting positive to positive and negative to negative and will just be making a system that is like a cell covering a larger area.
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Pi,
interesting but have you considered electrolisys by using solar panels
In my opinion, this idea is the best approach to a viable fuel cell (in terms of safety and potentially cost). It won't be easy, based upon the current level of efficiency of converting solar power into usable energy. You are correct in stating that NOx and SOx will be eliminated (or greatly reduced) since the fuel cell doesn't operate at temperatures capable of dissociating nitrogen and the feed fuel should have essentially 0 sulfur content. There are some benefits to fuel cells, but hardly enough currently to justify the multi-billion dollar "hydrogen infrastructure" makeover that some lobbyists are calling for (not on my tax dollars anyway).
P-man,
Sorry, dude. I didn't know you were 13. I probably shouldn't impose my negativity upon you. As a first venture, I would try commercially available fuel cells and bicycle parts and focus on the mechanical design of the bike and power conversion from the fuel cell. Pay close attention to tires also. You should swap them out to obtain the proper balance of efficiency (thin) and safety (fat tires). I can attest that taking a spill on a motorcycle is a lot different than taking a spill on a bicycle (your hands can't move quick enough to block anything or cushion the fall at 50 mph). After you work out a reasonable bicycle, it might boil down to simple "modular" swaps of the power supply and potentially using stronger gears at higher speeds.
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Dude,
That's OK man. I'm at the top of the class. I can take this stuff.
Anyways you were saying how much the hydrogen economy would cost. If the U.S. government can afford to spend trillions of dollars on a stupid war in Iraq, they can afford to spend billions of dollars on a hydrogen infrastructure.
Pi,
Thanks for giving me that info. I'll work on it. I'll see what I'll be able to do for this project, but in the long run I hope to be able to actually design and build (and hopefully patent) some designs.
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Dude,
Anyways you were saying how much the hydrogen economy would cost. If the U.S. government can afford to spend trillions of dollars on a stupid war in Iraq, they can afford to spend billions of dollars on a hydrogen infrastructure.
interesting you should bring that up, in fact Bush signed in 2001 to give $1 billion to fuel cell research, but i still do not see the progress, and the amount was very small compared to the $8.5 billion he gave to start drilling on reservations in Alaska, that and put the fact that the 1 billion is over a period of 5 years, making it a lot less to actually start any significant work around fuel cells, thought it is considerable not enough to beat all the competitors trying to beat us to renewable resources, only 500 million was given for other renewable resources, it just shows where most of the interest to most of the lobbyist is in, and that is to make a quick buck.
the major advances has really been made by private corportations, and they are trying to sell their technology to places like China, and Japan, which are seeking the technology and will be more likely to pay the big bucks for it, there has been a proposal about an 80 watt nano fuel cell for the army placed in phones that would decrease the dependance on battery systemsby being replaced by an affordable and highly available source, i saw a picture of the system next to a pen and its small, there is also the first half-ton fuel cell truck which is being tested by the army for the next six months, the hopefully first commercial truck, looks like the Chevrolet Avalanche and has an 45 or 85 kilowatt system (one of those two). either way all this designs were brought up by individual companies willing to spend their own money, but i still have not seen anything from the government.. wonder what happened to that money??? all i know is that if we lose the edge to other countries we may grow dependant on that country for yet another source of energy much like we are dependant on the oil industry provided by other countries. and i do not want to wait 4-8 hours in lines to get only 5 gallons of gas, like it was when wilma passed over Miami, Fl.
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In my opinion, this idea is the best approach to a viable fuel cell (in terms of safety and potentially cost). It won't be easy, based upon the current level of efficiency of converting solar power into usable energy. You are correct in stating that NOx and SOx will be eliminated (or greatly reduced) since the fuel cell doesn't operate at temperatures capable of dissociating nitrogen and the feed fuel should have essentially 0 sulfur content. There are some benefits to fuel cells, but hardly enough currently to justify the multi-billion dollar "hydrogen infrastructure" makeover that some lobbyists are calling for (not on my tax dollars anyway).
Sorry, dude. I didn't know you were 13. I probably shouldn't impose my negativity upon you. As a first venture, I would try commercially available fuel cells and bicycle parts and focus on the mechanical design of the bike and power conversion from the fuel cell.
one of the problems with getting a commercially built fuel cell and the most likely reason that he is trying to build his own is the cost, a very weak 0.6 watt fuel cell goes for about $200 US, maybe $120 if you are lucky to find one that cheap, and the reason for this is the fact that you are using a precious metal, platinum, as a catalyst. you could use any other catalyst but many do not handle impurities very well and they will not produce good energy yields per given amount of material. that is why industries are going nano on fuel cells because you use less materials, but then there is the labor behind a nano that accounts largely to the cost of such a fuel cell, but its still beats the $3000 per kilowatt compared to a large system that would take probably about 2 square feet by a height of maybe 3 to 4 feet, from a system that i saw.
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http://www.plugpower.com/technology/overview.cfm
The above link is a company doing fuel cells near me.
I have refrained from commenting on your experimenting with fuel cells up to this point. The reason is that in my opinion, you learn when you experiment. You learn from your failures as well as your successes. Edison did lots of actual experimenting. Tesla on the other hand did a lot of thought experiments.
Let us say you make a fuel cell and it works, but the part where you try to reuse the waste heat is a bust. You will still learn.
You might delve into thermodynamics and find out that your reuse of waste heat would likely not have worked.
Either way you would have learned.
On a separate note there is a discussion about alternative energy sources. I have seen lots of statistics thrown around that support or refute the utility of many of them. I toss my hat into the solar power ring with the knowledge that there are lots of obstacles to economical implementation.
PS - If you have a chance in you leaning future consider taking a Thermodynamics course, but remember that it is one of the hardest courses out there.
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Can you explain to me why it wouldn't work?
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well he is not actually saying that it will not work, he is simply saying what if it does not work? in a case where it does not work you learn that it did not work, and you are able to use what you learned to modify your hypothesis and again test it out and see what will happen. you are venturing into an area that was generally not tested there is a milliong things that could go wrong but with perseverance and continuing experimentation without giving up.
perhaps if by where you live there is such a thing as dual enrollment or a program that would allow you to take college level classes after school or during the summer or any break for that matter, you could take a course in thermo. though many states are starting to take out programs like those away because they feel that it gives students "an unfair advatage compared to others", whatever they mean about that, i always thought that it would be good to know more than to know less but apparently they are worried about the great difference in scores from one group to the others that lay dormant. LOL
about that company, you may try to contact them and see if you are able to get something from them, many companies are hopeful to sponsor such research from students if they see something good about it.... just a thought, expecially if they feel that it will get their name out there, if you are going to participate in some kind of competition or something.
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OK, thanks, I think I must've misread it. Anyways, do you really think a company would sponsor me? Like I'm not participating in a project but I'll be presenting it in front of 200 people. Is that good enough? I wonder. Anyways in Canada college is different than in the U.S., I think, so in my case I want to go to University. College is like apprentiship and stuff.
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Can you explain to me why it wouldn't work?
At this level of details it is impossible to say whether it will work or not. However, with some basic konwoledge about thermodynamics, electrochemistry and physics you may try to analyze whole design to find out if it has a chance of working, or not.
You have proposed Thermal Room. Please try to explain its construction in more details than you did so far, as it looks to me as a chance to show you how the knowledge can be applied to the inventions to test them on paper.
Have you noticed that in the other place where you posted your ideas you were asked almost the same questions about the design as here - whether you will have enough steam for turbine propulsion? That means that for most people with some knowledge about physics your idea looks dubious for the same reasons - reasons that you don't understand yet. That's why I am pushing you to learn, not to design :)
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Thread continued (as Thermal Room) here:
http://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?board=9;action=display;threadid=6263 (http://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?board=9;action=display;threadid=6263)