http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/ The United Nuclear Hydrogen Fuel System Kit converts your existing vehicle to run on Hydrogen. Complete kits will soon be available for various late-model cars & trucks as well as individual system components for those who choose to assemble their own kits. Included in the kits (and also available separately) is our solar powered Hydrogen Generator that manufactures the Hydrogen fuel for your vehicle at virtually zero cost. Simply put, you never have to buy Gasoline again. Since there are no major changes made to your engine, you can still run your vehicle on Gasoline at any time. We now have over 50,000 trouble-free miles on our prototype vehicles. We are currently fleet-testing our systems and are in final preparation for sales to the general public. This guy Lazar was on the readio last night with coasttocoastam.com and he apparently worked with Dr. Teller in NM. http://www.unitednuclear.com/ So is this for real? (I am not their paid shill and I have nothing to do with the company or the persons)
Well it's sort of true. It's actually not that difficult to run any internal combustion engine on hydrogen. The problem is the energy required to produce the hydrogen. Separating water into its constituent parts - hydrogen and oxygen, requires large amounts of electrical energy. If the electricity comes from solar or wind power, then the entire process is clean. However, I would calculate the amount of solar panels you would need to run a normal vehicle on hydrogen would be at least $20,000. Maybe more. So what they mean is after you've purchased the equipment to produce hydrogen from solar, your hydrogen is free. Kind of takes a little bit of the appeal away doesn't it. The latest developments in solar are likely to see the KW cost of solar fall to less than that of coal fired power or neclear power stations within the coming decade. So the cost of your solar panels may be around $7,000 in five or so years. At this time the cost benefit of solar produced hydrogen will begin to look very appealing. Runningbear
If that generator on the website is a solar oven of some kind and can achieve temperatures of 1500 degrees it can separate hydrogen from water. They don't say how much it can produce per unit of time. Personally I would wait until I was reading consumer reviews of the equipment before I considered it. Regarding cheap electricity, I have posted a couple of times about the potential in the Mojave desert for solar electricity production but never in the context of conversion of hydrogen. The CA govt. is building a pilot plant that produces all the energy needed for a quarter million homes in a 7 square mile site. The technology is parabolic mirrors heating a steam engine that converts 29% of the energy. The whole Mojave is 25000 square miles so the potential is there to supply cheap electricity [after the initial build threshold is overcome] to all of North America. They can pipe it out on 900,000 volt DC lines like they now do from Washington to CA. Rechargeable hybrids that run on hydrogen might be the car of the future. Nanotechnology is making order of magnitude increases in battery technology, 80% weight reductions, full charge in 5 minutes, that capability is here today and very soon will be available in commercial form. Black and Decker bought a company that makes small batteries with those characteristics and will be selling hand tools this year outfitted with them and other companies have developed them for cars.
If it works as advertised it is a great idea. The only draw back is the cost. A 10k per conversoin it would take me roughly 5 years to break even assuming gas stays at its current level. That is asuming my sustaining costs for the H2 hardware are zero, which I doubt. I wonder how trips beyond its range would be. It says that you can use gas at anytime so I guess that would be ok. However I would have to find a way to reduce the sixe of the existing gas tank and put the H2 bottles in the gas tank location so I do not lose my cargo capacity. They should also develop a converter to generate teh hydrogen from either 110V or 240V AC since the sun doesn't always shine. If they could halve that price it would become attractive.
Currently I am commuting 110 miles a day, round trip at $3/gallon gas.....20mpg ... $3630/year for gas, that thing makes sense for me and maybe 10% of all commuters.
Coasttocoast was one of my favorite shows when I used to commute to work in the early am's. By the time I got to work I was wide awake from laughing my rear off! It used to be the Art Bell show and he was a master of entertainment. They had supposed experts who had proof of deserted civilizations on Mars. Another guy who has predicted the end of the world 3 or 4 times, the biggest being Y2K technology disasters would bring the world to a halt. I wish Art was still doing it, it would motivate me to get up early to trade the Dax overnight and listen to Art Bell. After all that rambling, I'm not saying this isn't true, people have put a lot of money into it, but whether it is anywhere near ready for use is very questionable. At the same time On the show I heard about a guy who lived in Buffalo NY a long time ago and developed a steam powered car and drove it for quite awhile, including in the winter in Buffalo. I looked it up for the heck of it and lo and behold it's a true story! So I guess some of the stories do have validity, I hope this one does!
With out going into to much detail here, My passion has always been renewable energy starting with passive solar when I was in high school. I fail to understand, at this point in time, why utilizing the power already generated is not being considered, as far as I'm aware of. for instance... Right now the conventional automobile generates, via the alternator and coil, something like 10,000 continuous dc volts of electricity for combustion (aka: spark plug). Now, take gasoline out of the convention... Through electrolysis (breaks down water into it's individual components - hydrogen and oxygen - by passing electricity though the water), utilize the energy already being expended, to produce the hydrogen to generate the automobile's power? On a side note, Is any one familiar with a Stirling Engine? This is a diaphragm that perpetuates motion via the difference in pressure on either side of the diaphragm. Possibly very useful for heating/cooling a structure. Lastly, as far as solar goes, I feel that there's no need for pannels, if passive solar is utilized creatively. I have a goal in life to experiment with these and other simple possible solutions. In my mind, It is not necessary to make new energy to convert a source of energy into a "transferrable" source. ie: the cost of energy to make hydrogen, etc. As WPIX (ch.11) in nyc used to always say... What's your opinion? We'd like to know. kt
You might be able to use some of the excess automobile engine heat to convert hydrogen actually. The Stirling Engine is being used in the California solar electricity project. I don't know how many are used but the total output is 550 megawatts when they build the project out to the full 7 square miles.
Why not electrolysis? Remember that an automobile's electrical generation is not necessarily limited to the ~10,000 dc volts either.
How many of you would opt for a hybrid or a full alternative energy source for cars is this law was reversed? Would you go for it? if instead of giving $100,000 tax break for SUV buyers and only few thousand for Hybrid, it was reversed? Congress Clears Tax Incentive for SUV Purchases By REUTERS Filed at 7:08 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congress on Friday substantially widened a tax break that has been used by small businesses as an incentive to purchase the largest sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks. Supporters including President Bush said the business equipment tax break, which was quadrupled to $100,000 in the $350 billion tax cut bill that narrowly cleared Congress, is good for the economy http://work.colum.edu/~amiller/suvbreak.htm Who makes decisions and who benefits? tax breaks for gas guzzlers...use more oil, the more the better.. Hydrogen usage and development would go a long way it was really allowed and stimulated. post edited to add the tax credit for Hybrids, Up to $3,400 tax CREDIT for hybrids purchased after 2005! $2,000 tax deduction for hybrids purchased by the end of 2005! http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/tax_hybrid.shtml