The Car That Makes Its Own Fuel 534
Spy der Mann writes "A unique system that can produce Hydrogen inside a car using common metals such as Magnesium and Aluminum was recently developed by an Israeli company. The system solves all of the obstacles associated with the manufacturing, transporting and storing of hydrogen to be used in cars. And it's completely emission free."
Nice but... (Score:5, Informative)
In all seriousness, I wish them success. It remains to be seen whether they can create an efficient system for collecting the corroded/expended metal. How often do you see puddles of leaked material under a car? No mention of how much "metal oxide" this venicle produces, but I cannot imagine it's something we want leaked onto the ground.
I'd put my money on the H2N-Gen, but then again that guy's being sued for patent infringment [engadget.com].
Re:Sounds like BS (Score:5, Informative)
Bollocks. (Score:5, Informative)
For instance, aluminium is produced by electrolysis: the ore is dissolved in cryolite, and the pure metal produced by passing an electric current through it. (Details [wikipedia.org])
There's a number of aluminium smelters in Australia (my home country); at least one of these has its own dedicated power plant, burning brown coal to produce its electricity.
So no, it's not "making its own fuel". The fuel is the refined metal and the acids (or water) that are combined with them to make the hydrogen gas. The fact that burning the hydrogen is what generates the useful energy is irrelevant to this point. The pollution is shifted to wherever the power to make the metals is produced.
When it comes to energy, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Re:I don't get it... (Score:5, Informative)
remove the used magnesium oxide. Essentially, the waste is contained in the car instead of spewed out, and I think there is a use for magnesium oxide. Also they need to change the water. Since they have to take stuff out of the tank, refueling is a bit more complicated.
/. editors played video games in science class. (Score:5, Informative)
The issue here is that the process works, but it is very expensive in energy, because the metal oxide must be refined.
Anyhow, there is nothing new in the referenced article. The fact that it is possible to produce hydrogen using reactive metals has been known since perhaps 1860, maybe much earlier.
If I remember correctly, there was an explosion in Antoine Laurent Lavoisier's [k12.ca.us] lab caused by hydrogen released by heating with metal. Mr. Lavoisier died in 1794, and not from the explosion.
Re:Too good to be true (Score:3, Informative)
Re:FP BS! (Score:4, Informative)
They did figure out how to get hydrogen using solar energy [80.70.129.162], but that was announced back in April.
Re:Where do Slashdot editors come from? (Score:5, Informative)
I nominate the entire DOE Handbooks [doe.gov], not only for the /. editors but for the most part of /.ers overall, myself included. DOE-HDBK-1012/1-92 will cover Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer, and Fluid Flow. The math and science DOE Handbooks are a great free, downloadable resource. The basics of Physics, Chemistry, Electricity, Materials science, Reactor science and attendant math are all covered.
The DOE Handbooks are a rich resource that cover every aspect of implementing and running an organization. The books cover disputes, roundtables, the list is very nearly all encompassing.
Nothing speaks to independence like your own in house nuclear reactor and the DOE Handbooks guide you through nearly every step of the way.
Re:Obligatory Star Trek Reference (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Too good to be true (Score:3, Informative)
1) Magnesium is pretty reactive. If you soak Mg in water, Mg binds with the O, releasing H2. This means Mg + H2O = MgO + H2. MgO is pretty harmless. This is an exothermic reaction.
2) This process takes a *long* time. I assume it is accellerated by using the aluminum as an electrode in a battery-like tank. However, I still think that this would be very hard to get much energy out of it quickly. However, add a little hydrogen-rich something (read acid) and things speed up really fast. Something like viniger can produce enough hydrogen in a glass soda or beer bottle to produce a nice flame (WARNING: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. THE FLAME IS INVISIBLE UNDER NORMAL LIGHTING CONDITIONS). Also note that this produces more heat by itself too. Add too much acid, and things explode. Again 5% acetic acid seemed pretty safe though I did get a small explosion once when I tried to make a hydrogen torch that would premix the H2 with air in order to get a hotter flame (as you see in a bunsen burner).
3) This is only shifting your original energy source from one form of chemical energy (petroleum) to another (Magnesium). Hydrogen is only a transitional form (much like electity in power lines).
Re:Example of moving the pollution elsewhere (Score:5, Informative)
There is currently not a distribution system for delivery of gaseous fuels direct to consumers at the scale required to power our cars. There are some small-scale delivery systems (propane, for example) but those still require a trained handler and other special steps -- you typically can't pump your own propane, propane needs to be stored outdoors in a ventilated cabinet, etc. And the infrastructure for propane is small: a couple hundred gallons per homeowner per winter up here where it's cold, maybe a few tanks for cooking in the summer, that's it. There aren't nearly enough trucks and tanks required to provide fuel for all vehicles if they were suddenly converted to propane.
Even if the safety issues were handled technologically, neither propane nor natural gas are ready for "the final mile". Most homeowners don't have an existing gas "tap" where they can hook a hose up to their car, so they'd require new plumbing. For that matter, home delivery of natural gas is pretty much restricted to metro areas in northern states: it's not currently available in the far south or in rural areas. To make it available everywhere else would require a huge investment in pipes.
Then there's the problem with the storage of hydrogen or any gaseous fuel. For there to be enough energy to power a vehicle for any useful distance, a fairly large quantity of it needs to be highly compressed. Where do you put a large pressure vessel in a car so that if it's in an accident it has the lowest risk of rupturing? If you've ever seen even a small tank of high pressure gas rupture, you'll realize some of the danger. Now, make that gas highly flammable, and you'll be even more unhappy.
The idea of a magnesium coil as a fuel source is a good one. It could distributed in user-replaceable reusable metal boxes, each containing a humanly-portable 20kg of fuel, and having room for an equal amount of oxidized waste. Assuming a well-designed non-sparking container it would require no special handling, and would be remarkably inert. It would also be quite safe in most accidents, even those involving the fuel containers themselves.
These boxes can be carried by ordinary trucks. They would not require specialized tankers like propane or even gasoline. Any existing trucking firm could safely handle boxes of this product as is. And you could buy and sell them anywhere, not just fuel stations: a grocery store, discounter, convenience store, wherever. They would have no foul or toxic smells or hazardous liquids, and would run the same risk of accidental ignition as any other flammable metal, which is to say: not a lot. If you've ever tried to ignite magnesium or aluminum, you're probably aware of the amount of heat required to get it to sustain flame.
The part of the story that requires the most handwaving is the "mining" of the fuel. Both aluminium and magnesium are naturally found in the oxidized state (much like the spent fuel from the vehicle itself.) The amount of energy required to refine the metal is immense. Keep in mind that you cannot get something for nothing; that means the energy required to refine it must be higher than the amount of energy retrieved from the metal when it is burned. And that means huge amounts of electrical energy will be needed to produce a fuel stream. With an emphasis on reducing costly oil consumption, with today's technology that would basically mean lots of new nuclear reactors will be required.
Think of the magnesium more like a "rechargeable battery", storing electrical energy in the form of unoxidized metal. It's still going to require energy that comes from somewhere else.
Re:FP BS! (Score:5, Informative)
Or am I wrong?
Re:FP BS!, Al smelters? Not in the USA (Score:4, Informative)
I have more information on that.
The plant operated with reduced energy costs. They bought excess BPA power wholsale, not retail. This included shutting down operation when surplus power (spring runoff from hydro power, low residentual heating demand, not yet heavy AC season in LA) was in short supply. Even with cheap energy costs, the cost of operation finaly failed to make economic sense.
Sounds like a great way to save energy, reduce alumina to aluminum and then reduce aluminum to alumina.
If anyone thinks aluminum and other metal prices are not related to the rising price of energy, they have not been paying attention.
When gas prices then electric prices go up, so does smeltering costs.. This is not a breakthrough in high fuel prices.
Re:/. editors played video games in science class. (Score:5, Informative)
Man, are you stupid. The entire freaking Sun is filled with metal oxide.
Sorry, there ought to be a Godwin's law about calling people stupid.
My grandmother was G. R. Caughlin (as in Fowler, Caughlin, and Zimmerman-- the authors of s seminal paper on the generation of elements in stars). Some of their figures have been refined by others but the general theories seem to hold. So while I may not be an astrophysicist, I am not entirely unfamiliar with the field either.
Part of the problem with your theory is that metal oxides don't exist in the sun in any way you might think. First, stars are powered by fusion of hydrogen and helium (in terms of alpha capture-- you have the possibility of three helium nuclei fusing to form Carbon12). C12 can then capture another alpha particle (helium nucleus) to form Oxygen. Although I don't really understand the rest of the physics, I gather that many of the heavier elements are generated in the stars through other processes as the star ages. So for the sun, I would expect most of the sun to consist of Hydrogen, Helium, Carbon, and Oxygen.
(Hydrogen is fused into helium, 3 heliums become carbon, carbon + helium becomes oxygen. The Oxygen does not seem to fuse at these temperatures though one wonders about neutron capture.)
Re:why yes! (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, it does. In all likelihood, you've never actually seen pure aluminum, just aluminum oxide. The reason that we can have things such as aluminum foil or aluminum can is that aluminum oxide forms an airtight barrier, preventing the underlying aluminum from further oxidation. Aluminum is exposed when you tear the foil, but it (nearly instantly) oxidises and reforms the protective layer. This becomes an issue in bulk processing of aluminum for powder (for things like paint and some pyrotechnic compositions). If the aluminum is not "burped" in the process of breaking down the particles, the powder will absorb all of the oxygen in the container, and the newly exposed surface area will cease to oxidise. When the lid id opened, "poof!" all of the unoxidised Al is suddenly exposed to a supply of O2, and a fast, exothermic reaction takes place. Being a highly reactive metal in a finely powdered state, this is BAD, but I digress...
Re:Example of moving the pollution elsewhere (Score:3, Informative)
1) You wouldn't get a coil of MgO, you would get a lot of small MgO crystals floating in your water.
2) It takes a heck of a lot more than a spark of static electicity to ignite a small magnesium turning. A coil should not be a cause for concern.
3) However, selling them at the convenience store: Your problem isn't accidental ignition. The problem is what happens if there is a structural fire for other reasons? That might cause ignition, and I am not sure how you would put it out.
temperature? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:FP BS! (Score:5, Informative)
It has emissions and of a very ugly kind. True, Al will happily give hydrogen when whacked with a hyperheated steam. It is the well known firefighters rule of "never try to extinguish burning Aluminium with water".
There is a problem though - under controlled condition the reaction results in colloidal Alx(OH)y/AlxOy suspension which is a right mess. Its mechanical properies are all over the place so you cannot filter it, separate it or deal with it by any reasonable means. So the idea is a BS for most applications.
Re:/. editors played video games in science class. (Score:3, Informative)
IANAAP but I though the heavier elements were created in the massive stars that formed and quickly went supernova in the early history of the universe.
Re:/. editors played video games in science class. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:FP BS! (Score:2, Informative)
After seeing their ripoff image use, I call BS also.
Re:FP BS! (Score:5, Informative)
And the First Post that didn't deserve to be moderated OT too.
The car, contrary to the Slashdot editor letting this one through when they shouldn't have in its posted form does not make its own fuel. It runs on water and aluminum or magnesium.
Now if it mined those elements and refined them in the process and still had a postive energy output then yes, the article summary would have been accurate.
It doesn't. It's not!
Re:Example of moving the pollution elsewhere (Score:3, Informative)
But the metals are flexible, and there's no reason a feeder system couldn't be designed to feed metal from more than one coil. So I figured why not break it down into five easy-to-handle interchangeable boxes each containing a factory-rolled 20kg coil? And from there it was easy to add a recycle tank to the boxes to collect the oxides. No muss, no fuss, just change a box or five.
And 20kg isn't just a number I plucked from the air; it happens to be the approximate weight of a bag of water softener salt, which most people are able to manage on their own. I figured that way most people could lug their own in and out of their cars. 20kg is not magical or written in stone, but 5 x 20kg square boxes is a lot easier to deal with than a clumsy 100kg coil and a stupid hose.
There are other ways to deal with the fuel management, too. Small commuter vehicles might have space only for two or three boxes, while SUVs could hold ten. The boxes could have built-in urethane wheels and extendable handles, like little luggage carts. Or the fuel-box-holders on the cars could have small ramps that extend to the ground, perhaps allowing each box to hold 40kg instead of 20kg. Or there's the "Buick" edition, which would have an automatic winch system that would automatically load the boxes for your grandmother.
So think outside the box. Or the 100kg coil. :-)
Re:FP BS! (Score:5, Informative)
Using metals as a fuel source is the cover article on the current New Scientist:
Metal: The fuel of the future
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18825221.10
Re:FP BS! (Score:5, Informative)
The main bullshit of the article boils down to this sentence:
The fuel, i.e. aluminium or magnesium, is neither inexpensive nor abundant, in fact Al and Mg are completely nonexistant in nature in their unbound form. Since pure Al and Mg are so reactive, they don't last long in nature, and must be produced by electrolysis in liquid-metal, power-intensive plants. There's a reason why bike frames in aluminium are more expensive than ones in steel.
Since the article says also that the car "... needs a metal coil three-times heavier than an equivalent petrol tank.", one wonders why in the world we should not then use simple pressurised hydrogen-gas tanks then.
Actually its an old technique (Score:5, Informative)
That counts as irony.
Re:Example of moving the pollution elsewhere (Score:3, Informative)
You take nanometre sized particles of iron, aluminium or boron. They are injected into a standard internal combustion engine, a spark plug ignites the particles, the heat causes the air/fuel mixture to expand, operating the engine, the exhaust stroke pushes the spent fuel out where it is captured by an electromagnet (the particles are so small that they act like fine dust, floating in the airflow - the researchers tried years ago with iron filing sized particles and they just gummed up the motor).
Now the comparison:
The spent fuel in this real system is reprocessed by heating it in a hydrogen atmosphere, where the oxygen is captured by the hydrogen, leaving pristine metal nanoparticles again.
This system claims to be the opposite, heat up the metal in water atmosphere and hope that it dissociates and the oxygen is trapped by the metal.
This can not work both ways. It is impossible. Just to make it clear, we'll start with their imaginary physics then go to real physics:
1. You heat the metal in a steam atmosphere
2. The steam spontaneously breaks up into oxygen and hydrogen and oxidises the metal
3. Real physics kicks is here, the hydrogen combines with the superheated oxide giving steam and pure metal
4. (go back to fantasy physics) we've got perpetual motion!
Physorg Link (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Perpetuum mobile or what? (Score:5, Informative)
That car is actually a Ford concept car it is the Shelby GR-1 [conceptcarz.com].
Re:/. editors played video games in science class. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, I'll help you out here a little, as the guy is even dumber than you think. Metal oxides don't exist in the sun *at all*, because molecules can't exist in the sun. In fact, neither do atoms. The sun is a plasma - a bunch of nuclei and a sea of unbound electrons. So you have metal nuclei, oxygen nuclei, and electrons, but no metal oxides.
Re:Perpetuum mobile or what? (Score:4, Informative)
Not really. 1 gram of water will yield
Re:FP BS! (Score:3, Informative)
People don't like being wet or cold and no other solution matches mobile shelter from door to door as well as the private automobile. Until that changes or the US becomes as densely populated as Europe the culture centered around the automobile here is not going to change. If Oil runs out another way will be found.
Back to the topic at hand.... what energy is being used to split the water in the first place? IE I sit in the car and turn it on... where does the initial energy to start the car reside and how long does it take ? Does it have a resevoir of hydrogen to jumpstart the process ? Do I have to have enough battery power to heat up the initial process? Also you have to continue providing heat to this process at a faster rate than you use it or you have an over unity system.
Water is turned to steam by heat, steam then reacts with the mg or al then leaving some excess steam that was not broken down and hydrogen that was liberated... oxygen is caught in the resulting al or mg oxide. That took X amount of energy. To continue that reaction you must continue to supply X. You then burn the hydrogen in a combustion process to both provide heat to continue the reaction and provide motive force ?
I am assuming if this is not crack pot science that the reaction of the al or mg to steam is exothermic (ie it Burns) which allows the reaction to continue and that the combustion of the hydrogen and use of steam is then largely irrelavent to the process of breaking down the water. Otherwise this is a bunch of hooey. In otherwords you light the coil on fire and supply it with water in the form of steam then to control the flow of fuel you regulate just how fast its burning.
Considering the issues here.. why not instead use this concept to solve the issue of shipping hydrogen to gas stations? Create this kind of system for providing on demand hydrogen at gas stations where the weight of the coil is no matter.
A lot of people talk of the problem of short range of gas hydrogen powered vehicles... but I really don't see the problem. At easy to store pressures it is possible to make vehicles that travel more than 100 miles. That covers pretty much any daily usage short of long trips. If you can refuel in short order then 100 miles with some padding just has to cover the distance to the next station and that is more than enough for the current spacing of gas stations. Yes its annoying. But really if you have a vehicle that can travel 2-3 hours (120-180 miles at 60mph) then your going to solve most families needs for point to point without a stop travel. If you juggle weights and fuel efficiency issues and get a vehicle with 200 mile range with reserves you solve the problem completely as that is the range of many vehicles today. Then this kind of system can create on demand hydrogen at fuel stations that can be added to existing infrastructure relatively easily... say a generating plant and the needed pump equipment. There would be less storage danger because in its inert state it would only hold a coil and water... there would probably be some kind of small scale buffer storage of hydrogen but it wouldn't be the primary means.
And if you have visions of the hindenburg when considering hydrogen stored in your car please go read up on what happend there. Probably the most dangerous thing about a hydrogen tank rupture in a car wreck would be the loss of compression of the gas.
Finaly if they are talking of a combustion cycle here it is most certainly not emmission free. burning hydrogen and oxygen with atmospheric air will create nitrous oxide due to the nitrogen in the air and the high heat of the combustion. The only way to avoid that would be to only admit oxygen to the combustion cycle at which point yes... the only emmission would be water vapor.
Re:Perpetuum mobile or what? (Score:5, Informative)
It would be a good thing if it were true. The massive ammounts of energy used to reduce bauxite are mostly lost as waste heat. If they were actually stored in the material, this might be an efficient system to transport energy.
Water will add to the weight, yes. I don't know all the physics, but in general I know you can get a LOT of hydrogen out of a little water.
Well, I do know the physics involved. No, you can't get "a LOT" of hydrogen from water. Water is only 2/18 hydrogen by weight. So you only get 111 grams H2 per kg H2O. That's elementary chemistry. The heat of combustion of H2 is about 141 MJ/kg (IIRC), and the heat of combustion of gasoline is about 44 MJ/kg. But if you're only getting 11% H2 from water, then the effective heat of combustion from the products of electrolysis is about 16 MJ/kg of H2O. Therefore, even neglecting the weight of the metal, this is not a very energy dense system as you claim it to be.
There so much wrong with the rest of your post, but I don't feel like addressing it. The FP had it right: this is bullshit.
Carbon Monoxide (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Perpetuum mobile or what? (Score:3, Informative)
Lithium you'd need 7g Li/1g H2, beryllium(toxic) 9g Be/2g H2, and Boron 11g B/3g H2(though spontaneous reactivy is worse, so there is a reason why organic electrolyte lithium ion batteries use lithium.) Guess what? As you say it, carbon you need 12g
The obvious question with this metal solution is what do you do with your metal oxide? Dump it out on the asphalt behind you? Or haul it around with you? You certainly wouldn't be able to dump lithium borate, because it's so expensive, but if we're at dumping, you might burn metallic silicon (cheap, metallurgic grade purity prepared by non-carbon routes) to make quartz which is sand, which should be OK to dump behind you. You need 28g Si/4gH2, compared to 12g C, but the energy density of Si, on a weight basis is still close to that of C, because the Silicon oxide formation releases more heat than carbon dioxide formation, on a molar basis. Problem with silicon is that it's unreactive (also meaning that it's very safe,) and barely anything bites it at room temperature, while at high temperatures (molten silicates) your engine parts would wear out. (If these engine chambers are cheap, such as graphite molds, you might have a cheap consumable engine cavity that burns silicon, somehow harvests the energy, then recycle your whole engine cavity.) So anyway, dumping silicon dioxide would create a mess on the roads, and probably cause silicosis in all the drivers, so solid effluents from your car would suck. Even a carbon dioxide effluent is preferable to silicon dioxide, but hydrogen oxide is always the most preferable.
Probably the best solution with such metals is to keep the "effluent" with you and haul it around, and exchange it at the nearest gas station. Lithium/boron stuff would still be expensive, would need recycling, but aluminium oxide capsules that you can just toss in the garbage would probably be more cost effective, even given the 27g Al/11g B ratio, because aluminum is more abundant, nontoxic, other than some correlation with the aluminum fluoride in it that may be causing Alzheimer's. As far as this Alzheimer's threat goes, there is an expensive nonfluoride aluminum production (carbochlorination), by the Alcoa/Toth aluminum company, that can even process clays into aluminum, silicon, etc, but nobody has bothered commercially so far to recylce the CO from the carbochlorination back to C and O2 via zirconia electrolysis, and even fluoride aluminum production these days releases mole per mole stoichiometric quantities of carbon, so you might as well just burn gasoline instead of aluminum, (or even silicon, pidgeon process magnesium. In fluoride/cryolite aluminum production they are coming up with new anodes (titanium diboride instead of graphite) that will require more electrical energy and be more expensive compared to cheap coal, but generate direct oxygen instead of carbon dioxide. The problem is that burning coal/carbon to carbon dioxide is the cheapest thing on the planet, replacing that with expensive electricity (hydro, nuclear, solar, wind,) well, it's just not cost competitive these days without some government push, either via regulations or via tax credits.
Still, you waste a lot of available energy just converting the metal