The Car That Makes Its Own Fuel

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."

FP BS!

[schematix]

first post to call bullshit! :: cough ::

Example of moving the pollution elsewhere

[Futurepower(R)]

From the article referenced by the Slashdot story: "The metal atoms will bond to the Oxygen from the water, creating metal oxide. As a result, the Hydrogen molecules are free, and will be sent into the engine alongside the steam."

This is just an example of moving the pollution elsewhere. The metal must be refined, at great cost to the environment. Then it is oxidized in a "pollution free" car.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Sounds like BS

[pinkocommie]

Reading the article it says the way it works is by superheating water and using a metal catalyst to seperate H2 and O using the super heated steam and hydrogen to fuel the car. The problem not mentioned at all in the article is where does the super heated water come from?

water -is- an emission

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretend you are in Minneapolis, 5 am, 20 below fahrenheit, the sun won't rise for at least two more hours. It is rush hour. All the cars are putting out steam, which billows white in the frigid air. Ice coats your rear bumper and the streets, an ice fog reduces visibility to a car length or so.

Where do Slashdot editors come from?

[Ancil]

The Hydrogen car Engineuity is working on will use metals such as Magnesium or Aluminum which will come in the form of a long coil.

Is there any posibility we could send the entire slashdot editorial board to a class called "Thermodynamics 101"?

Actually, a lot of Hydrogen Economy True Believers need to enroll in that same class. Nothing against hydrogen per se, but half the nation seems to think of it as an energy source, which of course it isn't..

Jumping by pulling your own hair

[Anonymous Coward]

This just in, perpetual motion machine developed as well and the laws of thermodynamics are no longer safe in this house.

Seriously though, the title in the article and the summary is misleading. The car isn't making it's own fuel. There's still a fuel station, it's just using a novel idea (I'm guessing) at producing hydrogen. I'm not sure how effective it is but it's a pretty neat trick, and if all the things the article says (which must be taken with a teaspoon of salt) come true, this could be a real breakthrough (chances are it comes 10 years too late with half the performance.)

Re:water -is- an emission

[SealBeater]

A battery and water heater can take care of that. Once it get's moving, it can
use friction from other places, like the engine or the wheels. Even present
day cars can have problems starting in conditions like that.

SealBeater

it still needs fuel...

[ebatsky]

As far as I can see, you would still need to refuel the car. Except this time, instead of oil based gasoline you will be using metal coil made from light metals like magnesium and aluminum. So although the article says the cost of running this car would be the same as today's gasoline-based cars I somehow suspect that those estimates will rise if it's ever used on a global scale...

Re:Example of moving the pollution elsewhere

[shmlco]

Not to mention that, according to TFA, each "coil" lasts about as long as a normal tank of gas. As such, I still have to build an entire refining, distribution, refueling, and recycling network from scratch. In which case the summary is wrong, "The system solves all of the obstacles associated with the manufacturing, transporting and storing of hydrogen to be used in cars."

Sounds like there's still an obstacle or three in the way...

Re:FP BS!

[ElBorba]

No, seriously, I don't think you can mod this troll. This "article" is pulled from some sort of promotional flier or something. Not only is there a complete lack of any type of criticism but there's no hint as to what sorts of infrastructure would really be required to implement this "thing". I'm all for supporting the sciences and research and hey, I'm even psyched for the eventual advent of hydrogen or other yet unnamed types of personal transportation, but this piece makes it sound like a done deal when there's nothing at all in the article to make any judgement about...
 
...other than the fact that the fuel coil will be 3 TIMES THE WEIGHT OF A CONVENTIONAL PETROL TANK.

Let's do some math...

[Darth Cow]

100kg of aluminum costs around $200 at ~$2/kg [metalprices.com]. Looking at the graph on this page [ic.gc.ca] for Aluminum manufacturing costs, about 75% of the cost is raw materials and supplies (mostly the aluminum). So that's at least $50 net to fill up your "tank" assuming perfect effeciency in converting that aluminum.

Neglecting the costs of taking the recycled aluminum oxide out of your car and turning it back into Al rods, the maintaince costs for the fuel station, infrastructure costs to build all this, and so forth. Shipping costs will of course astronomically climb since metal can only be transfered in by train, truck or ship unlike cheap pipelines and is also no longer an easily moveable liquid. Nevermind the cost of your aluminum powered car itself, or the engineering difficulties inherent in moving a 100kg metal coil into your engine, this "upgrade" is already going to break the bank.

I think I'll leave the hydrogen production outside of the vehicle, thank you. Nice try, but no dice.

"Emission free", my ass!

[Kymermosst]

And it's completely emission free.

Ah, so the processes for gaining the aluminum and magnesium are completely green! The mining does no damage, getting the the metals out of the ore releases no pollutants and the process takes no nasty chemicals or fuel.

What a revolution!

Re:water -is- an emission

[Ozwald]

Huh? Are you serious? Moderators +3 insightful? A good snow storm will put more frozen water vapor on the ground than we're capable of. Besides, if we are burning gas, deisel, or water, there's still water vapor coming out the back end. Ever seen freezing rain? Fog roll in from the ocean?

If you are going to beg for a problem to bitch about, say it's going to be about the reservour freezing, or in the case of this car, filtering out water vapor (recycled) from the nitrogen which TFA neglects mention.

Oz

Re:Pretty amusing

[La Camiseta]

Then again if sodium was cheap and common this type of system would have been in every home years ago.

Completely ignoring the fact that Sodium in its pure state is highly explosive when any piece that's even relatively small touches any water, and the fact that the possible quantity and extent of the lawsuits that it would bring the first time a kid decided to crack open one of those balls of Sodium to find out what it "tasted like," yes, it would have been in every home years ago.

Re:Example of moving the pollution elsewhere

[CodeBuster]

The fossil fuel distribution networks in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere are configured to deliver a refined liquefied petroleum product (i.e. Gasoline, Diesel, Kerosene, etc...) to existing vehicles which are designed to store them in un-pressurized vented fuel tanks. Any alternative which causes a significant departure from this format will impose large structural costs in the form of upgrades and refitting to accommodate the new fuel. It is therefore desirable for any alternative to be able to use the existing distribution and storage networks without extensive upgrades and refitting. One must also consider the relative ease of the refueling operation. It is not unduly difficult for the average consumer to pump gasoline or diesel into the fuel tank of their vehicle. If the alternative requires special handling or a more involved procedure then it will not be as well received by the consumers. The distribution of metal coils is not much like the distribution of liquid fuels and therefore it does not make very efficient use of the existing networks. It is also probable that the replacement of these coils will not be as easy or convenient as pumping liquid fuel into your current vehicle. Perhaps this answers your question, "What is wrong with that"? There are other reasons why the metal coil system would not be as inexpensive (relatively), convenient, and therefore desirable as the current liquid fuel system, but you no doubt see where this is going so I will refrain from listing them all here.

Re:Example of moving the pollution elsewhere

[shmlco]

You're being very reasonable here, but I think you need to go back to the article as there's a small detail lurking there that you seem to have missed. We're talking about boxes three times the weight (220 pounds) of an equivalent tank of gas. As such, I don't see a gas station attendent or driver casually unloading a standard delivery truck full of "gas".

From TFA, "Refuelling the car based on this technology will also be remarkably simple. The vehicle will contain a mechanism for rolling the metal wire into a coil during the process of fuelling and the spent metal oxide, which was produced in the previous phase, will be collected from the car by vacuum suction."

So, functionally, we need to load a "pump" with several tons of metal wire, and then suck the waste back out again for disposal.

That being the case, I suspect the infrastructure requirements in terms of loading, transportation, unloading, fueling, and recovery might be a bit more involved than you, or the author or the article, make them out to be.

"Remarkably simple," indeed.

Metal-Air batteries

[klic]

There are already systems that convert metals into oxides, producing power. They are called batteries. They are heavy, because metal atoms are a lot more massive for a lot less energy per reaction than hydrocarbon fuels.

That said, this is a bass-ackwards way to do something that was done better at Livermore perhaps 30 years ago ( you can find a reference in the old "Access to Energy" newsletter by Petr Beckmann, if any of those are online ). Some Lawrence Livermore scientists developed a metal-air battery, which produced electricity directly from the reaction of the metal (aluminum or zinc plates, IIRC) with air via some catalytic electrode system. Like the Israeli system, you ended up with powdered metal oxide. Unlike the Israeli indirect-combustion system, the metal-air battery efficiencies were high and direct drive electrical power was produced, so you could control power to the wheels, do regenerative braking, etc. Since the metal-air battery produces electricity directly, the energy efficiency is probably 4X to 5X better than a hydrogen generator feeding a heat engine. With the metal-air battery you also can get the additional efficiency of a hybrid-type vehicle, so my guess is that you have 10X to 20X more energy efficiency than the Israeli Metal / Hydrogen / Internal Combustion / Mechanical Linkage system.

The Livermore engineers did not use magnesium, or sodium, or lithium, or other light metals. These metals pack higher energy density than aluminum. They also easy to ignite and burn very easily, with flames that are impossible to put out in air (sodium even burns in water). Yes, hydrogen burns faster (Hindenburg! Hindenburg! Oooooh scary!). But hydrogen burns UP, while burning metal just stays around and does a thermite/napalm number on you and your car. A magnesium slab in a car is NOT safer than a hydrogen tank in a car.

Even with the much better efficiency, Air-Metal batteries are not practical. It takes far too much energy to refine the metal, and handling metal and debris, cleaning the system, etc. are all far too much work. Now divide the value by 20, and wonder what those Israelis are smoking ...

P.S. Some researchers claim that the Hindenburg caught fire because of the ignition of the highly volatile doped fabric, which in turn set fire to the metal in the dirigible frame. The hot hydrogen vented upwards, remember, heating up the air far above the Hindenburg, but not affecting the passengers underneath. They got roasted by the burning dirigible body.

Re:as if

[Mistshadow2k4]

Well, as a member of the American public, I can say for sure that I certainly would (if it were for real, which it looks like it isn't). My husband has a long commute to work, none of his co-workers live near us so there can't be a car pool, and the high gas prices are really hurting us financially. We have to spend more than three times to pay for one week's gas than we did two years ago, and that's just for the minimum necessary. There are a lot of ther people we know who are also hurting financially due to the high price of gas. Not all Americans are well-to-do folks talking on their cell phones while driving their SUVs; some are still poor, hard-working people.

Oh that is so wonderful except...

[Anonymous Coward]

The system solves all of the obstacles associated with the manufacturing, transporting and storing of hydrogen to be used in cars. Gee that's great except the one problem it does NOT solve is the tremendous cost of storing energy in the form of magnesium. The key question here is, "what is the cost in terms equivalent to dollars per gallon?" In other words, let's say I have a typical car which gets 25 mpg and gas costs $3.50/gal right now. If there's a car out there that uses some new wonder-fuel-propulsion system, and the total cost of that car going 25 miles is, say, $20, then that's equivalent to using $20/gal gasoline. So that's how you can do an economic comparison (leaving out all the other non-economic and indirect costs) of cars.

I'm GUESSING that using that metric, this car will probably be in the "more than $20/gal equivalent" range, sorta like hydrogen cars are today.

The only thing that could possibly save this (and the hydrogen boondoggle) is the development of nuclear power plants that are an order of magnitude cheaper than they are today. That is possible, but until that can be implemented, this is all nonsense.

In conclusion, I'm glad that they solved all those problems, they just haven't solved the problem of making it anywhere near being economically viable.

If money is no object there are so many problems you can solve!

On another topic, Slashdot needs to have a "bullshit" category for things like this, or the battery life extender sticker. This is just painful.

Re:Editors

[ishmaelflood]

It would 'work'. That is to say, you would get hydrogen to burn in a conventional engine. But, if you take one step back, look at the real process. I'll use aluminium as an example, as it is the worst case scenario.

1) Make aluminium from bauxite and electricity and stuff. Lots of electricity. Really big amounts of electricity.

2) Burn aluminium in water, releasing hydrogen, and creating aluminium oxide/hydroxide.

3) Burn hydrogen in a normal internal combustion engine, max efficiency 40%, say.

total emission free

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you have any idea of how aluminium is being produced of course.

Re:FP BS!

[yog]

The problem with "solutions" like this H2-from-Mg idea is that it doesn't solve the real problem, which is cars. We badly need alternatives to private automobiles in the U.S. for both energy reasons and for safety. 37,000 people dying a year in automobile accidents in the U.S. alone is ridiculous. If the U.S. went to war over 3,000 deaths in 2001 then surely it can get more worked up over the ongoing slaughter on the roads (albeit largely alcohol-induced).

Take some of that aluminum and magnesium and make bicycles out of it. Paint stripes on all the regular city thoroughfares reserving space for bike lanes. Give people health insurance discounts for riding bikes, and give them secure, covered spots to park at work. Let them carry bikes on public buses and trains.

Speaking of buses and trains, put hundreds of billions of $ into public transportation and solar power panels on all public buildings rather than defending some oil fields in some miserable patch of desert in the middle east.

I see these online discussions about how many years it would take to make a hybrid's cost pay for itself. I suggest taxing the heck out of gas guzzler cars and *make* the fuel efficient versions worthwhile. It's crazy that you have to pay a $3000 surcharge for a hybrid electric vehicle, for example, over a regular gas guzzler that is literally funding war and terrorism in the Middle East.

Re:FP BS!

[cayenne8]

"....it doesn't solve the real problem, which is cars. We badly need alternatives to private automobiles in the U.S. for both energy reasons and for safety."

While that sounds good...it is virtually impossible given the vast amounts of land we cover here and the different weather conditions and terrains. Take for instance where I'm at right now. My house in NOLA is still uninhabitable...I'm living with friends just outside New Orleans. I commute every day to my job, temporarily moved to Baton Rouge. They're talking about trying to set up a rail system from NOLA to BR. Well, that would be just fine...but, how the hell do I get from the train to the other side of BR to my jobsite? What if I have to carry equipment? It just doesn't seem practical to me in most instances to try to rely on public transportation. As it is, I have to allow for about 1.5 hours each way...8 hours at work. If I had to factor in waiting time for busses, transfers...etc. Hell, I'd be using up 14+ hours a day just to work.

And while this is an extreme case in my situation now...it isn't that extreme for others in other parts of the country. I've heard around the Los Angelas area...peope often have multi-hour commutes as it is.

Lets put that aside...and just think of normal living. How the heck would I buy food and such relying on bicycles and public transportation? I buy groceries usually once a week...just for normal cooking...I can easily fill up my front seat, floor board and some in the back seat with groceries. If I'm firing up the smoker with whole briskets or such...well, even more of bulk and weight needing to be transported. How are you supposed to transport that kind of load without a private car? I don't see myself carrying all that by myself on busses, bikes...and then the last 'mile' from a public transport station to my door. And right now, I'm a single guy...think of what people with families have to carry?

Unless you are in a densely packed urban center...you pretty much HAVE to have private transportation to work, carry out daily activities...and living in this area...to get out with your LIFE if a catastrophic event comes your way.

I knew ...to get my ass outta Dodge before hurricane Katrina hit. I woke up surprised Sat. (like most of us down here) to see it had changed course and was now heading towards NOLA...I left that morning.

If you didn't have a car, or know someone that did...well, you saw what happened.

Re:FP BS!

[bigtrike]

I've been living without a car for over a year now. It's really not that bad.

Traffic is not so much of an issue. In a typical big city you can outbike an automobile during rush hour. While busses may be slow, the light rail/subway in this city is far faster than any automobile travelling on surface streets.

The problem is that automobiles have created urban sprawl which only creates a dependency for more automobiles. Density is lost mainly due to highways, parking lots, and roads.

As far as Katrina goes, how fast were you travelling to get out of town? On a bike you can travel a good 100 miles a day during an emergency. You don't need to worry about gas, traffic, downed trees, etc.

Groceries are an issue. Thankfully, my city was mostly solidified before cars existed, so it is dense. Since there are no big block mega stores with equally gigantic parking lots creating sprawl, I actually live close enough to walk to the grocery store. Usually I get about 2 or 3 bags worth at a time and walk home. The walk takes about 5 minutes, which is less time then I ever spent driving to a grocery store in other cities. Attempting to buy large quantities of groceries would be inconvenient, but it's not a need I have often.

The work situation can be a problem, but the majority of people don't need to carry anything to work. While I can't carry a tablesaw to work, I can fit a decent amount of stuff in my messenger bag. If I had to take a train, I'd likely buy a folding bike to get me to and from the station.

Weather can be an issue at times. With an investment in some decent weather gear, I've manged to bike in rain and cold (-5F). It's nice to get outside for a bit in these brutally cold winters.

Then there's the cost savings. I'm saving thousands of dollars per year by not owning a vehicle. If oil prices were to double, I may have to pay another dollar or two per year for chain wax.

While it won't work for everyone, it would work for many more people than you think. Personally, I've found it to be a lot less of a hassle to commute via bike.