Hey guys, I'm doing a project for school on hydrogen, and i chose to explore the possibilities of a hydrogen combustion engine.
The first step weould be to find out if it is even possible ( i was tinking tungsten steel for the stress problem) and then I would like to make designs for such an engine
Any ideas or insight?
oh yeah, and one of the problems is: how to get an efficient source of hydrogen... any ideas?
My first thought about such a thing was in 1975, when I was in the 7th grade. Now they are, supposedly, working on such a thing, perhaps with fuel cells, etc.
My idea was to fill the car's gas tank with water, and to use electrolysis to separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen. Those two gases would be mixed back together in the cylinders, and ignited as usual. The "exhaust" of this process would, of course, be water, which would be routed back to the "gas" tank.
Of course, I was a naive 13-year-old at the time, and hadn't considered that electrolysis would take too much time and energy for my design to be practical. Pity it couldn't have worked: I'd be very wealthy by now! LOL!
They exist, and use fuel cells, although there are two major issues.
Firstly, even the most secure fuel cell is much more prone to exploding than a conventional gasoline tank. Given the way some people drive, this is a Very Bad Thing.
Secondly, constructing the infrastructure to deliver Hydrogen to the personal car is an undertaking noone wants to pay for. Why would a gas company invest the billions required, nobody owns hydrogen cars? Why doesn't anybody own hydrogen cars? Because they can't get the fuel. The vairous "proof of concept" cars I've read about ended up bumming hydrogen from local power plants.
That was exactly my idea, Traveler. The problem is that the electrolysis wont produce hydrogen fast enough with out a huge electrolyzer.
Dark_Tiger, Thank you for pointing these problems out, but I was not planning to use this engine for a car, because of the very issues you have mentioned.
what you will find intresting is a search on the web for the joecell.
My freind has built one and fitted it to his 186 holden station wagon.
its supplied through a cng conversion kit on top of the carb. the whole unit is built in side a water filter and increases fuel economy. they say 30%.
http://www.waterforfuel.com/
best of luck one thing you might discuss is the efficiency of getting the hydrogen to fuel an h2 engine. unfortuantely this is not really considered a solution to pollution like it used to be because of the difficulties of obtaining hydrogen for fuel...however, new technologies might be able to change that too.
one thing you might discuss is the efficiency of getting the hydrogen to fuel an h2 engine. unfortuantely this is not really considered a solution to pollution like it used to be because of the difficulties of obtaining hydrogen for fuel...however, new technologies might be able to change that too.
| snowboardude wrote: |
Hey guys, I'm doing a project for school on hydrogen, and i chose to explore the possibilities of a hydrogen combustion engine.
The first step weould be to find out if it is even possible ( i was tinking tungsten steel for the stress problem) and then I would like to make designs for such an engine
Any ideas or insight? |
The MythBuster teamed tried that. The problem was it was huge, preventing the hood from closing. The other problem is that yes, it did produce hydrogen as fuel, but it didn't produce enough of it to even start the engine. Also, they fed hydrogen gas directly into the engine and the whole thing started bursting in flame like a flamethrower. I'm just going to let that warn you. Good luck though. | Traveller wrote: |
My first thought about such a thing was in 1975, when I was in the 7th grade. Now they are, supposedly, working on such a thing, perhaps with fuel cells, etc.
My idea was to fill the car's gas tank with water, and to use electrolysis to separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen. Those two gases would be mixed back together in the cylinders, and ignited as usual. The "exhaust" of this process would, of course, be water, which would be routed back to the "gas" tank.
Of course, I was a naive 13-year-old at the time, and hadn't considered that electrolysis would take too much time and energy for my design to be practical. Pity it couldn't have worked: I'd be very wealthy by now! LOL! |
@Traveller,
I think that you can't make hydrogen in your own car, the facility will take to much space to call it a car... And it will take to much time to make a lot of hydrogen.
But I think you can make a facility to make hydrogen at home! That will work.
You have clean energy if you use a windmill or solar to make hydrogen.
I hope that is the solution for the hydrogen problem, just make your own! | snowboardude wrote: |
Hey guys, I'm doing a project for school on hydrogen, and i chose to explore the possibilities of a hydrogen combustion engine.
The first step weould be to find out if it is even possible ( i was tinking tungsten steel for the stress problem) and then I would like to make designs for such an engine
Any ideas or insight? |
Good study! All the best to you.
here is my idea and thought on this subject.
1. A chemical reaction of hydrogen to generate is old science and would lead to other problems as well like safety, fire, too many components as in our current car.
2. Cars of the future should be very simple. Possibly suck atmospheric hydrogen or nitrogen and to start the reaction bombard with a proton or neutron to turn it into reactive and then have a small fusion reactor going inside your car (or is it a space ship). Eject the plasma providing a high speed jet or use the jet to rotate a turbine which will turn your wheels or your turbo-props.My professor at the university I go to (I'm a mech engineer major) works with a group in...Switzerland...I think, that investigate a solar furnace to create solar power.
It goes through a process of reflecting by mirrors to concentrate the beams into a small area to create combustion that can be resolved into certain products (I forget the reactants that are actually used). I believe one product is hydrogen, which could be collected into a fuel cell to use for automobiles.
However, going from the cell to the car...I'm not sure quite yet. I never was that big on automobiles and engines.
Though fuel cells are more commonly proposed, there have been various hydrogen engines produced. One example is an experimental car made by Mazda that ran on liquid hydrogen. Such cryogenic fuel is not easily practical for vehicles, however. There have also been proposals and experiments with other, non-cryogenic methods of having hydrogen fueled vehicles: metal hydrides or pressurized gas tanks. See the article here. On a separate topic than cars, liquid hydrogen is used in the highest performance rocket engines, such as the main engines of the Space Shuttle, the Ariane 5, and some others.
Regarding what QrafTee talked about for a MythBuster episode, that must have been an engine not properly designed to run on hydrogen. That is a lot different from the hydrogen-fueled engine built by Mazda.
Regarding the source of hydrogen, most hydrogen production today is by steam reformation of natural gas, as well as from oil and coal. That is done today due to it being most inexpensive. But such production of hydrogen using fossil fuels doesn't obtain environmental goals, such as transportation ideally converting away from having CO2 emissions. A combination of biomass, other renewable power, and/or nuclear power would be more ideal for large-scale hydrogen production. Sorry to say that it just wast of time.
The production of hydrongen is very complex and the production should not be used in such mechines as combustion engine. As you know the efficiency of combustion engine is not very high. Further more, there are not powerful and efficient ways to use hydrogen such as hydrongen cells and so on.
