Quote:
Originally Posted by seifrob
I don't want to sound like a spoilfun here, but:
you cannot electrolyse distilled water. You need to have some electrolyte (sulpheric acid etc) to electrolyse. So there will always be both hydrogen and oxygene, but you can cope with it.
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Yes, I made a mistake there. I think I'll probably change this to make plain HHO (not hydrogen). I'll either use baking soda, sodium or potassium hydroxide (probably sodium since this seems to be the cleanest agent to use). I heard HHO has about 4x the energy of H2, and it changes to H2 rapidly. So even if it isn't used fast enough so that the full 4x more energy can be used, it will at least still be as potent as H2. The only problem I see here is that storage of HHO in tanks isn't well described anywhere, so if anyone here has experience with it, let me know. I'm mainly concerned of increased safety issues compared to regular H2. I would be using it at just 250 bar though (not 700 bar as what most H2 pumps supply) so I would assume my safety issues would still be lower (even with HHO) than that of the H2 pumps at 700 bar. But as said, the more info I can get on this, the better.
Quote:
Originally Posted by seifrob
it sounds like you are trying to make carbon free bussiness. Now, where are you going to take power to electrolyse and compress that hydrogen? Solar array? It adds to the bill
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No, the idea is to use grid power (via either a subscription to renewable power only, or nuclear power or renewable power + nuclear power, no fossil fuel power !)
Quote:
Originally Posted by seifrob
if you are going to buy your electricity to power these electrolysers and compressors, than be ready to invest MUCH more kilowatt-hours in electricity to produce few kilowatt-hours in storage tanks. Its my wild guess, but I would say the ratio can be from around 6 to 1 to 12 to 1 (one kilowatt-hour in scuba tank will cost you six kilowatt-hours you pay in electricity). From financial point of view, this is disastrous.
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You are comparing the price the owner of the refill station would pay to the price of the electricity from the grid ? If so, that's a wrong comparison; you should be comparing it to the price of fuel (say gasoline).
When you compare this, it should be way cheaper.
Quote:
Originally Posted by seifrob
If you want offshore emission free system with limited range, compressed air will serve you as well, with less hassle. You can compress your air using wind power. you can rebuild engines to run with compressed air. You can store compressed air in scuba tanks. you can refill it as easily as possible with compressors in case the wind stops blowing. They tested this in France in eighties, no more info though, but someone may chime in.
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I thought about that as well, but most people already own an internal combustion engine-powered vehicle (so you'd then be making compressed air, which no one could use as they don't have any machinery or vehicles that can run on that). Besides this, I think compressed air has a much lower energy content than air. So you need even more compression to store a same amount of power, and thus also require more energy to be put into it (well for the compression-part at least), and you'll hence also need more expensive compression equipment.