Hydrogen Generator Experiment

[pgfpro]

OK what I came up with at here in Coeur d alene Idaho is it would cost me $26.00 to charge the batteries that will make 1lb of hydrogen that's equivalent to 1 gallon of gasoline. So it will have to make a major gain in combustion to pay off. As far as an increase in efficiency of combustion I don't know what that would be???

What are you guys coming up with????

[Christ]

pgfpro -

TBH, I'm not even sure what people pay in this area for electricity or natural gas.

Regardless, even if you could build the H2 gen for $50, and get the batteries for $7 each, you're already over $75, and you haven't even installed it, and that's assuming you only needed 2 batteries. For the average consumer, I still don't see where you're going to save anything at all.

On top of that, you need a grid charger, and even cheap ones aren't really cheap anymore. So unless you're going to save over $100 in fuel any time soon because of doing this, it's just not the "low hanging fruit" that we should be focused on for the most part.

It's great to think in the abstract about how things might help or hurt efficiency or economy (which, of course, are two different things), but sometimes, it also helps to not be quite so dead set on the logistics of things that aren't going to pay for themselves.

That said, there is no reason I can see for someone to not try it. Maybe we're all missing something that hasn't been brought up yet, and if so, maybe we won't really see whatever it is until a test has been performed...

Nerys - Balls yours, man. You started it, you wanna test it? I'll look forward to your results.

[pgfpro]

Originally Posted by Christ

pgfpro -

TBH, I'm not even sure what people pay in this area for electricity or natural gas.

Regardless, even if you could build the H2 gen for $50, and get the batteries for $7 each, you're already over $75, and you haven't even installed it, and that's assuming you only needed 2 batteries. For the average consumer, I still don't see where you're going to save anything at all.

On top of that, you need a grid charger, and even cheap ones aren't really cheap anymore. So unless you're going to save over $100 in fuel any time soon because of doing this, it's just not the "low hanging fruit" that we should be focused on for the most part.

It's great to think in the abstract about how things might help or hurt efficiency or economy (which, of course, are two different things), but sometimes, it also helps to not be quite so dead set on the logistics of things that aren't going to pay for themselves.

That said, there is no reason I can see for someone to not try it. Maybe we're all missing something that hasn't been brought up yet, and if so, maybe we won't really see whatever it is until a test has been performed...

Nerys - Balls yours, man. You started it, you wanna test it? I'll look forward to your results.

I 100 % agree with your statement. I always have an open mind when it comes to these things. I really hope someone on here takes the ball and runs with it to see if, what gains or losses can be had.

[Nerys]

yeah some of the original nimhs were WORSE than 30% a month. some of my original NIMH AA's self discharged at over 15% a WEEK no joke (oddly enough they still take a good charge over 10 years later)

[Nerys]

ahh your numbers seem pretty suspect to me man $26 in E ? you do realize HOW MUCH power that is right? for me thats 191,000 watts at full commercial pricing (electricity at work I have not done a cost break down at home yet) at work out bill comes to 13.6cents a kiklowatt.

your going to get a hell of a lot more than a "gallons equivalent" of hydrogen out of 191,000 watts worth of electricity.

I don't have solid data on this but one number pops to mind of .8 liters per minute out of a 12amp generator.

so thats what ? .1liter a minute hydrogen .7 liter a minute oxygen or close to that?

ie 6 liters per hours of pure hydrogen. Thats 156watt hours. if we assume 90% efficiency in the charger (EASILY possible with todays $40 digital chargers I think mine says 89% and it cost me $18) so that means from the grid I would cosume 170watts roughly per hour. so $26 in grid electricity would run that generator example for 1,123.5 hours WITH efficiency factoring built in.

or produce 6,741 liters of Hydrogen Gas and 47,187 liters of Oxygen. for $26

are you seriously telling me that it takes 6,741 liters of Hydrogen Gas to equal ONE GALLON of gasoline? I admit you could be right I have no ideal how much the H2 equivalent is but I find it excruciatingly hard to believe its 6,741 liters. (1780.8 gallons of Hydrogen)

Can someone chime in with some data to back up or refute these figures either way?

BTW some quick math. I plan to run at least FOUR generators so thats 2.3 cents per hour per generator. or 9.2 cents per hour or about 12cents per "trip" to work (1 hour 20 minutes) which comes to about .222 cents per mile.

if it gets me even 3mpg here is how the numbers play out.

I average 40,000 miles driven a year. at my current 47mpg assuming $2.50 a gallon thats 851 gallons of gasoline. at 50mpg thats 800 gallons of gasoline

or 51 gallons of gasoline or $127.50 savings per year. The Generator will cost me $88.8 dollars a year to run.

The generator uses crap I already have and about $12 in crap I did not have (namely the threaded rod and stainless plates) either way I am going to ignore the cost of the generator since its #1 so cheap #2 can be made with stuff you already have.

the charger is also zero as I already have them (and so should most people)

the only thing you REALLY need to buy seperate is more batteries. lets say 2 batteries deep cycle. From the u pull it in working condition $20 a pop brand new $40 a pop for a cheapy deep cycle. so $40 to $80 in batteries depending on which route you go. I would assume $40 since you won't want to spend more money till you know if its going to work.

So after a FULL YEAR of usage I would have saved $127.50 in gas (this assuming gas STAYS at $2.50 yeah right :-)

and I would have SPENT $88.8 in E and $40 in batteries for a total of $128 so in reality if you already have a charger you would SAVE money in your first year. NEXT year you would save $40 in fuel.

if you count that fully 50% of my charging would happen at work where the E is FREE to me I would save over $40 in my FIRST YEAR and $80 the next.

and this assumes only a 3mpg gain on a already REALLY high mpg car a Geo Metro.

now try crunching those number for a 15mpg or 20mpg car with even a 1 or 2 mpg gain.

the LOGIC is their. The question is "will it work" I really don't know. one of these days I will find time in my schedule to motivate my lazy ass to find out :-)

[Christ]

I deleted the last post because I'm having a time finding a reputable number for hydrogen.

[pgfpro]

Here is part of a paragraph from the Grolier Encyclopedia:
Electrolysis is an energy-consuming process. To obtain 2 grams of hydrogen and 16 grams of oxygen by the electrolysis of 18 grams of water, the equivalent of 68,300 calories of electrical energy must be supplied. This same quantity of energy, however, can then be recovered from the hydrogen and oxygen, either suddenly in an explosion or slowly if they are brought together in a FUEL CELL.
Two grams of Hydrogen is only 1/227 pound, so the electrical energy actually required to produce a pound of Hydrogen is therefore 68,300 * 227 or 15,500,000 calories of electrical energy! This can be converted into 18,000 watt-hours or 18 kWh. As noted below, the existing technologies to create Hydrogen by electrolysis are all around 20% efficient, which means that around 100 kWh of electricity is used up to produce a single pound of Hydrogen gas. If a house's current 15-cent per kilowatt of electricity is used, that therefore would require at least $15 of house electricity to be used up to create that single pound of hydrogen gas! We will see below that one pound of hydrogen gas contains just under half of the chemical energy of a single gallon of gasoline, so, even if everything else was perfect, more than $30 of modern house electricity would be required to simply PRODUCE an equivalent amount of Hydrogen gas to one gallon of gasoline! And then that gas would have to be ferociously compressed and all the rest.


We can say this same thing in terms of "gallons". A gallon of gasoline contains around 6 pounds, and has 126,000 Btus of energy in it. A "gallon" of hydrogen (gas) only contains around 40 Btus in it. Quite a difference! Instead of a two cubic foot gasoline tank (15 gallons) in your car, you would need a tank more than 3,000 times bigger, over 6,000 cubic feet, for the equivalent Hydrogen! That's a little more than TWO standard semi trailers (8'wide x 8'high x 45' long or 2900 cubic feet each). Pretty big gas tank!

[Christ]

Is the 40BTU figure per gallon correct? I've got a PDF that's showing a much higher figure of nearly 34,000 or so.

[Christ]

http://bhs.econ.census.gov/BHS/MEC/C...ctorsTable.pdf shows approx 35,600 BTU/gallon for H2

Other sites show ~270 BTU/ft^3, others show ~40 BTU/gallon...

[pgfpro]

Originally Posted by Christ

http://bhs.econ.census.gov/BHS/MEC/C...ctorsTable.pdf shows approx 35,600 BTU/gallon for H2

Other sites show ~270 BTU/ft^3, others show ~40 BTU/gallon...

That looks like to me its stored at 2600+psi(compressed hydrogen). Equal to a K tank.

I'm at work right now. I had some other documents on my home computer that matched my above posts.