Water run cars are coming soon

Martin wrote on Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:53:57 +0200:

Martin wrote on Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:48:40 +0200:

Clearly in the diagram the car plugs into the WES and the
magic ingredient is in the bottle marked !#%^/metal hydrate.

You don't get much power from hydrates but hydrogen can be
stored as a metal *hydride*. If someone has managed to safely
and efficiently bottle a hydride, please let me and the auto
industry know.

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/68...scription.html

There are some true statements there but it is like all those wonderful
gadgets that are "suppressed by the auto industry".
--

James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

E-mail, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not

On Jun 15, 9:28*am, Martin wrote:
On 15 Jun 2008 13:06:16 GMT, Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:

Markku Grönroos wrote in
.fi:

Japanese company Genepax has developed an automobile which is running
at 80km/h for an hour by a litre of H2O. Is this time to salute oil
producing arabs and European tax collectors by middle fingers up?

Sounds bull****. Water contains no exploitable chemical energy.

Not even hydrogen?

No, not even hydrogen.

A tad bit of chemistry needs to be explained here. When
molecules combine, or divide, there can be releases of energy.
Energy releases occur because the chemical process involved
result in molecules (or free atoms in some cases) that are
at lower "energy states". Hydrocarbons (oil, gas, etc) are
molecules at very high energy states. Combining them with
oxygen (burning them) results in moving the molecules to
lower energy states (and therefor releasing energy).

The reason that separating water into hydrogen and
oxygen makes a useful fuel is because you elevate the
hyrogen molecules to a higher energy state. Once at that
higher energy state, you now have stored energy that can
be rereleased by combining it with oxygen. But then energy
being released came from the process of creating it in
the first place.

The water molecule has hydrogen at a low energy state
and therefor has no "exploitable" energy available.

ANY process to split water into hydrogen and oxygen requires
the input of energy from some source. The trick to using hydrogen
is not how to extract energy from it, but how to get the energy
in there in the first place. We drill for oil because the energy is
already "in" the hydrocarbon molecule. Hydrogen can come from
a wide variety of sources and water is typically one of the more
inefficient places to extract it from (basically because it is already
at a pretty low energy state so it takes alot of energy to get it
out).
Hydrocarbon gas tends to be a great place from which to extract
hydrogen, being as the hydrogen can often be extracted from an
already high energy state. However, you are usually left with
other gases as well (various forms of carbon such as dioxide
and monoxide).

Those of us who have studied the physics, and who have been
watching various attempts to use hydrogen as fuel, get a bit
skeptical when we hear stories in the nontechnical media.
The media usually gets much of the details wrong, and
frequently leave the reader with the impression that they
hydrogen is the "source" of the energy. It isn't, It is basically
the "battery". I.e. a storage medium for energy extracted
from some other method (like burning coal, fission, hydroelectric,
etc.).

[PDF]
Optimizing Membrane Electrode Assembly Performance by Altering ...
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
Membrane Electrode Assembly. (MEA). Composed of the ion. exchange membrane..
(Nafion), reaction. catalyst, and the. electrodes that convert ...http://www.princeton.edu/~pccm/outre...ns/fourman...-



The problem is, when you break down water into its components, you have
to put in as much energy as you later hope to extract.

The same is true about fuel cells. If water is used to store energy it is easier
to cart around than cylinders of hydrogen.


You have that backwards. Water is the "exhaust". A fuel cell
contains
hydrogen. Once the energy from the hydrogen molecule is extracted,
you have water left. Some fuel cell designs have features which allow
them to "reverse" their process and store energy by splitting the
water
molecule. They tend to be fairly inefficient.

(poldy) wrote in
news
In article ,
Bert Hyman wrote:


If you have an abundant energy source that's not useable for some
purpose, converting that energy into a form suitable for use can
make sense, even if there's a net loss.

Like corn ethanol.


Converting coal into electricity to make hydrogen for fuel would
make sense when you can't burn coal in your car or bus directly.

Nuclear, hydro, wind and geothermal power are equally non-portable and
unsuitable for powering automobiles, but can produce electricity
suitable for making hydrogen.

It's all a matter of how much it costs and what the market will bear.

--
Bert Hyman | St. Paul, MN |

On Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:21:40 GMT, "James Silverton"
wrote:

Martin wrote on Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:53:57 +0200:

Martin wrote on Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:48:40 +0200:

Clearly in the diagram the car plugs into the WES and the
magic ingredient is in the bottle marked !#%^/metal hydrate.

You don't get much power from hydrates but hydrogen can be
stored as a metal *hydride*. If someone has managed to safely
and efficiently bottle a hydride, please let me and the auto
industry know.

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/68...scription.html

There are some true statements there but it is like all those wonderful
gadgets that are "suppressed by the auto industry".

Name one.

On Jun 15, 12:46*pm, poldy wrote:
In article ,
*Bert Hyman wrote:
[snip]
Converting coal into electricity to make hydrogen for fuel would make
sense when you can't burn coal in your car or bus directly.

Well, a lot of interest in alternate fuels for cars comes from wanting
to reduce carbon emissions so burning more coal wouldn't meet that goal.

Actually, as long as the goal is only to "reduce" carbon
emissions,
"remote generation" can help with that. A portable engine (like your
car) tends to operate at much lower temperatures than the furnace
at the coal fired plant. Burning at higher temperatures increases
efficiency. There are other efficiencies as well associated with
features of remote generation like not having engines "idle" at
stop lights. However, these efficiencies can be lost in the
"transmission".
i.e. there are energy losses in the transmission lines from the power
plant to your house. There will be losses in the processes used to
generate the hydrogen (even commercially). There will be "leaks"
in the transport and storage of hydrogen (which basically is lost
energy). If your losses get too large, anything you accomplish due to
the increased generation efficiency get lost in decreased transport
efficiency.

"Poetic Justice" wrote in message
...
Speaking of, they've been talking about
fusion for ages. No breakthrough in sight?

James Silverton wrote;

It's been 20 years in the future for the last
50 years :-)

Perhaps because they are still working on the cars with the fold-up
wings that we would keep in our garage and fly to work everyday.

They have been built and flown at various times since 1917, but none were a
commercial success. I always rather fancied the Taylor Aircar.

And the rocket-backpack that would fly us around town.

First built in Germany during WW2, to allow engineers to cross obstacles,
such as minefields, but, like many of its successors, never taken much
beyond the prototype stage. Yves Rossy's jetpack with wings is probably the
most practical version.

Colin Bignell

"Martin" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 15 Jun 2008 14:27:28 -0500, "Gregory Morrow"

wrote:




Martin wrote:

On 15 Jun 2008 13:43:48 GMT, Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:

Markku Grönroos wrote in
.fi:


"Wolfgang Schwanke" kirjoitti
...

The problem is, when you break down water into its components, you
have to put in as much energy as you later hope to extract. There's
no way around this. The unexplained "MEA" process must use some
unmentioned

Alright then spoilsport. But are you quite certain about this?

Unless my school chemistry & physics fails me, yes.

No way around this by contemporary tools?

It's not a question of tools.
The most basic law of physics is: You can't get energy for free.

It's mechanism for transporting energy, not creating it.


The Germans did it first with the Amphicar...

Always kinda reminded me of an aquatic DAF...

The Americans did it before with the DUKW.

The Amphicar was based upon the wartime work the inventor did on the
Schwimmwagen, which predated the DUKW. However, amphibious vehicles date
back to the mid-18th century.

Colin Bignell

"Martin" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 15 Jun 2008 17:52:30 GMT, "James Silverton"
wrote:

"Martin" wrote in message
. ..
On Sun, 15 Jun 2008 17:32:52 GMT, "James Silverton"
wrote:

Martin wrote on Sun, 15 Jun 2008 15:33:03 +0200:

Wolfgang wrote on 15 Jun 2008 13:06:16 GMT:

Japanese company Genepax has developed an automobile which
is running at 80km/h for an hour by a litre of H2O. Is this
time to salute oil producing arabs and European tax
collectors by middle fingers up?

Sounds bull****. Water contains no exploitable chemical
energy.

I guess some promoters or history majors have again repealed
the First Law of Thermodynamics: you can't get something for
nothing!

I don't see any claim that it does that.
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english...080613/153276/

It does not have to be claimed specifically since it's what they are
doing!

They aren't. They are using a chemical process to produce hydrogen and
feeding
that to a fuel cell.
--

You don't understand energy Martin; you can't get something for nothing
and that includes energy, which is why I mentioned the First Law of
Thermodynamics.

I do understand. Nobody except a stupid journalist is claiming that they
are
getting something for nothing.

The spokesman for the company who was interviewed by Reuters claimed that
the car required no external input and would run as long as you kept adding
water, which sounds a lot like claiming you get something for nothing. They
also claim that it will run on any form of water, including sea water, which
poses even more problems about how the chemical process is supposed to work.
Oxygen you can dump into the atmosphere, but what happens to all the
contaminants in impure water? Products like this in the past have usually
seen the inventor heading for the horizon with the money they have persuaded
people to invest.

Colin Bignell

In article ,
"nightjar" cpb@insert my surname here.me.uk wrote:

"Poetic Justice" wrote in message
...
Speaking of, they've been talking about
fusion for ages. No breakthrough in sight?

James Silverton wrote;

It's been 20 years in the future for the last
50 years :-)

Perhaps because they are still working on the cars with the fold-up
wings that we would keep in our garage and fly to work everyday.

They have been built and flown at various times since 1917, but none were a
commercial success. I always rather fancied the Taylor Aircar.


The problem is thqt they are neither a good airplane nor a good
automoble -- too many design compromises.




And the rocket-backpack that would fly us around town.

The problem is the same as with electric cars: You have to carry all of
your propellant, including oxidizer, resulting in a very short duration.

You had better be on the ground when the propellant runs out, or you are
in "Heap 'o hurt."



First built in Germany during WW2, to allow engineers to cross obstacles,
such as minefields, but, like many of its successors, never taken much
beyond the prototype stage. Yves Rossy's jetpack with wings is probably the
most practical version.

Colin Bignell

--
Remove _'s from email address to talk to me.

On Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:37:43 +0200, Martin wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:21:40 GMT, "James Silverton"
wrote:

Martin wrote on Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:53:57 +0200:

Martin wrote on Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:48:40 +0200:

Clearly in the diagram the car plugs into the WES and the
magic ingredient is in the bottle marked !#%^/metal hydrate.

You don't get much power from hydrates but hydrogen can be
stored as a metal *hydride*. If someone has managed to safely
and efficiently bottle a hydride, please let me and the auto
industry know.

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/68...scription.html

There are some true statements there but it is like all those wonderful
gadgets that are "suppressed by the auto industry".

There are several similar patents.

That and two bucks will get you a cup of coffee.