Hydrogen fuel cells?

[lain]

I've been wondering if there was a way of making boating more cost effective and was reading on the net about hydrogen fuel cells. I think these are just basic electrolysis cells but I can't quite remember the required chemistry needed to work things out for my self. I understand the principle but don't know the ratio of energy required to energy produced. I'm currently assuming it's all a scam but I find the subject interesting and want to satisfy my curiosity.

What I'm actually asking is how much energy would it take to release a quantity of hydrogen from water and then how much energy would be released by burning that quantity of hydrogen?

Also what happens to the hydrogen once it's burnt? Does it all just convert back to water, if so I'd assume it would only produce that amount of energy that was used to convert it from water in the first place? This is why I'm very interested to know what happens during the burning process.

[daren]

I dont pretend to understand the physics of fuel cells but there are systems out there that work very well on just plain water and that dont need masses of power to work. But we wont ever see them.

And when fuel cells are mass produced for cars and other vehicles you can bet that they will require "special" water, a blend of fuel/reactant that the oil companies will just happen to produce at around the same price as petrol.

And we wont see them untill we have used up most of the oil, so that's about another 10 years of sky high oil prices.

[SCOTT671]

found this link on www.prtrolprices.com

http://www.drivewater4fuel.com/water_for_gas.html

Looks very intresting

[verytricky]

you can split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Then you can burn the hydrogen to power a car. Efficiency is about 20%. Pollutant 99% is water, but some exotic polutants are created, with the burning of hydrogen in air which contains other gasses. Hydrogen burnt in pure O2 = pure water.

The fuel cell is a slightly different animal, and requires specialised equipment.

The hydrogen powered car requires just a similar conversion as you do when you convert a car to run off autogas.

A simple home made water splitter will create about 6 litres of Hydrogen per day from a 12v 35w solar panel source.... distance travelled on petrol x 0.65 = distance travelled on hydrogen.

[Cookee]

Originally Posted by verytricky

you can split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Then you can burn the hydrogen to power a car. Efficiency is about 20%. Pollutant 99% is water, but some exotic polutants are created, with the burning of hydrogen in air which contains other gasses. Hydrogen burnt in pure O2 = pure water.

The fuel cell is a slightly different animal, and requires specialised equipment.

The hydrogen powered car requires just a similar conversion as you do when you convert a car to run off autogas.

A simple home made water splitter will create about 6 litres of Hydrogen per day from a 12v 35w solar panel source.... distance travelled on petrol x 0.65 = distance travelled on hydrogen.

And the reason we're not all making hydrogen in our back garden is ...........



Hindenburg??????????