
‘Clean Energy and Water Technologies’ is now a social enterprise based in Melbourne, Australia. The purpose of this enterprise is to introduce a zero emission technology developed and patented by Ahilan Raman, the inventor of the technology. A 25 Mw demonstration plant will be installed to show case the above technology. This platform also used as a blog will publish articles relevant to Zero emission technologies for power and Zero liquid discharge technologies for water industries.
Google analytics tag
Showing posts with label Honda FCX clarity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Honda FCX clarity. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Concentrated solar power - a game changer
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
How to generate Hydrogen from your tap water?
Hydrogen is the cleanest source of energy that can power your homes and fuel your cars. It can potentially substitute diesel and petrol or coal and clean up our environment. Hydrogen has been manufactured industrially for the past several decades and transported across thousand of kilometers by pipelines in Europe. The science and technology of Hydrogen is well known but its application to generate power and fuel a car is relatively new. The gasoline internal combustion engines that drive our gasoline cars can be modified to suit Hydrogen fuel. But the physical and chemical properties of Hydrogen gas created a necessity to alter existing gasoline engines for commercialization. But such conversion has been painfully slow for couple of reasons. There is a stiff resistance from gasoline cars to switch over to Hydrogen because they have a well established infrastructure to manufacture gasoline cars and to supply gasoline through well established distribution network. But Hydrogen cars lack both of them. Even if the cars can be modified for Hydrogen, there are no sales or distribution network for the fuel Hydrogen, similar to Gasoline. Even consumers need to be educated that Hydrogen is safe, environmentally friendly and we need not depend on import of oil and so on.
It is a blessing in disguise that Hydrogen can be generated by individual homes, business and industries for their captive use from their tap water. Recently Hydrogen fuelled scooters have been introduced in the market. There are number of advertisements in the media too; that you can fit a Hydrogen generator at your car that will reduce your gasoline bills substantially and also reduce your emissions.But these Electrolyzers can generate only water gas and not a pure Hydrogen. Yet such simple devices can help reduce your petrol bills to an extend .If things are so simple why are we still struggling with high crude oil prices and increasing electricity bills? Let us examine this in detail.
Water (H2O) can be split into Hydrogen (H2) and Oxygen (O2) by simply passing an electric current through water using a battery. The water disassociates as follows:
2H2O ------------- 2H2 + O2
Stochiometrically, it means 36 lits of water will generate 4 Kgs of Hydrogen and 32 kgs of Oygygen.The current PEM (Proton exchange membrane) Fuel cell car (Honda FCX clarity) can drive 100 miles with just 0.105 kgs of Hydrogen from 5000 psi Hydrogen tank. Similarly 4kgs of hydrogen can generate about 100 kws of electricity using PEM Fuel cell, based on a conservative estimate; but 4Kgs of gasoline can generate only 15 kW electricity. The gasoline engine offers only 100km mileage from 13 kgs (16lits) of gasoline. In other words, 0.105 kgs of Hydrogen at 5000 psi gives the same mileage as 16 lits of Gasoline. This is the amazing power of water, yet to be unleashed!
The tap water is suitable to generate Hydrogen by adding a little amount of potash lye to improve the electrical conductivity. An Alkaline water electrolyzer can be attached to the water tank to generate required amount of Hydrogen based on the above calculation. The resulting Hydrogen has to be compressed to a required level. The power consumption to electrolyze water will be about 75-80 kwhrs per Kg of Hydrogen generated at 5000 psi.Therefore 4Kgs of Hydrogen will require a power of 300kwhrs costing about $30 for a total mileage of 3800 miles.
You will require a small reverse osmosis unit to be attached to your water tap so that the water is de-ionized so that there is no precipitation in the Electrolyzer or reduction in the efficiency of electrolysis.
Recently, Suzuki Bargeman introduced Hydrogen Fuel cell scooter which claims to offer a mileage of 200km from 12 lits Hydrogen (carbon composite material) tank at an elevated pressure of 10,000psi.The future of Hydrogen car is very promising and finally the world can hope to get rid of smoke and noise from our roads and cities.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Fuel your car with Water
This article provides an overview on Hydrogen cars and how we can generate renewable hydrogen to fuel these cars. There are two well known brands of Hydrogen based cars already in the market, BMW7 and Honda FCX Clarity models.
BMW7 works on Hydrogen Internal Combustion engine fuelled by Liquid Hydrogen. It is a 6 Liters V12 engine with 191Kw capacity and 390 N of torque. It offers 100km from 50 Liters of Liquid Hydrogen with a density of about 70-80gms/lit and and offers 100kms from Gasoline of 16.7 liters. It has a capacity of 170 liters for liquid Hydrogen storage at the rear end of the car. It can run both on Hydrogen as well as on Gasoline. Liquid hydrogen has a better power density but liquefaction is a cryogenic technology and consumes power for liquefaction. The storage tank also is of special construction because Liquid Hydrogen is stored at -253C.
Honda FCX Clarity car is fuel cell car fuelled by compressed Hydrogen gas. It offers 100kms for 3.5 lits of Hydrogen (at 5000 psi pressure with density at 30gms/lit.). It has Hydrogen storage of 3.92kgs kgs with a total mileage of 240miles. Increasing Hydrogen storage gas pressure up to 10000psi, the Hydrogen power density is considerably increased making it comparable with liquid Hydrogen. Moreover fuel cell car is silent while driving because there is no combustion engine.
BMW is able to use their existing conventional internal combustion engine with slight modifications suitable for Hydrogen so that they can use their existing infrastructure. But Honda FCX uses proton exchange membrane Fuel cell. It is an electrochemical device that converts Hydrogen into electricity which runs the motor for transmission of power. It is similar to an electric car in which power is stored in batteries and used to drive the motor for transmission. The only difference is the power is generated in Fuel cell car as and when hydrogen is supplied whereas in Electric cars, power is drawn from stored energy from the battery.
We can inject pure Hydrogen along with Gasoline, CNG or LPG to assist the combustion to save fuel consumption up to 30% and to reduce harmful emissions. The conventional gasoline cars can be fitted with water electrolyzer to generate Hydrogen using the car battery. The electrolyzer currently sold in the market is quite different. They generate ‘water gases’ and not pure Hydrogen. They electrolyze water using pulsating DC current which essentially breaks down water into Hydrogen and oxygen molecules. The complete mixture of Hydrogen, Oxygen and undissociated water molecules are injected into fuel manifold of the car. The hydrogen will assist in the process of combustion to certain extend and help save the fuel consumption of gasoline.
Renewable Hydrogen is a potential source for fuelling automobiles. One can use solar panels and simple tap water to generate hydrogen gas and store them under high pressure in cylinders. We will be releasing an eBook in the near future to design a suitable Renewable Hydrogen system and install them at homes and businesses for power generation as well as to fuel two stroke engines such as scooters and bikes. Initially the book will offer DIY kits to design and install power generation for homes and businesses up to 10Kw capacity electricity generation. We will be conducting trials on two stroke engines using renewable Hydrogen to get approvals from appropriate transport authorities for safety and usage on Indian roads.
Hydrogen can be safely handled as long as we take appropriate safety measures as we normally do while handling petroleum products like gasoline or butane gas. It may look like a daunting task to fuel a car with Hydrogen gas but in reality, all necessary equipments and systems are commercially available including High pressure Carbon fiber tanks fully tested and approved.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)