Big thanks to NachoMahma for the wire, without him it wouldn't be possible for this experiment.
This was an experiment to make a AA fuel cell with house hold parts (plus platinum Wire), but it failed. In a performence test it produced an unstead 2 - 1.5 volts for 10 seconds, yet it couldn't even light up a red LED. With that said here's the AA hydrogen fuel cell!
This was an experiment to make a AA fuel cell with house hold parts (plus platinum Wire), but it failed. In a performence test it produced an unstead 2 - 1.5 volts for 10 seconds, yet it couldn't even light up a red LED. With that said here's the AA hydrogen fuel cell!
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2 cheap AA (not shown)
solder
nut and bolt
platinum wire
a tube that's the size of an AA, I made one from a 5cc syringe
glue
a bit of aluminum
water
solder
nut and bolt
platinum wire
a tube that's the size of an AA, I made one from a 5cc syringe
glue
a bit of aluminum
water
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If so, which metal?
From Wikipedia:
"The first law of thermodynamics, an expression of the principle of conservation of energy, states that energy can be transformed (changed from one form to another), but it can neither be created nor destroyed."
Typo,I Meant it will Be stolen from you.
you wrote this experiment and now you yourself says that it doesnt work?
well maybe you are right but with the structure I told you I received about 2 volts (with no Amps actually) so its not completly useless ha?
hey does your car have a hydrogen generator?
please look at this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRCnSQA37Zs&feature=related
I downloaded it.I wanna make one
would you help me?pleaseeeeeee
Im waitiiiiiiing
Currently all you are doing is electrolysis of water, with platinum electrodes, and the reason that it is not giving electricity back out is because there is no driving force for converting the oxygen and hydrogen back to water.
For starters, I'd suggest looking up "electrochemistry."
You will need to have a different half-cell on either side of a permeable barrier (permeable to ions, not just electrons). In fact, just have a look at this page and it explains a fair bit: electrochemistry
depending on what you use as the two reaction "half cells," you will get a different voltage. To recharge the system, it's as simple as driving the reaction backwards by supplying an external voltage in the opposite direction, which is greater than the voltage that can be produced!
the amount of current that can be generated is proportional to the surface area of the electrodes, and the total amount of charge that you can get out of the system is related to the concentrations of the salt solutions, and the total size of the electrodes. It will only have a limited life-time though, as at least one of the electrodes is going to be sacrificial (it will be consumed as the reaction progresses)
any questions, just reply to this comment and I can try to help you understand! :-)
http://sci-toys.com/scitoys/scitoys/echem/fuel_cell/fuel_cell.html
so yes, you remembered correctly =]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_breeder_reactor
Wind turbines can be placed where humans otherwise wouldn't be living... That said - population density of the US is about 12 people per square mile. On average, each hose consumes 1.826 kW of energy (Average of 16000kWh per year/8760 hours). Lets say a given wind turbine produces 1 megawatt (there are higher ones - but just for this example lets go with 1MW). We'll assume a capacity factor of .25 (typically the low end of acceptable - .4 being awesome). So 1 turbine makes 8760000 kWh per year in ideal conditions (always making power- no down time) - with the capacity factor, that's 2,190,000 KWh per year or 250kW. That equates to 136.9 households per 1MW turbine (250/1.826). Now, to break even with the average population density - that would mean there's a requirement of 1 turbine per 11.4 square miles - which is obviously not the case.
In Brazil, the minimum is E20 - but the automakers there have many vehicles on the market that can accept E100. It's kinda like E85 and E10 in the states. We're required to be able to do at least E10 -but some places sell 85 (or have blender pumps). But yeah, the conversion from sugar cane is far more efficient as compared to corn... America tends to engineer it's way out of situations like that though...
Mitsubishi apparently has plans to sell a 100 mile ranged 4/5 seater EV that can do 80mph in the coming years... Alas, not in the US :/ The price is still a little high 15,000 pounds - but it's something. But the reason I bring that up - EVs are far more efficient energy wise compared to using that same energy to refine petrol and eventually burning it with a huge efficiency loss....
Not one item is the solution to our energy problem - as such, a friend once told me "All or nothing attitude will result in the latter." He was likely quoting someone else, but it holds true to power generation solutions.
On the subject of fission... I think it has something to do with the NIMBY attitude. Which is why we really don't have much in the way of plans for new power plants - but, at the very least, we have plans under way to add more reactors to existing plants. The NIMBY attitude comes from a lack of education and fundamental understanding - not to mention, the US is far behind other countries with respect to methods and recycling. Hell, Canada has heavy water reactors while we're still using plain old water resulting in lovely arms grade crap...
I think it's also going to be quite hard to shift funding to nuclear technology (public funding that is) on the political level too - a combination of constituent's lack of education on the matter and the resulting political suicide to follow.
Don't get me wrong - I'm totally with you with breeder reactors... But we're lagging behind severely (in the states :/)... I noticed you said "spanner" - just curious, where are you located?
All that said -again, there really is no one solution to the energy needs...
It's totally cool :)
In addition to Chernobyl - the aftermath is basically the result of running a nuclear power plant in your garage.. Three mile has containment such that the risk of an explosion was minimal (and why other reactors on three mile are still in operation :) ).
Wind turbines take up a relatively small footprint space, compared to the power output, just look at one.
Current solar panels are about 20 % efficient, about the same as the thermal efficiency of coal fired electrical plants. The main difference here is the 80% of sunlight that's not bumping electrons is turned to heat, as it would if it hit anything else. The 80% of the coal that's burned, that doesn't light your lights, turns into lovely stuff like carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, mercury, etc.
Current battery technology works fine for electric vehicles already in use for short distance commuting and delivery.
Also, I would like to thank you for sharing your experience about it =o)
Lot's of peoples make experiments, and don't dare sharing it just because they failed. But they forget we can learn a lot from failures and mistakes too ...
Maybe will you accept to add this instructable to this group ?
=o)
Hydrogen is the fuel storage device of the future. You can create it using non pollutive ways, such as hydro or wind powered generators.
As far as it being a greenhouse gas, what is your point? Water vapor will only condense and make rain or snow.
As far as the monopolies... I believe the next tycoons will be the Hydrogen Tycoons, and it will good thing, especially because no country will have a monopoly on the fuel, like OPEC ones do.
You'll be glad to know that the country isn't investing "gazillions" in hydrogen technology then. In fact, right now the government is investing far, far more into ethanol. Much of this investment at the moment is in corn-based ethanol, because of the political power of big agro. But that's a piss-poor alternative as well: it's not very energetically favorable (i.e. it takes far to much energy to produce the corn, compared to what you get out of it), and you wind up competing with food crops.
There's also a significant effort in cellulosic ethanol, which could be a much better solution, because you can convert the entire plant into fuel, not just the ears of corn. Add in biomass crops like switchgrass of Miscanthus ("elephant grass") which produce far more biomass than corn ever could...
By the way, ethanol as a fuel has its own problems, as they are starting to find out in Brazil, because it tends to produce more toxic NOx compounds upon combustion.
Either way, any expert you talk to will tell you that no single technology will be able to solve all our energy needs for the next century. Whether it's Canadian oil sands (*huge* supply, but very dirty, and we'd have to stripmine much of Canada), nuclear, solar, wind, tidal, cellulose ethanol, etc. - we will need all of these to provide our energy needs in the fairly near future, even in the most optimistic scenarios...
The same can be said for running a car off of hydrogen. Also you mention that water vapour is far worse for the environment, but do you have any proof to back that up? From what I remember water vapour forms clouds, which are very short lived.
Hydrogen is still an emerging science. If you look back to when they started making Li-Po and Li-Ion batteries I'm sure there were people that had the same negative view towards them (we don't need them as we already have things that store lots of energy and can be used), yet people continued research and the batteries got better. The same exact thing is going to happen for hydrogen until it is surpassed by another fuel source.
Yes it may have an expensive start up cost for distributing it, but so did gas. Now bring on the counter argument.
The residence time of water in the atmosphere is on the order of days, and the oceans and forests put far more water vapor into the air than we ever could.
In comparison, the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is on the order of decades to centuries!
What about those getting all of their power from renewable sources (more of an option I'm told for those living in Canada)? Wind, Solar, Hydro... Even for those that get their service from partial to complete "traditional" power sources - the power conversion is just more efficient for a car that substitutes electricity for petrol fuel... I'll dig through my bookmarks to find the energy life cycle study that starts with raw resource and ends at the car... As I recall...
Both Petrol and Electric using a dino based source (non-renewable)
Nat Resource -> Mine/pump -> Transport -> Refine-->
Petrol add
Oil Resource --> Pump --> Transport --> Refine --> Transport --> POS (point of service)
Electric Add
Transmission -> POS
Add maintenance to everything -- EV use has a far superior POS efficiency... EV includes range extended EV/plug in hybrid... Fuel refining does take a huge amount of energy - a great deal of that energy comes from refining by products... And burning tar isn't so hot on emissions....
And I'd say a 50% increase in fuel efficiency is a big benefit... Such as the Prius plug in conversion kit for example...
As far as H2 is concerned... I'm totally with you with one exception.... I'm totally there if the reason to convert a non renewable resource to H2 and convert that to electricity is to prevent the burning of said resource. If we do move to H2 - the switch won't be too terrible... As Nat. Gas resources are strained - we have the infrastructure to send H2 (perhaps with modification). This is particularly useful for those that don't live near sea water (which, to me, seems like the most logical source of H2 after dino sources become too expensive/scarce)
Unfortunately, in the US, the vast majority of electricity is still generated from fossil fuels. A recent study (sorry, can't find the link right now) showed that for the average electricity sources in the US, plug-in hybrids didn't provide any benefit.
Again - IF we make some significant improvements in how we generate electricity in this country (CO2 sequestration may be a good short-term bet, but we really don't yet have a solid grasp on what happens to that CO2 in the long term, after we inject it into, say old oil wells), plug-ins would become a far better option.
Do the research - I've found several sources that agree ;)
Not to be nit picky... But as far as efficiency goes - walking is very inefficient compared to a car... Cycling is about equal... This is for a car optimized for fuel efficiency.... A fit cyclist is around 25% efficient - a fuel efficient car has around 25% thermal efficiency (mind you mpg and fuel efficiency are two independent metrics).
Why?
Food... Food take a huge amount of energy - and humans put off a lot of heat. And if you get a great deal of your energy from meat - it's even less efficient (because of the energy necessary to feed the animals you eat). I'm not saying don't eat meat (I had a seafood pasta last night :p) - just putting perspective on it.... I, for one, notice how much extra stuff I eat when I'm training frequently :p
That, and a gallon of water seems incredibly low to power a car under normal usage.... But I'd be interesting in reading if you link us up :)
Since the platinum turns the h2 and o back into h20, the water will never go anywhere, therefore as long as you dont destroy the ting, and keep it charged, you will never have to fill it up with water