Water Powered Car
Can you imagine fueling up your car with your garden hose?
After reading an article in the most recent issue of New Scientist (Vol. 191 No 2562), I no longer think the idea is all that far fetched!
Tareq Abu-Hamed, at the University of Minnesota, along with colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, have developed an ingenious ‘hydrogen-on-demand’ system. Essentially, water is reacted with the element boron to liberate hydrogen - at a rate matching the demand of the vehicle.
Unlike traditional H-powered systems, this technology would avoid all the hassles of storing and transporting hydrogen fuel in heavy, high pressure tanks. According to the scientists, vehicles using the hydrogen-on-demand system would only need to carry 18 kg of boron and 45 litres of water - enough to produce 5 kgs of hydrogen gas (the equivalent of 40 litres of standard fuel). What makes this system even more attractive is that the only by-product is boron oxide, which can then be recycled back into boron and used again.
Other elements, such as sodium and potassium, can also be reacted with water to liberate hydrogen, however boron has been found to do so at a more manageable pace.
One of the main stumbling blocks for hydrogen-on-demand technology may be the lack of proper infrastructure in place to support vehicles using this system. In fact, according to the article, Daimler-Chrysler apparently axed their promising Natrium line (based on somewhat similar technology) for just that reason.
Another company, Engineuity, is also working on a similar hydrogen power system for vehicles, and in fact claims they will have a prototype built within 3 years.
Whatever the outcome, it sounds like this is going to be a fascinating story to follow!
For a more info on ‘hydrogen-on-demand’ you may also want to check out this wiki from Pure Energy Systems - http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Hydrogen_from_Water_using_Boron
B.
Written by Bentley on August 8th, 2006 with
no comments.
Read more articles on Green Energy and News.
- [+] Digg: Feature this article
- [+] Del.icio.us: Bookmark this article
- [+] Furl: Bookmark this article
