hydrogen to run engines

[Tom L]

had my wife's cousin over last weekend and this guy was a trip, he has built a container that he powers some tubes inside the container with 12 volt battery that when set up correctly and water is added, he produces hydrogen out of the container. enough to power a 5 hp engine off of a lawnmower, and continually run that engine on basically water.

pretty smart thinking, he plans on upping the scale and trying to run his truck off of the hydrogen produced. and then a generator . his thinking is to generate that 12 volt power, produce hydrogen to run the generator and produce electric from the gen set to power things around the house.
hope it works for him.

he says the technology has been around since the 40's and for some reason no one uses it, or someone in the power chain prevents them from doing this on a broader basis.

[Gary_C]

Ka Boom!

[Ron Wenrich]

I think the lawnmower technology is along the line of GEET.  It works on small engines, but you have a problem when you get to a bigger scale and when you have a variable load.  Its sort of like the gas vapor thread is on here where a guy converted his motor to run on vapors.  It works much better on lawnmowers. 

The technology to run cars and generators on hydrogen is out there.  The problem is finding a way to produce enough hydrogen cheaply.  I know they do it in Iceland, where they have a bunch of geothermal heat to help the process.  I also know there are methods of doing it with natural gas.  Unfortunately, the economics aren't there for replacing hydrocarbons with hydrogen.  I've also tried to go the route of adding hydrogen to your air mixture to get better gas mileage.  It doesn't work, as not enough can be produced. 

There's lots of technology that's been developed over the years.  Much of it doesn't work.  It's great to think there is a conspiracy of deep pockets that would keep the technology out of other's hands.  But, how feasible is it that all this knowledge was lost and never came to the forefront, either in the US or any other place in the world? 

[sharp edge]

Right now deep pockets is doing every thing they can think of to put down the greenies. IMO

SE

[Paul_H]

Hi
Tom,I have a small engine repair shop and would be willing to build an exact copy of your wife's cousin's device if he would allow you to post the full plans and I'm sure others here would build one also also. My thoughts are that the engine would slow and quit as the battery lost charge but am more that willing to give it a try and post the results here.

[Tom L]

Hi
Tom,I have a small engine repair shop and would be willing to build an exact copy of your wife's cousin's device if he would allow you to post the full plans and I'm sure others here would build one also also. My thoughts are that the engine would slow and quit as the battery lost charge but am more that willing to give it a try and post the results here.

I don't have a drawing , only what he told me in our conversation. he is planning on charging the battery with an alternator off of the engine , thus making his own fuel as he goes. and keeping the circle intact.

gary C, that is funny, he specifically said if we no longer hear from them , we should assume we know what happened   

[beenthere]

he is planning on charging the battery with an alternator off of the engine , thus making his own fuel as he goes. and keeping the circle intact.

Sounds like a new invention for perpetual motion.  That will be a real breakthrough.  Just water it.

[Ianab]

he says the technology has been around since the 40's and for some reason no one uses it,

Main reason is that it doesn't work.... It's not that you can't make hydrogen with electrolysis, that's easy enough. You can run an engine on hydrogen (like pretty much any flammable gas).

The problem is that it takes more energy to split the water into hydrogen (and oxygen) than you can get back by combining them again. With the efficiency of the average internal combustion engine you might hope to get ~25% of the power back? It pops up again every few years, usually someone looking for investors or selling plans.  :

Same issue faces commercial hydrogen powered vehicles. It sounds great on paper because the exhaust gas is water vapour, so much less pollution from the car exhaust. But where you you get the hydrogen from? Make it from Natural gas, or build a new coal fired power station or a Nuke plant? Just creates more pollution (because of efficiency losses in the processes), in some other area.

There is no free lunch...

Ian

[Paul_H]

When I was a kid I had a go-cart and wanted to drive it with an electric motor powered by a battery and charged by a generator hooked to the wheel. One push to get it moving and coast forever

I was telling a guy my age about that a little while ago and he wondered why it wouldn't work and even after I explained it he was still insistent so I offered him the parts for free if he would build it and bring it by when he was done.  :D

[Jeff]

This is going to be a very crude way of saying this, but I think it is the best way to describe how this won't work.

  Is there a single creature on this earth, that maintains life, by simply, and only, eating it's own excrement? That is the biological equivalent of this mechanical question.

[sharp edge]

To make hydrogen is easy... sneak past Canada go to the artic circle... where their lots of heavy
wind... make wind farms... make hydrogen cells... then sneak them back here. 8) 8) 8)  I think a hyd. cell is
about the same thing as  batteries.

SE

P.s. We don't own Canada yet, so we have to sneak.

[Compensation]

I have made these things, actually quite a few. They are neat to play with but take alot of juice to run. It is neat to stick the tube in water and light the bubbles all the way till the displacement lets your fireball into the tube itself and blows the top off the generator. I just always thought about my poor alternator the whole time so I disconnected it. If you use the same principal in a open bucket, you can remove rust from one piece of steel to a sacrificial piece.

[Brucer]

TANSTAAFL.

... or, as Ian explains, the inefficiencies at each step will stop the cycle. Your wife's cousin needs to learn about the first law of thermodynamics.

As for producing hydrogen from water, it's no big secret. I did it as a kid. Cut a penny in half (they were made of copper in those days); solder each half to a wire to make an electrode; connect the wire to a model railroad transformer; make a solution of water with a bit of baking soda (to make it conductive); fill a couple of tubes with the solution (I used metal tubes that fancy cigars came in); invert the tubes in a jar of the solution; stick one electrode up into the base of each tube; turn on the transformer. Be sure it's a DC transformer!! Or use a 12 volt battery.

One tube will fill with hydrogen, the other with oxygen. The solution in the tubes gets driven out as they fill with gas. The hydrogen tube fills first.

Be very careful with they hydrogen. I once saw a guy in the emergency room with his forearm looking like a piece of charred meat. He'd used a grinder on a pipe in an industrial plant, and some of the residue in the pipe had reacted to half fill it with hydrogen.

[Delawhere Jack]

When I was a kid I had a go-cart and wanted to drive it with an electric motor powered by a battery and charged by a generator hooked to the wheel. One push to get it moving and coast forever

I was telling a guy my age about that a little while ago and he wondered why it wouldn't work and even after I explained it he was still insistent so I offered him the parts for free if he would build it and bring it by when he was done.  :D

As a kid I drew up plans for a boat, powered by something like a shower head pointing out the back. The water came from a pipe that ran up from the bottom of the boat, forced up by the displacement of the boat ..... :-\

[Delawhere Jack]

Not saying that any of you would, but......

If you ever decide to make your own hydrogen in an Erlenmeyer flask, using H2S04 and zinc.......
And you put a thistle tube and a stopper in said flash.......

DO NOT USE A MATCH TO SEE IF IT'S REALLY HYDROGEN COMING OUT OF THE THISTLE TUBE!!!!  :

Don't ask me how I know this.......

[Southside]

Not saying that any of you would, but......

If you ever decide to make your own hydrogen in an Erlenmeyer flask, using H2S04 and zinc.......
And you put a thistle tube and a stopper in said flash.......

DO NOT USE A MATCH TO SEE IF IT'S REALLY HYDROGEN COMING OUT OF THE THISTLE TUBE!!!!  :

Don't ask me how I know this.......

Now that is funny  :D :D :D  Reminds me of the time in high school chemistry class when we were supposed to be measuring the temp at which salt water boils or something along those lines and I had "discovered" a formula for homemade nitroglycerin, however I had not discovered the dangers of such a potion.  Well rather than boiling the salt water I was boiling the "solution", which subsequently turned into a mushroom cloud of sorts over our lab station.    Never saw the chemistry teacher run so fast.... and never did I cover my tracks so fast.

[dgdrls]

http://www.bmw.com/com/en/insights/technology/efficient_dynamics/phase_2/clean_energy/bmw_hydrogen_7.html

BMW Model 7

Germans have been using hydrogen since the 1920's as a fuel source,

DGDrls

[Ianab]

Running an engine on hydrogen has some interesting technical issues, but none of them break the laws of physics.

The problem is, where do you get the hydrogen from?

[Gary_C]

The problem is, where do you get the hydrogen from?

You make it by obtaining some gasoline and using it in an engine generator to produce electricity that you use to make hydrogen from water and then use the hydrogen to run the BMW. Whew, that's hard work.

Or you could simplify and just use the gasoline to run the BMW and save a lot of conversion losses.  :

[Jeff]

I would think the ultimate answer would be to have solar that produced hydrogen. I know its possible, but no idea if it is scalable.

[Ianab]

I would think the ultimate answer would be to have solar that produced hydrogen. I know its possible, but no idea if it is scalable.

I imagine it would scale up quite well. Just line up more solar panels and electrolysis units...  Then it's a practical way to store that solar energy, and carry it around in a tank in your car.

Economically practical is the problem  ???

[Delawhere Jack]

To really grasp how much energy is contained in liquid fossil fuels, consider this:

One gallon of gasoline will propel a small car 30-35 miles or more. Try pushing that same car that distance by your own strength.

I've read that one gallon of gas run through an internal combustion engine produces the equivalent output to an adult male working continuously 8 hours a day for 30 days.....

Besides uranium, there are no known practical fuels that even come close to the energy density of liquid fossil fuels.

[Ianab]

Well technically Bio-diesel or alcohol, and even hydrogen, are comparable energy density, and aren't "fossil" fuels.

But they are along the same lines chemically, and there is no way to make them for free. The energy has to come from some place, sunshine, nuclear reactor, hydro power etc.

There are also ideas floating around of running a car on Aluminium. The aluminium is part of the battery, and by oxidising it you can produce electricity. But even that's not a free lunch. Eventually all the aluminium becomes Al oxide, and the battery is flat. Then you swap it for another one and send the old one back to the smelter where they use a huge amount of electrical energy to convert it back into metal again. Again getting this to work on a practical scale is the problem, but at least it's not breaking the laws of physics. You can trace the energy through the process.

Ian

[Ron Wenrich]

From what I've found, you can't bring the production costs down on hydrogen to make it competitive.  I've seen figures for natural gas that the hydrogen is triple the cost, when looked at on a $/btu basis.  Using 10 cent electricity ends up being 9 times as expensive as btus from natural gas.  Solar would have to come in at making electricity at 1 cent to make it competitive to natural gas.  These aren't making hydrogen on the fly.  The other thing to look at is the efficiency differential between fuel cell technology and internal combustion technology.

Also, to get electrolysis at low voltage, they have been using metals like platinum and iridium.  Seems like some grad students in Stanford have come up with making hydrogen using iron and nickel as catalysts and using AAAA batteries.  That would make solar a whole lot more feasible.  But, they're still not talking about putting water in your tank and making hydrogen on demand. 

[Gary_C]

Hydrogen has always been considered as the future when we run out of fossil fuels just because it is not economical to make as Ron pointed out. Plus there are enormous technical challenges in producing, storing, and transporting quantities of hydrogen.

Two of the methods of storing hydrogen involve either pressures of 10,000 psi or temperatures of -253 centigrade which is close to absolute zero. NASA has used the 10,000 psi method with composite tanks and fuel cells on the space shuttles to generate electricity simply because weight is more important to them than money.

Unless something changes drastically, solar produced electricity will never be used to produce hydrogen because the electricity is much more valuable because maximum solar energy occurs at exactly the same time as maximum energy demand for air conditioning.

Hydrogen and electricity are considered energy carriers and not as actual energy sources. So without some technological development, it probably will never be economical to produce electricity and then make hydrogen with the electricity. But electricity has storage problems that cannot be solved with any battery technology to use electricity in transportation.

So hydrogen absolutely works in both internal combustion engines and fuel cells, but to use hydrogen in transportation still has a long way to go because of the storage problems and the problems of production.

And then there is the "Ka Boom" problem.  :

[OneWithWood]

And then there is the "Ka Boom" problem.  :

Hmm.  Wasn't that part of the issue with the Hindenburg?

[pineywoods]

NASA spent a ton of money trying to find a way to store hydrogen. I had a neighbor who was on the research team. The thing that ultimately killed the idea was a process called hydrogen embrittlement. Hydrogen atoms are so small, they will seep through solid metal. In doing so, they make the metal extremely brittle. One experiment filled a cylinder with 2 inch thick aluminum walls with hydrogen under a few thousand psi. Came back later and most of the hydrogen was gone. Someone smacked the cylinder with a hammer and it shattered like glass..NOT IN MY CAR.. : The second stage booster of the apollo saturn vehicle used liquid hydrogen stored in insulated tanks at extremely cold temps. It would boil off rapidly, but who cares, gonna burn it all in about 10 minutes anyway. The stuff they stored in high pressure tanks was much smaller, used in a fuel cell to make electricity..

Now if PaulH could figure out a way to store wood gas, maybe we would have something  ;D

[Ianab]

 :P Composition of average Wood Gas.

    Nitrogen N2: 50.9%
    Carbon monoxide CO: 27.0%
    Hydrogen H2: 14.0%
    Carbon dioxide CO2: 4.5%
    Methane CH4: 3.0%
    Oxygen O2: 0.6%.

So a significant part of that is actually Hydrogen. The nitrogen and CO2 do nothing, so it's the CO, H2 and CH4 that are actually the fuel, so it's more like 30% of the fuel is hydrogen.

Ian

[Ron Wenrich]

Interesting.  Is that composition the same for all biomass or only wood?  Does moisture content change the components?

[Gary_C]

:P Composition of average Wood Gas.

    Nitrogen N2: 50.9%
    Carbon monoxide CO: 27.0%
    Hydrogen H2: 14.0%
    Carbon dioxide CO2: 4.5%
    Methane CH4: 3.0%
    Oxygen O2: 0.6%.

So a significant part of that is actually Hydrogen. The nitrogen and CO2 do nothing, so it's the CO, H2 and CH4 that are actually the fuel, so it's more like 30% of the fuel is hydrogen.

Those percentages are by volume. By weight it looks a little different. (if I remembered how to convert correctly)

    Nitrogen N2: 57.6%
    Carbon monoxide CO: 30.55%
    Hydrogen H2: 1.13%
    Carbon dioxide CO2: 8.0%
    Methane CH4: 1.94%
    Oxygen O2: 0.776%.

So hydrogen and methane are just small players in the wood gas, it really is a fuel made of carbon monoxide. And the carbon monoxide is only present if you starve the wood fire of oxygen.

[Ianab]

Yes, but H2 has about 14X the chemical energy (by weight) compared to CO. A kg of hydrogen will make a much bigger "pop" than a kilo of almost anything else.

So although it not a major on the mass scale, it still provides a significant part of the "oomph".

Ian

[Ianab]

Interesting.  Is that composition the same for all biomass or only wood?  Does moisture content change the components?

The ratios are variable, I guess it depends on how well the gasification is working. A bit more air going in and more of the methane would oxidise to CO2, CO and H2? Moisture content will probably affect the reaction, and you would get H20 (steam) in the mix. Type of feed stock must have an effect too, but if you are feeding in cellulose, it's chemically similar no matter if it's wood or straw or corn husks.. or...

But it's pretty much always going to be some mix of those gasses coming out.

Ian

[Brucer]

NASA spent a ton of money trying to find a way to store hydrogen. I had a neighbor who was on the research team. The thing that ultimately killed the idea was a process called hydrogen embrittlement. Hydrogen atoms are so small, they will seep through solid metal. In doing so, they make the metal extremely brittle....

This is the crux of the storage problem. I worked in an oil refinery 4 decades ago. One of the processes used compressed hydrogen, which was a byproduct of another process. We had a steel tank about the size of a modern SUV to store the hydrogen between the two processes. Every year we had to do non-destructive tests on the tank to measure the extent of the embrittlement.

I happened to be in the maintenance department when we did a test. The hydrogen had penetrated about half way through the walls of the tank and had started delaminating the steel. In effect we started up with a conventional steel vessel, but ended up with a vessel of very brittle steel inside a pressure vessel of ductile steel. We had no choice but to scrap the tank and replace it. Apparently this happened so regularly that they had a spare tank ready to go.

[Brucer]

Hydrogen can be made relatively efficiently by electrolysis of water. Which means you need electrical energy to make it. Where does that energy come from. If it's from fuel-fired power plants, than the hydrogen has to cost more than fuel oil.

Hydrogen can also be made by breaking down natural gas. So hydrogen made this way will always cost more than natural gas.

Internal combustion engines (and external combustion engines for that matter) are relatively inefficient. The maximum theoretical efficiency is about 75% -- in practice they are nowhere close to that.

So if you are going to use electricity to produce hydrogen to burn in an engine, you are better off to use the electricity to directly charge a battery and use it to power an electric motor. Keep in mind that the hydrogen storage tanks will probably weigh as much as the batteries, and will probably have the same life.

If you're going to use natural gas to produce hydrogen to burn in an engine, why not just burn the natural gas. Skip a conversion step and eliminate one inefficiency. Natural gas is also easier to store than hydrogen.

[sharp edge]

I think there will be some form of (H) in the future of the earth. We had lots of problems with the nuclear stuff too and over came lots of them..   Just stay away from the H-bomb.

SE

[r.man]

One of the advantages I see in a conversion that produces a clean fuel with an unclean fuel, say coal to electricity, is the ability to control the pollution at the source. Burn coal in a clean plant that is designed to minimize pollution and then use the electricity to power electric cars in cities without the pollution. From the perspective of this forum you could run a gas or diesel generator to power your sawmill, processor or splitter. Doesn't make much sense until you consider the fact that you can now stay away from the pollution of the motor involved by using a long cord to the machine.

[Ron Wenrich]

But, the pollution does eventually come down.  Just not in your backyard.  Acid rain in the NW PA had a pH value of lemon juice.  The source was from coal fired plants in the Midwest.  Scrubbers takes care of that, but the damage was done and it had to be drawn out in courts and Legislatures to correct the problem.

Electric cars would make more sense if they had a better battery solution and if they could power with cleanly generated electricity.  If using coal fired plants, all you're doing is driving with coal instead of oil.

[Cornishman]

I would think the ultimate answer would be to have solar that produced hydrogen. I know its possible, but no idea if it is scalable.

I am sure it could be. We have PV panels on our roof and down the road is 5 MWs worth.
I thought the main problem with hydrogen was safety.

[Ianab]

There are safety issues with hydrogen as a fuel. If can attack metal and has to be stored under high pressure.

But then there are issues with petrol and propane as well, and we live with those.

One plus that hydrogen has, if it does leak, it rises and soon disperses. Propane and petrol vapour are heavier than air, so tend to gather in any hollow around the leak. That's why they set up such a large safety cordon around a crashed LPG tanker. If it leaks it "pools" and spreads over the ground, and the whole cloud could be ignited by a distant ignition source.

That's why many people escaped the Hindenburg disaster. The burning gas rose away from them as they escaped. Very spectacular but the people running on the ground below it where able to escape.

[Alligator]

This has been quite fun to read. I have always been curious about hydrogen as a fuel, and seen all the different claims that it can be a viable energy source. I am not a strong chemistry person. I did the experiments in high school to separate the 2 hydrogen from the 1 oxygen atom. The simple takeaway was that it takes "x" amount of energy plus H2O to produce "y" quantity hydrogen. "y" quantity of hydrogen yields "z" BTUs. Knowing "x" and determining "y" this gives $ per BTU that I can insert into my machine and make it go or do whatever it does.

Man kind spends trillions of dollars scouring the earths surface to find, drill, transport, refine, and deliver petroleum which takes energy. This is fairly evident that this is a profitable venture, looking at the fortunes that have been amassed from it.

It takes "x" amount of energy to produce "y" quantity of petroleum. "y" quantity of petroleum yields "z" BTUs. Gasoline yields roughly 114,000 BTUs per gallon. Today 10/19/14 gas is hovering at $3.00 per gallon / 114,000 BTUs.

x$$=BTUs & BTUs = x$$  Petroleum has a low BTU in to high BTU out ratio. Hydrogen at present not so much.

We have found H2O! When someone devises a method of producing hydrogen that will yield a $ per BTU ratio that is lucrative to the producer, there will be a hydrogen station on every corner.

[Al_Smith]

And then there is the "Ka Boom" problem.  :

Hmm.  Wasn't that part of the issue with the Hindenburg?

I think the Hindenberg pretty much put the stoppers in hydrogen for fuel about like three mile island did for nuclear  power .The kaboob factor did it .

[Alligator]

I don't think the "Hindenberg" or "Ka Boom" factor are effecting the use of hydrogen in this day and age. We have so many, as explosive or more explosive materials or other more deadly materials around us, it would terrify you to know.  The Hindenberg was not using it as fuel nor containing as we contain our explosive fuels. It was more or less contained in a huge pillow case. (over simplification) None the less not well protected against leaks.

Feasibility is hydrogen's problem. With the raw resource being free, the energy to separate the 2 hydrogen atoms from the one oxygen atom is equal to or less than the amount of energy produced. Petroleum doesn't come out of the ground as gasoline, it has to be separated. Petroleum and water are both natural resources. A BTU of gasoline today cost $0.00002632 give or take 100 or so millionth of a cent. The person who can get the cost of a BTU of hydrogen one hundred thousandth of a cent of that will become a very rich person. 8) 8) This is not a perpetual motion machine, the fuel is locked it water, and no one has figured a way to extract mass quantities at a rate per BTU anywhere close to gasoline price above. That number is an inflated number because it includes taxes.

[Brucer]

... the energy to separate the 2 hydrogen atoms from the one oxygen atom is equal to or less than the amount of energy produced...

It cannot be less than the amount of energy produced. You can only get back from combustion what you used to separate the atoms in the first place. First law of thermodynamics.

[Gary_C]

It cannot be less than the amount of energy produced. You can only get back from combustion what you used to separate the atoms in the first place. First law of thermodynamics.

The first law is only true for a closed system. It does not say you cannot allow energy to escape in a process.

[Ianab]

The first law is only true for a closed system. It does not say you cannot allow energy to escape in a process.

True, but if you allow energy to escape from said closed system, it must eventually "run down". If energy is escaping from your system, then you need to be adding more in some way. Falling water to turn your generator, sunshine on your solar panel, fuel added to the gas tank etc.

[Brucer]

We agree, Gary. In this case the suggestion (if I understood it correctly) was that the system would have a net gain in energy. Hence my reference to the first law.

[maple flats]

I had an uncle who was (he died a few yrs. ago at age 93) a Dr. of geophysics. He told me that he was certain that in the next half century, lots of energy would be made from electrolysis of water. He never lost his faculties even at 93. He envisioned wave power generators anchored offshore, electrolyzing water and then piping the hydrogen onshore where it would fire electric turbines.
He was a mental giant in my view, in everything he ever did, as well as those who worked with him (in 1952 Van had taken enough courses in math, physics, geology, and chemistry to have graduated with a major in any of the above. [taken from http://virtualmuseum.seg.org/bio_robert_van_nostrand.html) I hope he was right, waves are a free energy source and a big system run that way seems far safer than nuclear when there are people out there who consider it an honor to destroy another people.

[HuckFin]

I can make hydrogen for next to nothing. I have a micro/hydroelectric system that runs 24/7 charging 8 L16 batteries. When the batteries reach full charge the excess voltage is used to power a heater, (to keep the alternator from over revving) so instead of using the heater for a governor, I could make hydrogen instead but don't feel that adventurous.

[Bill]

fwiw - I recall an article some time back about some researchers that claimed to have found a simple organism ( from a swamp or volcano or ??? ) that took in - oops I forget - but one of the byproducts was hydrogen . Now lest anyone jump to conclusions - it was some time ago - after those folks that claimed that they'd solved " cold fusion " but some time back none the less . Now I'm not saying it was a hoax or not - just that its failed to make  more recent news .

Bottom line - imho - its more expensive to make hydrogen than to just use the fuel you would have used to make hydrogen .

[Gary_C]

The search for a way to produce hydrogen economically is not over. 

Hydrogen fuel breakthrough could pave the way for clean cars

This is research done by scientists at Virginia Tech, peer reviewed, and published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The only thing left to do is scale the process up to prove it is feasible on a large scale. But that is always easier said than done.

[Ianab]

May be practical.  But will it be better to turn the organic material into methane or methanol, which are also practical fuels, and already pretty well proven in auto use.

Sure Hydrogen burns cleaner, and your car has no carbon emissions. But the by-product of their reaction is CO2, so the CO2 emissions is the same, just in another place.

But I agree that if you want hydrogen, that would be a good way to produce it.

[Kbeitz]

I made my own Hydrogen fuel cells It was fun but sure not worth it.
You use as much energy making the fuel as you get out of it.
I made a Hydrogen torch. Now that was hard to do with out blowing my self up.
And i did all this in my basment. But it was all fun...

[Al_Smith]

One basic law of physics regarding matter is it is neither made or destroyed only that its form is changed .

Take for example the U-boats of the US Navy I once rode .We took sea water and separated the elements reaping the oxegon and burned off the hydrogen and carbon monoxide which was returned to the sea .We breathed the O2 and gave off Co2 which was also returned to the sea .Nothing changed in the broad spectrum of things .It wasn't like we lowered the oceans of the world either .However in all of this it took a form of energy to accomplish. Like they say there is no free wood pile .

[ozarkgem]

I have a friend that works at a Wal Mart distribution center and some of the forklifts have hydrogen fuel cells instead of batteries. I ask him to get me the info off the fuel cell so I could research it. He said they have  a filling station for the fuel cells. I found that quite interesting .

[Ianab]

I can see how it would be practical for a forklift being used inside. They wont want CO from a propane engine poisoning people, a tank of hydrogen can store a lot more energy than a battery, and can be refueled relatively normally (in minutes), as opposed to a battery that needs hours to recharge.

[starmac]

I would like to see more info on these hydrogen run forklifts, every warehouse I have ever been in in the last 30 years or so used propane forklifts or electric, I have never heard od any hydrogen powered ones at all.

[ozarkgem]

I would like to see more info on these hydrogen run forklifts, every warehouse I have ever been in in the last 30 years or so used propane forklifts or electric, I have never heard od any hydrogen powered ones at all.
[/quote
Me either. that is why I asked him to get me the info on it. All I have ever seen were battery powered. I also saw a Wal Mart truck with a sign saying it was powered by Compressed Natural gas.

[plantman]

Ianab stated correctly that it takes more power to create the hydrogen than you get from burning the hydrogen. Forget it, and keep buying gasoline like the rest of us.