Hydrogen propulsion

I agree with the panel.

The energy needed to get the Hydrogen from the water is huge, but what's then even worse is the enormous energy needed to COMPRESS and cool the hydrogen to get it to a liquid to store it in the tank.

It is crazily inneficient to do this. The only way it might work is if you plug your boat to shorepower for weeks on end to create and then compress the hydrogen into tanks, but the range when you unplugged and headed off would be small, and then you'd need weeks to refuel - totally non-viable.

One fuel that Lotus are looking at is Methanol. Created in a similar way to alchohol but using a methane constituent as well it's an interesting fuel.

But like everything it's far from perfect, you'd need to keep all the worlds cows in sheds with methane recovery systems etc etc... still not viable.....

Only solution - use a sail!
 
Nah, Hydrogens far too high tech. What you want is methane power. Now, what generates loads & loads of methane. Chickens. Get them bare decks covered with Chickens, all piped up to those big V8's.

Just think what Noah could have achieved. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

(Damn, Onthe Plane beat me to it !)
 
I think you're all missing the point which is NOT to store the hydrogen but create a "gas-on-demand" system which is the Holy grail of hydrogen fuelled engines. The only way to store hydrogen is compress it to a liquid - like I want a floating bomb then? The way forward is to create the gas and use it then and there. There's a lot of work in the amateur private sector going on right now to do just that, not by electrolysis but by catastrophic disassociation of the water molecules into "Brown's gas" utilising plain water and a cathode/electrode coupled with coils and capacitors to vary a collapsing magnetic field amplifying the charge fed to the water. Try Googling "Brown's Gas" and hunt for the Watercar forum on Yahoo specialising in the field of research. I haven't checked for some time but they were pretty close to cracking it last time I looked. It is pretty technical though and I felt I would be unable to build to the exacting tolerances at home and although I did start collecting old microwaves for there capacitors the toroidal coils were beyond me.
 
Volatility, hydrogen bomb. Getting a bit mixed up ain't we Jez?? The hydrogen bomb nothing to do with volatility, more a case of nuclear fusion. A much bigger bang than a tank full of hydrogen go off with a chemical explosion.

Brendan is right, of course, hydrogen doesn't exist naturally (except in the sun) so has to be produced, using more energy than it would make available to push a car or boat. Bit like when Clarkson asked Boris Johnson where the energy came from to push the electric car that Boris was championing. The answer is of course ' Blum, blah, burble, blunder, bla FROM THE PLUG'
 
Before anyone spends one penny piece on those I reccomend they do the research first, Yahoo Groups Watercar group, Panacea University etc and just check on what is offered and what it can do. However, calculate first how much gas you will get per hour, and how much your engine wants at say 2000 rpm for the hour based on it's c.c. The sums for electrolysis speak for themselves, snake oil!!
 
I think that maybe I should be a little clearer in what I was proposing with wind vane/solar panels as some of the comments posted don't seem to have "got it" that what we are talking about is a boat where the props are driven by an Electric Motor (not hydrogen driving a conventional combustion engine, so cc's and running time don't come into it) and the electricity would be generated by an array of Hydrogen Fuel Cells scaled up in power from the ones in the Honda. I was postulating that wind/solar power could top up the tanks with H through electrolysis while the boat is doing nothing, not while it is underway.


The Hydrogen would be stored aboard - Honda seem to have cracked how to do that with the car, and they demo'd on the show how easy it was to refuel. It seemed to have a twist-in nozzle/hose very similar to normal petrol stations, and internally the tank had some kind of Non-return valve to stop gas escaping. Storing H is not much more difficult than storing diesel - they are both highly combustible and would make a big bang if your fuel went up no matter which type you have.

Where I was doing some "blue skies" thinking (and I have been thinking about it for 4 days before posting) is in the alternatives to having to fill up with Hydrogen at a refuelling station.

The link I posted shows that it is possible to create H at low power by electrolysis. Now given that most of our boats sit doing nothing for long periods, and when we do use them it is for relatively short periods of time at high power, I'm sure that a trickle of 50W solar/wind power over say - a week while tied up in the marina between trips out? - would be enough to electrolyse a couple of hundred litres of H. That would be enough to power most people's boats for the couple of hours a week (or month) that they actually spend under power during normal boating activities.

You would have to have the capability of taking on board H at fuelling stations as well to top up the tanks in the situation where there wasn't enough time to electrolise sufficient H for the next trip.

All of this is of course some way off in time - I know of no-one currently looking at developing H Fuel cell technology for boats, and the electrolysis methods are not efficient enough just yet. They may well be though in 5 - 10 years time. And as the Major said, it's unlikely that it will get off the ground until there is a combination of a shortage of oil (rationing and main production reserved for military use only is I think likely in the not-too-distant future) causing boatbuilders to be forced to look seriously at alternative fuels, and also the big power companies figuring out how to make as much money from it as possible. If we are all still around in 50 years time it may all be a reality. Maybe less if oil gets scarcer sooner.
 
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What does the panel think - can we revolutionise boating with this technology?

[/ QUOTE ] Nothing will happen until they can find a way of charging four times as much money for a marine version and fortune to service it. Oh, and don't forget expensive parts - you need very expensive parts.

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You forgot the government, as soon as someone invents a fuel system that is a fraction of the cost of oil,cleaner than oil, no pollutants like oil, they will tax that to death as well,

just because they can /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

remember Blairs excuse for high fuel duty prices, someones got to pay for education, education, education, NHS,NHS,NHS.
 
I have been doing some work on reviewing the technology for the hydrogen economy as part of my job. For automotive use the current plan is to store he hydrogen compressed to 750 bar (~11,000 psi). This is done in a composite aluminium/carbon fibre cylinder. Do you really want that in a boat? Jointing this is not easy, and the refueling coupling is extremely difficult.
The efficiency of converting water to hydrogen via electrolysis, compressing the gas, then releasing it on demand to a fuel cell is about 30% so not good. There is a lot of heat produced. The methanol based cells often in fact have an on-board catalytic reformer to make the hydrogen. They are struggling to make this work for automotive systems where there is a much greater demand, and in general power outputs are smaller than powerboats - most cars having engines producing between 60 and 150 bhp.
Do not hold your breath for this happening - it will not be in boats for some years if at all.
 
Fuel cell technology is moving forward at a fast pace with many major UK universities undertaking in-depth studies.

The generation and use of Hydrogen is starting to look more viable by the day but we are still several years away from producing economically viable systems IMHO.

I looked into this for a multi-million pound housing project recently in London. We were going to incorporate storage, generation and fuel cells to power the buildings. We discussed this at length with a Professor at Imperial College but the technology is just not quite viable yet (We hope to move to construction later this year and we are leaving space just in case, its that near).

Hydrogen will be a major and readilly available fuel source in the not too distant future, high pressure storage cylinders may be an issue, but think of weight saving and buyoancy compared with diesel fuel tanks!

Not sure how the recession will stiffle serious research but believe me Hydrogen is its way!
 
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