h a l f b a k e r yOutside the bag the box came in.
add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, best, random
news, help, about, links, report a problem
browse anonymously,
or get an account
and write.
register,
|
|
|
Please log in.
Before you can vote, you need to register.
Please log in or create an account.
|
Stan Meyer invented a device called the Water Fuel Cell, which is still a pretty contentious piece of technology. He claimed you could use one to drive a VW Beetle from the east to the west US coast on just 22 US gallons of water.
Rather than try to rely on that, I thought I'd combine a few technologies,
to produce a greener car than we have, without getting too rabid.
Using a source of electrical energy to break water into gases is nothing new. Nor is the idea of powering a car off a hydrogen fuel cell.
What could be novel is using the water harvested from the air by the airconditioner, to refill the water fuel tank. Capturing exhaust water is already on the cards.
Whether you could generate enough power from solar sources, augmented by a petroleum engine, to generate the necessary gases, is the real problem here. It takes 572 kJ to break down a mole (18 cc) of water. Remember, however, that your car can be generating fuel for itself while it is parked in the sun.
Perhaps the use of geothermal energy, using Stirling Engines will make it possible to generate either electricity or hydrogen, or both, in sufficient quantities?
It makes sense but I'm sure it's impossible in interesting ways.
[link]
|
| |
Aparently there is a similar car (in the design stages at least, and I could be thinking of the Stan Meyer one) that uses super heated metals to ionise the water and then the metals oxidise leaving the hydrogen. This hydrogen can then be used to fuel the car. |
|
| |
Its meant to be about the same cost to build and run this sort of car, and it can travel the same distance before refuelling as a petrol driven one, but with water being the only emmision. |
|
| |
You do have to fill up with water. Having air conditioning to extract water from the air is inefficient and energy wasting. |
|
| |
I think that UB meant to capture what water happens to drip out of the airconditioner, not to set up an ambient-vapor condenser. That capturing idea is novel, but I think it won't accomplish much, which may be why nobody has bothered to mention it before. The rest is pretty fuzzy. |
|
| |
Geothermal would be cool, but dragging around a honking big auger to plug the car into the ground all the time is sure to be bad for the drag coefficient. |
|
| |