Re: Fuel Cell House, was Re: TECH: fuel cell car

From: Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Date: Sun May 06 2001 - 14:02:20 MDT


"J. R. Molloy" wrote:

> "The unit is fueled by hydrogen" Too bad hydrogen is hard to acquire and
> subject to explosion.

Hydrogen is not at all hard to acquire. You can make hydrogen from
any (preferably hydrogen-rich) fuel by a fuel reforming process.
Googling for "hydrogen" "fuel" "reforming" or "reformer" should
give you plenty of hits.

As to subject to explosions, I'm too tired (and have sniffed far
too much paint solvent today) to make a websearch, but I suspect
methane will do slightly better than hydrogen in terms of destruction,
though hydrogen has probably much larger explosion corridor.

Wtf, I did make a websearch, and found this:
        http://www.fuelcellstore.com/hydrogen_safety.html
I was wrong on a few issues, but not by much.

Of course a gas pipeline needs to have tighter checking on leaks
due to hydrogen higher diffusivity. But if you make your hydrogen
in the cellar in a fuel reformer, that's quite irrelevant.

> "A fuel processor extracts the hydrogen from the gas or LPG.
> A fuel cell changes the hydrogen to electricity.
> A power conditioner converts the fuel cell electricity to the type and quality
> of power that you use today."
>
> Now, if we could just figure out how to do it with something (else) that works
> as well as hydrogen for the reducing agent...

What's wrong with methane? What's wrong with hydrogen, for that matter, if
it's made from water, using solar photons usually wasted to heat your roof?



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