EAST AMWELL, N.J.?Mike Strizki has not paid an electric, oil or gas bill?nor has he spent a nickel to fill up his Mercury Sable?in nearly two years. Instead, the 51-year-old civil engineer makes all the fuel he needs using a system he built in the capacious garage of his home, which employs photovoltaic (PV) panels to turn sunlight into electricity that is harnessed in turn to extract hydrogen from tap water.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=hydrogen-house&sc=DD_20080619
From Scientific American
I saw a short of video from his setup. yeah it is nice, but so expensive to build one. Some companies donated parts equipment to him to finish his project.
Sure it is expensive to do something like that but the point for me is that it is possible. People like this guy show the world what is really possible and maybe someone will start to pay attention.
Quote from: enki09 on June 22, 2008, 12:34:54 PM
Sure it is expensive to do something like that but the point for me is that it is possible. People like this guy show the world what is really possible and maybe someone will start to pay attention.
I do not think it is news that this sort of thing is possible - everyone knows that given enough money, one can live entirely off the sun, as this man does. He makes hydrogen using electricity from his solar panels, and of course he also uses the solar panels to power the house. The problem is that it cost half a million $US to do this, and people sort of know that solar is expensive.
One thing he does which he does not need to do is store energy in batteries. He could simply sell back his surplus to the electric company by day, and use the grid by night, coming out in a wash or still ahead, but he insists on being off the grid entirely, which is inefficient.
He could also use electricity directly for his lawnmower and similar devices, and not deal with the added losses of hydrogen production and the combustion engine.
But overall, it is great to have a few people do this just to show one way it can be done, but overall this can be done much more efficiently.
Quote from: hunter on June 20, 2008, 11:23:14 AM
I saw a short of video from his setup. yeah it is nice, but so expensive to build one. Some companies donated parts equipment to him to finish his project.
The prices will soon come down.
There are now cheap electrolysis cells, that have seperate H2 and O2 and are very efficient.
Also I am looking for pumps to compress H2 easily and cheaply to store in old
propan gas tanks.
Also hydrogen fuel cells, that are generating electricity from Hydrogen and air ( or Oxygen) are coming out now and will get cheaper day by day.
Stay tuned for the new updates.
Regards, Stefan.
hi Stefan,
roy mcalister has been working with this stuff for a long time. he gave a class in a video sold by steven harris (http://www.ush2.com/) that talked about compressing hydrogen. i wrote to steven and this is his reply....
its called electrolysis to pressure... you just electrolyze inside the tank itself.
i don't think they put a limit on the pressure. maybe others (or steven or roy) have more info they can pass along.
tom
Looks like it is getting cheaper Stefan
http://actu.epfl.ch/news/cheap-hydrogen-fuel-from-the-sun-without-rare-meta/
there is a good method for making hydrogen from water now with sonolysis. it uses ultrasound and zinc oxide mesoglass catalyst
here is link: http://alternativeenergy777.blogspot.com
If they get the efficiency up to where they hope then this could lead to profound improvements.
One reason I'm really glad to see Toyota Selling Hydrogen Powered Cars is that, as we know all to well; new cars
become used cars and eventually we will see inexpensive and available sufficiently high powered fuel cells as a result.
Once this barrier is broken I think hydrogen storage will take off...Note: remember HHO gas is not hydrogen gas.
If utilities behave themselves grid storage is an inexpensive and useful option, but will they??
:S:MarkSCoffman
TBird
Quote
Roy mcalister has been working with this stuff for a long time
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Actually Roy has some very cool work coming out that May help get this Main streamed much quicker.
I will post it Here too...
Thx
Chet
he had a book "solar hydrogen civilization" or some similar title i like the description of a hydrogen powered grill.
you could fuel it with drano water and aluminum
i noticed stefan and others asking about safe hydrogen storage methods. there is a method using keratin-charcoal derived from chicken feathers.
pyrolysis breaks down the keratin into super-porous charcoal that is as effective as nanotubes but way cheaper.
the hydrogen can be stored in quanity at normal atospheric presure (they want to use it for fuel cell buses in maryland)