With the price of oil rising because of increased world wide demand and the peak oil phenomenon, essentially there is no more capacity to increase the production of oil above the current levels, the race is on to find a viable alternative fuel source. One leading contender is the use of hydrogen for cars and trucks.
Direct Burn Hydrogen Engines
BMW has always seen to do things it’s own way and it no surprise that with hydrogen technology, in contrast to other manufacturers, BMW has opted for a normal car being fitted with a tank containing hydrogen and the engine burning hydrogen instead of gasoline. BMW have piloted the system with a series seven and plans to have models on sale in the not too distant future. However, before this technology becomes mainstream a chain of specialist filling stations that supply hydrogen for cars would have to be constructed.
Hydrogen Fuel Cells
Just about every single vehicle manufacturer is currently developing new generation of vehicles that utilises hydrogen as opposed to gasoline. These new generation vehicles are electric cars, or trucks, that employ fuel cell technology instead of a battery to run the electric motor. Using a chemical process, the fuel cells in these electric vehicles convert the hydrogen that has been stored on board, and oxygen obtained directly from the air, into electricity to power their electric motors. This process is very efficient, much more so than any internal combustion engine. Nearly all, if not all the hydrogen based fuel cell systems currently under development for vehicles require that filling stations are adapted to provide hydrogen for cars instead of gasoline. The hydrogen for cars bandwagon rolls on with General Motors planning to place a fuel-cell SUVs in the hands of 100 consumers. In London, the first filling station purpose built to provide hydrogen for cars, was opened in April 2008 and another three to be opened by 2010.
Hydrogen Hybrid Kit Conversions
So based on the discussion so far does this mean that to get onto the hydrogen for cars bandwagon you will have to scrap your existing car. Well, there is help at hand. It is possible to get conversion kits that will allow your existing car to run on hydrogen, with the advantage that the kits are easy to install and you do not have to depend on specialist filling stations that provide hydrogen for cars. The United Nuclear Hydrogen Fuel System Kit is a conversion that provides hydrogen for cars, enabling an existing vehicle to run on hydrogen. The kit is an intermediate approach which when installed allows your existing vehicle to run on hydrogen or gasoline. The kit conversion requires modifications to the engine management, electrics, ignition and cooling systems.
The hydrogen is stored in small tanks (Hydride tanks) which can be installed in virtually any free space within a vehicle. The hydrogen itself is generated by an additional system which can be installed in your garage eliminating any trip to a specialist filling station providing hydrogen for cars. One particular draw back of this particular hydrogen for cars solution is that hydrogen gas burns a lot faster than gasoline and therefore engines with compression ratios greater than 9.5 to 1 will most likely suffer damaging pre detonation (engine knocking). This means that this technology is not applicable to diesel or turbo charged cars The technologies we have discussed require storage of hydrogen either as a gas or in liquefied form with the associated inherent technical challenges.
There is one other technology that utilises hydrogen stored in water. This technology is effectively a hybrid technology in that the vehicle still runs on gasoline or diesel but burns hydrogen as well. This technology produces hydrogen for cars by an electrolysis process of water that breaks up the water molecule into brown gas. Now brown gas consists of a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen and is 3 times more heat energy than the equivalent volume of hydrogen. One litre of water can produce effectively just under two thousand litres of brown gas. The kits that make use of brown gas, feed the brown gas into the vehicles air intake manifold or carburettor. Because the vehicle burns effectively a fuel vapour brown gas mixture, these kits are it suitable for all vehicles and compression ratios do not appear to be a problem. As water is the supplementary fuel from which hydrogen is extracted there is no need for specialist hydrogen for cars filling stations.
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