Author Topic: quick question: using electrolysis of water as a battery-type storage (Read 2792 times)

The Crazy Noob · « **on:** February 24, 2006, 09:17:05 AM »

Hi,

If you put electrical power into water, it splits up in H2 and O2, but is it possible to - after you've put in like 100J of electricity - get it back by using the wires that come out of the water as a battery? So first you put power in the water, then you take it back. Like you do with a battery.

picture:

is this possible?

oztules · « **Reply #1 on:** February 24, 2006, 03:54:32 AM »

If only we could...short answer .........no,nyet,nix,nil...not a prayer etc. But A lot of people wish you could........oztules

thunderhead · « **Reply #2 on:** February 24, 2006, 04:29:41 AM »

Aligning the water molecules with the hydrogens all pointing one way is how an ultracapacitor -- or any electrolytic capacitor -- stores energy.

If you use enough current to not just align the water molecules but also to break them apart, the result is hydrogen and oxygen, which can be stored chemically or as gases.

You can store the hydrogen in a lanthanum electrode and the oxygen in nickel (II) oxide: this arrangement is called a nickel metal hydride battery.

If you make lots of hydrogen and oxygen, and store them in tanks, you have two problems: that of safe storage (they are both gases that cause explosions); and the more fundamental one that creating gases requires energy due to thermodynamics -- energy that can never be recovered. The energy is used to expand the bubbles against the surface tension and pressure of the electrolyte.

oztules · « **Reply #3 on:** February 24, 2006, 06:38:31 AM »

well, you managed to get more out of those diagrams than I did.......oztules

Jon Miller · « **Reply #4 on:** February 24, 2006, 08:22:31 AM »

Store the hydrogen and oxygen then burn them in a combustion engine which is then bolted onto a generator thus making lots of watts, just an idea seen it done before, in WW2 I think the German resistance made charcoal then heated wood up with it to produce hydrogen to run in engines. Long way of doing it but it is carbon neutral at least

thunderhead · « **Reply #5 on:** February 24, 2006, 09:09:01 AM »

Making your hydrogen is about 60% efficient, because of the problem of creating the gas out of a liquid electrolyte.

Your ICE is maybe 18% efficient, if it does as well as a typical car or genset engine.

So 60% of 18% gives 10.8% efficient. So if you want 10kWh per day, you need to collect 93kWh per day.

That's a big windmill.

Or there's batteries.

georgeodjungle · « **Reply #6 on:** February 24, 2006, 10:48:44 AM »

also, & about 1/2 the energy of gas...

so you'll use twice as much...

nanotech · « **Reply #7 on:** February 24, 2006, 01:09:52 PM »

But after you've made the windmill, you can pretty much make your own automobile fuel.

United Nuclear have done vehicle conversions for hydrogen useage in an ICE. But they use solar panels for the electrolysis.

nanotech · « **Reply #8 on:** February 24, 2006, 01:31:02 PM »

Efficiency is one way of looking at it.

The other way is to view it is you're becoming independant. If all the talk about peak oil is anywhere close to realistic, anyone wanting to drive a car soon will be completely screwed if they continue to rely on the gas pump for fuel.

Thinking up ways of converting to alternate fuel sources NOW while you still have the availability to drive the car on petroleum products I think is the forward way of thinking. Waiting until gas prices are $35 a gallon is way too late.

And if the only way to drive your car is to convert it to running on hydrogen in its current configuration (IMO the cheapest conversion for a car) then you will have to find a way to produce your own hydrogen. And if that means covering your property with a wind farm, then so be it. I'm rather lucky in the fact that I have 10 acres out in the farming area that I can put up as many windmills as I like, so long as they are not over 100 feet high (I think). I'm in an airport exclusion area for height restrictions.

So putting up one massive turbine is out for me. Besides, if you're running one big turbine and it has a problem, you lose 100% of your power generation. If you have 30 small turbines producing the same power output and you have one sieze a bearing, no biggie. you lose 1/30th of your power generation. So you turn off the computer until you get the turbine repaired. Boo hoo.

The route I'm going to be taking to get off grid is to first build my wood burner furnace (watch for a picture diary on this coming soon). That will save me between $75 a month (summer) and $500 a month (winter) on electricity between my heat and hot water heater. Next will be to start making my turbines. They will slowly replace individual circuits in my house that run electrical items. The last two to come off the grid will be the biggest ones - the stove and the clothes dryer. Being two of the three 220V items left (after the heat and water heater are taken care of), the inverters for these two will be expensive (I believe).

As I can slowly afford to get circuits off grid, they will be done so. I'm going to be spending quite a bit of money on this adventure as I will be buying quite a few small inverters instead of one big one. Yes, I know. In the long run it would be cheaper to figure out my total electrical useage and buy the big inverter to begin with, but my thinking with this is the same as the one big turbine. If I lose a $40 inverter due to an overvoltage, spike, lightning strike, etc I'm only out $40 and one circuit is down. Easy to fix relatively quickly. But if I'm running a 5000W inverter to power the entire house and it goes fizzle-pop, I'm out quite a hefty chunk of change and my house is dark (and cold) until UPS/FedEx gets around to shipping me a new one.

So I'll be going the route of having a multitude of small (7ft or less) turbines all over the place, all tying into thier own battery banks, all tying into thier own inverters, supplying power to individual circuits in the existing breaker panel. And eventually I'l be able to tell Red Lake Electric Coop to come and get thier power meter. It's going to take me a while, and quite a bit of saving up and building, but I'm going to get there. And eventually I'll be using several turbines specifically to produce hydrogen for stuffing into metal hydride storage canisters for use in the car. I might also use the hydrogen in a converted natural gas furnace for heat. The only hurdle I have to overcome with that idea is how I store that much hydrogen long-term over the summer for useage during the winter. Metal hydride canisters ain't cheap, ya' know?

thunderhead · « **Reply #9 on:** February 25, 2006, 02:27:03 AM »

And if the only way to drive your car is to convert it to running on hydrogen in its current configuration (IMO the cheapest conversion for a car) then you will have to find a way to produce your own hydrogen.

But it isn't. Some diesel engines will run on SVO, and many petrol engines will run on ethanol.

Potatoes produce maybe 15 ton(ne)s per acre, and they are about 25% carbohydrate. Fermentation yields about 50% of the carbohydrate as fuel. So an acre of potatoes yields about 1.8 ton(ne)s of ethanol -- over 2,000 litres. 2,000 litres of ethanol will get my wife's Punto maybe 15,000 miles, and will get my Samurai nearly 10,000 miles.

The biggest problem with driving ICEs after the Big Black is going to be getting parts and things like lubricating oil. Electric motors tend to last much, much longer: if you can find a lifetime battery (eg the Eagle-Picher batteries from the Dodge TEVan, which are based on Edison's design, as used in the Detroit Electric) you have a vehicle which can be maintained by a blacksmith and passed to your grandchildren.

Edison's battery stores oxygen exactly the way I described, by oxidising nickel (II) oxide to nickel (III) oxide. The hydrogen is not stored: instead oxygen leaves the other electrode, where it was stored as iron (II) oxide, and converts back to iron. The hydrogen remains as water.

Of course, if the oil runs out and the car manufacturers don't offer an alternative, there'll be no point in converting anything less than my Samurai to run on alternative fuels. Roads are made with bitumen, which is another oil product.

electrondady1 · « **Reply #10 on:** February 25, 2006, 08:58:43 AM »

i first made hydrogen when i was 11 years old and have been interested in it eversince. i check on every post that mentions it . i few points that might be worth mentioning. the process of electrolisis heats the electrolite. this is an inconvienience to commercial production but may turn out to be a bonus heatsource to an individual trying to make a fuel.as well, the oxigen obtained through electrolisis is considered medicaly pure. it is a commodity that has real market value.if it was collected properly perhaps it could be sold.i don't think the oil will ever really run out , but we have reached that point on the bell curve were energy consumpion and energy production cross. so from now on, the corporations can charge what ever they want for energy. anything that can make us independant of this downward spiral is good.

thunderhead · « **Reply #11 on:** February 25, 2006, 01:48:24 PM »

I first made ethanol about the same age, and I have to say my interest in that has remained. But ethanol has more recreational uses than hydrogen, in my humble opinion. ;-)

The process of electrolysis only heats the electrolyte if the current is too high. By lowering the current or lowering the internal resistance (by shortening and/or widening the interconnection path) the efficiency can be improved.

The problem with the oil and the roads is that, if the private car disappears for want of a practical energy source, the roads will quickly fall into disrepair. For many reasons, mostly connected with fundamental laws, I don't believe that hydrogen will ever be that practical energy source.

In a country with a low population density, (where you live, I suspect) biofuels might help. In a country with a population too high to even feed with the available land (where I live, for a short while longer), biofuel crops will never be sustainable.

nanotech · « **Reply #12 on:** February 25, 2006, 02:20:31 PM »

The big problem (and the only thing holding me back from doing an electric vehicle conversion right now) is the fact that I live in northern Minnesota. Looking at Weatherbug and The Weather Channel Desktop it is Zero degrees F right now. I believe that works out to -32 degrees C. Just last week we had windchill taking the temps down into the -50 range.

Not too many batteries that any of us could afford will still be alive in those kind of temperatures. Not enough to validate using them for an electric vehicle anyways. Especially one that ends up parked outside my work unplugged for 8.5 hours. As it is with the starting battery I have to take one of those Coleman Emergency Jumpstart packs along and keep it inside the building at work so I can get home.

I hadn't really thought about the ethanol thing due to the problems all my vehicles have had running the E-85 fuel. The Toyota needed some serious adjusting on the carb to even run, poorly as it did. The Neon had to have its tank drained and refilled with the UK's equivilant of Optimax just to get it started again. The truck was the only one that didn't run any different. But the loss in mpg was astronomical as to make it WAY more expensive running the 85% ethanol over running it on Premium unleaded!!

Now granted, if I had half an idea how to adjust any of my vehicles so they would run (normally) on ethanol, they'd already be doing it. But everywhere I've looked for info on it basically says if they don't run on it now, they never will.

As for Deisels, well that's another whole different story. The only oilburners I have available to me around here are HUGE (Ford F350 Super Duty, Dodge Ram 3500, etc) 4X4 pickup trucks, or ancient pre-80's Volkswagen Rabbits.

nanotech · « **Reply #13 on:** February 25, 2006, 02:22:34 PM »

I think I was way off on my C to F conversion. I guess 0F is around -15C...

thunderhead · « **Reply #14 on:** February 26, 2006, 04:32:48 AM »

The big problem (and the only thing holding me back from doing an electric vehicle conversion right now) is the fact that I live in northern Minnesota. Looking at Weatherbug and The Weather Channel Desktop it is Zero degrees F right now. I believe that works out to -32 degrees C. Just last week we had windchill taking the temps down into the -50 range.

Look again at the temperature/performance graphs for nickel iron batteries. They work fine at -15C.

The thing that's holding me up is that the wife is putting this house up for sale, giving me a whole raft of new jobs. But she's looking at smallholdings, so it's all good.

Now granted, if I had half an idea how to adjust any of my vehicles so they would run (normally) on ethanol, they'd already be doing it. But everywhere I've looked for info on it basically says if they don't run on it now, they never will.

Ethanol yields about 27Mj/kg, or 21Mj/litre; but octane yields about 48Mj/kg, or about 36Mj/litre. So you'd expect to see a big difference in fuel consumption.

To run a car on ethanol, you need to either re-jet the carburettor or re-program the fuel injection. The aim is to get the correct amount of fuel to the correct amount of air.

New cars can sometimes do this by virtue of the gas sensors on the exhaust. For an old car, you'd need to do the conversion by changing the jets.

The gas sensors in the exhaust don't always work very well, especially on high mileage cars. You might find that if you changed these sensors, the cars ran better. Does the manufacturer expect them to run on E85?

As for Deisels, well that's another whole different story. The only oilburners I have available to me around here are HUGE (Ford F350 Super Duty, Dodge Ram 3500, etc) 4X4 pickup trucks, or ancient pre-80's Volkswagen Rabbits.

As for diesels, the Samurai would take an engine from a 1.9 Peugeot diesel. Many people have reported that this engine runs on SVO with no problem.

Almost all modern diesel engines (and some old ones, like the Lister) run just fine on fatty acid esters. Esterifying rapeseed (canola) oil with ethanol is considered to be a bit fiddly, but rapeseed oil and ethanol are both available to the ingenious smallholder.

I suspect that again the problem is where you live -- you are too close to the malign influence of Detroit.

Sorry about that. :-(

maker of toys · « **Reply #15 on:** February 26, 2006, 04:58:57 PM »

detriot at least is selling vehicles that will run happily on anything between straight liquid dinosaurs to e-85 with no user intervention besides filling the tank.

(be ready to change fuel filters a few times if it's been on a dino-diet for any length of time. . . there's a lot go guck that gets plated out through the fuel system from gasoline.

another way to change a straight dino-mobile to something a little more renewable is to

change the injectors; many after-marked dealers can supply injectors with higher flow rates in the 'stock' form factor.

Also, within reason, you can increase fuel pressure to improve flow and atomization with the existing injectors.

depending on your computer, you may be able to do both of the above without upsetting the existing fuel maps too much.

(I'll take up alcohol fueling my streetbike by the above methods as soon as I can find a reliable source of ethanol. . . )

-Dan

hvirtane · « **Reply #16 on:** March 01, 2006, 02:25:19 PM »

Fahrenheit 0 is -17.8 Celsius.

We had a week ago here Celsius -32.

Does anybody know, if it is

possible to make yourself

Edison (NiFe) batteries?

- Hannu

thunderhead · « **Reply #17 on:** March 02, 2006, 01:32:20 AM »

It is certainly possible to construct nickel iron batteries in the home:-

http://www.uni-regensburg.de/Fakultaeten/nat_Fak_IV/Organische_Chemie/Didaktik/Keusch/chembox_edison
-e.htm

I don't know if it is possible to construct useful nickel iron batteries in the home. The biggest problem is going to be getting the surface area up: using iron wire wool and electroplating nickel onto carbon fibre were two possiblities that occurred to me.

The amount of nickel and iron oxides on the electrodes is likely to increase as the battery is cycled. Unfortunately the labwork described here doesn't investigate this effect.

The industrial techniques available to Edison when he was making his original cells was not much beyond what we can obtain in the modern kitchen: I'm sure that a skilled constructor could get hold of his patents and make his batteries.

Bruce S · « **Reply #18 on:** March 03, 2006, 04:34:23 PM »

nanotech;

I like your thinking. It's the same a 4cyl versus 8 cyl cars.

If one cyl is off then you loose 1/8th power on 4cyl you loose 1/4th.

Take a gander at the home power website, in their archives they did an entire run on how the store H2 in used propane tanks and how the get them ready of M-H powder.

For me living in the city brings the same porblems of putting up anything higher than my house and of course there's those 100amp wires:-((

So I'm looking into small VAWTs strung along the fence line for smaller input but add enough and those small inputs add up.

There's also tons of info out on the web now on how to convert NG items to using H2, the biggy is making sure the air nozzels are closed.

Cheers!

Bruce S

Bruce S · « **Reply #19 on:** March 03, 2006, 04:44:27 PM »

Thunderhead;

I'm intreagued.

Your Website says UK, are you know making your own ethanol?

I have had my far share of input on the ethanol side of diaries here.

One spot , if you are making your own is to go have a visit to cow markets and find who sells them the processed sugar casts offs. This stuff is usually high value molasses, and it can be converted into low grade Alky in one single pass. Low grade being 130P - 160P.

Using an adjustable power supply that pluses is a better use of the power need to get the bubbles going and lowers the heat generated.

Cheers!

Bruce S

Bruce S · « **Reply #20 on:** March 03, 2006, 04:56:48 PM »

electrodaddy1;

In 2004 and ealry 2005 there was a lot of discussions on this board about H2.

There was so much hipe coming from the news and the prez. that I took all off one day to teach my daughter how to "SAFELY" make H2. Then went on the give a talk at church, just to get everyone just to understand, that yes it is an alternative, but NO it's no free lunch.

I believe that this would be, and it seems the bigger companies have been spying on this forum as they're looking at the same ideas, that this would be a perfect use of extra power from gennies, PV or.....

I think that since it only takes about 1.28Vdc to begin the process, that even those give away batteries would be good to use for this.

Are you now making or just keeping the how-to up to date?

Cheers!

Bruce S

thunderhead · « **Reply #21 on:** March 04, 2006, 06:21:05 AM »

I am indeed in the UK.

The alcohol I make fuels me, not my car. Distilling it in my suburban home would certainly get the revenuers around: a still would pong. I don't make it any stronger than 18% by volume -- the best I can get with yeast.

I do use molasses in my barley wine recipe.

The plan is for my car to run on batteries: and following a spate of thefts in the area, I'm just getting my breath back after bringing 800kg (3/4 ton) of batteries in from the back yard.

Which means I need refuelling ... excuse me a minute ... :-)

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Author Topic: quick question: using electrolysis of water as a battery-type storage (Read 2792 times)