Some fellow called me yesterday on the telephone to chat about his work.
(He said he would send a web site but he has not got around to it.) Anyway,
he says he is injecting hydrogen into gasoline, which improves mileage
without embrittling the engine. He has been running a car on the stuff for
a few years and it seems okay. He is working on a small electrolytic
generator and compressor for the home, and Kelvar tanks for the vehicle. He
sounded responsible about safety. The beauty of this approach is that if
you use up all the hydrogen on a long trip, or you forget to recharge
overnight, your car still works normally on gasoline.
This would be a good starting measure to begin popularizing hydrogen and
conserving gasoline.
The two big stumbling blocks with hydrogen are the distribution network and
the need for precious metals with hydrogen fuel cells. A home generator
would partly solve the first problem, but it would not work if you take a
long trip on the highway. That makes this intermediate solution mixing
gasoline and hydrogen attractive.
The only problem with a home generator is that pressure is limited and you
cannot make liquid hydrogen. I assume . . . But I would love to have a
cryogenic gadget! I think that liquid hydrogen will call for something like
cold fusion or hot fusion anyway since there is such a large extra energy
cost. "There is a large energy penalty for hydrogen compression (equal to
10% of the energy content of the gas compressed) or liquefaction (30%)."
(http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-10/iss-1/p20.html)
- Jed
