In reply to Frederick Sparber's message of Sun, 9 Apr 2006 14:59:10 -0600: Hi, [snip] >The 240 volt 100 amp single phase service (25 KW Peak) for residential use >would limit you to >1.0 pound of hydrogen (0.5 gallon gasoline equiv.) production per hour with >a 2.5 volt 10,000 ampere state-of-the-art >electrolysis cell.
Actually I wouldn't consider an electrolysis cell meeting those specs to be state of the art. It would require a huge, and thus expensive, transformer. It is much simpler to just connect individual cells in series until the overall voltage drop equals the line voltage. Then connect the gas output from the cells in parallel. The latter is easy to arrange by letting all the cells share common manifolds (one for oxygen, and one for hydrogen). Then one only needs a controlled bridge rectifier (quite cheap), and a controller to drive it, and a compressor to pump the H2 into the vehicle. No external storage is needed, because the unit can simply be started after it's connected to the vehicle. Because the production rate of H2 is so low, only a very small (and thus cheap) pump would be needed. All of this notwithstanding, I still prefer Jed's notion of rechargeable hybrids as the best short term solution. It would greatly extend the remaining amount of oil, and concurrently cut the overall CO2 production rate (assuming nuclear or renewable electricity production), to the point where nature could cope with it again. [snip] Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://users.bigpond.net.au/rvanspaa/ Competition provides the motivation, Cooperation provides the means.
