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hydrogen fuel cell power plants for homes

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johncaldwell

johncaldwell

Industrial
Jul 10, 2008
1
Hello, I would like to discuss with someone about the possibilities of creating hydrogen generating plants for powering homes. I see how we are piping natural gas into every home in america. Why can this same pipeline into every home not import hydrogen instead? Perhaps instead, it could be like in the old days when the milk truck came to your house. Now, instead the connect to your hydrogen tank and fill you up for a week or month. Any way, we will never be completely free of oil until all elements of our society have been dealt with, including the home. Imagine, each and every home and business in america has its own hydrogen fuel cel power plant, No electrical lines coming into the home. Houses would not even need to be rewired. It would be just as a gas powered generator works, plug and play! Gone are the electric power plants, - no oil or nuclear, no huge wind mills, ok solar if you want, but who would????????
 
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The problem with using existing piping for hydrogen is H2 reacts with iron and it would also permiate through the piping. In order to plumb H2 into your home, you would have to switch all of the piping to stainless and even then you will still have degradation.
 
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Interesting idea.
Us folks in the rural areas still get propane delivered to a tank. Delivery of hydrogen could be similar.

Ted
 
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Hydrogen is not a source of energy so it will do nothing to solve any energy shortage. It burns cleanly so it may be useful for lessening some pollution problems. It is not as clean an energy souce as electricity in the home. As a way of distributing energy it cannot compete with wires for distributing electric power. Hydrogen's main attraction is as a clean fuel for internal combustion engines in vehicles or fuel cells instead of batteries in electric vehicles. Fuel cells and batteries are still nowhere close to the energy storage density of gasoline.

All the details about alternative energies can get confusing but hydrogen is not a source of energy. It is one method to distribute energy and is not ideal for that purpose either.
 
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Great reply, Compositepro. Unfortunately most H2 production comes from fossil fuels, which doesn't relieve the problems john is talking about. You can get H2 from water if you put in a lot of electricity, but most electricity (at least in the U.S.) comes from polluting sources like coal or nuclear (coal pollutes high volumes of low hazards, nukes pollute low volumes of high hazards).
If you could get the H2 from a clean source such as wind power you might be in business, but if you're going to put in a windmill and pipe the engery to someones home it'll be much cheaper to do it in the form of electricity over a power grid than a gas in a pipe.
 
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hydrogen burns really fast- you would want a really good tank and piping and valves, or have a really good boom!

consider an onsite generator and flashback arrestors on everything

nice ideas- do more research first or you may loose more than just hair
 
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H2's rate of combustion is actually slower than most fuels. It's energy to mass ratio is relatively low compared to gasoline and propane.
 
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I have personal experience with generating HHO from water to improve efficiency of ICE (internal combustion engines). I am very impressed with power density, physics, chemistry, and electrical, electronic potential of future hybrids that can produce MORE energy than they CONSUME. It's gonna happen. Everybody is gonna say WOW that's amazing geewhiz. The same thing goes for power for your home.
I just saw the Navy test fire a 32 Mega Joule Rail Gun. It launched a big gun round at MACH 7 for 200 miles. They just made gun powder obsolete. What do you think about gas now?


Stewart R. Frederick
USMC, AS Degree in Electronics
Martin Marietta R&D
Lockheed Skunkworks
 
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