Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

There have been engines converted to run on hydrogen for many years. They readily run on it. However, storage is a problem. Its hard to get enough to get very far. The only real option for normal driving ranges is carbon fiber 10,000 psi tanks. Of course I dont need to drive that far so a balloon in the trunk or a scuba tank will work just fine for me.

I have seen a car converted to hydrogen as simple as simple home made port injection (tubes placed in the intake close to the intake valves), a pressure regulator, and a variable valve connected to the foot peddle, with a needle valve for setting idle gas flow. I plan on installing a vacuum operated natural gas type conversion.

If you pull this off please keep us posted DDM. Fascinating stuff. I understand it is not top of your list right now.

A thought on the balloon above the car. Could the hydrogen not easily explode if so exposed?

If you stuck a fire to the balloon it would burst and a large fire ball would go up, but it would not explode. I ignite hydrogen balloons in my hand fairly often. I have never been burned. Its does not even pop unless you inject oxygen. I feel safe working with it. Its no worse than gas.

This is next on my project list. Now that I have enough AP food to keep my family I need an energy source to power the AP and well pumps. I need to save up and buy a good Honda generator then I can proceed to run my house from home made fuels.

Its really very easy to do and the materials a low tech. The process was observed in the 1700's. I will post my progress to this thread. True green power in abundance without expensive silicon, or months of digesting, or pressing oil, and any biomass can be used. My primary concern here is growing my fuel source. If I just burn up all my trees then what? I can get all the wood chips I want from the people who grind limbs for the power company while the economy is going good, but Im looking for producing everything I consume here on my land; well except cloths ect..

Why particularly Honda as a generator? Better than others? Can any generator be adapted to home-made fuels or must we look out for a specific type? I know nothing about this....

Why not also clothes DDM? Angora rabbits... spinning.... to wool... to warm sweaters. Tanning of hides. Ever see how fish hides were made into cloth for bikinis? Weaving of plant fibres for cloth and rope.... still looking into all this. Not highest proirity right now. But see it as do-able sustainably. Want at least to get the plants and animals so long. I have sisal.

I would be really interested to follow your success....

Any motor including diesel can work fine. Honda is more dependable, has a steal sleeve so it can be rebuilt, its easy to start. Any type will work really, but I find cheap generators are rated at peek power while higher end generators are rated and working loads. Running at peak power over heats/overloads cheap generators.



It is doable, but there is only so many hours in a day. If it comes to that then I will start looking into tanning hides. I would prefer to not have to do it and my wife is not skilled that way.

I recently came across this article pointing out that hydrogen fuel wont be useful, I would appreciate people comments on the article.
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publicati ... rogen-hoax

It's an interesting article. There are a couple things that make our discussion different. The article talks about creating an infrastructure of hydrogen power, which he's right, would be inefficient. We're talking about distributed generation and consumption. You make your own, there's no transport loss.

As far as losing energy to inefficiencies, well, that's just restating the 2nd law of thermodynamics. It's not a question of will you lose energy. You will. The question is whether in your particular generation process, do you lose energy that you care about / pay for? If you are using grid power to do electrolysis, it's going to be costly, and those costs will not amortize. If you buy a windmill that powers a generator to perform electrolysis to produce hydrogen, your cost is the capital cost of the equipment, and will be amortized. But, you are indeed "losing" wind energy to inefficiencies.

Relative efficiencies are important, but they must be taken in a given context. If you do buy the wind generator, is it better to create H2 or to buy an electric car? That's something that you should look at.

The author does make good points about storing and using H2. It does take a lot of energy to store. Again, the question is does that energy matter in your context?

What are we looking at this on the base of, an alternative fuel or its greenness?
As a 100% fuel alternative it has several major problems, most listed and I have not been able to fault his chemistry yet (though I am no chemist). As a minor additive to other fuels for a complete burn, a possibility.
Curiously the world seems blind to the fact that we are looking for alternatives to fuel internal combustion engines. Aside from a slight foray into electric cars very little has ever been done (relatively speaking) to explore other engines. For example there was a time when it looked like steam cars would rule the roads (an external combustion engine).

Paradigm shifts are hard, and usually take a long time.

There is a LOT of incorrect info on hydrogen novaris.

Atomic hydrogen will embrittle metals and leak out. However the natural state of hydrogen is not monatomic, its H2.

Here are some facts:
-H2 has been stored in steal bottles for decades and does not leak out.
-These same bottle are over a hundred years old and passes ALL metallurgy test for being a sound usable bottle, 100 years later. No embrittlement is evident after a century.
-Our existing natural gas infrastructure carries quite a bit of hydrogen with no ill effects. Infact, the existing infrastructure is capable of transporting hydrogen with very few changes. Even so, locally produced is the better option.
-Hydrogen dissipates so fast that it poses little risk if ignition seconds after being vented.
-It takes more heat to light hydrogen than gas. Gasoline: 280C Hydrogen: 500C
-Carbon fiber tanks of hydrogen in a car are safer than gas tanks. The tanks can withstand great temps and a stick of dynamite will not rupture them. With an internal regulator its most likely that after a really bad wreck the only thing intact will be the hydrogen tank and perhaps a small flame if some how the top gets knocked off and ignited. I have seen gas cars burn to the ground really fast with all that burning gasoline.

Compression does take about the same energy as the BTU value of what you compress. However, if its almost free who cares?

Using bio mass is great. Using energy from the sun biomass sinks carbon from the air using water it produces oxygen and hydro carbons. Plants are amazing factories! Then when when reacted, the byproducts are the same CO2 that plants love and that was collected from the air to begin with. Besides the whole CO2 greenhouse gas thing is just a lye and an excuse to tax anyway. For example, take a green house and double the CO2. What is the result? Plants grow twice as fast and absorb twice as much CO2. Net effect.. No change.

HYdrogen power as proposed by Bush is a hoax as shown. What I think Dandman is talking about is biomass gassification. That does produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide and a few other gasses that can be and has been used to drive engines. Do a goggle of downdraft gassifier and take a look at what is being done. The rub is that you need a large source of biomass.......commonly wood but other things will work. If you have a logging industry nearby or land and water to grow switchgrass you have fuel potential.
I have neither trees nor enough land nor water to run a gassifier. Here in the Mojave desert we do have lots of sun and wind so I harvest those for power. Also I had money invested at risk and drawing small return. By putting some of that money into solar PV and wind generators I am getting a far better and more secure return. I might try gassification if I didnt have the money for PV, but biodiesel seemed a better source of fuel and the stock is readily available but the conversion cost about $1.00 per gallon.
Dan will do well by using the resources available as waste like chips from tree trimmers.
Dan will also create biochar in his gassifier which can be used to enrich his garden. Or it may be sold as barbque fuel.

Its NOT gasification. This process pure H2 and CO. Its a higher BTU value gas and contains not other elements.

This stinking spell checker is changing my words.. Sorry about that. Hope all my post aren't that bad Oh well

What is the set up cost of 2Kw solar? What is the cost of battery storage? How many hours can you generate it? What does it cost to operate? Do you have to replace it after 20 years?

With this process the setup cost of a 2KW system is about $1500.
Storage cost $50 for 3000 cubic foot bags made to collect gas.
It can run 24/7.
Operation cost are almost free, but you must have a source of bio mass.
While you do not have to replace batteries you do have to replace the rings and piston sleeve in the motor every few years.

It would be cool to have a 20 and 50 year cost of ownership comparison.

Either way, if I had to buy solar I would never have a source of power. Its just to expensive. I need to run well and AP pumps, as well as my home.