InnovaTek's hand-sized microreactor converts liquid fuel into hydrogen
By Darren Murph 
posted March 20th 2008 4:17PM
posted March 20th 2008 4:17PM
posted March 20th 2008 4:17PM
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Maybe we should've spent some of those billions in developing new sources of energy instead of wasting almost a trillion dollars and thousands of lives, alive and dead, affected by this nonsense war in the middle east.
How relevant to a gadget site.
no war for oil, amirite
@ matt
Nearly $4/gal for gasoline (here in Florida at least, it's even worse elsewhere) seems to contradict the "war for oil" theory.
We've been over there for five years, plenty of time for us to start pumping some for ourselves. To the victor go the spoils, right? Where's all this oil that my country conquered a dictatorship for?
lol josh is right. i hate these money for oil conspiracies, if we went to take this oil then where is my cheap gasoline? it pointless to continue arguing that the US went to iraq solely for oil.
Ok, so why are we still there? I don't buy into the "bringing democracy" and "fighting terrorists", that's a bunch of bull. Or "keeping Americans safe." Just ask Rudy why his campaign never gained any traction. Ok, so what about those thousands of Americans that have died, and the other thousands that are left behind with missing limbs and fractured minds. Oh, and let's not forget their family members too. I even voted for Bush. Now I regret it because after 5 years we haven't achieved a single thing and we're worse off than we were before. I'm not naive to think that we didn't go there for oil. Iraq is allegedly over a large amount of crude oil. Why do you think the bad guys keep on blowing up the crude lines? Or, why is the price of oil so high? Everyone likes to say China's and India's demand has increased, therefore. Sure that has happened, but not to a point of the price of it tripling and more.
Back on topic, we should be concentrating more in developing new, and current, ways of creating energy other than combustion from fossil fuels. So, let's hope that whomever becomes president is more focused in really getting us out of this dependence on foreign crude, and not just talk.
"Ok, we got some Soda, some purple stuff, and... oh! Some Sunny-D!"
WTF? you carry around a tank of diesel, use it to make hydrogen, then turn the H2 into electricity to turn an electric motor? Tell me, how the hell are you going to achieve any level of efficiency?
Surely the answer is to make the diesel engine even more efficient, and make the car lighter yet stronger.
The problem is that people in the USA still drive round with no passengers in an SUV getting barely 12 miles per gallon, even a 100% efficiency gain is not enough to put them on a par with a small light European compact car getting 35 mpg or more! Even if that gas guzzling US car uses H2 or LPG, it's still going to use a very large amount of energy per mile which has got to be generated somewhere - you can't beat the laws of physics!
My thoughts exactly. Hey lets convert perfectly good liquid fuel into hydrogen then into electricity to run our car. How ridiculous. Research should be in creating better batteries, with Nuclear being used to supply base load power and solar maturing with companies like Nanosolar, the only thing holding back fully electric cars is battery capacity. Well that and everyone circlejerking over the Hydrogen economy which is full of way too many hurdles at this stage.
@ kaiswil2
"You would think that after everyone spending this much money they would have found a clean, reliable, cheaper and PRACTICAL method of fueling our vehicles."
Yes, I suppose one would think that... If one was a narrow-minded type that believed that throwing money at a problem is all it takes to solve it. You might make a good middle manager one day ;)
The problem of renewable and clean energy sources is more complex than the average person realizes. The Mass Media dumbs everything down as a matter of course, and when it dumbs this sort of science and engineering work down to the point where people are led to believe that we could transform our entire energy-producing infrastructure into a completely clean, self-renewing system overnight (if only those damn Oil Companies and those evil, planet-hating Conservatives would get out of the way!)... Well then of course conspiricists such as yourself will crop up.
Do yourself a favour and go do some research on the subject. Some real research, not watching "Who Killed the Electric Car?" on YouTube.
im sure you have heard of the Tesla Roadster?
this whole subject of the electric car being stopped by oil companies is getting old, fully electric cars are going into production and its only a matter of time before ALL of the major car manufacturers have an electric car or 5.
Ironic how Chevron "partnered" with them. I'm going to venture a guess that this "partnership" will eventually become a "takeover"...just to bury this technology.
Cool. Hopefully this will make it to the market instead of never getting produced.
I can't believe how gullible some of you are. alex jones must be telling the truth because capitalism is EVIL!
At about 160 gallons of hydrogen a minute, I am pretty sure it works a bit more efficiently than the "Wait you put diesel in your car and drive an electric motor how stupid is that?" theory. Optimally with the correct enhancements to oleochemicals produced in a energy crop, one could envision putting a gallon or two of biodiesel into a matrix that supports a few layers of the nanochannel wafers and then driving for about 3 months until your next fill-up, much like you change your oil every 3000 miles. The cars computer would even tell you when you need to "recharge your fuel cell" sounds so trekkie.
The guy at the back looks like he's holding his own urine sample. He doesn't look impressed either.
I'm tired of people saying that the transportation of hydrogen is dangerous. DO THE RESEARCH.
The auto-ignition temperature of hydrogen is 932 degrees Fahrenheit. Compare that to gasoline’s auto-ignition temperature of 536 degrees Fahrenheit. Gas ignites easier!
Because hydrogen is so light (about 15 time lighter than air) it easily dissipates and if a leak or spill does occur, the hydrogen becomes rapidly sparse and difficult to ignite. And even if it does catch fire, it burns itself out very quickly. By contrast, heavier fuels such as diesel oil and gasoline do not rapidly dissipate and remain a fire threat for a longer period of time.
The tanks used to store hydrogen, whether in its gaseous or liquid form, undergo demanding testing procedures. They must endure extreme heat and external pressure forces as well as collision impacts. Conventional gasoline and diesel fuel tanks are, in most instances, simple stamped steel shells that do not undergo these stringent stress tests.
If you look for pictures of Hydrogen vs Gasoline in a typical car. You can find pictures before lighting the fuel tank, during the lighting of the fuel tank, and after the lighting of the fuel tank. Now you tell me which looks more dangerous.
Government and industry “well-to-wheel” studies have found that
when hydrogen is produced using some methods (including hydrogen
made from natural gas or water using renewable or nuclear energy)
and used in a fuel cell vehicle, significantly less carbon dioxide is
emitted into the atmosphere than when oil is refined into gasoline and
used in conventional or even higher efficiency hybrid electric vehicles.
Source: National Research Council 2004
- A Well-to-Wheel analysis is the all-inclusive, cradle-to-grave
look at the production, distribution, dispensing and use of a
fuel.
"As it stands, the outfit has already signed a half-million dollar joint development agreement with Chevron to "pursue fuel processing technology for hydrogen refueling stations,"
I enjoyed reading this right until I got to that part. Chevron. Well that guarantees this will be USELESS to the american people considering that they are preventing anyone from making electric cars by refusing the license the NIMH battery patent they are sitting on that they got from GM via Texaco.
"im sure you have heard of the Tesla Roadster?
this whole subject of the electric car being stopped by oil companies is getting old, fully electric cars are going into production and its only a matter of time before ALL of the major car manufacturers have an electric car or 5."
Except that the ONLY current viable battery technology is being intentionally crushed by You guessed it CHEVRON. They hold a controlling patent on the NIMH tech needed to make Electric cars work that do NOT COST $100,000 and use nearly 7,000 freaking batteries and is SO inefficient as a result of this that it uses IN EXCESS of $2 in electricity per 100 miles driven. The NIMH tech developed over a DECADE ago and PROVEN over the last decades in hundreds of electric cars (the ones GM did not CRUSH) costs about $1 per 100 miles driven and the battery pack was only $4500 TEN YEARS AGO compared to the $100,000 price tag of a Tesla.
I do not want a car that 90% of us will NEVER have a chance of owning. I want a sub $10k PURE ELECTRIC car and I only need a 75 mile range. (though the NIMH pack GM/Ovonics developed would easily get me 120+)
YES Electric cars ARE coming but dammit it I want them NOW not after I have been drained of every ounce of damned blood I have buying gasoline or WORSE hydrogen.
Sadly this patent does not expire till 2015