Power A City With... A box in the ground outside your street?

Well,For all you living in a rock for the past 6 years, you may not know that were starting to work the kinks out of a box 5 feet below the ground in front of your house/apartment, that needs 10-20$ a month at most to maintain, and can power 3-5 houses?!A Fuel Cell.A hydrogen Powered Generator. But theres somthing special about it...A fuel cell when using Hydrogen fuel gives off two items1. Electricity2. H2O ( Water)But what if, you do this,Connect a pump to take the water and put it throught a separator. Then Hydrogen is then put into the Fuel cell and becomes power. and the cycle continues. While a pipe sends the oxygen out into the area, so you can breath :oSo basically you got a self sustained power source needing 1 thing... A Start up Fuel unit.Some of the electricty is using it to power, the rest you useWouldnt that solve tons of problems once the Mass production kinks are out?

This is a really good idea, but there is a slight drawback. The cost in terms of energy required to seperate the hydrogen from H2O is pretty large and there is considerable wastage. Also, the amount of energy generated is usually not enough to maintain a self sustaining cycle, with an overflow of electricity.Ultimately, when we can reduce wastage of energy in production as well as in the seeration of Hydrogen from water, we should see hydrogen fuel cell applications appear in all our daily like gadgets and lifestyle usage. Really looking forward to that day.

This is a really good idea, but there is a slight drawback. The cost in terms of energy required to seperate the hydrogen from H2O is pretty large and there is considerable wastage. Also, the amount of energy generated is usually not enough to maintain a self sustaining cycle, with an overflow of electricity.
Ultimately, when we can reduce wastage of energy in production as well as in the seeration of Hydrogen from water, we should see hydrogen fuel cell applications appear in all our daily like gadgets and lifestyle usage. Really looking forward to that day.

yeah so am i, but we will need to run outta oil first, which sukcs

Connect a pump to take the water and put it throught a separator. Then Hydrogen is then put into the Fuel cell and becomes power. and the cycle continues. While a pipe sends the oxygen out into the area, so you can breath

Ubnfortunatly.... Both Maths, and the laws of physics disagree with you...


Hydrogen + Oxygen = Energy + Water.
and therefore....
Water + Energy = Hydrogen + Oxygen.


Theoretically, your sepeator would require the same amount of energy to spereate water into hydogren + oxygen as the fuel cell would generate.. making it kinda pointless.


My Question is this......

Fuel cells are great and everything, but i can only think of 2 sources of Hydrogen.....

1) Electrolysis of water...
wheich requires energy, pron fossil burning power stations, or other conventional means.


2) Chemical reactions, for example, Acids and metals.


Fuel cells are just batteries... They are very efficiant, and can hold lots and lots of energy, but still, just batteries.. you need to charge them with somthing.


Im still cheering for Fusion
cold fusion would be nice.

Theoretically, your sepeator would require the same amount of energy to spereate water into hydogren + oxygen as the fuel cell would generate.. making it kinda pointless.

Uh ... that's not counting the losses due to energy transmission. In effect, it'll take MORE energy to obtain the hydrogen+oxygen than the energy that is obtained from the fuel cell (2nd Law of Thermodynamics).

Uh ... that's not counting the losses due to energy transmission. In effect, it'll take MORE energy to obtain the hydrogen+oxygen than the energy that is obtained from the fuel cell (2nd Law of Thermodynamics).

i was mearly stateing that Water + X = hytrogen + oxygen, and hydrogen + oxygen = water + X.
where both X's are equal.

Its like saying Velocity = Distance / time, without taking into account for lorenz contraction and time dialation.

I bet you sit in the corner at parties and correct people's speach when they say things like " me and you" instead of "you and I"

stop showing off your thermo-dynamics when im preaching simple chemistry

hehe.

well, A Fuel cell is effective true, but to get teh hydrogen and oxygen, a bit far fetched i guess

well, A Fuel cell is effective true, but to get teh hydrogen and oxygen, a bit far fetched i guess

What are you talking about? I think you're contradicting yourself. You said that you would get the hydrogen and oxygen (water) from the fuel cell in the first post. Or were you replying to yourself?

How does a hydrogen fuel cell work? How does it take hydrogen and create H2O? Does it get the oxygen from the air around it?

stop showing off your thermo-dynamics when im preaching simple chemistry

Hold on! The minute you said X=energy, you involved Thermodynamics. And when you say energy, you have to consider the efficiency of the fuel cell and losses due to other factors as well. It no longer remains 'simple chemistry' .

For all practical purposes in our daily life, we don't need to consider time dilation for regular objects since it's negligible (unless cars and stuff move at the speed of light).

But for a fuel cell, the efficiency, though being quite high when you consider the conversion of Hydrogen to electricity, the overall is quite is low. Here's a page about fuel cells used in cars:

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/alternative-fuels/fuel-cell4.htm

Don't mean any offense, but just meant to say that you can't run a house AND recharge the fuel cell using power from the fuel cell itself. You CAN'T even recharge the fuel cell itself even if you use the power you obtained from the fuel cell directly to recharge it .
Edited March 17, 2006 by abhiram (see edit history)

Don't mean any offense, but just meant to say that you can't run a house AND recharge the fuel cell using power from the fuel cell itself. You CAN'T even recharge the fuel cell itself even if you use the power you obtained from the fuel cell directly to recharge it

thats what i said...
only i said it by talking about the universal rule.. "you dont get somthing for nothing"

and then poked fun at you for talking about thermo dynamics.

Great Idea!

I have to jump in on abhiramâs side here and point out that what you are proposing is a perpetual motion machine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion) which does not exist.

 

Proposals for such inoperable machines have become so common that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has made an official policy of refusing to grant patents for perpetual motion machines without a working model.