The Car that Makes its Own Fuel

Amnon Yogev, an retired Israeli professor from the Weizmann Institute and one of two founders of Engineuity, has invented a car that produces its own hydrogen fuel from light metals, such as magnesium or aluminum, eliminating all of the infrastructure required for making, transporting and storing hydrogen.  The inventor claims that when the cars become commercial, they will cost about the same as conventional cars and will be emission free.

A coil of the fuel - aluminum or magnesium - is fed into a device called a Metal-Steam combustor that will separate hydrogen out of water that is heated to a very high temperature.  The oxygen atoms will bond to the metal forming a metal oxide, freeing the hydrogen.  The hydrogen and the steam, which forms when the pressure in the 'fuel' line is reduced below that in the combustor, are sent to the engine where they are used to generate power.  My explanation: The steam will be superheated in the engine and returned to the Metal-Steam combustor to provide the heat needed to generate more hydrogen.  The waste metal oxide and remaining unoxidized metal would be removed from the combustor and collected for recycling at the fuel station where the coils of metal are purchased.

A drawback is that the amount of metal needed for fuel, to give the car the same range as a conventional car, weighs about three times as much as the gasoline it replaces.  The engine should be a minor modification of ICE's. They claim neither the purchase price or the running cost should be much different than conventional cars.  Engineuity plans on developing a prototype in three years if they are able to raise enough money from investors.

I don't believe its that simple.  Does it really work?  Can some of you bright young readers analyze the cycle and see if it can work?  How do you start the car?  Do you need a heater for the combustor and where do you get the energy to do that?  Can you produce some excess hydrogen and store it, that sounds expensive. How do you adjust the speed?  Somehow you must dump some of the heat produced in the engine I guess or can you throttle the hydrogen and design the combustor to take the high pressure that might result.  Can that be combined with the engine cooling system?  What is the response time of the system?  You have a volume in the combustor that might have to be heated and cooled to provide response.  What about the cost of the Metal-Steam combustor?  It must operate at a pretty high pressure and the pressure vessel then adds weight to the car.  I guess there is no exhaust system which saves a bit. I would think the price of the "feed metal" would go up with the price of energy, so there is not a great saving there, if any.  I have added some to the cycle description to clarify it, I hope I did it correctly.

Resource:  The Car That Makes its Own Fuel, IsraCast, October 24, 2005

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Comments

[Jerry]

They had a rather extensive and, as is the norm, "loud" discusion of this over at slashdot.org. It seems that the basic conclusion is that this doesn't provide neither a lighter, cheaper, or easier means of fueling a vehicle.

Who knows, maybe they'll optimize it after further research?

[Robert McLeod]

Posted this 4 days ago:

http://entropyproduction.blogspot.com/2005/10/quick-swipe-at-free-hydrogen.html

[Engineer-Poet]

The losses in a metal-water reaction are very high.  It makes far more sense to use a metal-air battery (fuel cell), and as long as you're doing that it is far easier to run a cycle on zinc than either aluminum or magnesium because zinc can be regenerated by electrolysis in a water solution at room temperature while the others require exotic processes.

[Engineer-Poet]

I saw this in enough different places I decided to tear it apart in detail.  It doesn't look any better when examined closely.

[Grub]

Quoting Jerry, "this doesn't provide neither a lighter, cheaper, or easier means of fueling a vehicle."

If this works, we will not have to rely on petrol as the chief fuel for all modes of vehicles. Rather, the metal oxides that are produced can be recycled.

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