| Author | Message | ||
     Ken Unregistered guest |
Hi, do you think the fuel cell project will work if i substitute the platinum coated wires for cheap platinum plated razor blades? And, would it be better if i cover the container so that the gases do not escape. Tq. | ||
| Read please Unregistered guest |
Hi, do you think the fuel cell project will work if i substitute the platinum coated wires for cheap platinum plated razor blades? And, would it be better if i cover the container so that the gases do not escape. Tq. | ||
| Rick Unregistered guest |
Why did you post twice? D.S. will get to you soon. As for the question probably not, why else would he use more expensive stuff. Also they are only plated. | ||
| Simon Quellen Field (sfield) Senior Member Username: sfield Post Number: 281 Registered: 12-2004 |
The razon blades sound like a great idea. Let us know how it works. Enclosing it is not needed -- the bubbles that stick to the metal are what are used. | ||
| Angus Chalmers (Fungus) Member Username: Fungus Post Number: 11 Registered: 12-2005 |
Would the fuel cell work with the razor blades half in water and half out in an enclosed container so you could store the gasses? Also in reply to Rick's question the wire that is sold on this website is only plated too. | ||
| Thomas Vlaskamp (Vlasktom) New member Username: Vlasktom Post Number: 2 Registered: 10-2006 |
Not to add another question to the table just to make everyone mad, but... would it be possable to build say... 20 or 30 of them, wire them together, have them run off one source, a car battery, and when the voltage runs out, switch the polarity, so the bubbles form on the other electrode, and wire all of the fuel cells to an ac/dc converter to run some lights or something off em, not the entire house, because when the voltage runs out in the middle of the night durring the winter, i'd freeze to death. It's just an idea, sometimes my idead are simple just that, and they almost never work, or I just get side tracked, and forget about them. | ||
| Thomas Vlaskamp (Vlasktom) New member Username: Vlasktom Post Number: 3 Registered: 10-2006 |
Trying to save the world, one step at a time... | ||
| scott (Ichyc) Senior Member Username: Ichyc Post Number: 150 Registered: 6-2006 |
Well you might as well get a heck of a lot bigger platinum wire like a 3" diameter wire 2 of them & make a giant one rather then a whole lot of them it would probably be a lot cheaper & easier other than finding the wire. but it is possible to do it all tho it would take a whole lot of these in a circuit to make it work. it would only last for a very short time & it would be very inefficient. | ||
| Thomas Vlaskamp (Vlasktom) Junior Member Username: Vlasktom Post Number: 6 Registered: 10-2006 |
Yeah, it would be... but with todays gas prices, anything is better than spending $275/mo for electricity. If I could get it down to about $100/mo... then my parents might be able to save enough money to send me to college. When they showed the Fuel Cell working on this website, they used a 9-volt battery, which has maybe 1/1000 of an amp. The car battery i'm wanting to use is a 700+ amp battery, so it would probably work for a good bit longer than the 9-volt battery. Really, all that we're creating is a really big battery, the voltage would be split among all of the cells, unless they were wired in either paralell or series, I don't remember which it is, one of them gives all the cells the same voltage. I'd have to have a battery charger on the battery, so the battery wouldn't die on me. As Americans, we are wasteful. We only make up 5% of the world population, but we are creating 75% of all the polution, and are using 95% of all the crude we recieve every day. We have almost no reserve oil, so anything to cut down on polution, and save a little bit of money would be well worth it. The only problem I can find in this idea, is the fact that i can't find an ac/dc converter strong enough to withstand that kind of power. The only ones i've found are made for 12 volts @ less than 10 amps. | ||
| Alex Roberts (Whoo_mythbusters) Senior Member Username: Whoo_mythbusters Post Number: 176 Registered: 9-2005 |
Actually, we have a huge oil reserve, but its not what you think. Its oil shale, there are some plants in California that are drilling for it. The process involves pumping pressurized steam down into these reserves which "hydrates", for lack of a better term, the shale. Then it is extracted and has to go threw all of the refining processes. It costs about 30$ a barrel with the current technique. | ||
| Thomas Vlaskamp (Vlasktom) Junior Member Username: Vlasktom Post Number: 7 Registered: 10-2006 |
Even so, Americans are wasteful, there's mp denying that There's a guy in my town that has a truck that gets 4 gallons to the mile, not 4 miles to the gallon, 4 gallons to the mile. He has to fill his truck up every day, and it costs him about $100 to do it. Now, if that's not wasteful, nothing is. And how much of the reserve do we have to spare, that we don't use at all? We have to get into the reserve atleast once a week, and we have to take a lot of oil out of it. In my opinion, we should drill for oil in Alaska. "It might ruin the environment" We're doin that now! Driving our cars, running 7 TV's at the same time, and not watchin any of em, garbage, eventually, mother nature will stab us in the back, and that won't be a good time for us... so, we have to do something now, and this is the place to start, something simple, and slowly work our way up. Back in the 1800's, we used coal as our primary souce for fuel for transportation, then we found oil, and converted it into gasoline... We made the switch from coal to gas, and we can switch from gas to somthing else. The human race is, basicly, like one HUGE baby... gasoline is our bottle, slowly, we need to be weened off the gasoline bottle, and replace it with something else, like electricity, or hydrogen, or somthing similer to that. If you really want to make a difference now, there are ways you can make a difference, but I won't talk about them here... because this really isn't the place. | ||
| Simon Quellen Field (Sfield) Senior Member Username: Sfield Post Number: 1546 Registered: 12-2004 |
The argument that is is OK to further ruin the environment because we are currently doing so is rather silly. It would mean that it is OK to litter if you see litter somewhere, or OK to kill someone if you see someone else doing that. Besides, the oil in Alaska is a drop in the bucket. The people who want to drill in national parks are after the money, not the national interest. Even the people most eager to drill there predict that at its peak it will supply no more than 1.4 million barrels a day, and has a capacity of 10.4 billion barrels, and thus would be completely gone in 20 years. Putting that into perspective, world oil consumption increased by 1.2 million barrels a day in 2005. So even if we were pumping at full speed, we would only be just keeping up with the increased demand. In the U.S. alone, oil consumption is growing at 2% per year, or 0.4 million barrels per day per year. So we would need another ANWR every 3.5 years. We consumed 20.8 million barrels of oil in 2005. So at most, ANWR would produce 6.7% of that for 20 years. But the Alaska pipeline supplies 0.7 million barrels a day, so not only would we need to convert the wildlife refuge into a sea of oil derricks, but we would need to build two more pipelines across Alaska. But all of this is moot, because oil and coal are the main sources of greenhouse gases, and if we keep using them as energy sources, the effects of global warming will cost us far more than the energy was ever worth. One Alaska pipeline cost $8 billion in 1976. That's $28 billion of today's dollars. Two more would cost $56 billion, just for the pipelines alone. That would buy 2.24 million residential solar power systems. That's 67.2 gigawatt hours of electricity, or about 0.04 million barrels of oil per day. And that's just the cost of the pipe. And, the solar power systems have a 40 year life, twice the lifetime of the oil reserves in ANWR. Oil prices are volatile, but will go up as the demand keeps increasing. The cost of oil from ANWR is probably going to be above $70 per barrel for most of those 20 years. 10.4 billion barrels times $70 is $728 billion dollars. That would buy 30 million residential solar power systems -- one for every 10 people. No greenhouse gases, no pollution, just quiet electricity, produced right where it is needed. Creating diesel fuel from plants using Fischer Tropsch synthesis, or making cellulosic ethanol from prairie grasses are two other ways to get power without creating greenhouse gases, and they are renewable, like solar power. And they cost less than oil at $70 per barrel. That's where we should be investing, not in a dead end that devastates a national wildlife preserve. | ||
| Michael (Michaelt) Senior Member Username: Michaelt Post Number: 120 Registered: 12-2005 |
Not to mention the energy costs in drilling, building the pipeline, running the equipment, etc... It'd almost be like driving the 65 miles to the next town just to pay $.10 less per gallon of gas. "Why'd you drive to Tulsa?" "So I could fill up cheaper!" "Yeah, but you drove 130 miles round trip just to get it." "Yeah, but I got it cheaper!" And the labor costs (although that would actually mean JOBS for people, which is a rare thing in today's economy.) No, Simon is right-- the money is better spent developing alternative energy and improving the efficiency of our present vehicles. What really rips me is that the auto industry isn't taken to task for their poor CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy.) Ostensibly, they're supposed to have an average fuel economy across their entire line-- but certain vehicles they make are exempt from economy requirements. These are the oversized SUVs, which are more often seen occupied by a single person than transporting the entire family or soccer team. And even if they two occupants, their passenger-miles per gallon is still lower than when I'm alone in my car. (For example, the 2007 GMC Yukon 2WD has an EPA MPG of 20 highway, with my Corolla having an EPA MPG of 41 highway. This means that even with two passenters, their passenger-miles per gallon is just 40. Granted, more passengers in the vehicle will lower economy perceptibly, if both vehicles had 4 passengers I'd be still near 160 passenger-miles per gallon versus the Yukon's 80.) These vehicles are using the most fuel, cost the most energy to produce, in the first place, yet are exempt from certain fuel-economy regulations. The worst offenders? The Hummer models H2, H2 SUT, and H1 Alpha-- they are exempt entirely from EPA mileage regulations. Only the H3 is small enough to not be exempted. |
