Car Test -- Hydrogen On Demand (Pure hydrogen, not HHO) Can pure hydrogen (H2) replace HHO to increase MPG? pdf

Phillips Company lts esu tR Tes ar eC Se 13 age p Car Test Hydrogen On Demand (Pure hydrogen, not HHO) Can pure hydrogen (H2) replace HHO to increase MPG? Updated : 11/2012 By: Phillips Company Email: hp@valliant.net, Tel 580 746 2430 CT.p65 Page Contents Car Test Hydrogen On Demand Section Hydrogen Cell Initial Results, 2011 Can pure hydrogen (H2) replace HHO to increase MPG? Technology comparison; HHO system and CC-HOD H2 system Phillips Company Aluminum hydroxide, aluminum oxide and recycling The need for pure hydrogen (this invention) Problem and solution The present invention for hydrogen production improves the state of the art Catalytic Carbon (CC) is intended for the high-production-rate, large-volume production of hydrogen Chemical reactions The present invention uses simple and well-known chemical reactions High rates of hydrogen production are possible Hydrogen production rates: Up to LPM in small reaction chambers Hydrogen production rates: Up to 35 gallons/minute in large reaction chambers 10 By-products are fully recoverable using existing commercial methods for producing aluminum metal 10 Fuel: The use of lower-cost, lower-purity aluminum 11 Fuel: The use of water from almost any source is a novel aspect of the present invention 11 The use of salt water makes the present invention suitable for marine applications and as an energy source for coastal areas 11 Catalytic Carbon (CC) can be used with the most desired materials to produce hydrogen 12 Safety: Catalytic Carbon (CC) can be used with the world’s safest materials to produce hydrogen 12 First pure-hydrogen road test using CC 13 CT.p65 Page First test run: 37 MPG 15 The government says this Buick should get 26 MPG (highway driving) 16 Analysis: 32% increase in gas mileage 16 Engineering design concepts 17 Summary 17 Phillips Company Section Hydrogen Cell Design and Fabrication, 2012 18 2012 Prototype cell design update 19 Installation of hydrogen system 30 Problems and comments 31 Operation of the hydrogen system 32 We used both CC/Al fuel and CA fuel 33 How to evaluate this new H2 system 34 CT.p65 Page Phillips Company Section -Hydrogen Cell Initial Results, 2011 CT.p65 Page Can pure hydrogen (H2) replace HHO to increase MPG? Phillips Company Technology comparison; HHO system and CC-HOD H2 system CT.p65 Page Phillips Company Aluminum hydroxide, aluminum oxide and recycling The following online article explains how bauxite (aluminum oxide) is mined, refined and smelted to produce aluminum http://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=3529 The by-products from the CC method of producing hydrogen have a special characteristic they are identical to the MOST PURE form of refined bauxite CT.p65 Page The need for pure hydrogen (this invention) A hydrogen-based economy is the only long-term, environmentally-benign energy alternative for sustainable growth The increasing demand for hydrogen arises from the impending paradigm shift to a hydrogen-based energy economy This change will become needed as the worldwide need for more electricity increases, greenhouse gas emission controls tighten, and fossil fuel reserves wane Problem and solution Phillips Company The future increasing need for hydrogen fuel has created a problem: the problem is the lack of a hydrogen-supply infrastructure that is necessary for the proliferation of the use of hydrogen The present invention provides a simple solution, in that hydrogen on demand (HOD) is available at any desired high production rate This makes it unnecessary to store hydrogen in a pressurized tank for release later at a high rate The present invention makes it possible to control and sustain the continuous production of hydrogen with no requirement for any external energy The controlled, sustained production of hydrogen has been achieved in our laboratory so long as water, aluminum and Catalytic Carbon (CC) are provided to the hydrogen-production cell The present invention for hydrogen production improves the state of the art The common method to recover hydrogen from water is to pass electric current through water and to reverse the oxygen-hydrogen combination reaction, i.e water electrolysis Another method involves extraction of hydrogen from fossil fuels, for example from natural gas or methanol This method is complex and always results in residues, such as carbon dioxide And, there is worldwide limit to the fossil fuel available for use in the future In these reforming methods the resulting hydrogen must be somehow stored and delivered to the user, unless the hydrogen generation is performed “on-board,” close to the point of use The safe, reliable, low-cost hydrogen storage and delivery is currently one of the bottlenecks of the hydrogen-based economy The present invention addresses this problem through safe, “on-board/on-demand” production of hydrogen close to the user systems, using simple, safe and pollution-free metal oxidation reacting with water and Catalytic Carbon (CC) CT.p65 Page Phillips Company Catalytic Carbon (CC) is intended for the high-production-rate, large-volume production of hydrogen Although about 20% of air is oxygen, there is no easily-accessible, safe source of hydrogen available The current invention addresses and solves this problem CC-HOD relates to a novel method of generating hydrogen from water Water consists of two elements: oxygen and hydrogen A relatively large amount of energy is released when these two elements react to form water This energy may be captured and may be used as a heat source, a combustion fuel, or it can be efficiently converted to electricity in fuel cells One novel aspect of CC-HOD is that the high production rate of hydrogen makes previously-impossible applications technically feasible for the first time, especially for high-energy-consumption applications Because of the straight-forward scale-up of the production rate of hydrogen using the present invention, the use of Catalytic Carbon (CC) makes it feasible to use high-production-rate hydrogen as fuel or as a fuel supplement for commercial power plants, trans-oceanic ships and remote locations, including third-world population centers and outposts on other planets so long as water, aluminum and Catalytic Carbon (CC) are provided to the hydrogen-production cell In the later potential application, an important advantage of this invention is that only water and water vapor (nothing else) is released when oxygen and hydrogen react using Catalytic Carbon (CC) Consequently, the hydrogen-oxygen reaction is potentially a pollution-free source of energy Chemical reactions The present invention uses simple and well-known chemical reactions 2Al + 6H2O + CC => CC + 2Al(OH)3 + 3H2 where Aluminum and water are fuels and the only by-product is aluminum hydroxide Al(OH)3 In this reaction, CC is a catalyst which is not consumed or chemically transformed in the reaction The same reaction can be written as 2Al + 3H2O + CC => CC + Al2O3 + 3H2 where Aluminum and water are fuels and the only by-product is aluminum oxide, Al2O3 In this reaction, CC is a catalyst which is not consumed or chemically transformed in the reaction CT.p65 Page Aluminium hydroxide, Al(OH)3 is found in nature as the mineral gibbsite (also known as hydrargillite) and its three polymorph forms: bayerite, doyleite and nordstrandite [Ref Wikipedia] Closely related to aluminium hydroxide is aluminium oxide, Al2O3, differing only by loss of water These compounds together are the major components of the aluminium ore bauxite [Ref Wikipedia] Aluminum, a fuel used for producing hydrogen, comes from bauxite Bauxite is an aluminium ore and is the main source of aluminium This form of rocky ore consists mostly of the minerals gibbsite Al(OH)3, boehmite AlO(OH), and AlO(OH), in a mixture with the two iron oxides goethite and hematite, the clay mineral kaolinite, and small amounts of anatase TiO2 [Ref Wikipedia] Phillips Company High rates of hydrogen production are possible Most methods of producing hydrogen (electrolysis, thermo-forming) produce hydrogen at low rates when measured in units of volume per minute (LPM) per gram aluminum per joule of required energy, or LPM/gm per joule Using this benchmark for production rate evaluation quickly leads to the conclusion that electrolysis and thermo-reforming are poor performers simply because of the energy required to drive the processes Our invention is much better than electrolysis or thermo-reforming processes (for hydrogen production) This is because our invention uses a process that only needs external heat to start the reaction, usually in the temperature range of 150F to 190F Once started, the reaction, because it is fundamentally exothermic, provides enough heat to sustain the reaction The only external energy required is for cooling, if needed to limit the production rate to some desired target value Hydrogen production rates: Up to LPM in small reaction chambers In our laboratory we carried out more than 50 experimental runs in which we obtained hydrogen production rates of 400 mL/minute to LPM with a hydrogen cell charged with 10 to 40 gm of powdered aluminum These experimental cells had reactionchamber volumes ranging from 100 mL to liter, made from plastic bottles and glass containers Higher rates were demonstrated in our laboratory and we believe rates exceeding 100 LPM can be easily achieved using larger cells in non-laboratory (industrial) conditions because the scale-up of the present invention has no known CT.p65 Page fundamental barriers The controlled, sustained production of hydrogen was achieved in our laboratory so long as water, aluminum and Catalytic Carbon (CC) was provided to the hydrogen-production cell Hydrogen production rates: Up to 35 gallons/minute in large reaction chambers 130 LPM of hydrogen was produced during scale-up experiments For more information, please see www.PhillipsCompany.4T.com/CA.pdf Phillips Company By-products are fully recoverable using existing commercial methods for producing aluminum metal The by-products from our hydrogen-production method are desirable because they are pure, and contain no contaminants including bauxite, gibbsite, boehmite, goethite, hematite, kaolinite, and TiO2 We reason that the large volume of by-products of our invention, pure Al(OH)3 and pure Al2O3, will be 100% recycled to produce more aluminum metal Recycling of aluminum hydroxide and aluminum oxide makes the present invention economically viable for large-volume hydrogen generation An excellent discussion of the process for primary aluminum production, as well as worldwide values for the energy requirements for aluminum smelting, can be found on a web site produced by the International Aluminium Institute (www.world-aluminium.org) For more information, please see www.PhillipsCompany.4T.com/AHA.pdf Aluminum refining from aluminum-bearing bauxite ore uses the Bayer process chemistry which forms a hydrate which is essentially the same as the reaction product in the proposed aluminum-water reactions described above [Ref DOE paper, 2010] The hydrate is then calcined to remove the water to form alumina The alumina is electrolytically reduced into metallic aluminum at about 900 oC using the Hall-Heroult Process, producing a metal with 99.7% purity CT.p65 Page 10 The major fuel is water This cell design includes a water tank The gravity-flow water tank is higher than the cell Pumps are not needed in this design The water tank serves a dual purpose it functions as a bubbler to prevent material from the cell entering the hydrogen-output plastic tube Note that the output line is clean and clear of both carbon and aluminum particles A check valve (one way) is shown in the red circle The hydrogen from the cell goes through a normally-off solenoid which is powered by 12 VDC only when the ignition is ON This stops hydrogen from entering the engine compartment when the engine is off The hydrogen goes from the solenoid to the engine Phillips Company The electrical control contains three things that would not be needed for a commercial system, but are helpful for engineering diagnostics in prototype systems These three things are (1) a current meter to measure total current draw from the battery; (2) a 30 Ampere circuit breaker, and (3) a switch to control the anode current in the cell In a commercial system, a 30 Ampere fuse could be used to eliminate the cost of a circuit breaker A cell cover is used in this design It is made from a section of thin-wall PVC pipe CT.p65 Page 21 Phillips Company The cell is lower than the gravity-flow water tank The cell cover serves two purposes: (1) The cell is in a glass jar, which is protected from gravel and other “might break” problems, and (2) the cell cover conserves heat which would be lost from air cooling if the cell were exposed to the wind The cell temperature is controlled by a digital temperature controller which switches power OFF to the electrical cell heaters when the cell temp reaches the desired temperature (180F to 190F, typically) The cell will continue to produce hydrogen as long as the cell temperature remains in the desired operating range, so the cell cover saves electrical power used for heating The cell is contained in a glass jar This is a simple 1-quart canning jar Glass cell Don’t this Don’t use glass for a container Remember this is just a prototype system A non-glass CT.p65 Page 22 container for the cell is a safety precaution that will prevent glass shards from flying about in the event of a hydrogen explosion in the cell This has never happened to us in our work, but surely it will happen to someone one day, and safety design is therefore recommended Phillips Company A glass container was used to provide “see through.” The cell is shown above with water (no CC and no CA) so that the internal elements can be seen This design uses 6” to 8” of connector cable This cable is usually coiled neatly in the cell during normal operation But, when the cell lid is removed, inspection is easy with no need to remove the heating element, which is usually embedded in the semi-solid bed of aluminum or CA fuel CT.p65 Page 23 Phillips Company Two tubes in/out of cell This design has two tubes, as shown One tube (copper pipe) carries water into the cell The other tube (plastic Tygon tubing) is used for flowing hydrogen out of the cell The copper pipe provides a rigid structure so that it can be easily pushed into the semi-solid aluminum (or CA) fuel bed Filter on the end of the copper pipe The copper pipe (water input) must be below water level for proper operation That means that it is in the semi-solid material in the cell, which can result in clogging of the copper tube Our prototype cells have experimented with shorter copper tubes, with limited success This has been a challenge, and better designs are needed to prevent this clogging problem This design uses a lead strip for an anode Lead is corrosion resistant, which is one reason it is used in lead-acid batteries In this design, there is virtually no corrosion, for two reasons: (1) The liquid is pH neutral, with no electrolyte added, and (2) the current is very low (less than 0.1 Ampere) The anode potential is 12 VDC The assembly is CT.p65 Page 24 Phillips Company bound by epoxy We have used J-B weld epoxy with good results Heater assembly also used for electrolysis We use immersion heaters which are manufactured for use in heating a cup of tea or coffee They are available as 12-volt products, which we find convenient because that voltage is readily available from the automobile battery The outer tube of the heater element is electrically insulated from the internal heating unit (resistance wire) This electrical insulation allows for wiring the outer tube of the heater element to ground, so that it serves as the cathode surface There is a second advantage of the low-current electrolysis Most water-splitting and hydrogen production occurs near the heater elements, because that is where the water CT.p65 Page 25 Phillips Company temperature is warmest When the water is split, the H atom is positive (+) and the OH group is negative ( - ) The electric field tends to separate the two, thereby reducing the probability of recombination The figure shows how the electric field tends to separate the H+ from the OH- ions, by applying a force to the ions Separating the two ions immediately after the watersplitting event reduces the probability of recombination If recombination occurs [ H + OH > H2O ], the hydrogen production rate is lower Therefore, the electric field provided by the electrolysis system is helpful Almost no HHO is generated by the low-current electrolysis almost all the gas produced will be hydrogen The hydrogen is produced according to 2Al + 6[H2O] + CC = CC + 2[Al(OH)3] + 3[H2] CT.p65 Page 26 Phillips Company The control system is described in the following photo CT.p65 Page 27 Phillips Company The following designations are used in the figure: HCC = Hydrogen Cell Controller TS = Temperature Sensor, a thermistor; part of the DTC DTC = Digital Temperature Controller VDC = volts, DC A = Ampere +Ign = +12 volts when ignition switch is ON Not shown in the figure is the 12 volt power relay which is under the meter assembly S1 is a circuit breaker S2 is control for the anode The circuit diagram for the controller is shown on the previous page CT.p65 Page 28 Phillips Company The temperature controller is available from eBay sellers: The controller is described in the manual, available online: Manual: http://www.willhi.com/Documents/WH7016Cdatasheet.pdf CT.p65 Page 29 Installation of hydrogen system Phillips Company Installation of the hydrogen system is made simple and straightforward because only hydrogen is delivered from the system to the engine The following illustration O The only connection to the engine fuel system is shown ( red circle ) in the above figure The only additional connections to the engine are the 12 volt connections to the battery and to the ignition system Note: When pure hydrogen (not HHO) is used, no modifications to the engine are required Oxygen sensors are not modified Tuning of the engine is not required “Air/fuel ratio” adjustments are not required “Timing” adjustments are not required CT.p65 Page 30 Phillips Company The temperature controller is mounted for clear viewing, near the instrument cluster A scan gauge is also used to provide accurate miles per gallon (MPG) data The temperature controller provides ON/OFF switching capability so that the entire hydrogen system can be switched OFF during driving, if/when desired Problems and comments Our designs used glass jars for hydrogen containers This is not a good idea, because of safety concerns Better materials can be used We occasionally experienced clogging of the water line that delivers water (fuel) from the water tank to the hydrogen cell We used only a simple screen to limit material from entering the copper-pipe Surely, better filters or screens are available CT.p65 Page 31 This is only a prototype system, intended to obtain performance data We are not a mechanical company We have no machine shop in our company Surely, others can improve on the shabby mechanical characteristics of our prototype Our design heats slowly From a cold start, about 10 minutes is required to heat the contents of the cell to the desired operating temperature range = 180F to 195F A better design might use a better heating system Our design uses electrical energy from the battery for heating Other builders may want to use heat from the exhaust system or heat from the engine coolant system Either source of heat may be useful, if the cell contents can be rapidly heated to the desired operating temperature range = 180F to 195F Phillips Company For high-hydrogen-flow-rate systems, a cell larger than a quart jar may be useful This may be the case for larger engines, such as diesel engines for trucks We not have a diesel-truck test vehicle, so we leave this experimentation to others Our prototype is much larger than it needs to be, and other system builders will, no doubt, build smaller systems Our prototype was mounted outside the car, for convenient access during the experimental phase There is no doubt that better systems can be built and installed under the hood to make the installation virtually invisible Operation of the hydrogen system The system operated without major problems for weeks at a time Fuel replacement because of fuel depletion was not a problem, because much of our use was under very low hydrogen generation rate conditions We were surprised that 30% to 35% increase in gas mileage was obtained when operating the system with a hydrogen output of only 30 to 50 milliliters per minute much less hydrogen than expected, by comparison with reports from HHO electrolysis system users The hydrogen flow rate output can be adjusted by changing the set-point temperature for the temp controller We had good operation at various set temps ranging from 170F to 195F The temp controller displays temperature in degrees C For that reason, we found this temp-conversion table helpful: CT.p65 Page 32 We used both CC/Al fuel and CA fuel Phillips Company Both fuels work well in our prototype We prefer CA fuel because no mixing (CC / Al / water) is needed, making the fueling process more convenient and with fewer variables that can affect performance of the system Another advantage of CA fuel is that it uses less than 2% CC (because of CC/Al bonding) whereas the use of CC/Al/water typically requires that 20% to 30% of the volume be made up of CC Clearly, CC provides an advantage in that less CC is needed Because less CC is needed when CA fuel is used, the heating rate can be better because there is less material in the cell to be heated, for a given amount of aluminum in the cell More details about CC / Al / water fuel can be found online at www.PhillipsCompany.4T.com/HYDROGEN.html more details about CA fuel can be found online at www.PhillipsCompany.4T.com/CA.pdf CT.p65 Page 33 How to evaluate this new H2 system Might you be interested to evaluate this new method of producing hydrogen? Please see the following information, online: Phillips Company Hydrogen and CC: www.PhillipsCompany.4T.com/HYDROGEN.html How to obtain Catalytic Carbon: www.PhillipsCompany.4T.com/MCC.pdf How to obtain Catalyzed Aluminum: www.PhillipsCompany.4T.com/MCA.pdf Hydrogen News: www.PhillipsCompany.4T com/PRH6.pdf Catalyzed Aluminum (CA) info: www.PhillipsCompany.4T.com/CA.pdf Hydrogen tech business model: www.PhillipsCompany.4t.com/bmH.pdf Phillips Company Email: hp@valliant.net, Tel 580 746 2430 CT.p65 Page 34 ...Contents Car Test Hydrogen On Demand Section Hydrogen Cell Initial Results, 2011 Can pure hydrogen (H2) replace HHO to increase MPG? Technology comparison; HHO system and... illustration O The only connection to the engine fuel system is shown ( red circle ) in the above figure The only additional connections to the engine are the 12 volt connections to the battery and to. .. 33 How to evaluate this new H2 system 34 CT.p65 Page Phillips Company Section -Hydrogen Cell Initial Results, 2011 CT.p65 Page Can pure hydrogen (H2) replace HHO to increase MPG? Phillips