RE: Can you construct a fuel cell car?

[Tom Snoblen <snoblen@ieee.org>]

Hi,

  Hydrogen stored as a gas dose not really have enough power density plus 
the danger of carrying around the high pressure bottles (I think you would 
have major problems finding and insurance company).  Liquid hydrogen is 
better for power density but is a pin to work with and you still will have 
an insurance problem.  You could store the hydrogen in metal but it is hard 
to get out again.  My former employer (Energy Conversion Devices) spend 
lots of money trying to get this to work without much luck.

If you want to build a fuel cell I would suggest a methanol cell can 
achieve a 90-95% conversion and methanol is no harder to work with than 
gasoline.


Tom   Snoblen

On Thursday, May 31, 2001 9:40 AM, Teoman Naskali [SMTP:TeoEV@hotmail.com] 
wrote:
> I am wondering is it possible for the individual to consturcut a fuelcell
> car with a 30.000 dollar budget?
> If you constructed a case (covering the whole back seat, the safest part 
of
> the car) out of fiberglass that would absorb the shock of a crash and in 
the
> middle you could have 2 or 3 bottles of hydrogen.
>
> You could use electrolyse to form hydrogen in to air tanks used by 
divers,
> (i dont know howmany (X) bars) and then you could have a compressor to
> compress it to a nother tank X bars at a time.
>
> So once you have the hydrogen in tank, how do you convert it to the 
precious
> volts and amps you want? Fuel cells do this but do they have one that can
> produce say 30kW? how do you regulate this? Most important could you 
build
> one to produce 30 kW?
>
>
> Just a thaught
> Probably not, but still...
>
> A. Teoman Naskali