Hydrogen House

[rickoff]

Click this link to view an interactive diagram showing the actual system used for generating and utilizing Hydrogen to supply all energy needs of a building which is located about a half hour's drive from where I live. Pathways to a Sustainable Future

Keep in mind that this is an actual system which is currently in use, and not just a concept. Some great ideas here for anyone to incorporate in a new or existing home. I plan to visit the building sometime in the next few weeks, and will take along a camera. If others are interested, I will gladly post many of the photos on my SkyDrive and provide a link to them in this thread.

Best to all,

Rick

[ashtweth]

Hi Rick, thanks for the data, have a look at our Eco housing design on the Panacea site, there is a hydrogen one there too. Many more..this will prob make a good edition, will check it out thanks man.
Eco housing
(solar hydrogen power is there)

Ash

[michaelpaul]

Thanks to both of you for the info. Rick, looking forward to those pic's.
Mike

[rickoff]

Pics and info

Sorry it has taken so long for me to dig up the info on this project. Today was the first day that I have driven to Wiscasset in several years. I had a dental appointment there, so figured this would be a good chance to find out more about the Chewonki Hydrogen Project. The Chewonki Foundation, in partnership with the Hydrogen Energy Center of Portland, Maine, has developed the world’s first publicly accessible direct high-pressure hydrogen system. The project is designed to explore the use of hydrogen as a storage medium for all renewable energy sources. It does this while also serving a functional purpose as a backup energy system for Chewonki’s Center for Environmental Education. What makes the Chewonki system so unique is an Avalance Hydrofiller electrolyzer (built by Avalence, LLC) that uses renewable electricity to produce very pure hydrogen at 2500 pounds per square inch (psi) without the use of a compressor. In electrolysis water molecules are split into hydrogen gas (H2) and oxygen gas (O2) by passing an electric current through water. The hydrogen gas is collected and the oxygen gas is released to the atmosphere. The high-pressure hydrogen which the electrolyzer unit produces is stored in DOT-approved “T” bottles, where it stays until the building needs backup power generation. During power outages, three 1kW fuel cells use this hydrogen to produce electricity, heat, and pure drinking water for the 11,000 square foot Center for Environmental Education (CEE)building for up to four days. In addition to keeping the building from freezing, this power is used to keep the environment stable for non-releasable Outreach wildlife kept at the Center. The only byproducts of electrical production with fuel cells are heat and water - the same amount of water that was used to create the hydrogen. The electrolyzer unit and Hydrogen storage tanks are kept in a shed placed some distance from the CEE building. The Chewonki system uses eight tanks of hydrogen, similar to helium balloon tanks. “Typical systems require a compressor if they want to attain these pressures,” claims Avalence’s system engineer Martin Shimko. “Compressors dramatically increase cost and complexity and can introduce impurities. Our system creates extremely pure hydrogen directly at high pressure.” Technology

Below are some photos of the components:

The Hydrogen Shed, showing the Avalence hydrolizer cabinet.

An inside view of the cabinet displays the high pressure electrolyzer cells. A 4.5 kilowatt (kW) PV solar array on the rooftop of the CEE building is used to power the electrolyzer. The Avalence Hydrofiller 15 is designed to produce 15 standard cubic feet (scf) per hour, draws 2 kilowatts per hour of production, and uses 1/10 gallon of water per hour.

The 8 hydrogen storage tanks provide a total storage capacity of 2080 scf at a pressure of 2265 psi and are separated from the electrolyzer unit by a cement wall. Notice that the sides of the shed have spaced-apart vertical wood slats that allow floor to ceiling ventilation to the outdoors, thus preventing the possibility of hydrogen gas accumulation inside the shed if any leak were to develop.

Three Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) hydrogen fuel cells, each rated at 1kw, are used to produce heat, water, and electricity from the stored hydrogen. Producing 1kW for an hour uses about 31.5 scf of hydrogen. Up to two cartridges can be removed from a unit for servicing, and the unit will still produce 800 watts. These fuel cells have an expected service life of 22,000 hours. Each fuel cell produces about 2/10 gallon of water per hour during use. Using the total of hydrogen stored, 14 gallons of pure water is produced. The fuel cells can convert about 75% of the energy stored in Hydrogen to electricity. The remainder is converted to heat. The fuel cells will operate between 140 and 200 degrees Farenheit once warmed up.

The total costs for this development project were about $250,000, and about $150,000 was for material and technology costs. While this is certainly way more than than anyone would consider spending for a home system, the project does prove that a home hydrogen system is feasible. To be affordable, common sense approaches using cost-effective materials and ingenuity are needed.

Below is a link to an interactive poster that shows how several renewable energy methods can be used together for a totally independent homestead. Click on any area of interest for further information.

Pathways to a Sustainable Future


Best to all,

Rick

[brenie]

Hello Rick, many thanks for your report, as always very interesting.

Regards, Bren.

[Moe R]

This guy has a pretty cool set-up
YouTube - Solar hydrogen home Michael Strizki

[h20power]

Hi Rick,

Here are some video's of interest that you might not have seen before:
YouTube - Stan Meyers Estate Water Fuel Cell #1
YouTube - Stan Meyers Estate Water Fuel Cell #2
YouTube - Stan Meyers Estate Water Fuel Cell #3

One of these I have never seen before, the plate cell one, and even I learned something new from these video's. Enjoy!

Just think if you add in Meyer's work to the mix you cut out all of the other components in the set shown of the working system, it would go from water purification, to WC/GP/WFI to HICE or Fuel Cell, to inverter, to load. Oh and controlling electronics will also be needed but ones to control Meyer's systems. Now with the Fuel Cells your going to have to replace them every two and a half years but it will be oh so quite, something us old guys love So the cost of such a system goes way down with Meyer's work added in. By the way where can I find those fuel cells and how much do they cost? Plus I would need their way of separating the hydrogen from the oxygen too. I don't know the life of an HICE being run 24/7 but that is noisy and has moving parts, but it will give people other options if the cost is too high for the hydrogen fuel cell. I found this on HICE: http://www.utexas.edu/research/cem/i...wis%20HICE.pdf


h2opower.

[rickoff]

@ H2O - Thanks for the video links. I had seen earlier videos after they found Stan's car an gear, but had not seen these newer ones. I wonder why Orion has dilly-dallied on acquiring this stuff. Even considering current advances, this stuff is still priceless and has much info to yield. Say, did you notice the crack in the gas processor housing, as seen in video #3?

Yes, if you were to run an internal combustion engine on the stored hydrogen you could use it to drive a generator and also circulate heated water through a household radiator system to heat the home.

The 3 fuel cells for the Chewonki project are ReliOn Independence 1000 (Model J48C). No price information is given at the company website, though you could contact the sales department at the link given there. Test reports on the unit, prepared by the Center for Fuel Cell Research and Applications, is available here: CFCRA - ReliOn Independence 1000 (J48C)

@ brenie - You're welcome Brenie. While the Chewonki project was the first such Hydrogen project in the United States, having been installed several years ago, the state of the art has certainly advanced since then, making it possible to use Hydrogen relatively inexpensively for several uses.

@ Moe R - Thanks for the video link, Moe. This fellow has something quite similar to the Chewonki project, but with twice the solar array power and a much larger storage capacity. There's no doubt that such systems could be utilized by people for homesteads, although most of us could not afford the high initial cost. I'm thinking that there is an even better, and far less costly way, to store energy for later use. It requires no storage batteries or inverter, no fuel cell or electrolyzer, and no storage tanks. There is no volatile substance or gas to be concerned with. I talked about this method in another thread, but for some reason it did not generate much interest from readers. Perhaps no one fully considered the possibilities and the advantages. I first thought about the idea while up inside a steeple tower in a church some 30 years ago. I was at the church rebuilding their 100 year old tracker pipe organ, and a man who was working on the non-functioning tower clock had asked if I would take a look at the clock and see if I had any advice to offer. When I went up in the tower with him and looked at the various components, I realized it was very much like the sytems used in a grandfather's clock that was in my home. It used gearing, a pendulum, an escape mechanism, and a system of weights to maintain a governed speed of rotation. The fastest turning gear (when the clock ran) caught my eye right away, as I could see it was rotating at several hundred rpm, and that it was large enough and heavy enough to drive an electrical generator at a steady speed with no problem whatsoever. The weights that were suspended to cause rotation were hoisted by hand power, of course, just as in a grandfather's clock, and the clock would run until such time as the weights descended to the bottom of the tower's base platform. The taller the tower, of course, the longer that period would be. I immediately thought to myself that instead of re-hoisting the weights by hand power, what if you used available wind power to hoist a series of smaller weights, one at a time? Let's assume you hoist 6 one-pound weights by this manner, and that when the 6th weight is fully hoisted that it releases all 6 of the weights to fall, while engaging a mechanism that would hoist one 5 pound weight to the top. The 1 pound weights would then be individually re-hoisted to repeat this sequence, until 6 five-pound weights were at the top, whereupon the 6 five-pound weights would be released in unison to fall while hoisting a 25 pound weight. The process continues until you have whatever amount of weight hoisted that you deem sufficient to provide the output torque you require - say, for example, a 100 pound weight. The desired rpm for the generator drive (lets say 1855 rpm, which is perfect to drive an AC induction motor to generate directly usable 110 volt, 60 cycle AC power equivalent to the motor's hp rating) can easily be derived through gearing and governance of the "clock" mechanism output. A 5 hp motor would put out close to 4 kilowatts, which is enough to power a homestead. See this post for more information on using an induction motor this way: http://www.energeticforum.com/37441-post7.html

As you can see, the method that I suggest uses mechanical storage of the derived energy, which can then be used on an as-needed basis. You can derive the energy to hoist the weights from direct windmill coupling, or by using wind generated electric and/or solar array generated electric power to operate a hoisting motor. The weights can be made from inexpensive sections of PVC pipe filled with water or sand to provide the exact weight desired. A stationary bicycle, housed at the base of your tower, could be used to drive an auxilliary weight hoisting system during times of low sunlight or wind, or to boost storage at any desired time by providing increased hoisting efficiency. The beauty of this system is that it is low-tech, relatively inexpensive to build and maintain, and highly efficient. What's more, such a system could be built from scavenged and homemade parts if necessary, which would be immensely important to anyone at a future time of upheaval when either other systems and parts are not available, or you have no way to buy them. Have I piqued anyone's interest?

Rick

[Aaron]

World Hydrogen View

Roger Billings is a wealth of info on Hydrogen.

World Hydrogen View book of his I think is online free.

[sucahyo]

The beauty of this system is that it is low-tech, relatively inexpensive to build and maintain, and highly efficient. What's more, such a system could be built from scavenged and homemade parts if necessary, which would be immensely important to anyone at a future time of upheaval when either other systems and parts are not available, or you have no way to buy them. Have I piqued anyone's interest?

I do. Whenever I can't replicate or can't understand I keep quiet, but I will try to save everything posted. Keep sharing .

[rickoff]

Thanks for your interest, sucahyo. The original post about my mechanical energy storage idea can be found here:

http://www.energeticforum.com/36247-post2.html

If people are interested in learning more about this method, I would probably start a separate discussion thread, as this really has little do do with the topic of this thread, other than the fact that the electrical output of the generator, derived from mechanically stored energy, could be used to power an electrolyzer to make hydrogen.

Rick

[sucahyo]

Thanks .