Hydrogen powered lawn tractor?

Ran across this from a friend:
An aluminum/hdrogen fuel cell, to provide power for a motor vehicle

Forbes.com


I will tell you of a method of producing Hydrogen "On Demand." Simply take a stainless steel tank with water, add Sodium Hydroxide, which is common "Red Devil Lye" and then scrap aluminum. The reaction is immediate! The spent aluminum combines with all the Oxygen and falls to the bottom of the tank in the form of a fine powder.

The lye is never used up, although it will suffer a small loss over time through attrition and a little will need to be added occasionally. The result is that Hydrogen is released. Simply connect your generator unit (the stainless steel tank) to an air tank with a popoff valve, then add a valve and run the Hydrogen to the carb, or the air intake, and run your car on pure Hydrogen.

If you have a very small tank it will help a lot. If you produce enough, it will require no gas at all. Any excess Hydrogen will just be vented into the air and not hurt anything. The generator tank will need to be cleaned out ever week or two and is recycleable. Any scrap aluminum will work, even old beer cans, however, beer cans have a coating that slows the reaction and don't have a lot of mass.

A better solution is busted up aluminum transmission cases, etc. Here you have clean aluminum in bulk. In order to run your car on pure Hydrogen, the timing should be set to top dead center because it burns much quicker than gasoline. There are electronic units available on the net for under $40 that will accomplish this from inside your car, so you truly have a dual fuel system. THIS WORKS. Put a small amount in a test tube and prove it for yourself!

Wow, let go trade $100 bills for $1.00 while we are at it.
Do you have any idea how much electricity and energy it takes to make a pound of aluminum?
You are saving the environment by recycling the aluminum and burning gasoline.
This is all academic as you are going to blow yourself up, burn yourself with flame or burn yourself with the alkaline compounds. I didn't read anything about pressure relief valves and safe venting of excess hydrogen?
If you are really serious about hydrogen. Get some solar panels, wind turbines and an electrolysis system.
My sister is a RN and Paramedic. Fatherinlaw is a Firechief. Want some stories on some home brew tinker inventions that were based on good intentions. But built without a clue regarding the laws of physics, basic chemistry, metallurgy, electricity and mechanical safety.

I wondered about how you would cover a kettle and what kind of pressure would be involved. This advice seems to come out of the woodwork, like in the seventies: "block off some of the cylinders.." or three wheel cars or add water to combustion chamber. And all of the "he invented a 100mpg carburetor, but big oil companies bought his invention and buried it.."Leonard

Yep. I saw a show on PBS of all places,about hydrogen powering vehicles. Iceland has a goal or running all of their vehicles on it. They have all of their busses on it now. They have free geothermal heat as an energy source to make the stuff and they say that the technology is still so ineficient that they figure even with the free energy to make it,they are still 50 years from running all of their vehicles on it.

Had a guy a couple towns over who was getting free gasoline from a local junkyard as they removed gas tanks.

Had so much, he modified his oil burner to use gasoline instead.

Day it malfunctioned, what's just a puff back of some white smoke with an oil burner, when using gasoline moves one's house off it's foundation.

I wonder, I have a huge stainless steel tank that used to be a carbon tank for the soda system from BK. I bet it would make a heck of a base for a generation system.

All you need is a plastic soda bottle, a few ounces of The Works bathroom cleaner and a strip of aluminum foil. Mix it all together and you have all the excitement you will need. Have to be very careful with that though. Lots of mailboxes got missing because of that concoction.

Ya Right

So,,,,,how much energy does it take to get the aluminum mined?

I know it works. My cousin did that with his riding mower this summer. Fairly simple procedure. Briggs engine runs smoother on hydrogen than gas & has same power.

Wonder how a gallon of aluminum compares with a gallon of gas.

One gallon = 0.133680556 cubic feet.
Aluminum = 0.098 pounds per cubic inch.
12 x 12 x 12 x .098 = 169.344 pounds.
169.344 x .133680556 = 22.638 pounds.
22.638 pounds of aluminum per gallon.
At 50cents/pound you would still be over $11.30/gallon for aluminum.

And is the system more or less efficient running off aluminum.
Just how much hydrogen can be made from a gallon of aluminum.

Pooh Bear (aka Fluff For Brains)

Be better for the world if we spend our time breeding a grass that would only grow two inches tall. : ) Leonard