Build Your Own Backyard Fuel Cell

"....a real, sustainable achievement that makes its own hydrogen in a cedar shed out back."

Remarkable achievement.

"Now the system, which they built for around $50,000, taps any surplus solar electricity to fill a 500-gallon hydrogen fuel tank, enough reserve for about 14 days' worth of power."

Hope he isn't around when it BLOWS!

I second that. The part about adding a second reserve tank is really scary. Murphy's first law:"If anything can go wrong it will go wrong". I can't imagine anyone deliberately blowing up a 500 gallon hydrogen fuel tank, BUT then again could anyone have imagined a passenger aircraft being deliberately flown into the world trade center, twice!

Another problem as I see it, is the relative cost terms translated to ZAR (South African Rand). This would work out to nearly R400 000.00. With seven of us in the house my electricity bill works out to R800.00 per month. (Roughly $110.00). Effectively I would have to run the device for about 37 years before it became economically viable. Of course, the rand/dollar exchange rate varies from day to day, but this is roughly the gist of the matter.

"Jason Lerner, an alternative-energy expert and family friend, installed the home's photo­voltaic panels (cost: around $13,400) in the front yard. The cells pump out 1.6 kW during the sunniest hours of the day, which is just under a typical load for the Friend family."

So if they are "home" there is precious little energy to store in any case. And they say the 500 gal of H₂ at 200 psi is enough for about 14 days of reserve power, so the numbers don't add well.

For only a few thousand dollars more, they could have bought a small modern, quiet, gasoline powered 3 kW generator and more batteries.

For maybe $10,000 more or so, they could have bought a small electric start diesel generator and even more batteries, and a control circuit to start the diesel automatically when the batteries were getting low.

"Stuart Island, an off-the-grid Pacific Northwest paradise in Washington's Puget Sound."

At the sight they describe, a windmill (and more batteries) sounds like a good bet to produce some power and accomplish more than they did a lot cheaper, and just as green.

For storage, even compressed air storage with a air driven generator would have been more economical than making hydrogen, compressing it, storing it and then feeding it into a fuel cell.

Everything was existing off-the-shelf commercially available equipment, so the only thing proved was that if you have a lot of money, and don't really care how you spend it, you too can make something inefficient!

Greg

How to agree?

The title is not covering the content.

What is green in the whole installation?

Stainless steel tubing as H-ions are the corrosive part of acid. H₂ has nothing to do with H⁺

Why not trying to store the captured heat in a large water tank which can be heated with the excess power from the suggested windmill.

Gwen,

"What is green in the whole installation?"

The only thing I can see in the "backyard fuel cell" is that he does not have to run a generator (much) ..... on re-reading the text, on a bright sunny day the installed solar panels provide just under what they require. That indicates if they are home, even on a bright sunny day they are running at a deficit, not to mention a cloudy day, so somewhere, out in shed, or behind a big rock is a regular generator: you can be on it!

As to the stainless steel tubing, I assume they are referencing hydrogen embrittlement for which certain stainless alloys would be the proper choice to prevent it.

Capturing waste power in the form of heat would certainly be a good choice once the batteries were all topped off.

I just thought he could have accomplished much more for a lot less money and still done it "green".

Regards, Greg

It would also be an interesting way to run a desalinization plant. It's about as close to "free" energy as you can get. Not perfect but the only CO2 emissions are involved in manufacturing and transporting components. I wonder what the chemical constituents of the salts would be. Can they be recovered and used for something?

Green and battery do not go together. The problem with batteries is there is an enormous

amount of pollution in production. When the batteries are spent you have a nice box of hazardous materials to get rid of, not very green. This home made fuel cell method may be expensive now but the cost will come down and it is green.

How toxic is the production of fuel cells?

And the PV cell production?

But where is the problem: We export all production facilities to Asia, where they surprisingly meet the local rules (with less investments), so now the production of all these things can be called "green".

The water that needs to go into the Hydrogen generator will need to be treated.

It all comes down to the same problem: which investment does bring the best results in green solutions, in reducing the use of fossil fuels, the hydrogen solution does rank first.

Prototype is always more expensive than the run, just the way it is. You'll be smiling in four years when commercial cells using hydrogen stored in a solid and no it is not at -456F. If you want to know more there was a cover story about it. The guy who invented it he won a Noble Prize in chemistry for it a year ago. I believe he is working with the Energiser Bunny to create micro fuel cells to run your car, drill or laptop. Solid to gas make hydrogen fuel cells for more safer and economical.

Hello, I helped install this system, and there is more info available at www.siei.org. I will try to answer some of the questions posted here. Last we checked it would cost over 2 million USD to bring grid power to the island. The project seemed more economically viable than buying an SUV. The goal of the project was to create Hydrogen using the sun, and use it as a fuel for the "backup" generator, the fuel cell, when there was extended cloudy periods. Yes a honda generator or a wind generator would have been much easier and less expensive, but the point was to do something different, make it work, make it easier for other people, and get people talking about it. Yes it isn't very efficient, considering we are not capturing the heat, but there is another way of interpreting the data. The batteries are charged by the sun by 11:00 in the morning, at that point the Solar charge controller reduces the charge to the batteries. If there are no loads, this energy is "wasted", so at this point making Hydrogen is using otherwise "wasted energy" making it 100% effecient.?. ---What is green in the whole installation? We are making the fuel for our backup generator using the sun. ----That indicates if they are home, even on a bright sunny day they are running at a deficit, not to mention a cloudy day, so somewhere, out in shed, or behind a big rock is a regular generator: you can be on it! The system is designed to take care of all the house loads first, and then the Hydrogen makers will kick in based on battery voltage ----Prototype is always more expensive than the run, Exactly!! that is why this project happened, to pave the road for others. www.siei.org