Mad Max Wind Turbine Powered Hydrogen Electrolysis

The concept is to have a real decent size wind turbine dedicated to powering a hydrogen electolysis unit. I'm thinking that with the right sized setup you get get at least one good fuel cell fill-up per week.

But I'm more of an electronics oriented guy. I'm conceptual with some of this other stuff, like hydrogen systems. I'm hoping for some feasibility advice in such a system.

Say you could build a decent sized turbine for roughly $1000, that produces a good solid 2,500kw on average. For this system you wouldnt even need the battery banks, as the generator power would feed directly into the electrolysis unit at a constant.

So from there it becomes a question of what would be required of the rest of the system, to be able?

I suppose the 2 ordeals are capturing, compressing and storing the hydrogen gas. And then, adapting a vehicle to be able to run it.
But estimating this side of things is where I need help.

For compressing the fuel I'm guessing the right air compressor pump could be outfitted with wind blade power??

I did look arond and find formula for hydrogen electrolysis:

Electrolysis of water produces hydrogen and oxygen gases at different electrodes.

2H2O(l) --> 2H2(g) + O2(g)

Hydrogen is collected at the cathode.
Oxygen is collected at the anode.
wiki.answers.com...

More:
en.wikipedia.org...

Hydrogen has 134,500 Btu/kg.

It takes about 50 kWh of electricity to manufacture one kilogram of hydrogen. One kWh is equal to 3,412 BTUs, so it takes 170,600 Btu of electricity to make 134,500 Btu of hydrogen.

Or you get back about 78% of the energy back.
answers.yahoo.com...

I suppose the 2 ordeals are capturing, compressing and storing the hydrogen gas. And then, adapting a vehicle to be able to run it.
But estimating this side of things is where I need help.

For compressing the fuel I'm guessing the right air compressor pump could be outfitted with wind blade power??

I'm not sure that the average air compressor would be good for compressing hydrogen. As the compressor compresses the gas, it produce heat (Charle's law) and it would react with the oxygen in any air it would encounters producing too much energy (remember the Hindenberg). Wiki about hydrogen compressor.

The basic idea is good, but I think that the storage of hydrogen is problematic. I'll be checking this thread to see if anyone comes up with a good design.

This system could be adapted to wind power.

Solar-Hydrogen house

He's done the same thing, only using solar.

Basically, instead of storing his energy in batteries he's using hydrogen tanks through tap water electrolysis.

The article quotes a system cost of half a million dollars $(500,000), not sure if that includes all the development costs, or if you could homebrew one significantly cheaper.

Check the second page of the article, there is a link to the guy's company website. Sure you could get some good ideas from there.

[edit on 28-4-2009 by hotrodturbo7]

[edit on 28-4-2009 by hotrodturbo7]

Here is a web page address that clears up all the mystery about the proven new microwave of salt water claim ( given near the middle of this web page & titled: "Water-related discovery" ) of more efficiently producing hydrogen from salt water by using only microwave directed energy.

This method was accidently discovered just a few years ago by John Kanzius.

en.wikipedia.org...