FUEL CELL in a Micro… RS4 HPI

[PandaBear]

Don’t you just hate charging batteries for your ‘lekkie RC?

Nitro engine too noisy for your neighbours??

Well… lookie here…

Can’t beat a FUEL CELL in a Micro RS4!!! :D:D

(oh, don’t bother emailing HPI about it just yet…)

Edited by – PandaBear on 19 May 2003 12:43:50

[micro_Amps]

Looks like it runs on a liquid hydrocarbon, probably ethanol or something like that judging by the clear plastic tubing and the filter and little tap.
Some people are crazy
:)uA

[barto_85]

i dont know if its just my computer, the pics aren’t working for me.

[PandaBear]

This is a “borrowed” pix… I think they just renamed their filez.

[PandaBear]

Quote:

Looks like it runs on a liquid hydrocarbon, probably ethanol or something like that judging by the clear plastic tubing and the filter and little tap.

Not sure… either ethanol or maybe some liquified gaseous HC?
(pressurised, so you don’t need a fuel pump!)

Checkout the funny thing over the motor too… what is it,
a vapouriser maybe? Using heat from the motor… or would it
just supercool the motor. 🙂

Didn’t someone sell a fuelcell retrofit kit for your mobile phone,
you were meant to be able to refuel it by replacing the little
cartridge of fuel about size of a A battery or so?

[jamiekulhanek]

Cool, looks a bit big and heavy, i wonder how much current it can supply.

[PandaBear]

Theory behind fuel cells is that they can pump
the electrons as fast as the fuel is available…
so maybe the limitation is in the fuel supply.

Fuel cells power experimental 1:1 cars too!

[Admin]

Hey Panda,

I have been wanting to get my hands on a fuel cell for a while, I study mech eng at UTS we don’t get to play with kewl stuff like that!!

If you want to know more about the fuel cells then check out fuelcellstoday.com and for all the aussies hydrogen.org.au

I am most interested in where that photo came from

As far as I know there is only one fuel cell manufacture in Aussie, Vic but they make solid state fuels cells from ceramics, to brittle for anything moving, my guess is that it is a PEM, (proton exchane membrane fuel cell) probably runing off methanol. Can you tell me more??

fuel cells are very kewl stuff. general motor crysler, mercedes benz and plenty of other big motor companies are spending billions on the development of fuels cell in cars, there are buses that already run on them. and prototype cars even eleictric bicycle!! I want build one of them!!

They are very environmentally friendly, they can run on pure hydrogen and only exhast water!! i.e zero pollution and are very effient at doing so. 60% is normal an internal combustion engine runs at about 20% effic. The one thing that stops mass production of these is hygrogen storage. Hydrogen is a very spacey gases i.e given the same amount of volume as a cars fuel tank you would only make it 40 – 50 Km not very practical but there are many solutions to this but just too costly at the moment and then there is the retro fitting every fuel station in the world!! with hydrogen and supplying them all.

I am a big fan of fuels and what they can do <--- as you can see. So Can you tell me more about this photo??? you have got me going here!!;O)

[Admin]

I had written fuelcellstoday.com it should have been fuelcelltoday.com ;o)

[micro_Amps]

Yeh I am a big fan of FCs too. I would also be interested to know where this originated from.
:)uA

CeramicFuelCells in Melbourne focus on medium to large scale power production plants, so their stuff would be too huge.
The thing on the motor is probably a fuel heater.
It looks like it runs a liquid fuel because the fuel lines are not the pressure type.
PEM sounds right Perri, they can take a certain amount of impurities inherent in liquid hydrocarbons. Some of the other types require perfect purity in their fuel supply, which would make it difficult to easily refuel.

How ’bout some details Panda.

[PandaBear]

Quote:

I have been wanting to get my hands on a fuel cell for a while, I study mech eng at UTS we don’t get to play with kewl stuff like that!!

You’re probably in the wrong uni, maaate. :smiley2:
Whilst I was hanging around Melbourne Uni, the auto eng dept there
had a Ford Capri running on hydrogen. Also managed to get my hands
on their gas-turbine running on kero, then there was a bench engine
whose compression could be altered whilst its running and we had
a go on the lab’s Mitsu AstronII bolted to a dyno which we revv’d
until the headers glowed red. Rotary engine’s innards? Boring…

Quote:

I am most interested in where that photo came from

That was shown at the 2003 Shizouka Toy Show.
Apart from that I don’t know any more.
Don’t even know who made it… :dead:

Quote:

They are very environmentally friendly, they can run on pure hydrogen and only exhast water!! i.e zero pollution

Depends on who you ask. If you read the Californian “Zero Emissions”
bill, they even consider H2O an exhaust/byproduct so this don’t
count as a zero-emissions-vehicle, only a Low-E-V.

Quote:

The one thing that stops mass production of these is hygrogen storage. Hydrogen is a very spacey gases i.e given the same amount of volume as a cars fuel tank you would only make it 40 – 50 Km not very practical but there are many solutions to this but just too costly at the moment and then there is the retro fitting every fuel station in the world!! with hydrogen and supplying them all.

That… and the slight “Hindenburg” PR disaster. :smiley2:

[Admin]

Well that proves it then doesn’t it!!! I’m at the wrong uni. I’ve actually know that for a while now ;o) UTS is a concrete square with no windows on the eng. depart. no kewl chill out areas and definately no kewl cars like you have just meantioned grrrr!!

hmmm yes the hindenburg. . . shame not everyone realises it was the paint that caught fire first and that hydrogen is a much safer gas than most already in use hydrocarbon fuels.

flies in storm –> electrostatic build up —> SPARK –> paint/fabric mixture combusted made hole in fabric then as hydrogen escaped into atmosphere the hydrogen burned —> hydrogen not responseable for disaster ;o)

californians??? I’m sure they are not trying to say that water as an emission is abad thing. still zero pollution in my mind. and surely theres they are just stating that something is still being produced as a bi-product

[jamiekulhanek]

I want a fuel cell in my BCG now.

[PandaBear]

Quote:

Well that proves it then doesn’t it!!! I’m at the wrong uni. I’ve actually know that for a while now ;o) UTS is a concrete square with no windows on the eng. depart. no kewl chill out areas and definately no kewl cars like you have just meantioned grrrr!!

Here in Vic, Melb Uni is right smack in the city so land is at a premium. Supposedly Monash who’s further out in the stix is better for some engineering studies, as their facilities are even better.

I didn’t hang around Melb too long… but:

Scariest tutorial/lecture?
We were all sitting in a lab, with naked wires everywhere that were live with 445V 3-phase power all around. Everybody was too scared to move much…!! 😯

Coolest demo?
There’s this big huge transformer (ok, its not that big, size of laser printer?). This does (I think) 600,000V… so we plugged it in. Then it hums… then it goes ‘brrrrr’ shivering… then this dark blue corona appears, gradually turning to brighter blue. :smiley16:

All this and its not even passing any current yet – I didn’t say we *connected* it to anything but 240V mains!!! 😀

Quote:

hmmm yes the hindenburg. . . shame not everyone realises it was the paint that caught fire first and that hydrogen is a much safer gas than most already in use hydrocarbon fuels.
…hydrogen not responseable for disaster ;o)

Well, saying that is like saying if you try light a match inside a tank half-full of petrol… it won’t burn either.

Its the air, yup, blame the oxygen. :smiley2:

Actually me thinks the Hindenburg wasn’t an explosion, it was more of an “Implosion”. Because the oxidising hydrogen will cause enough vacuum to pull more air into the cavity… like the “squeee-pop!” when you light a testtube full of H2.

[jamiekulhanek]

Hydrogen burns invisible (i think), when the hindenberg went up, there were bright orange flames….becos the covering had an additive in it that was also used in rocket fuel.:p

[PandaBear]

Quote:

Hydrogen burns invisible (i think), when the hindenberg went up, there were bright orange flames….becos the covering had an additive in it that was also used in rocket fuel.:p

I believe it was some nitrocellulose compound, similar stuff to the epoxy dope you use when fibreglassing. I think the airship’s covering was either silk or paper, probably silk.

Most alcohols burn with an invisible flame too… especially methanol – prime ingredient of gas car fuel. The idiots who smoke while playing gas RC… haha they’ll never get to see what burns them.

Powdered paper or powdered graphite/carbon also burns amazingly well.

[Aaron]

The other interesting fact is that the reason the thing burned so hot was actually the magnesium and other metals in the coating (ie that Dope) that gave the dirigible the silver finish.

Edited by – Aaron on 22 May 2003 17:21:47

--
Site Owner Guy.

[PandaBear]

Ahh, but the germans didn’t really care much about public liability back then & magnesium was nice and lightweight (pre Titanium!)… witness the 1955 LeMans. :smiley2:

The rest of the fun pix are here:
http://members.aol.com/healeypics/lemans.html

[jamiekulhanek]

I learnt that ping pong balls are very flammable by accident last night 🙂

[perriscope]

did you make a smoke bomb?

alfoil ping pong ball??

[jamiekulhanek]

Nah i was sitting in my room bored stiff, and i got into one of those burn-stuff-cause-its-fun moods, i didnt expect it to burst into flames and emit lots of black smoke.

[perriscope]

Just read this article and it reminded me of this thread and we all kept going on about how good fuel cells aka a Hydrogen based economy would be. . . well seems to have a major down side to it that they will need to investage/ fix ..

here is the article from fuelcelltoday.com

http://www.fuelcelltoday.com/FuelCellToday/IndustryInformation/IndustryInformationExternal/NewsDisplayArticle/0,1602,3020,00.html

man thats a loooooooooong link hope it works
:p

[perriscope]

Just read this article and it reminded me of this thread and we all kept going on about how good fuel cells aka a Hydrogen based economy would be. . . well seems to have a major down side to it that they will need to investage/ fix ..

here is the article from fuelcelltoday.com

http://www.fuelcelltoday.com/FuelCellToday/IndustryInformation/IndustryInformationExternal/NewsDisplayArticle/0,1602,3020,00.html

man thats a loooooooooong link hope it works
:p

[PandaBear]

Fuel cells don’t necessarily need to use H2 as fuel, they can use any gaseous hydrocarbon as well.

Conversely, you can also ‘burn’ H2 in a conventional piston engine – its a bit like converting it to run on natural gas or LPG. This is what BMW is currently studying, but its hard to sell H2 cars unless there’s enough refuelling infrastructure to support the vehicles.

The beauty of fuel cells is the ability to convert a fuel direct to electrical energy, without having to burn it thru some mechanical engine then run a generator/dynamo/alternator to create electricity. This is very inefficient.

[perriscope]

yes I know,

I just thought I’d add that article to the discussion as I have never heard anyone say anything bad, environmental wise about fuel cells/hydrogen economy.

check it out fuel cell on ebay a huge 3Kw just a mere $40,000 USD!!!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2538187309&category=11771

and

you can get a zinc air fuel cell for your phone maybe you could slap one in a rc car??

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3030033364&category=20368

doesn’t look like it is rechargable?? you just buy new cartrige which sounds strange for a fuel cell. might buy one and experiment hee hee

[PandaBear]

Quote:

you can get a zinc air fuel cell for your phone maybe you could slap one in a rc car??

doesn’t look like it is rechargable?? you just buy new cartrige which sounds strange for a fuel cell. might buy one and experiment hee hee

A fuelcell is not a rechargeable battery… 🙂

With the cellphone ones, I believe you just buy a little butane cartridge size of a A-cell battery, and just plug that in.

But gee, its been years since I saw those ad’d in Popular Mechanics, definitely haven’t seen them around lately nor locally otherwise I’d have grabbed a few for experimenting too. :smiley2:

[perriscope]

hmmm yes,

your right again what i type doesn’t alway come the way it should 🙁

find it strange because I thought the zinc-air fuel cell had a reversable process so why not make it so you can plug it into a power point. hmmmm this link might help

http://www.metallicpower.com/pdf/backupdata.pdf

A catrige of butane doesn’t go with what I understand to be a zinc-air fuel cell I thought zinc was the fuel and due to electrolysis can reform the zinc from zinc oxide. DAMIT I’m going to ask him now whats in the cartrige 🙂

If butane is, then it sounds more like a PEMFC, shouldn’t believe everything written on ebay
🙂

I was think the cartrige was full of zinc pellets. So I was thinking what a waste, reform them . . . anyhows soon find out 😀

[PandaBear]

Oh, OK… sorry – I missed the “zinc” bit.

A zinc-air battery is not really a “fuel cell”. Its more of a secondary battery… as it can/must be recharged. Zinc to zinc-oxide reaction is fully reversible.

A true fuel-cell takes the hydrocarbon fuel and burns it straight into electrical energy, like an engine makes kinetic energy. They are a primary cell – keep feeding it the fuel and it’ll keep running forever, you don’t need to charge it. And when the current drain stops, the oxidisation process should stop too.

I’ve seen zinc-air packs for phones but these are usually sold as disposable “1 week’s use” battery packs for business travellers. These have some airholes that you unseal when you use the cell, and then they have a working life of about 2-3 mths or something. They’re not meant to be recharged.

There’s another group that built a real fuel-cell for phones that used little butane cartridges. These held pure liquefied butane, much like ciggy lighter gas. Supposedly you could buy new cartridges from any USA 7/11… 🙂

[PandaBear]

Excerp from an article in The Age, full article is Here.

Quote:

Peter Dixon, senior technical specialist, Toshiba Australia, says the main aim with notebook battery manufacturing has been to improve the power-to-weight ratio, providing higher capacity at lower weights – which is essential for the mobile computing user.

Li-ion batteries weigh half as much as NiCads, but cost two to three times more, not least because they contain a circuit board to prevent overcharging. “They’re very volatile,” explains Bungate. “If they overheat and explode, they burn like magnesium – you can’t put them out.”

The latest battery technology, lithium polymer, has further reduced weight.

Toshiba’s latest Portege notebooks are the first to include this type of battery. While providing the same performance as Li-ion, lithium polymer batteries are only about the thickness of a credit card, and there’s more flexibility in the shape they can take. According to Toshiba, the whole casing of a laptop can theoretically now be a battery.

Despite these advances, the operating duration of a notebook battery appears to have changed remarkably little. New Li-ion ultra-high capacity batteries can bump this up to six to eight hours, but these are extra external batteries about the size of the notebook itself.

Breaking this barrier appears to depend on the fuel cell, a technology that has helped power NASA space missions since the 1960s and could offer an incredible energy density of 1000 watts/kg. Early developments focused on clean-energy applications, such as electric engines for cars, as the only byproduct of fuel-cell power is water. But attention is now turning to electronics too.

Basically, fuel cells use hydrogen to create electricity using a PEM (polymer electrolyte membrane), typically a sheet of platinum. This acts as the catalyst for a chemical reaction that separates electrons, the source of electricity, from hydrogen – which is now positively charged and combines with negatively charged oxygen atoms to form water.

The main problem for portable electronics has been size. A very large surface area or tank has been required to create sufficient reactions.

At least two approaches based on nanotechnology are providing answers. Neah Power Systems in the US is using a porous silicon PEM, allowing the reactions to occur in a denser, smaller area. NEC, on the other hand, is using carbon nanohorns (variations of carbon atoms) dusted with platinum particles.

Claims for how long a single fuel cell cartridge will last range up to days and weeks. But Toshiba claims its current prototype fuel cell, which powered a notebook at this year’s CeBit technology fair in Hanover, operates for about five hours with 50cc of methanol (the fuel most developers use to provide the hydrogen).

There are still many obstacles to overcome before we start running notebooks all day on a couple of AA-sized fuel cells. Methanol is a flammable fluid and, unless made safe enough, it is unlikely fuel cells will be allowed in places like aircraft cabins, especially in today’s security-conscious travelling climate.

Nevertheless, manufacturers are racing to commercialise fuel cells, and both NEC and Toshiba expect theirs will be in devices some time next year. Significantly, Intel invested in Neah earlier this year.

[VR-4]

thats some crazy stuff but i seen crazyer. like when rc car action made the worlds fastest micro rs4 by straping 3 of the big black rockit eng’s on it and let it rip down a 1/4 mile and it did a low 5 lmao.

but on that rs4 how long can you drive it befor you need more fule like 3 years?

[Racer9]

They make some fuel cell car kits but never seen one quite like this!

[perriscope]

do you have a link to such a “car kit”?

[jamiekulhanek]

There is no skill in strappin rocket motors onto a car, but it would be cool.
I like this fuel cell stuff sounds cool.

I want to power my mini z from li-ion cells, but getting 4.8v is tricky.

[perriscope]

Terminator 3 runs on a FC, he must “breath” oxygen just like humans now, hee hee.

. . . . movie only states he contains hydrogen

[Author]

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