Dear Sir
From what I have read, the future of hydrogen generation is through thermochemical separation of water (using perhaps an iodine and sulphur closed loop process), with the most cost effective provision of heat being through nuclear fusion. This means of production appears to be absent in the article. Could you please refer me to any past articles that will clarify this.

regards

Phil Clark
Senior Environmental Consultant

After reading the article on hydrogen in the September issue of Machine Design I thought there should some mention of the basic cause driving the cost of producing hydrogen. It's the cost of energy in general. If you're trying to get hydrogen from water you must put at least the heat of combustion into the process, about 136 kcal. per mole. Taking hydrogen out of other substances (hydrocarbons) require a little less energy, but you have to deal with other substances, such as sulphur, or CO2, etc.
It seems that the cost of energy from hydrogen will always be the cost of the energy source plus the cost of the process to make hydrogen.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't go after hydrogen. It may be an
excellent way to store energy, especially if your using a fuel cell, that may have a high efficiency that could offset the high cost of hydrogen.

Bill Anderson

You might be interested in doing an article about technology that enables a gas engine to run using diesel fuel with much greater efficiency and far cleaner exhaust. The U.S.Marine Corps is already applying this technology in hundreds of their unmanned aviation vehicles. It can vastly improve the performance of any piston-driven combustible engine. Much higher fuel efficiency and environmental standards are achievable with it.
Considering that diesel is cheaper to refine and safer to use than gas, this technology will facilitate a switch to a diesel economy. It is a solution for tomorrow's energy crisis.
If you are interested, I will send you more information about it.

James Bauernschmidt

Kind of a belated response to Mr. Bauerschmidt:
There is work being done in these areas, but here is all I know so far.
1. There is the question of ignition. Diesel engines are supposed to work because the fuel charge ignites spontaneously from the heat generated by extreme compression ratios (something like 16:1 or thereabouts as I recall, vs. 8 or 9:1 as a normal top range for gasoline.) All well and good, but these compression ratios create enormous pressures and structural loads on the piston, connecting rods, bearings, and combustion chambers. These high loads tear the hell out of gasoline engines giving them exceeding short lives when converted to diesel. That is what did in the GM automotive diesels about 30 years ago. These engines were a perfect example of how American engineers are almost totally ignorant of structural design and fatigue considerations. The reader mentions unmanned drone aircraft. (Does drone mean the craft are expendable?) A short engine life would probably be something the drone people are willing to accept.
2. If you are talking basic gasoline-engine technology, how do you get the diesel fuel to vaporize and ignite by means of a spark plug? That could come from fuel-injection, but the technology to do this can be tricky. If you are using ignition-compression technology, that means you are trying to inject a fuel charge into a combustion chamber that is already at an exceeding high pressure, which means the injection pressure has to be that much higher. Not easy to do reliably.
3. The major automobile companies are already working on ways to make diesels more "docile" and more like gasoline engines in operation. The approaches, however, generally require spark plugs and complicated injection strategies. The Wall Street Journal had an article on these approaches about a week ago. In general, major automotive companies don't like to talk about what they are doing in the way of engine research. (Most because they aren't doing much.) And the closer they get to commercial application, the less willing they are to talk. However, I bet there are some SAE papers pretty well outlining what they are planning. SAE papers tend to be an "under the radar" venue the escapes the notices of the PR departments.
4. There is a lot of interesting work going on in the military with regard to taking conventional pickup trucks and adapting them to technologies more ideal for battlefields. Dodge Ram and I believe maybe some Japanese firms are involved her. One problem is that the automobile firms are so narrowly focused that they don't see any PR benefits in publicizing this stuff, so it is hard to get information out of them in this regard. They don't have anyone assigned to generate publicity in this area, so editors pretty much have to find out on their own whom they should contact.

Khol

Ref: New spin for flywheel technology
Very interesting article, but I’m somewhat confused. Several times in the article, flywheels are described as “power sources”. Yet, I was taught that flywheels are energy storage devices, not power generators. Something has to spool up (put energy into) that flywheel before it can do any work (give up energy), right? At least one illustration leads me to believe that they might be just heavily modified electric motors/generators. The article doesn’t shed any light on this.
Two other questions were raised during my perusal of this article:
In one paragraph, the author mentions the “keeping the flywheel rotating at a constant velocity stabilizes…the spacecraft.” I may be all wet here, but the only way to keep the flywheel’s speed constant while you are extracting energy from it is to feed the exact same amount of energy into it at the same time. If you have do this, why even have a flywheel?
Second, supposedly a ‘strong selling point’ of flywheels is that they don’t degrade in the manner of “electrochemical power sources (there’s that term again) which have a specific number of charge and discharge cycles.” Well, excuse me, but several paragraphs were previously devoted to explaining what happens when the (typically) composite wheels begin to come apart. Sounds like flywheels have a finite life expectancy (total number of revolutions, perhaps?) after all, eh?
Keep us informed of project like these. I just like to pick the flyspecks out of the pepper.

Larry E. Fry
Senior Engineering Technician

Yet, I was taught that flywheels are energy storage devices, not power generators.
Modern flywheels have generators built in as integral parts of the flywheel shaft so they can be thought of as power generators.
You asked: Extracting energy from it is to feed the exact same amount of energy into it at the same time. If you have do this, why even have a flywheel?
It's tricky. That's why NASA has been researching the subject.
Thena ask: Second, supposedly a ‘strong selling point’ of flywheels is that they don’t degrade in the manner of "electrochemical power sources
Flywheels have a finite life but much much greater than electrochemical power sources, at least for the ones NASA is working on. And particularly if you are talking about putting electrochemical power sources in deep space environments.

Lee Teschler

A fellow named Tom Bearden has patented a "MEG", motionless electrical energy generator. It works on magnetic principles and looks basically
like an ordinary transformer, with the exception of a permanent magnet placed across the core. It produces a C.O.P. of 5, that is 5x the power inputed to the device.

Apparently, the device has raised some eyebrows at the patent office but not with industry. I'm not surprised. If it doesn't fit into the
existing infrastructure, it just isn't practical if it doesn't burn oil.

This sounds like the alchemists gold from base metal. FIVE times the power input!!! We could replace our nukes with a hamster and wheel plus a cascade of these MEGs
I thought that the USPO wouldn't accept perpetual motion and similar devices.What is the patent number

Any comments or observations on alternative energy sources, or articles about them in Machine Design?

U.S. Patent # 6,362,718 shows the device.
and it looks simple enough, but I found there
is a problem of coupling a non-reactive load to
it. Any reactance, inductive or capacitive, will
upset the gizmo into limbo.
Apparently,they've come up with they call a conditioned resistor to negate this unwanted effect. You're probably right, hokus,, pokus,
abracadbra,,,,,,

A gas engine can indeed use (bio)diesel fuel with greater efficiency and cleaner exhaust. Read the article on this link for more details:

http://www.washingtonfreepress.org/73/gasEngineUseDiesel.htm

How much are you guys getting paid to sit around and dream up things we already have? I remember,when I was a little boy,there was plenty of cheap gas for everybody and all the oil came from Texas, the same place that cowboys were from. Boy, cowboys were great,they spent all day riding horses and herding cows. Now you engineers spend eight years in college and when you get out you sit around and dream about running engines off of cow poop instead of finding more oil for us to use. Oh, what's that? I sound like an ass when I spout off on subjects I know nothing about? Hmm, maybe I'll go back to firefighting and leave the engineering to you guys. Good idea,huh Ron?

Poop. Aye there's the rub. I seem to recall that it has been stated the big cities would have vanished under a pile of horse's poop and pee if it were not for the invention of the IC engine.
Don't F*rt*NG cows contribute more to global warming than automobiles?