06/12/06 - Device could power the future of energy
http://www.keelynet.com/
Tim Dolan believes he's found the key to solving the world's energy-consumption woes and the environmental damage caused by burning fossil fuels. But Dolan's plan to replace fossil fuels with hydrogen — the H in H2O — isn't just a long series of scientific symbols and calculations that work only on paper. Dolan has built a machine that creates and stores hydrogen. The device, powered by sunlight, sends electricity through water to separate hydrogen from oxygen and then pumps the hydrogen as a gas into a container, where it is stored as a renewable energy source. "Once you have this stored hydrogen, you can take it out of here and run it into any device that uses fossil fuels," said Dolan, a 46-year-old Trumbull resident. "The only thing hydrogen won't do is it won't make plastics. That's what we need fossil fuels for." Dolan said he converted a small engine to run on hydrogen, and the engine works fine off his machine and emits only water vapor. Dolan said his machine is unique because it directly couples to a renewable power supply and can make hydrogen at high pressure without extra parts. He said his machine, which also can operate on wind power, is not only cleaner than fossil fuels, but also more efficient compared to the energy required to use fossil fuels. But a problem with Dolan's prototype, from a practical standpoint, is the space needed to store hydrogen. A pound of hydrogen may have three times the energy content of fossil fuels, but it takes 400 cubic feet to store the hydrogen equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, Dolan said. But Dolan said his machine's storage container, 4 feet by 8 feet and capable of storing 1,000 cubic feet of hydrogen, could be larger. He said his machine also could store hydrogen at high pressure. The container can store nonpressurized hydrogen at an equivalent of 95 kilowatt hours of electricity, or 300,000 BTUs, Dolan said. The machine now built is a prototype, and Dolan said he could have made the storage container big enough to store 10,000 or 20,000 cubic feet of hydrogen. Dolan's prototype can't make hydrogen as fast as people would use it to heat and light their homes and run appliances. But the point of the hydrogen container is to allow the machine to build up a big reserve of hydrogen — like the oil reserves now available for fossil fuels. It takes two days for Dolan's machine to make the hydrogen equivalent of a gallon of gas, he said. "If I had a bigger system, I'd be very comfortable running my house on it because it would work," he said. Dolan said the operating cost of his machine is low — the equivalent of 1 cents for a gallon of gas. Dolan also thinks the cost of his machine would drop when it is mass-produced. "It was designed to be easily replicated and mass-produced because it is that important," he said. Dolan, married and the father of three children, is president of Enabling Technologies, a Trumbull company that develops renewable energy systems.
BOOKMARK:
http://www.keelynet.com/
========================
06/10/06 HBO: Lewis Black (comedian) Red, White & Screwed
Audio: http://www.apfn.net/pogo/L001I060610-lewis-black-HBO.MP3 (58Min)
Lewis Black's Official Website
http://www.lewisblack.net/
