Hydrofill: Generate and Store Hydrogen to Power None of Your Gadgets!
February 8th, 2010
Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies’ hydrogen station the HydroFILL is a small and portable hydrogen generator, and the battery-shaped HydroSTIK cartridges are even smaller, but right now there’s no sense in buying it unless you have gadgets that can harness the hydrogen. You can buy a small number of hydrogen-powered toys from Horizon, and they also have MiniPAK, a portable charger, but outside of that handful of gadgets, the majority of us will find no point in buying a HydroFILL in the immediate future. But I’m not saying that the device holds no promise.
In an interview with CNN, Horizon co-founder Taras Wankewycz said that they want every home to have a HydroFILL – with increasing capacities every year – so that we can finally free ourselves from non-renewable energy resources. Every home will be a hydrogen station, and we’ll be able to generate hydrogen for our own use, powering everything from our vacuum cleaners to our cars.
But here’s the other problem I have with Horizon’s vision: you still need electricity and water in order to generate hydrogen. Right now early adopters can either plug the device in (which makes no sense as it doesn’t really liberate you from current energy options) or buy an optional solar panel add-on to the HydroFILL, which begs the question – why not just develop a small-scale, cheap and easy to use solar station? No need for water or electricity. I’m just thinking out loud here, and obviously all Horizon has right now is proof-of-concept, something to show everyone that hydrogen can be harnessed in a simple and affordable way. Let’s check back on them in a few years time and see if they’ve secured the support of other electronics companies.
Those of you who already want to have their own hydrogen station and hydrogen-powered gadgets can check out Horizon’s online store.
[via Boing Boing]
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Categories: Future Tech Gadgets Mobile Tech Strange + Wonderful Technology
Tags: eco-conscious electricity fuel hydrofill hydrogen power renewable energy water
why they haven’t thought of this, I don’t know, but potentially, with a system large enough, you could use this in place of a solar/wind/battery system. you’d use solar/wind power during the day, which would also refill the hydrogen tanks, and at night, run off the fuel-cells.
“But here’s the other problem I have with Horizon’s vision: you still need electricity and water in order to generate hydrogen.”
yes, which is what the solar panel is for. as for the water, well that’s a different issue, but where else were you expecting to get the hydrogen? methane? propane? some other hydrocarbon? water’s the cleanest and most abundant source, and the hydrogen just reverts back to water when it’s run through the fuel-cell. in my system idea up above, you could potentially reuse the waste water over again as the hydrogen source.
As long as you need more energy to produce hydrogen than you can use with the produced hydrogen. This all makes no sense at all.
At the moment we are far away from that, but if we ever may find a way to produce hydrogen more efficiently, I doubt that we want to store masses of them in every single house.