Make Fire With Water, Electricity
This Aqueon Fireplace, from Heat and Glo separates water into hydrogen and oxygen, and then burns them. Because the hydrogen burns cleanly (unlike, say wood or gas), there’s no need to ventilate. As if you needed more proof that science trumps idiocy.
I look forward to having six hydrogen burners in my stove. Because that would be cool. (Or hot?) And not require any gas pipelines or storage tanks. (Private to patent attorneys claiming newness and non-obviousness: haha!)
(Via gizmodo.)
220V x 60A x 1 H = 13.2 KW-hours
31,000 BTU = 9.07 KW-hours
Assuming this thing doesn’t draw the full 60A, it would seem surprisingly efficient, especially considering that all of the heat produced is directed into living space, rather than up a chimney. I am pleasantly surprised.
This makes no sense. Hydrogen burns with an invisible flame.
Also, if you store hydrogen, there is an issue of hydrogen embrittlement.
The hydrogen is “stored” in H2O, in this case.
Too much exposure to Lakehurst, NJ’s most famous photo made me never even *think* that burning H2 was not visible.
They add the oxygen (also conviniently stored in water) back into the flame for visibility.
Ther’es nothing on the website talking about using this for a cooking stove, and I wonder what the point-heat of direct hydrogen burn is like. Propane has a very high burn temperature, so it’s great for a stove top, but I don’t know if Hydrogen does the same thing.
Also, not sure about Chris’s numbers, I’m not a physicist – it know that seperating out the hydrogen and oxygen isn’t terribly efficient, and doing it fast enough to make a stovetop flame from the result is tricky.
But gosh, that’s a great use for big DC storage. Get a couple deep cycle LA batteries under the stove, charge them trickle-charge from the solar panels, use them to seperate out the hydrogen for heating and hot water as needed. Hmm!
There’s a lot of data at http://www.hydrogennow.org/Facts/Safety-1.htm. Unfortunately, some of it is self-condtradictory, which I think entails an editing error. It appears that hydrogen can be made to burn at 2300 C or so, while propane burns about 100C hotter.