Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Hydrogen Fuel Cells coming closer for Psubs?

[Ian Roxborough <irox@ix.netcom.com>]

On Thu, 05 Dec 2002 22:53:05 +0100
MerlinSub@t-online.de (Carsten Standfuss) wrote:

> - heat.. a 1000 watt fuel cell with a efficency of say 
>   50 % produce also 1000 watt heat.. 
>   if they build something with 75 % you get still 333 watt heat.  

I was thinking about the heat problem and I wonder if
there is anyway to usefully recover the heat from the fuel
cell, for heating the crew compartment or heating fresh water
for tea or coffe or a bathing.  I would imagine it would be
useful to beable to dump the heat over board as well. 
With a well thought out heat exchanger system you could have
a comparement heater, a water heater and an external heater
to removing excess heat, all powered from the heat of the fuel
cell(s).

Ian.
 



> Ian Roxborough schrieb:
> > 
> > On Thu, 5 Dec 2002 14:29:54 -0600
> > David Buchner <buchner@wcta.net> wrote:
> > 
> > > Coooool! Can't you get hydrogen cylinders from places that do welding
> > > gases? Maybe I imagined that. But it does have to be straight-up
> > > hydrogen, not methane or propane (or acetylene?) or other more popular
> > > and available fuel, like some ideas I'd heard of. Hm. Like
> > > hydrogen-fuelcell cars, that becomes a "they don't sell that around
> > > here" type of problem.
> > 
> > I don't think you cold use anything but hydrogen in this model.
> > Finding H2 might be a big problem,  I know the fuel cell's proton
> > exchange membrane is sensative to polutants in the hydrogen
> > and will loose effiency and finally fail with no way to clean
> > the membrane (it's too fragile).  The web page says you need to
> > use Fuel Cell grade hydrogen, which is probably very pure, I
> > don't know, but I would guess wielding shop hydrogen might not
> > be pure enough.
> > 
> > There is a 'Fuel finder' on the website, the closest to me
> > is about 50 miles a way.
> > 
> > The website also mensions ventilation systems so they may
> > be other problems to solve before one could be using in
> > a Psub.  I might be pretty dangerous to operate one in the
> > same compartment as a person.  Also I've not found out
> > how much O2 these things use.
> > 
> > Ian.
>