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PostPosted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 2:35 pm 
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Check this new development out:

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/...ire/163448.htm

They are in partnership with a fuel cell manufacturer NEAH in order provide green power for hulls like the Pro Angler. A methanol fuel cell will provide electric power much longer than a battery.

"NEAH's fuel cells use renewable methanol, a cost efficient, sustainable and "green" mode of energy. Dr. Chris D'Couto, NEAH's President and Chief Executive Officer, noted that NEAH fuel cells operate in both aerobic and anaerobic manner, which applies directly to Hobie's water environment. "Our micro fuel cells may eventually replace batteries for most uses," D'Couto said, "meaning that cost-efficient and "green" technology is at hand to not only preserve the environment, but to provide nearly perpetual power to the military, manufacturers of almost any product that require an energy source, and to the millions of consumers who require energy on the go.

Doug Skidmore, President of Hobie Cat, said that when NEAH's fuel cells become operational in his products, it opens up new doors for his company's business, which includes its eponymous surfboards, sailboats, kayaks, its new Mirage Drive(tm) ProAngler fishing boats, introduced February 19, 2009, and peripheral products. Hobie boats and peripheral products are sold around the world, with dealers in Australia, Europe, Brazil, Africa, the Middle East & West Asia."

BTW, Our troops in the middle east have been using methanol fuel cell powered lap tops to great advantage for a while now. They are able to ship a much smaller quantity of methanol cannisters into a battle theatre to provide an equivalent amount of power available from a much larger weight and volume of lithium laptop batteries.
See these Samsung fuel cells: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/09/s...that-soldiers/


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 3:31 pm 
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Thats great news -but I dont understand what "eponymous' has to do with the Mirage drive. And if it exists it will find its way to something beyond Hobie. Why start here?

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 3:41 pm 
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"Eponymous products" is just a 50 cent word way of saying these are products that Hobie has lent the company name to.
I guess the Hobie name will go on the fuel cell system also as it is already the Mirage drive.


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 3:50 pm 
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So humans still have to charge the battery. And we will get more than we put in?

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 4:00 pm 
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You could charge the battery by using the wind like hybrids use the brake?

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 4:40 pm 
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Methanol fuel cells produce electricity from liquid methanol.(instead of hydrogen) You screw on a fuel container of wood alcohol and you get electricity. Electrons from the hydrogen in the methanol cross over a proton exchange membrane and you have electric current..... to power your Torquedo or Minn Kota trolling motor.

It's like the hydrogen fuel cells used on the space shuttle that power the computers and other devices. It acts very much like a battery but it's not a battery. It gets Re-fueled, not Re-charged.


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 4:56 pm 
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If it has to be refueled then doesnt that defeat the whole purpose of green?

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 5:18 pm 
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Methanol is often called wood alcohol because it was once produced chiefly as a byproduct of the destructive distillation of wood.
Pure methanol, was first isolated in 1661 by Robert Boyle, because he produced it via the distillation of boxwood. Since it is from plants which take CO2 out of the atmosphere, unlike fossil fuels, it is carbon neutral. It can be made from methane or natural gas. The methane could be from a pig farm or a landfill.

A fuel which is renewable and carbon neutral ...sounds pretty green to me.
Powering an electric motor with a fuel cell is also much more efficient than an internal combustion engine like an outboard which loses a lot of energy by making heat from the exploding fuel and the friction of moving valves and connecting rods around inside the engine not to mention the friction in the transmission and gears. An electric motor doesn't have all those moving parts and the energy is converted to motion more directly.


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 5:20 pm 
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What I have been told is that it would work like is a trickle charge for a battery. One "cell" in the battery is the "fuel cell" which uses naturally created alcohol to create the current. This would not run the motor, but recharge the battery. This gives you longer running time and a recharge while not in use.

I guess what is really "green" is the ability to use electric motors in more situations. With the charging issue resolved, you could easily use this as an auxillary motor on any sailboat for example.

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 5:32 pm 
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Hmmm-Sounds good to me dude... did you ever see 2001 A Space Odyssey? The Monolith symbolized God but it was also a magnet.In fact(in the book) it was called "Magnetic Anomaly One" Electricity is everything. Thanks for the input!

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 11:51 pm 
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denizen wrote:
Since it is from plants which take CO2 out of the atmosphere, unlike fossil fuels, it is carbon neutral.

Denizen, at the risk of being pedantic, fossil fuels are just plants that took CO2 from the atmosphere a long time ago, then became fossilized. Wood is just from a plant that removed the CO2 more recently, so it's no more carbon neutral than fossil fuels. Any process which relies on the combustion of organic material to produce energy must generate CO2 in the process. A hydrogen fuel cell would produce no CO2, but where do you get the hydrogen from? - by electrolysis of water. If the electricity required for the electrolysis is generated by burning coal, gas or oil, even a hydrogen cell is not carbon neutral.

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 5:18 am 
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I can't believe people are still saying that, and apparently don't know meaning of the term "carbon neutral". Green plants amd algae use photosynthesis to make carbohydrates and sugars. In that process O2 is produced in the atmosphere by the plant after it has taken CO2 from the air. We can breath oxygen because of green plants and this process.
At the risk of going all EARTH DAY on you, ancient plants took C02 from ancient atmospheres which originated mostly from mega ancient vulcanism. That CO2 went to the "grave" with those ancient plants and was sequestered in sediments undergound in the form of fossil fuels for millions of years. A large amount of that ancient sequestered CO2 from plants has been re-released into the atmosphere as a result of the industrial revolution for the past 300 years. When you make a biofuel today from environmentally sound means (like cellulosic ethanol or algae biodiesel), it is using CO2 from the current atmosphere rather than digging up coal or petroleum, dumping even more of that sequestered CO2 into an already overloaded atmosphere.
As for hydrogen, it can come from solar and wind but there's a new process where we may count on future cheap, clean, abundant hydrogen with a method of "artificial photosynthesis" or low energy hydrolysis discovered by Chemist Daniel Nocera at MIT. It was hailed by Fortune Magazine as one of the game changing technologies which has the power to turn this whole environmental and economic situation around.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html
Class dismissed. Go forth as if every day was Earth Day.


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PostPosted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 6:04 am 
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Sorry Denizen, I didn't realise that commercial methanol was coming from cellulosic ethanol or algae biodiesel or pig farms or landfill. I thought that it was synthesised from the methane component of natural gas. I'm off to throw another carbon neutral log on my woodfire.

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 6:22 am 
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You've got to start somewhere with the end use devices.
And the wood fire is fairly environmentally sound as long as it's burned efficiently in a low emission wood stove. :mrgreen:
What we are currently doing isn't what we must always do, or necessarily even what we will be doing by the time this fuel cell from Hobie comes out. The Obama Energy Policy is coming together and there will be an major speech today emphasizing many new approaches to energy including increasing carbon neutral biomass fuels from non-food crop sources. The fact that Hobie is planning for this new hardware is part of the equation for change. You have to have a demand. If you don't have things like methanol fuel cells in use, there won't be as much incentive for carbon neutral fuel powered motors. It's certainly better than Hobie introducing a standard gasoline/motor oil powered thrust system, which could be powered by E-85 but would still be inefficient and still stink.


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PostPosted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 6:50 am 
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Actually, I totally agree with you. I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about using food crops to produce fuel, or diverting cropland to produce fuel or clear-felling forests to grow fuel crops. Let's face it, everyone, including fuel cell manufacturers, likes to label their products "green" these days. I found the quote from the NEAH dude particularly amusing: "cost-efficient and "green" technology is at hand to not only preserve the environment, but to provide nearly perpetual power to the military". :roll:

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