[parainwater]

Splitting hydrogen from water via a d.c. current is very simple. By adding the apropriate amount of sulfuric acid H2SO4 to clean water (distilled is best by no means necessary), H2 is liberated at the cathode which can be made of stainless steel and oxygen at the graphite anode. With properly designed PVC cells a 75% conversion efficiency is very attainable. I have designed a method to manufacture (pyrolize) graphite anodes from ordinary charcoal briquets at very low cost. As for the power supply (no--Home Depot does not cell electrolytic power supplies). That would be counterproductive any way as most power supplies are powered by a fossil fuel burning power plant. The idea is to generate electric power above your required household needs and divert the extra power to a bank of electrolytic cells. A simple circuit of SCR's will engage and disengage the proper amount of cells in accordance with the variable voltage output of say a Rankine cycle steam engine powered by a parabolic solar concentrator or wind turbine. I have also designed a simple way to modify a run-of-the-mill Briggs and Stratton or Tecumseh lawnmover engine to operate as a Rankine sycle steam engine. You can also reduce the cylinder head volume to optimize the steam expansion ratio in accordance with the boiler pressure located at the focus of the parabolic concentrator. After I build the first concentrator I will then take a mold of the dish and use a fiberglass chopper gun to mass produce the dishes. As for storing the hydrogen gas there are generally three methods employed. Compressed hydrogen, cryogenic hydrogen and hydrogen stored in a particulate metal "mol sieve". The first two methods are highly energy intensive to compress or liquify hydrogen. However, I submit to you that there is another option. Now here me out before you form a judgement on this idea. If one were to construct a cylindrical mylar bag of say 10 ft in diameter by 30 ft long, you would have a storage volume of length*(pi/4)*diam^2 cubic feet. So for these dimensions that works out to 2356 ft^3. At STP conditions hydrogen is an ideal gas and therefore the mass of hydrogen in this bag would be m=(PV/RT)*Mw. So if your local atmospheric pressure is 14psia and an ambient temperature of say 80F, the bag would contain 5.69 lbmol of H2 or 11.4 lbm of hydrogen gas. H2 has a thermal energy content of around 62,000 BTU/lbm. A gallon of gasoline has a thermal energy content of around 124,000 BTU/gal. So therefore this mylar bag would contain the gasoline equivalent of 5.7 gallons. An off the shelf gasoline powered generator can easily be modified to run on the hydrogen during the night or on a cloudy day. The neat thing about this approach is that your varying household electric demand is totally independent of power decay(availability). As long as there is hydrogen in the bag you can produce steady or variable houshold power. Where as a battery bank will of course loose its charge and hence the available power to your home will drop during the night. But isn't H2 highly explosive? It is only explosive when mixed with the proper amount of oxidizer(oxygen in the air). As long as the air is excluded from the mylar bag there is no explosion hazard. Flammability hazard--yes. By placing the bag in a properly grounded sheet metal enclosure, this hazard is greatly reduced if not eliminated. Of course gross neglegence is a factor. I wouldn't smoke,weld or work on the bag unless it was vented down and my body was physically grounded. This idea is not a panacea solution for everyone. Obviously if you live in a closely spaced suburb it would not be practical. However, people who have a minimum of about .5 acre or so of land could implement this system. I live on 1 1/4 acres and am going to build not only the solar concentrator but a wind turbine, active solar heating system and a heat driven ammonia absorbtion refrigeration system for my home---if I ever get a job.

[Tanada]

You have jogged my curiousity bump, did any of these grandieos plans ever come to fruition?