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The Museum of Hoaxes is dedicated to promoting knowledge about hoaxes. (Click here for opening hours, etc.) On our blog we post about dubious- sounding claims, and whatever else strikes our fancy. The site is also home to the Hoaxipedia (the museum's online encyclopedia of hoaxes), the Hoax Forum, and the Top 100 April Fools' Day Hoaxes.

The museum was created in 1997 by Alex Boese. He's assisted by a staff of deputy curators and docents. Alex is the author of three books, most recently Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments (which has nothing to do with hoaxes). Check out the list of the Top 20 Most Bizarre Experiments of All Time for a preview.

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I'm a little skeptical about their claims of solving the hydrogen storage problem. I don't see how having it absorbed by "granulated hydrides" (whatever they are) will allow more capacity than storing it as a liquid. That would seem to defy the laws of physics. I would think a liquid is about as dense as you can get. (Perhaps someone else knows more about this.) Up to that point the site seems almost legit.

Of course it would only be an advantage for commuters since you can't go far from your homemade source of hydrogen. Another problem would the by-product of combustion. Hydrogen + oxygen = H20. The inside of your cylinder heads would rust overnight. You would have switch over to gasoline for a minute or so before shutting it off each time. So you would still be partly dependent on gasoline.

No mention of a patent either. Shades of Lifewave Energy Patches.

I'm having a very hard time believing this. How well can an engine designed to burn liquid gasoline use gaseous hydrogen as a fuel? And this system will even allow you to switch between the two instantly? I don't believe it.

In the UK there has recently been an upsurge in kits for converting your petroleum-powered car to a dual-fuel LPG/petrol hybrid. The conversions are reportedly very successful, but expensive. You do get the capability to run on both fuels, alhtough I cannot comment on whether you can change instantaneously. Certainly a friend of mine (a genuine friend, not a foaf) invested in this conversion for his Land Rover and claimed it worked very well.

I can think of no reason why a hydrogen/petrol hybrid should be any more difficult to do than a LPG/petrol hybrid. As LPG is butane (C3H8) or propane (C4H10), most of the problems should be the same. I can't comment on the storage front.

Use of solid oxide fuel cells is currently being investigated by many companies as a means of generating electricity or hydrogen, so one of these could be used to generate the required hydrogen from water.

My opinion is that the system is technically feasible, although not necessarily practical yet. However, with the price of petrol being about £1 per litre here in the UK (about $8US per gallon!!!!), I would buy one if I could on the grounds that it would definitely pay for itself.

AqueousBoy said:
"And this system will even allow you to switch between the two instantly? I don't believe it."

Some cars converted to propane can switch between the two fuels so that could be true.

Assuming it's real, another problem is:

" As an example, it takes over 2 days of our generator running at full power, 24 hours a day, to fill our smallest 'short range' tank."

What effect will it have on your electric bill? They don't say how many kilowatt hours it takes to make a given amount of hydrogen. The extra electricity used may be more than the price of gasoline.

With the possible exception of their storage system, this whole thing is possible. Whether or not it is practical is another question.

I wouldn't think that a standard car engine could burn hydrogen gas safely for any length of time, but I admit to not being that familiar with the compression ratios, storage and transfer issues, and such.

Still, creating hydrogen is an energy losing proposition. Water is a stable molecule, and more energy is required to convert it to hydrogen and oxygen than can be recovered by burning the resultant gases, or by using them in a fuel cell. Solar or wind power just doesn't cut it. You can't generate enough to matter. If they've found a revolutionary way to generate hydrogen cheaply and easily (which I doubt), then that alone should make them rich. If they haven't, then it'll cost more in electricity than you save on gasoline.

>>>Solar or wind power just doesn't cut it. <<<

Solar and wind power can generate all the electricity you could possibly want. (After all, solar power runs the entire biosphere of Earth, so running a paltry setup like a worldwide electrical grid pales in comparison.)

Assuming, of course, that you have enough collectors. Which means vast fields full of solar panels or wind turbines. Truly massive devices arranged in rows of thousands.

It would be a pretty good way to provide electricity for home usage, assuming you have several hundred square miles set aside for the collectors (which usually isn't a problem in most parts of America). You just can't put a solar panel on the top of your car and expect much.

If you want to use solar or wind power to run a car, you have to have a massive elctrical grid system to plug the car into. Back to the rechargable battery problem.

I don't believe a standard car engine can safely burn hydrogen, either. I seem to remember something about a Hindenburg...

On a side note, Bob Lazar is one very ugly man.

Wind farms are a beautiful sight; on hills, on plains, offshore, even. As for the Hindenberg, watch the NOVA program about it -- the fabric was doped with a highly flammable substance, but they didn't know that at the time.

Wind farms are a beautiful sight; on hills, on plains, offshore, even.

We have quite a lot of those here, and they spoil the landscape. And they make a hell of a lot of noise too.

As for the Hindenberg, watch the NOVA program about it -- the fabric was doped with a highly flammable substance, but they didn't know that at the time.

Still hydrogen acknowledgedly is highly explosive, with or without the Hindenburg. Never done those funny hydrogen experiments during chemistry lessons on high-school? Kaboom!!!!!

Wow, nothing like a minor blip in oil prices to make everyone get shakey.

As someone that has built their own electric vehicle, and helped others convert cars to electric, I can tell you conversions will probably never save the amount of money they cost to do for the average driver. Well, not until petrol is a lot more expensive.

Even using now very off-the-shelf and common EV components, you only just break even, and that's if you get excellent range out of your batteries, and you do all the conversion work yourself.

Having vehicles made right from the start suitable for the fuel is the only way to really solve it. And manufacturers are building Hydrogen cars, they are only test models for now.

The big TBD problem is the cost of the hydrogen converters. They are generally pretty damn expensive. There are better proposals to use biological/chemical means to make hydrogen than to split water using hydrolysis.

One person I helped convert a Porsche to electric also install grid connected solar panels on his house. The 1.5kW panels will pay for themselves in about 5-8 years (looking more like 8 at the moment). They are on his roof and you cant see them at all really. They generate electricity during the day(when the grid needs it most) and he charges at night(when there is surplus) and the amounts generally balance out. So, you could say he is running a zero emission car.

Could all this be done with hydrogen. Yes, it can. You can convert your engine to run safely on hydrogen, but is runs really hot and generally isnt a great solution. Is it economically and environmentally the way to solve it?
No, not by a long shot.

In short, you need some big government/industry/consumer changes in thinking to avoid a big economic meltdown when demands finally outstrips oil supply, which is estimated to be in 10-15 years time. One off conversions are for hobbyists only.

100% fake. You cannot store enough energy to drive "over 650 miles per fill" in 4 tanks, 6.5 miles more likely. It is just a gas.

Nuclear waste and coal dust spoil the landscape a whole lot more than a wind farm.

>>>We have quite a lot of those here, and they spoil the landscape. And they make a hell of a lot of noise too.<<<

Couldn't possibly spoil the landscape as much as having to go to war and kill a hundred thousand Arabs every six years or so. Which is where we are now with oil.

A couple of weeks ago one of the news magazines on TV did a segment on hydrogen cars. They even had two mechanics test drive and evaluate the car. There was no gasoline engine in the car, the hydrogen/electric motor took up all the space. The way it worked, as I remember, was that hydrogen had to be stripped into an ion and the protons went through a filter that didn't let the electons through, they had to travel around the filter thus producing electricty. The motor/filter combo broke down a lot and the cost of the filter was huge, above and beyond the cost of providing/storing the hydrogen.

As far as solar panels go, they are useful in certain situations but I have never had the energy costs explained clear enough. Doesn't it always cost more to create solar panels than you will ever get from them? Something to do with entropy I believe? There ain't no free lunch.

I wonder how efficient it is to first make hydrogen gas out of water, and burn it afterwards to water again. There has to be a second energy source to do this. So in fact, you put energy into water to turn it into a fuel, that is NOT efficient at all. Yes, once it's hydrogen it's clean and stuff, but how to efficiently retrieve hydrogen from water?? The best way is to do it with solar power, but that would be a slow precess.

Well, we'll see what the future will bring.

BMW thinks otherwise

http://www.bmwworld.com/hydrogen/h2r_racer.htm

It seems Hydrogen is the way to go. But diluting it with nitrogen 80% 20% Hydrogen would be safer and cheaper.

That is a very impressive story from BMW. I wish one day soon we can all benefit from this. Just wondering what size solar cells are required to power a conventional fuel station that services as many people a day as it does today. If you fuel just one 200kW car from colar cells, and suppose this car drives 1 hour/day (full blast) you need at least 200 square meters of solar cells (assuming we have 10 hours of daylight/day). And ..... that is just 1 car.....

Another, better hydrogen generator.

http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=cfeb17de-d945-4db4-87a6-090911200e96

Williams's device sounds cool. But did I read it right that he'll be charging $7500 for it? That's clearly not aimed at the passenger car market.

Well, I am very sceptic about william's device... If, as he claims, you want more than 35% of fuel to be burned in your engine why not just add pure oxygen? The hydrogen and oxygen ratio from the gasses released by electrolyse is exactly the right amount to burn your H and O gasses back to water ......