hydrogen furnace

[air design]

can a furnace run on hydrogen gas,if so how do i go about doing this.

[d_griff]

[beenthere]

At this time, no.

And if it could.
This is not a DIY site, so we wouldn't tell you anyway.

[maniak]

nice

[maniak]

It's a nice thought though, I'm sure someday someone will design a unit to run off of it

[air design]

i guess i will go to anther site then

[gonekuku]

Hydrogen is a really small atom...the smallest one actually. Natural gas is mostly Methane, a molecule with a molecular weight about 16x that of Hydrogen. Guess which will leak easier.

Hydrogen mixed with air burns about 600F hotter than Natural gas....easily deforming & melting parts designed for a natural gas flame.

On a volume basis, Hydrogen yields 325 Btu/cuft, while methane yields 1008 Btu/cuft. Your hydrogen would need to be stored and delivered at a much higher pressure through the same size pipes, and orifices.....again leaking more.

Still modifying your furnace?

[cmajerus]

Heat and Glo built a hydrogen fireplace, in order to be mass produced it would have a msrp of about 100K

[gonekuku]

Wow there is one. Too funny...

Creates 31,000 BTU. Requires 1/2 Gallons water / hour... oh and a 220 VAC 60A circuit.

Lets say it draws 44A @ 220 VAC = 9680 Watts = 32912 BTU spent making hydrogen for a return of about equal BTU's of heat from the flame. Oh..and you pay a sewage fee for the water this thing vaporizes.

I could see tree huggers taking home equity loans to upgrade to one of these, only so a coal burning plant has to be fired up for the 44A to power the hydrogen furnace.

100% efficient. Clever marketing.

[mark beiser]

Like 100% of all hydrogen powered devices currently in existence, more energy would be consumed creating the hydrogen than would be recovered as heat from burning the hydrogen.

[drsmith012]

Hydrogen is wonderfull clean fuel provided it is not made from buring natural gas at very high temp to crack additional natural gas CH4. And guess where all those c's go when they are liberated from the four H's. Up a stack along with all the oxides of nitrogen and co2 form burning the gas. Same problem with coal but now you get sulfer oxides, mercury oxides, and radioactive gasses. We are better off buring the coal and gas directly.

Hydrogen the answer to global warming, my a$$.

[air-doctor]

Yeah you guys are right... Hydrogen is a wonderful fuel, and very easy to produce... but not cheap. Right now its just not cost efficient or eco friendly to produce hydrogen: ie burning fossil fuels to produce electricity to extract hydrogen from water.

I see the world being forced to develop nuclear power on a very large scale in order to alleviate our dependance on fossil fuels, which opens an even bigger can of worms.

But if you think about it... If we have to go nuclear, then why not just let homeowners have small nuclear reactors that will produce all of their heat, electricity and hot water? Hey how about nuclear powered cars?

The future is coming fast... don't rule out anything

[Tsubaki]

Self contained Portable Nuclear generator sounds good, kinda like a package unit I guess, where do I order one of these puppies? Will I have to have a EPA/NATE certified tech to be on stand by at all times to operate it for me or what?