Don Lancasters

Tech Musings
August, 1997
omebody on the net has just invented a water powered car. They were loudly bemoaning the fact that nobody noticed. Repeated contacts to universities and talk shows were totally ignored, as were newspaper letters and magazine inquiries. Why, even Detroit wasnt showering them with megabucks. Golly gee Mister Science. I was left with the feeling that they simply had not done their homework. There are lots of very good and very bad things about hydrogen powered cars. And in fact, there has been a new hydrogen storage discovery that could end up rather interesting. So, it might be a good time for my

PIC chips now on CD ROM Hydrogen car fact and fancy A brand new TV Typewriter! Fuel cells and related resources Decades BOB-5L design contest
Your gases can then be collected and compressed for further use. The reaction is
2H20 2H2 + O2

Thoughts on Hydrogen Power

Hydrogen powered vehicles have some rather obvious advantages. The energy density by weight of hydrogen is three times better than gasoline. Hydrogen can power a fuel cell and thus might "beat" the thermodynamic Carnot efficiency limitations on heat engines. Possibly by a factor of two or more. And the usual main product from hydrogen energy conversion is plain old water. For potential (but by no means at all guaranteed) localized pollution reduction. Hydrogen can be made anywhere, totally trashing geopolitics. Lastly, those low voltages and high currents used in hydrogen production are very much solar compatible. But here is the downside
Hydrogen is not a fuel Ill define a

you have net deliverable BTU gains in the process. Your fuel might be competitive only if and when those gains are quite large. Whenever you allow for "gasoline equivalents" for such things as labor, true costs, and interest, I know of no proven process for making alcohol that comes even remotely close to an energy breakeven. Let alone ending up economically competitive. Similarly, hydrogen usually comes from the electrolysis of water. Using that highly energy intensive process shown in figure one. You first make the water conduct. Perhaps by adding a weak acid. Then put the water into a "U" shaped tube and apply a dc current. Your current dissociates the H2O water by way of electrolysis, liberating oxygen gas at the positive or anode side and twice as much hydrogen at the negative, or cathode side.

This is a nearly reversible reaction. Tremendous amounts of energy are consumed in going from left to right. Tremendous amounts of energy are liberated in going from right to left. Because of cell heating and related side reactions, more electrical energy input to your cell is always required compared to the energy returned. You might have seen that recent expose and criminal prosecution of a major pseudoscience hydrogen scam. As usual, the culprit started off with plain old bad labwork that was not even wrong. Combined with wishful thinking plus "too good to be true" results that got out of hand. Other hydrogen production ploys apply steam to existing hydrocarbons or use water to oxidize sodium. Since

O2 gas

H2 gas

fuel as any substance that is able to produce net BTUs of energy at an economically reasonable cost. Ferinstance, assume you fill your tractor with ten gallons of gasoline, plant some corn, and distill the corn into six gallons of grain alcohol. You could think of this process as a giant funnel. Youll pour gasoline into the top, and alcohol dribbles out of the bottom. The alcohol is not a fuel; it is simply an energy transfer medium for gasoline in disguise. Youll produce a fuel only when

(+)
PLATINUM ANODE H2O (water)

(-)
PLATINUM CATHODE

Fig. 1 HYDROGEN IS NORMALLY PRODUCED by the electrolysis of water. There is no known non-nuclear process for hydrogen generation that creates more energy than it consumes. Thus, hydrogen is definitely ~not~ a fuel.

Copyright c 1997 by Don Lancaster and Synergetics (520) 428-4073 www.tinaja.com All commercial rights and all electronic media rights fully reserved. Reposting is expressly forbidden.

115.1

Tech Musings

330 ground chip select in clock input data input genlock out +5v output microcontroller or hosting pc interface 100 K +5 v hpll adj .001 F video input 2.49 K + bottom pin may connect to ground 1K .001 F 4.99 K 75 100 +12 v
8 7 6

+5v +12 v 1N4148 2.7 K 2.7 K +5 v 1 F + +5 v

nc nc nc
32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25

75 +
5

33 pF
8 7 6

NC +12 OUT NC

1K dc level offset video output

2044
NC
1

+ GND
3 4

nc nc nc nc
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17

DET DAT CLK CS Q1 Q2 Q3 RST YX RX GX BX CX CIN CVX CVI

ROHM BU5963AS
+5V SIN SX GND SEP CAP HMM CLV +IN -IN XX PDX +5V XTI XTO GND

1 Meg 14.3182 MHz .01 22 pF 7-45 pF pll adj

10 K

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

nc

+5 v +5 v 1K 220 pF 22p 1F 2.7 K + 2200 pF .047 F

5

1K 1K 47 K

MV2109 2.7 K + 2.2 F 1 F .047 F 2.2 F

NC +12 OUT NC

+12 v +5 v source source 4.99 K -10 volt source power supply circuits

+ +12 vdc input

2044
NC
1

+
3

-10
4

2.49 K

Fig. 2 THE SCHEMATIC FOR THE BOB-5L TV TYPEWRITER. 10 row x 24 character color display generates its own NTSC baseband video or overlays an external input. Uses include PIC data displays, teleprompters, low end titlers, large print aides, time of day, or budget point-of-purchase systems. Theres an amazing variety of options.

these gobble up your input products, such processes are even more energy consumptive than electrolysis. No non-nuclear means is currently known to generate hydrogen that can deliver more in energy BTUs than it consumes! Thus, at its best, hydrogen can only move pollution. It can never eliminate it. And can only raise your cost of energy. When you talk about a hydrogen economy, the total production costs must always be included. Total costs that are direct and indirect, obvious and hidden. We saw more on electrochemisty last month in MUSE114.PDF and in the Tech Musings reprints.
Hydrogen is quite hard to store The

energy density of hydrogen gas is an outstanding 38,000 watt hours per kilogram. Compare this to gasoline at 13,500 wh/kg or lead acid at its 25 wh/kg. But a kilogram of hydrogen at

standard temperature and pressure takes up 11,126 liters. For an utterly laughable energy density by volume of 3.4 watt hours per liter. Compared to gasoline at its 9600 wh/l or lead acid at 40 wh/l. One way to reduce the volume of a gas is to compress it. The pressures involved quickly get horrendous, and safety becomes a rather serious issue. Instead, processes are sought out to chemically bind hydrogen to another substance, creating a hydride. The best storing hydride in nature is methane or CH4. Methane can store 25 percent hydrogen by weight. And, until recently, the most promising of man-made carbon hydrides were way on down at 4 percent or so. A new graphite nanofiber storage material was recently announced by a Nelly Rodriguez and her research team at Northeastern University. In which some recyclable hydrides got created that store up to 75 percent of

their weight as hydrogen. If verified and proven, this could give a 20:1 density improvement. As much as thirty liters of hydrogen can be stored per gram of nanofibers! A recyclable cartridge the size and the weight of a tank of gasoline could run a car for 5000 miles. An announcement on this ongoing development is in New Scientist for December 27, 1996. Based on a fall 1996 Boston paper at the Materials Research Society conference. Their full paper should show up in Science magazine "real soon now". A useful summary appears in the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Letter for February of 1997. While this new storage scheme is very exciting, we are merely talking highly preliminary lab work for now. Off-the-shelf products and systems to deliver them might be something else entirely. Especially solutions that are safe and economically competitive.

115.2

Copyright c 1997 by Don Lancaster and Synergetics (520) 428-4073 www.tinaja.com All commercial rights and all electronic media rights fully reserved. Reposting is expressly forbidden.

August, 1997

not used

not used

not used

not used

not used

set address msb

set address bit #6

set address bit #5

set address bit #4

set address bit #3

set address bit #2

set address bit #1

set address lsb

Typical word to set auto-indexing address for forthcoming data

superimpose flag

set character color blue

set character color green

set character color red

display reverse on-off

not used

character select msb

character select bit #5

character select bit #4

character select bit #3

character select bit #2

character select bit #1

character select lsb

Typical data word for display screen position addresses #0 through #239
horiz size lines 2-10 msb horiz size lines 2-10 lsb horiz size line 1 msb horiz size line 1 lsb horiz position setting msb horiz position setting bit #4 horiz position setting bit #3 horiz position setting bit #2 horiz position setting bit #1 horiz position setting lsb

not used

not used

not used

Data word for control address #240

vertical size lines 2-10 msb vertical size lines 2-10 lsb vertical size line 1 msb vertical size line 1 lsb vertical position setting msb vertical position setting bit #4 vertical position setting bit #3 vertical position setting bit #2 vertical position setting bit #1 vertical position setting lsb

not used

not used

not used

Data word for control address #241

set outline color blue set outline color green set outline color red set charsize color blue set charsize color green set charsize color red set backgnd color blue set backgnd color green set backgnd color red

not used

not used

not used

not used

Data word for control address #242

Port # 3 data output on pin 26 Port # 2 data output on pin 27 Port # 1 data output on pin 28 character charsize on-off character outline on-off blink reverse ~vs~ blank select blinking enable select blinking duty cycle msb blinking duty cycle lsb blink frequency set superimpose on-off mono color off-on

interlace off - on

Data word for control address #243

Fig. 3 ADDRESS MAP FOR BOB-5L. The low 240 locations hold on-screen display characters and their individual attributes. The high 4 locations hold global formatting information. If incoming bit B13 is a one, the 16-bit word sets an autoindexing address. If B13 is a zero, data gets placed into the previously set address. invisible flame. A stunt that us fire The appeal of fuel cells is obvious. Hydrogen rots metal That hydrogen

molecule is the smallest one known. It thus easily diffuses through many common materials. Waltzes right on by. Worse yet, hydrogen reacts with metals and causes embrittlement. A metal in contact with hydrogen for a long time tends to lose most of its strength. Ultimately stress cracking or shattering to failure. This leads to severe safety, testing, and lifetime considerations when you are talking about a hydrogen powered anything.
Hydrogen is dangerous Even after

you get on past the Hindenberg and Three Mile Island, this is still nasty stuff. Uh, the flammability range of hydrogen in air is one of the broadest known, ranging from 4 to 74 percent. Inside most of this range, hydrogen is violently explosive. Hydrogen can burn with a nearly

department haz mat teams use is to tie a rag onto our pike pole and then attempt to "joust" with the hard to see flame front. Do not try this at home. Hydrogen storage systems should be designed such that any total and catastrophic release of all contained energy is extremely unlikely. Sort of like a flywheel that could expend its failure energy by tearing itself apart rather than violently ejecting pieces. Hydrides would seem better at slow release than a pressure tank hydrogen gas system would be.
Fuel cells are expensive Just like the

Volkswagen van heaters, "significant improvements" in the fuel cells have been claimed every year for the past three decades. And in fact have been demonstrated. But my feet are still cold.

Beat Carnot at his own game. Flush thermodynamics and approach 100% efficiency. Route air and hydrogen to an electrochemical cell that directly generates electricity. Output (mostly) water as a byproduct. Sadly, we flat out aint there yet. Expensive catalysts are involved. The cells remain large, costly, and offer limited life. Output voltages are very low. Many cells have to run at higher temperatures. They sometimes can be slow to start or change power levels. Claimed efficiencies are often fudged by assuming you can use your waste heat for something else. But sharply increased funding for next years grant will magically cure all of this. Just ask any researcher. For this months resource sidebar, Ive gathered together a few places to go to get more hydrogen info.

Copyright c 1997 by Don Lancaster and Synergetics (520) 428-4073 www.tinaja.com All commercial rights and all electronic media rights fully reserved. Reposting is expressly forbidden.

115.3

Tech Musings
HYDROGEN ENERGY RESOURCES

Alternate Energy 901 N Columbus Street Alexandria VA 22314 (800) 469-2519 Am Assn for Fuel Cells 50 Mile Street Greenfield MA 01301 (413) 774-6051 American Hydrogen Assn 216 S Clark Dr Ste 103 Tempe AZ 85281 (602) 921-0433 CA Selects: Batteries PO Box 3012 Columbus OH 43210 (800) 848-6538 CA Selects: Stress Corr. PO Box 3012 Columbus OH 43210 (800) 848-6538

ElectroChem 400 W Cummings Park Woburn MA 01801 (617) 938-5300 Energy Research Corp 3 Great Pasture Road Danbury CT 06813 (203) 792-1460 EPRI Journal PO Box 10412 Palo Alto CA 94303 (415) 855-2000 Fuel Cell Assn PO Box 65481 Washington DC 20035 (301) 681-3532 Home Power PO Box 520 Ashland OR 97520 (916) 475-3179

Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Ltr Grinnell St PO Box 14 Rhinecliff NY 12574 (914) 876-5988 International Fuel Cells 195 Governors Hwy South Windsor CT 06074 (860) 727-2348 Intl Jnl Hydrogen Energy Box 945 New York NY 10159 (212) 633-2730 Materials Research Society 9800 McKnight Rd #327 Pittsburgh PA 15237 (412) 367-3003 National Hydrogen Assn 1800 M Street NW, Ste 300 Washington DC 20036 (202) 223-5547

Natl Renewable Energy Lab 1617 Cole Blvd Golden CO 80401 (303) 231-7681 New Scientist Magazine Box 945 New York NY 10159 (212) 633-7300 Rocky Mountain Institute 1739 Snowmass Creek Rd Snowmass CO 81654 (970) 927-3851 SAE 400 Commonwealth Dr Warrendale PA 15096 (412) 776-4841 Science/AAAS 1333 H St NW Washington DC 20005 (202) 326-6400

Ground zero on all this appears to be that Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Letter. A pair of quality books include that Fuel Cell Handbook by Appleby and Foulkes 1989 from Van Nostrand; or the Fuel Cell Systems by Blomen and Mugerwa from the Plenum Press. There is tons of stuff on the web. Start off with all the fuel cell links on www1.usa1.com/~fuelcell/electroche m/fc_sites.html or stuff on www.get net.com/charity/aha/ahafcell.html Two useful newsgroups here now include sci.energy.hydrogen along with alt.energy.renewable Plus possibly sci.chem.analytical For alternate wishful thinking on all this, visit the Keelynet. Or any of those dozens of mesmerizingly awful sites on the Pseudoscience web links page of my http://www.tinaja.com

stand-alone data display for a PIC or a PC or any other micro. The schematic appears in figure two. Up to 10 rows of 24 characters per row could be either generated or superimposed over your input NTSC video. An optional output fader can be added for variable transparency. Although their 128 character set is fixed, theres a surprising variety of color, outline, overlay, background, and size options. All brought about mostly by the Rohm BU5963AS chip. Whose original intended use was as a VCR/TV remote display. A single +12 volt power supply at sixty mils is needed. Typically from a wall wart module.

Data Format Details

Your host computer or micro can communicate using three input lines.
NEED HELP? Phone or write all your US Tech Musings questions to: Don Lancaster Synergetics Box 809-EN Thatcher, AZ, 85552 (520) 428-4073 US email: [email protected] Web page: www.tinaja.com

Build This TV Typewriter

Hmmm. Its deja vu all over again. For those of you that came in late, my Radio-Electronics TV Typewriter from their September 1973 issue is widely regarded as having been the opening shot fired in the personal computer revolution. Well, theres now a brand new TV Typewriter called the BOB-5L from Decade Engineering. Listing at $79 in quantity and double that in singles, this smallish card can provide either a genlocked overlay video or else a

Plus possibly a fourth output line. These BOB-5L inputs are your usual chip select, clock, and data lines. An optional output returns genlock info. When CS is low, the input data gets transferred on your positive edge of the clock. Data transfer could go as high as 2.5 Megabaud. Which might process up to 150,000 characters per second or as many as 650 full screen refreshes per second. Far more than can possibly be viewed. There is an internal RAM memory stashing 244 words of 12 bits each. The lower 240 words hold the screen character content data. Addressing starts with zero at the upper left and progresses rapidly left to right and slowly top to bottom. The upper four control words give you all sorts of fancy display options, by using the command set of figure three. There are always sixteen bits in a word received from the host PC or controlling micro. Most significant bits B14 and B15 are always zero. Bit B13 is the mode bit. If B13 is a one, the rest of the bits are treated as an address as shown. If B13 is a zero, the rest of the bits treated as data and get entered into the previously stored or next available address. All sequential data words will auto increment into your next available address. Thus, you only have to set an address once at the beginning of a

115.4

Copyright c 1997 by Don Lancaster and Synergetics (520) 428-4073 www.tinaja.com All commercial rights and all electronic media rights fully reserved. Reposting is expressly forbidden.

August, 1997
NAMES AND NUMBERS
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sequential data stream. For random access, youll have to individually set each address and data value. Theres an unimplemented feature on the BOB-5L that just might come in handy. You can directly write data to unconnected pins 26, 27, and 28 of the BU5963AS. By using those bits shown in data word 243. This gives you up to eight more functions. One obvious trick here would be an eight level fader or a transparency setter. By using a CMOS 4051. More details in my CMOS Cookbook. By a special arrangement, lower BOB-5L pricing is available only to readers of this column. Contact Mike Hardwick at Decade Engineering for more details. Use tinaja as your top secret code request for this special offer.

applications contest. Where theyll award several BOB-5L s and a few development systems to their choice of the better entries. Just tell them a new or unusual use for their BOB-5L. Or else simply tell them why you want one. Submit all your written entries to Decade Engineering per their address in the Names & Numbers sidebar. Or you could FAX (503) 743-2095, email [email protected] or visit the http://www.decadenet.com web site.

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Ongoing details on Book-on-demand publishing, a new method of producing books only when and as ordered. Reprints, sources, samples. $39.50

THE CASE AGAINST PATENTS

For most individuals, patents are virtually certain to result in a net loss of sanity, energy, time, and money. This reprint set shows you Dons tested and proven real-world alternatives. 28.50

New Tech Lit

Microchip Technology has recently gathered all of their PIC papers (and everything else) together into a single free CD ROM. It is called the 1997 Technical Library, First Edition. Also check out the free Designers CD Reference Manual from Analog Devices. Two electronic speech resources: An Instant Voice ROM Products from ISSI, and that ISD ChipCorder Data Book from ISD. A few ISD products are also Radio Shack carded. Musical Instrument Design is the new Bart Hopkin book thats got all

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What can you create with a third generation tv typewriter? A very easy to use one that opens true low cost genlocked color NTSC video overlay character displays to even simplest and cheapest of micros? Decade is conducting an ongoing

FREE SAMPLES
Check Dons Gurus Lair at http://www.tinaja.com for interactive catalogs and online samples of Dons unique products. Searchable reprints and reference resouces, too. Tech help, hot links to cool sites, consultants. email: [email protected]
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Copyright c 1997 by Don Lancaster and Synergetics (520) 428-4073 www.tinaja.com All commercial rights and all electronic media rights fully reserved. Reposting is expressly forbidden.

115.5

Tech Musings
sorts of simple construction projects. Mostly acoustical instruments. A few made from his bizarre collections of found materials. Mainly excerpts and reprints from Experimental Musical Instruments magazine. Published by the See Sharp Press. They also have a web site at http:// echonyc.com/70/0/Music/MO/EMI A "new" old book from Lindsay on Finishes for Aluminum. Primarily old Reynolds annodizing formulas. After a few missed issues, Frank Reids Speleonics is back in print. This one is my favorite labor-of-love newsletter. Frank uniquely reports on "underground" subjects such as cave communications, super-bright LEDs, and lamp batteries. Surplus WWII military electronics remains available if you know where to look. For the small stuff, try Fair Radio Sales. And for those really big monsters (such as fifty foot tracking dishes and complete radars), try out Radio Research Instruments. Both have free catalogs. Two superb online electronic mags are at http://www.poptronix.com and http://www.emags.com/electron/htm For most individuals or small scale startups most of the time, patents are virtually certain to end up as a total waste of time, energy, money, and sanity. Do find out why in my Case Against Patents package, as per my nearby Synergetics ad. Included are lots of tested and proven real-world alternatives and workarounds. A reminder that my new Gurus Lair website that you should find at http://www.tinaja.com is now going great guns. You will find bunches of reprints and preprints here, surplus bargains, tinaja quests, a consultants net and lots of annotated links. Because we can now deliver nearly 120,000 hits per month, advertisers are newly welcome. As usual, most of the mentioned items should appear in the Names & Numbers or the Hydrogen Resources sidebars. Do be certain to check these before you dial up my no-charge US technical helpline youll find in the Need Help? box. Lets hear from you. 3

115.6

Copyright c 1997 by Don Lancaster and Synergetics (520) 428-4073 www.tinaja.com All commercial rights and all electronic media rights fully reserved. Reposting is expressly forbidden.