Amorphous Solar Cell
Amorphous Solar Cells are the most popular type of solar cells in use today. These are the everyday solar cells, that you’ll probably buy if you get one today. They use the “p-n junction”, which take the photons of light, and through some chemistry, with some really complex molecules (pentacene, if you’re a scientist), a electrons transfer between 2 sides, and a electric current is produced.
The top layer is simply glass, but as you go deeper down, you hit the absorbent silicon layer, and then finally hit the back end, which is where you add your wires to the very back of, and then it’s just a matter of hooking up the solar panel to your energy system.
Of course, the main reason that you want to buy a Amorphous solar cell, is because they are the cheapest in the world. You can get a small solar panel, which will power about %30-%50 of your house, for under $150. That’s an average of course, but unless you live in the middle of the jungle, you should see a huge drop in your energy bills.
There are many different sites you can visit if you want some reasonably priced Solar Panels. solarpanelstore.com is a very comprehensive site, that gives you many different options, from small, household solar panels, to large powering systems for large corporations. solarhome.org takes a more utilitarian approach, offering a large variety of products for around the house. Finally, solarpanelinfo.com is a great source of information on production, installation, and research into solar panels.
Hydrogen Booster Cell
The purpose of this topic is too help you build your own hydrogen booster cell. This cell is what creates the HHO needed to mix with the gasoline. We’ll cover where this HHO goes in a later article.
Ok. Let’s get started. What you are going to need is…
1) A plastic tub for holding the water, and the metal plates that will cause the reaction.
3) 2 roll nuts that’ll you’ll drill into the end of the tub, that will connect to the car battery.
4) 2 steel meshes
5) Rubber tubing
6) water, and the sodium hydroxide electrolyte.
7) Zip ties to hold some sections together
Bend the 2 steel wires in half, almost as you could a piece of paper. If you look down the long side of it, it should be a long oval shape, with a small break in them that used to be the ends of the sheets. Nest, interlock the sheets together, so that if you do from the top to bottom layer, it will go sheet 1, sheet 2, sheet 1, sheet 2. Think of it as 2 linked rings. Next, add rubber tubing to both ends of both steel sheets, and use any more rubber tubing to keep the plates from actually touching each other. Use the zip ties to hold the plates against the rubber.
At this point, it’s probably a good idea to install the roll nuts onto the side of the tub. Just drill a little compact hole, and try to minimize leakage area. you could use sealant if you screw it up too badly.
Now, you need to lower your metal sheets into the tub. The sheets should fit snuggly into the tub. Fill the tub up with a solution of water, and your sodium hydroxide. You’re almost done! Now we need to create a top for the tub. That should be easy though, as all you need is something that will sit comfortably, and snugly on the top of the tub, with a rubber tube installed to allow the HHO to get out.
Now you need to install the machine into the front of your car. Attach your battery to the roll nuts, and turn on your car. If you did everything correctly, you should have a bunch of flammable white gascoming from the tub. Congradulations! You have created a hydrogen booster cell.
Links:
Fuel Cell Electrolye from Essential Depot
Fuel Cell Energy
So how much energy can a fuel cell generate on it’s own? That’s a good question. As explained before, fuel cells work by separating electrons from protons, and making the electrons run through a circuit, generating electricity. The average fuel cell can generate a voltage of up to 0.7 volts. That’s lower than what it is actually physically possible for a number of reasons. First, there is an “Activation Loss”, meaning that it cost more energy to start the reaction than is actually necessary. Second, there is also resistance in every material in the world. This resistance means that some voltage gets wasted traveling through the material.
But, as I’ve said before, it’s very possible to put fuel cells into a series or parallel circuit, which is called a fuel cell stack, allowing for any number of voltage, limited only by the size restraints on the fuel cell. Also, the efficency we get on fuel cell energy is %50+, meaning that we’re missing half of the energy possible from fuel cells. To put that in perspective, we get efficency of %20 percent with normal petroleum based fuel. And the maximum efficentcy possible is %25 with petroleum. With the fuel cell, we can get almsot completly pure hydrogen, meaning we can get up to %99.9999 efficency with fuel cells.
Finally, the most important part of fuel cell energy is the emissions. It doesn’t matter how efficient we become, if the fuel we use will destroy the earth. This is the biggest draw of fuel cells: the only emisson is H2O, or water. That’s right, we’re just releasing one of the eco friendly compounds ever, back into the ecosystem. This is the way of the future: living with nature, and not destroying it.
Links:
Fuel Cell Electrolye from Essential Depot