Tamil Nadu - Dindigul   

Students design car run on hydrogen in water

DINDIGUL: Four final year engineering students of P.S.N.A. College of Engineering and Technology have designed pilot model of a car that can be operated with hydrogen in the water, an alternative energy to fossil fuel.

The four final-year electrical and electronics engineering students – S. Balamuralidharan, K. Boobalakrishnan, R. Bhuvaneswaran and B.J. Benito – have successfully designed this model car christened Hydro-Gen vehicle as their project work.

Briefing the project, they said that Gandhigram Rural University and L-Ramp, a US based technology research promoting organisation, funded this project. Low running cost and no need for disposal of batteries were some of its benefits.

Water and solar energy are the basic source. First, photovoltaic cells convert sunlight directly into electricity to separate hydrogen from water. Separated hydrogen is used to generate electricity using electrolysis technology, to operate motors to move the vehicle.

The oxygen released from the water will be left in the atmosphere. A special regulator has been used to limit and maintain pressure in the electrolyser.

If the hydrogen requirement is high, it can be stored in the tank in compressed form, they added.

They had invested around Rs.11,000 to develop this pilot model. If they satisfied with our pilot model, they hoped, the organisation would sanction more funds to develop a full-fledged car that could accommodate four persons comfortably.

This hydrogen technology would make environment pollution free and scale down global warming. Moreover, this technology could be employed for power generation, portable electronic applications by replacing batteries, they said.

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