17Sep05 Montreal Gazette: "Can this man save the world?"
- "Uncle Joe" Williams -- http://tinyurl.com/8vwgv
- Kyoto Protocol carbon credits trade multi-billion-dollar business
- Innovative Hydrogen Solutions - H2N-Gen Hydrogen Generating Module
From:The Mesa School <gurucalifornia@...>
To: Global Emergency Alert Response 2000 <gear2000@...>
Subject: Fwd: [ECETI News] CAN THIS MAN SAVE THE WORLD?
Date: Sep 19, 2005 3:51 PM
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From: ecetiwebmaster <ecetiwebmaster@...>
Date: Sep 18, 2005 10:04 AM
Subject: [ECETI News] CAN THIS MAN SAVE THE WORLD?
To: eceti@yahoogroups.com
By William Marsden
The Gazette (Montreal)
September 17, 2005
http://tinyurl.com/8vwgv
Can this man save the world?
Everyone wants to cut car emissions. Sooner or later, someone
will find a way to do it. Joe Williams hopes it's him.
WILLIAM MARSDEN
The Gazette
Saturday, September 17, 2005
CREDIT: JOHN MAHONEY, THE GAZETTE
Peter Romaniuk of Innovative Hydrogen Solutions looks over his company's
machine, which the company claims eliminates almost all emissions from
gasoline-powered vehicles. The company says it is developing a version of
the machine that will be one-eighth the size of the current prototype and
that should be ready by next year.
Joe Williams Sr. believes he has the machine that will help save the world.
It will make the sky blue, allow everyone to breathe easier, and, in a time
of skyrocketing fuel prices, save us all money.
Yes, it's hard to believe. Williams is a Winnipeg boy who cut his business
teeth managing McDonald's and Burger King franchises. Even now, he employs
only 15 people in his Toronto and Manitoba offices. He entered this
save-the-world field only 11 years ago and has invested just $7.5 million in
his product.
But before you sniff skeptically and skip to the next story, read on.
Because if Joe Williams turns out to be right, "I think Bill Gates and our
group will be shaking hands," he says. "It's that big."
"It" is his Hydrogen Generating Module, or H2N-Gen for short.
Smaller than a DVD player - small enough to sit comfortably under the hood
of any truck or car - it could be big enough to solve the world's greenhouse
gas emission problems, at least for the near future. In fact, it could make
the Kyoto protocol obsolete. Basically, the H2N-Gen contains a small
reservoir of distilled water and other chemicals such as potassium
hydroxide. A current is run from the car battery through the liquid. This
process of electrolysis creates hydrogen and oxygen gases which are then fed
into the engine's intake manifold where they mix with the gasoline vapours.
It's a scientific fact that adding hydrogen to a combustion chamber will
cause a cleaner burn. The challenge has always been to find a way to get the
hydrogen gas into the combustion chamber in a safe, reliable and
cost-effective way.
Williams claims he has achieved this with his H2N-Gen. His product, he said,
produces a more complete burn, greatly increasing efficiency and reducing
fuel consumption by 10 to 40 per cent - and pollutants by up to 100 per
cent.
Most internal combustion engines operate at about 35 per cent efficiency.
This means that only 35 per cent of the fuel is fully burned. The rest
either turns to carbon corroding the engine or goes out the exhaust pipe as
greenhouse gases.
The H2N-Gen increases burn efficiency to at least 97 per cent, Williams
said. This saves fuel and greatly reduces emissions.
It also means less engine maintenance and oil changes. The only thing the
vehicle owner has to do is refill the unit with distilled water once every
80 hours of engine use.
Tests show the unit itself should lasts for at least 10 years, Williams
said.
It can be attached to any kind of internal combustion engine: diesel,
gasoline, propane/natural gas.
Also, because the H2N-Gen manufactures only enough hydrogen to feed the
engine at a given time, there is no dangerous onboard storage of hydrogen
gas and no hydrogen under pressure.
Williams said his product, if it works as well as he claims, will serve as a
bridge between the present and the time when the combustion engine is
relegated to the scrap heap of history. The preferred interim solution has
been gasoline-electric hybrid cars, which remain expensive.
But Williams doesn't want you to take just his word for it.
The H2N-Gen recently went through third-party verification -- known as
"proof of concept" - at Wardrop Engineering Inc. of Toronto, specialists in
product testing and development. The company built its own prototype
according to Williams's design and tested it against Williams's claims. It
passed with flying colours.
In fact, Wardrop liked the invention so much the company wants to become an
equity partner in Williams's company, Innovative Hydrogen Solutions, said
Richard Scheps, Wardrop's product development manager and a co-owner of the
engineering firm, which employs 600 people.
"At the time we first saw it, it seemed too good to be true," Scheps said.
"But for everything we're seeing it seems really good. It does work. So
we're moving into phase two. Refinements and further testing."
He cautions that it's "only a go when everything is finished." But if all
goes smoothly, he said, it could be out on the market in six to 12 months.
Further tests are now being performed by the Canadian Environmental
Technology Verification (ETV), a non-profit Toronto company licensed by the
federal government to verify environmental technology. Williams doesn't have
to have ETV approval for his unit. But he said that he is not going to
market without it.
"I think it has a high potential to do what they say or think it will," said
Adele Buckley, vice-president of technology and research.
"On the basis of what we have seen from other situations, it looks likely,
but we will wait until we get the data."
sss
Williams never doubted that his H2N-Gen would work. He said his company has
"over 80 million miles of real experience of onroad verification of the
machine in all four seasons."
His first target would be heavy vehicle fleets such as public transit buses,
trucks and trains because they are the biggest fuel users and their engines
are the biggest polluters.
"We're marketing a 20-pound unit for $7,500," Williams predicted. "That's
the maximum price that it will be. The average truck out there today will
get their money back in eight months at the latest. CN (Canadian National)
spends $11 billion a year on fuel and we can save them minimum a guarantee
of 10 per cent, $1.1 billion a year."
And that's where things would get financially interesting. In fact, they
become financially astronomically interesting. There are, after all, more
than one billion combustion engines on earth. Just a fraction of that
business would make him a very rich man.
Williams doesn't want to make money just through selling H2N-Gen units. He
has his eye on getting a share of the fuel savings.
In other words, he would hope to install the H2N-Gen unit in, say, every
Canadian National railway and truck engine for free in return for a
percentage of CN's fuel savings.
Furthermore, he would hope to get his hands on carbon credits promised by
the Kyoto Protocol. The trade in carbon credits is predicted to be a
multi-billion-dollar business as countries attempt to meet their 2012
obligations of cutting greenhouse gases to below 1990 levels. Those who fail
to make the cuts will be fined or will have to buy credits from companies
that have cut well below the agreed levels.
"Credits are a huge bonus," Williams said. He figures his company could make
billions trading them.
sss
Williams's entry into the hydrogen field came 11 years ago when he was
running his own management consultant firm in Winnipeg.
"It was a friend introducing me to a friend, saying you got to meet this
guy," Williams said.
This guy was an environmentalist and inventor named Gene Stowe, from Tempe,
Ariz. Stowe had developed a plastic cylinder that produced hydrogen and
oxygen through electrolysis on demand only when a fuel engine was running.
Stowe's hydrogen-producing cylinder was "very rudimentary." Among its many
problems was a nasty habit of blowing up.
"They had a lot of UFO sightings around the area because whenever his
cylinder blew it sent a disc flying 200 to 300 feet into the air," Williams
said, chuckling.
Stowe died six months after their meeting. Williams was intrigued enough by
that time to try to take the idea to the next level.
Unlike large companies such as Ballard Power Systems of Vancouver, which has
spent billions in public and private money trying to develop fuel-saving and
emissions-reducing technologies with modest success - including trying to
build a low-cost and safe hydrogen-powered electric engine - Williams said
that so far he has spent slightly more than $7.5 million. He raised money
from a private investment fund in western Canada and from the Wealth Masters
International, a private fund in Toronto. No government money has gone into
his company.
He's not the only one trying to save the world, and to make a bundle doing
it. Other companies have been working on the same theory of hydrogen
generation and they are already suing each other over patent infringements.
A Toronto company called Hy-Drive Technologies Ltd., for instance, is suing
a Winnipeg competitor called Canadian Hydrogen Energy Corporation over
alleged patent infringements and a non-disclosure agreement. Williams is
named in the lawsuit since he was a part-owner of CHEC until disagreements
led him to leave and form Innovative Hydrogen Solutions.
Hy-Drive last year started marketing a hydrogen generator for trucks.
Company president Tom Brown claims to be well ahead of Williams, who he said
is little more than a "snake oil salesman."
Williams, for his part, said he has never even met Brown.
It must be noted that when Brown's company hit the Toronto venture exchange
last year and began selling its units, it was soon discovered that the
product was not reliable. After selling only 55 units at $11,500 a piece,
Brown had to take the product off the market. The company's stock is trading
at around 78 cents.
Brown said an updated version of his hydrogen generator has rectified
reliability problems, but it's not yet on the market. Hy-Drive's unit still
weighs about 70 pounds, and at more than 4,000 cubic inches, is much too big
to fit into an engine compartment. Truckers have to secure it to the side of
their cabs.
But Brown said his company has teamed with Martinrea, a Canadian auto parts
manufacturer started three years ago by former executives of the giant Magna
Corp., to work on a smaller unit.
Still, it seems that Williams's company is ahead in the game - though, as he
notes, the market potential of this technology would be so huge "even 12
competitors could not serve it."
sss
The Gazette drove a 2000 six-cylinder Jeep Grand Cherokee equipped with an
H2N-Gen prototype from Montreal to Cornwall and back. We set the cruise
control at 102 kilometres per hour. The trip computer indicated that on the
highway the car averaged about nine litres per 100 kilometres, which is more
than 10 per cent below the manufacturer's mileage rating of 10.5. The
combined city/highway mileage was slightly more than 11; the car is rated at
12.9.
We also tested the Jeep SUV at one of Ontario's Drive Clean emissions
inspection centres. The car's emissions were well below the manufacturer's
ratings. For instance, on carbon monoxide, Daimler/Chrysler gives a rating
of 5.5 grams per mile for this model of car. The Drive Clean rating for the
Jeep was zero.
Ontario's Drive Clean testing has been disparaged by the Automobile
Protection Association as inaccurate. So neither of our tests - the mileage
and the emissions - can be considered scientific. But anecdotally, the
H2N-Gen passed.
What's more, even after the hour-long drive from Montreal, the tailpipe was
not hot. In fact, we could wrap our hand around it without getting burned.
Williams claims this proves that hot polluting emissions are not coming out
of the tailpipe.
Confident that the ETV will approve the H2N-Gen, Wardrop's engineers are
designing a streamlined module for the marketplace. "We're working on a
prototype that will be one eighth the size (of his present unit) to be used
in cars," he said. "That should be ready by next year."
When everything falls in place, he's confident his tiny patented machine
will have a huge world-wide impact. Then he'll be well on his way to meeting
Bill Gates at the top of the Fortune 500.
If it works.
wmarsden@...
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2005
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