Cox, a senior master technician at the Dave Moore Ford dealership in Beeville, invented his own hydrogen fuel cell to help him cut fuel costs and save the environment.
“It really works,” said Cox, 40. “I laugh every time I pass a gas station. I used to fill up twice a week but now I only fill up once a week. So, basically, I’ve cut my fuel consumption in half.”
Cox said he got the idea for the hydrogen fuel cell off of the Internet.
“Ford has a website and the mechanics were writing about using hydrogen and they were saying they couldn’t get it to work,” recalled Cox, who graduated from Skidmore-Tynan High School in 1987. “I got to thinking about it one Sunday and thought I’d give it a try myself.”
Cox, who lives in the Olmos community in southwest Bee County, said he put some water in a soft drink can, hooked two nails up to two wires and then hooked the two wires up to a battery. He stuck the two nails into the water and, voila, the water began to bubble.
“It was making hydrogen,” he said. “I wanted to see if it was flammable — to make sure it was hydrogen, so I lit it with a lighter. It exploded.”
The electrical current passing through the water broke the bonds of the water molecules — made up of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, known as H2O, he said.
“That’s something we learn in high school chemistry class but a lot of people forget when they get older,” he said.
He said he immediately began to fashion a larger and more permanent fuel cell.
“It really wasn’t that hard,” he said. “I’m mechanically minded so it was just a matter of experimenting with the right components.”
Cox, who graduated from Coastal Bend College in 1989 with an associate’s degree in auto mechanics, said he got his mechanical aptitude from his father, Jay Cox, a former chief mechanic for the Navy who died last year.
His first attempts to design larger containers proved failures when the containers eroded, he recalled.
Four months later, after numerous experiments, he settled on thick PVC pipes to capture the hydrogen. The two pipes, about the width of a coffee can, are mounted in the back of his pickup truck. Hoses carry the hydrogen vapors to his truck’s intake. Two wires, one hooked to the positive terminal on the truck’s battery, and one connected to the negative, power the fuel cell.
“Getting the hydrogen fuel to the intake was really no problem for me because I know what it takes to make an automobile go,” he explained. “But I had to figure out how to make the fuel cell safe.”
Again, he turned to the Internet for ideas and settled on bronze wool as a flame arrestor.
“I bought all my supplies locally, at hardware stores in Bee County,” he said. “But you can’t buy bronze wool in Bee County so I had to go out of the county to a marine supply store.”
The bronze wool acts as a one way check valve and prevents a flame from passing back to the fuel cell, explained Cox, who started working for Dave Moore Ford since he graduated from college 20 years ago.
So little hydrogen is collected at any one time that a big explosion is all but impossible, he added.
“My truck uses the hydrogen as it’s created so there’s very little in the cells that can explode,” he said. “Now if I stored a large volume of hydrogen, say 500 gallons, then, yes, that would be deadly. The danger comes in storing too much hydrogen, but I use up all the hydrogen I make almost as fast as I can make it.”
Cox also had to work out a way to keep water vapor from entering his engine.
“Hydrogen fuel cells still give off some water vapor,” he said. “But some water vapor is okay because it cleans any carbon deposits in the intake system.”
He installed a water trap, or filtration system, to capture the bulk of the water vapors heading to the intake.
Another problem he encountered: not using more fuel to power the alternative power source.
“In order to make power or energy, you have to produce power or energy,” he said. “In other words, I didn’t want my truck’s engine to work harder to produce the hydrogen. That would have defeated the purpose of the fuel cell. If it takes a lot of current to power the fuel cell, then my truck’s engine would have to work harder. My alternator would have to work harder and that means my truck would consume more gasoline. I didn’t want that. I wanted to cut my gas use.”
Fortunately, he said, his hydrogen fuel cell draws a mere 8 amps now — less current than a windshield wiper motor.
“The good thing about my fuel cell is that it doesn’t draw much current and doesn’t overwork the alternator,” he said.
He calls his contraption “The Enhancer,” because it enhances the fuel consumption of his truck.
“I can’t totally rely on hydrogen to power my truck, but I can get about 30 to 40 percent fuel savings with it,” he said. “Like I said, I only fill up once a week now, compared to twice a week only three weeks ago.”
Cox said his pickup truck used to get 29 miles to the gallon. Once he hooked up his fuel cell, however, he started getting over 40 miles to the gallon.
He said the hydrogen also makes his truck engine run “leaner.”
“The computer in my truck determines that engine is running rich,” by the added hydrogen he said. “And because it is running rich, the computer then tells the engine cut back on fuel use. It doesn’t need as much gasoline now to power it so less fuel is injected, which is saving me money.”
The Enhancer cost Cox about $85.
“I’ve been using it for three weeks and it’s already saved me that much money in gas,” he said.
Cox’s supervisor, Robert Rodgers, service manager at Dave Moore Ford, said he and his co-workers were wary of Cox’s claims at first.
“When he told us he could produce hydrogen we were a little leery and even after he showed us he could make hydrogen we were hesitant, but after he hooked it up, we tested it and sure enough it worked,” Roberts said. “It was amazing.”
Roberts said Cox’s hydrogen fuel cell is on the cutting edge of automotive technology.
“(Hydrogen fuel cells) are the coming thing,” Roberts said. “The technology has actually been around for years but no one put it to use, probably because the price of gasoline was so low.”
Cox keeps two gallons of water in the rear of his pickup truck to power the fuel cell. He adds electrolytes — a solution of baking soda and vinegar — to the water to help conduct the current across the two electrodes implanted in the fuel cells.
“The good thing about using hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cells to power your vehicle is that once it passes through the engine it leaves the vehicle as water again,” he said. “The only emission there is is water coming out your tailpipe.”
So why can a mechanic in Beeville develop a workable hydrogen fuel cell when engineers worldwide have struggled for years to develop an affordable system for mass marketing?
“I think there’s a lot of skeptism,” he surmised. “There are a lot of people who are simply skeptical that hydrogen fuel cells are safe and can be made to work.”
He also feels that oil companies may have a hand in keeping the lid on such technology.
“Look, if I can do it, if I can make a hydrogen fuel cell at my home and cut my fuel costs by 30 to 40 percent, then the engineers who work for the automobile industry should be able to come up with a cheap, workable system too,” he said. “I mean, if I can do it, a mechanic here in Beeville, then the engineers at detroit with more resources could do it, too,” he said. “I mean, if I can do it, then just about anyone with any mechanical abilities at all should be able to do it.”
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