First, let me qualify that yes, this would be evil and illegal, but I think it'll happen so let's address it now.
For use once we get to the "hydrogen economy" where we use H2 as an ubiquitous energy source, where you fill your car with H2 instead of gasoline.
Sell, on the blackmarket, devices in a black box that can sit under a desk at work, plug into the electrical grid, and quietly use the electrical energy to electrolyze water to fill a little H2 cannister. The H2 cannister can be discretely carried back to your car and used as fuel, or sold.
Horribly inefficient in the total energy production cycle, but the theif is only paying for the capital on the black box, so there's plenty of motivation for the black box to be bought & used.-- sophocles, Dec 20 2004 Black Market - Weather Report http://www.amazon.c...202-6522620-8454259Joe Zawinul, the greatest ears since Mozart apparently. Looks exactly like my dad. [spiritualized, Dec 20 2004] Here's Joe, but I don't see anything extraordinary - http://content.answ...0px-Joe-zawinul.jpg- about his ears. Beauty is in the eye of, I guess. [normzone, Mar 29 2006] Didn't there used to be a business:scam grouping? This might fit in there.
Anyway, no objections worth mentioning. After all, I plug in my lava lamp at work.-- shapu, Dec 20 2004 Will the black box save a recording of your last words before the office explodes? +-- FarmerJohn, Dec 20 2004 Hazards like possible explosions haven't put a damper on other black market activities. Consider it an add to the allure.
Also, there are other H2 storage concepts out there such as using borax and other "H2 battery" concepts that are safer than pressurized H2. Of course they all take energy to charge the battery, so this theft method would still work.-- sophocles, Dec 21 2004 Who needs to wait for the hydrogen economy? You could do this with a battery charger now? Or a brass and crystal windup box which you then hook to your bike pedals.-- bungston, Dec 21 2004 Why not now? You're correct. But the magnitude of how much energy you can store with an H2-battery/cannister is so much greater per volume/mass than what you can get with Ni-Cads that it won't be useful enough to the theif until we go H2.-- sophocles, Dec 21 2004 Umm... Evil?
But awesome.-- DesertFox, Dec 21 2004 // ... once we get to the "hydrogen economy"...
Old Russian joke: "Once we get to the "true communism" dad is walking with his son, and kicks a coin on the street. Son: 'Dad what was that you kicked'. Dad: 'That was money. Many years ago it was used to buy meat and other things'. Son: 'Dad, what's meat?'-- pashute, Mar 29 2006 I've been thinking about building this truck see... it's got two big hoses, a turbine, a hydrogen electroliser and a big tank. You dump one hose in a hydro dam and take the other hose down the hill... you sit there all night syphoning the dam dry and sneak out next morning with a big tank of hydrogen. haha... evil.-- greyfiend, Jul 15 2006 I'm bunning this, but if you just hook your box to the telephone lines you get a constant unmetered current. Only need 1.6volts to seperate o and h. Good times for that black box, and it keeps you from getting any pesky phone calls at work.-- hypergiaphobia, Sep 05 2006 I cant help but think how funny this seems. Why would I do that, it much easier to steal power from the parking lot where your car is parked, you wouldn't have to carry a small box, I am willing to bet you could steal a lot more hydrogen if you made a medium sized box and left it mounted in your vehicle that way it could store it directly available for use. This is assuming that it is considered stealing to use flush mounted solar panels discreetly located on the roof of your car, who knows your work place might own the sun...
Now before people tell me there's no way to generate enough hydrogen to run your car off just the solar roof, I already know that, but "nickels and dimes" help pay the our bill collectors so why couldn't this help supplement our hydrogen supply? And no doubt could a little black box sitting under our desk provide us enough to drive either.-- JaKaL, May 11 2010 random, halfbakery