Customer Reviews

Fuel from Water: Energy Independence with Hydrogen

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

As an engineer who both uses hydrogen and can work the math, I'm astonished that no one has corrected Peavey. He mixes units, get equations wrong and just plain can't spell. A decelerating engine is "braking" not "breaking", for example. His thermodynamic computations are often wrong once you work them out, his "borrowing" of other sources is painful where "propane" was not changed to "hydrogen" is all cases in a paragraph. Incredible. This text is very nearly the "Anarchist's Cookbook" of renewable energy -- there's a lot of words, some of it correct, but someone's going to get badly hurt if they actually follow this guide. All that, and a decade out of date to boot. If Amazon would take the book back, I'd gladly send them the ashes from the woodstove.

This is an old college technical paper, put together to look like a book.
It is very poorly written, but probably technically correct.
The book jumps around with no particular sequence or direction.
If you are not an electrochemical engineer in training who likes really bad diagrams ( bordering on hand written ) and REALLY TERRIBLE photographs ( which look like somebody's 3rd pass Xerox copies of twenty five year old black and white photos ) you will not like this book.
It may be of assistance to a engineering student, who may need some of the obscure tables and reeeeally bad graphs.
It looks like this guy printed this on a Commodore 64, in his basement,,,, him self,,,,, twenty years ago!!!!!!!
The technical knowledge is there, but the book is a REEEEEALLY out of date, poor quality, and a piece of CRAP.

But it's a great buy if you are looking for the spark gap setting for a 1977 Cadillac running a hydrogen conversion kit on a gasoline engine!

I learned more in five minutes of reading this book than in months of wading through subject indexes in the library (much of the information cannot be found with on-line sources). More people should be made aware of the ideas this book offers in helping solve the world problem of energy. Fuel From Water is what I was looking for and I will put it to good use. Having always been interested in alternate energy sources, and since I am involved in electronics manufacturing, I find the production of electrical energy a fascinating subject. Peavey has done much of the work for me. A friend borrowed the book. He was thrilled to find that much information in one volume. He didn't return it. He just handed me the money to buy another.

This book has been in publication since 1985? That is quite impressive that he started thinking about this stuff way back then. I can't believe all the negative feedback and this book is in it's 11th edition. If there are so many errors and everyone has the time to write about it here don't you think you could send the author a little note? Like "Hey Mikey, photovoltaic cells are made of silicon and implants are made of Silicone." The book is good as a rough start, I'll admit it has been very helpful to me - a professional engineer. Yes the facts and calculations need to be checked but what facts and calculations don't need to be checked? The web sites out there dealing with this stuff are either so simple that a 5 year old could understand or so in-depth that only someone very familiar with the technology could understand the tradeoffs. This book does a great job at bridging those gaps. With that said, good Job Mikey and to everyone else - if you don't like something fix it, or shut up that's what the Hydrogen Revolution is about people fixing something they don't like.

"Fuel From Water" is an exceptional book, containing anything the mind desires when entering the field of a hydrogen econonmy and/or technology. The book covers electroylsers; solid state polymer catalysts, 2 container seperation, and sulfur types.

Peavy goes into the fuel cell technologies such as pem, sofc. The types of storage of hydrogen with a non-bias opinion on the advantages and disadvantages of the storage devices. The book has more information on this topic than many others in its class. It is definately worth every penny, even if it is to open your eyes or to expand on this fuel technology.

The latest edition of Fuel From Water does not contain any specific instructions for constructing an electrolyzer. It does not encourage anyone without sufficient technical background to do so.
The unit conversion errors in a previous edition have been corrected. The book has been in print since 1985 and covers research since 1970. In the recent edition, 25 of the 186 footnotes are later than 1994. This book has been used as one of the texts for courses conducted by professional engineers who are capable of evaluating its scientific accuracy.

This more like a high school paper gone wrong than a serious book for adults. Typical of the nonsense circulating around lately regarding Hydrogen as an alternate fuel. Poor science, terrible reading...... Does not factually deal with the real issues such as cost of distribution, storage and gasification. An insult to any reader with a brain.

Practical information abounds in this book by Michael Peavey. The problem is, a lot of it is wrong in minor but dangerous ways. Spelling is bad enough to be distracting, and math and mixed unit errors make this _not_ the book to follow in building equipment that uses an explosive fuel. To his credit, he does cover the topic well and also provides a useful bibliography and list of sources -- from the mid 80's. From an engineering standpoint, the text approaches the Anarchist's Cookbook in it's sheer amateurism, and in its liklihood of getting someone hurt who follows it. If Amazon would take this book back, I'd send them the ashes. -Greg Richter

I too am surprised to see so much negative feedback on this book.
On the positive side it is filled with hard to find information on making hydrogen and using it. It would have taken me dozens of weeks to find this information on the web - if I even knew where to look. So at less than $20 this is a real bargain. It reminded me of many forgotten methods of creating hydrogen. This book has real value.
On the negative side...Mr. Peavey what were you thinking? You need to hire a good technical editor to remove all the typos. You also need to hire a graphic designer to make this book look good. The information is great for tinkerers and R&D people like myself, but when you package it in such an amateur way it gives the impression that the content also lacks value. If you fix the errors, redesign the book and put it in a hardcover (that cheap laminated cover curls like crazy) you could charge 3 times the price.
Just my 2 cents worth.

This book provides a comprehensive view of the uses for and the production of Hydrogen gas as a fuel. There are hard facts and figures, particularly when making comparisons with other fuels and the way they are used. The author has a clear understanding of the energy field and does not appear to have any bias. This is not an instruction manual on how to run your home or car on hydrogen, but is a good textbook for anyone thinking of using hydrogen as a fuel. Plenty of hard facts and figures, very little waffle.