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Increasing Fuel Mileage With Hydrogen?
cr0sh asks: "I was recently looking into the costs and availabilty associated with small, hydrogen fuel cells (results: they are still expensive), when I came across this site about the Hydrogen-Boost [Warning: Pop-ups]. Looking at this site, it seemed like just another in the long line of scamming 'get more mileage/power' engine products out there, but it intrigued me enough to continue looking into it. I eventually came upon another site on
hydrogen experiments. A little more searching revealed this one about constructing your own Hydro-Boost device, which goes into detail about how you would build such a system. None of these sites answered the big questions, however: 'does it work?', and 'if so, how well?'. I also wanted something a little more authoritative. So, back to digging...which came up with this paper from OSTI [PDF]. The very first line of the abstract of this paper reads 'It is well known that hydrogen addition to spark-ignited (SI) engines can reduce exhaust emissions and increase efficiency.' This paper seems to advance the notion that such a system like the 'Hydrogen Boost' system may actually work. Does Slashdot think such a system would work? If so, how it could be improved, especially given today's rapidly rising gasoline prices, here in America?"
"On the experiments site, via the link to 'Hydrogen Experiments Part 2', the author references the first site. He ultimately decides to 'home-brew' his own system instead, and gives enough detail for anybody to do so. I was hoping the author had more details on the effects caused by dumping hydrogen into his engine, but that doesn't appear to be.
A notable observation on the Hydro Boost Device is that instead of using a stainless steel mesh as the other guy uses (which would seem to be a superior material to use, though difficult to find), this design uses galvanized steel bolts for the electrodes, making it something that can be built from materials found at a local building materials warehouse."
- Emissions result from incomplete combustion of the fuel. If this is true, how can adding hydrogen (i.e. more fuel) help the emissions quality when the limiting ingredient is oxygen?
- NOx gasses are going to form as long as there's nitrogen present at high temperatures, pretty much no matter what you burn. So that's not going to improve emissions...
- Where are we supposed to be getting the hydrogen from in sufficient amounts to make it worth the effort?
Color me very confused...Here in india we are not that power consious. So a 90-95mph top speed car(diesal) gives around 20Km/ltr on long trips, thats about 12.5 miles to a litre or more than 60 MPG!. So if you are willing to sacrifice power, its easy to get economy
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It is about using Hydrogen, which is very combustible to enhance your engine's efficiency. Somehow you put hydrogen into your engine, it ignites, and thus you can use less fuel to get the same power. aka a Hydrogen Boost.
You are simply replacing some of the hydrocarbons in the fuel supply with hydrogen.
This is talking about making normal cars better.
At the expense of a far more complicated fuel system. Since one fuel is a liquid the other is a gas. So you can't simply pre mix fuel in a storage tank. As you could do with an ethanol & alkene mixture or even methane and hydrogen.
a little thing called thermodynamics. More specifically, the second law. You can't get more energy out than you put in. As a matter of fact, you can't even get back the same amount.
Heisenberg might have been here.