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Hydrogen Generating Module to Help Your Car?
TomClancy_Jack writes "A Canadian man claims to have invented a hydrogen
electrolysis box that can be fit onto any existing internal combustion
engine. He claims that engines using his "H2N-Gen" box
'produce 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.'
If this doesn't turn out to be vapor-ware or just a regular scam, it could turn
out to be one of the biggest recent innovations in transportation history.
He claims it will be on the market in 6 - 12 months, so time will
tell."
Where's the profit for the oil magnates?
It's another perpetual-motion machine, people.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
$7500 for a 10% increase? Seems a bit steep for the average joe. I'm sure that if this gets popular, prices will go down. Sounds like a great idea if it works.
It isn't anymore vaporware than Windows Vista
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
But this draw to seperate the water would require a lot of energy, which would be drawn from the engine causing it to work harder (like A/C). Plus the problem of constantly refilling the reservoir (and who cant see the first lawsuit when people have to add caustic chemicals like KOH)
drunk chemists
I still think the cat-fueled method would provide a greater return in the long run....
This sig is six words long.
It's been known for years that adding hydrogen to the mixture allows a better fuel burn by making the ignition faster and more consistant. However, the amount of energy needed to produce the hydrogen probably counteracts whatever extra energy is produced. This may be good for reducing pollution, but I don't think it'll save much fuel, especially in a regular engine, and not one specifically designed for it. You need quite a bit of hydrogen, and it takes tons of electricity to split water.
Catchpa: diesel
another frontpage without apple+ipod+apple->intel headlines.
Is that you don't have to shave before driving to work in the morning.
...at Mississippi State University that made one for a Senior Design project. It really does work.
Beep. Boop. Beep. You have questions. I have answers and your home address.
I'll use it to power my 6'8GHz laptop!
--
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Look, all the papers printed that there were WMD in Iraq because a couple of idiots said so. Just because it is in print, does not make it so. But it would be cool if it works.
I wonder if this guy is friends with the guys who did cold fusion?
Dear Slashdot,
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have been looking for something like this to put in our vaults never to be heard of again.
Love always,
Exxon-Mobil
Huh? Okay, simple math here... 80 hours at an avaerage of say 50mph is 4000 miles. Say an average car gets 25mpg, that's 160 gallons. WIth a 15 gallon tank/fillup it's about every 10 tanks that you would need to add water.
I don't get your comment.
How do you get a hundred percent reduction in emissions and still be using an internal combustion engine??? It's not possible to not create some emmissions.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Catalyzing DHMO into its components . . .
The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet. -- William Gibson
Let me rapeat just to make sure I got it right. Energy in form of electric current splits water in hydrogen and oxygen. The box collects hydrogen, vents oxygen, and then hydrogen is burned into the conventional engine, which through the transmission turns the wheels.
I'd simplify that. I take electricity and run it through the electric motor instead. 90% efficiency! Any takers to market that with me?
Just how much power does the alternator produce that is unneeded to top up the battery and keep the engine rolling along, therefore going to waste? Is this addon simply using the extra power to electrolyse water? Seems like a good idea to me.
Wow - that is big.
If his device is set to corrupt hundreds of millions of vehicles the world over, will Bill Gates consider him a peer?
That's what came to mind first... now excuse me while I finish TFA.
he's talking about achieving 60% efficiency from a Carnot Cycle automotive heat engine? Ok. When's the IPO ... I want to invest.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
./ had a BULLSHIT! buttion?
The car does not run on hydrogen with this device.
The device adds hydrogen and oxygen to the mix, producing a cleaner, more thorough burn.
Supposedly.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
So this thing engine will not pollute any when burning gas? Huh?
Yes, because we can all leave our engines running for 3 and a half days without adding gas. I get six hours tops at highway speeds.
Of course, it has nothing whatsoever to do with hydrogen, other than water contains hydrogen. What is happening is the water makes the air more compressable (increased humidity) and the engine works better. This was far more true in the 1950's where such water add-ons were more popular.
Now, with the addition of the keyword HYDROGEN we have an entirely new set of rubes which will certainly pay $7500 for this without batting an eye. See, if it uses hydrogen, it must be more environmentally friendly.
Rubes. Marks. Suckers.
Unfortunately, those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. And pay for it.
I really want to know what kind of mpg you're getting and how big your gas tank is that you refuel less than once per 80 hours of use.
I LOVE articles that come from FARK.
Yay, I have a sig.
i'll use it to play duke nukem forever and check my sco stock while using my windows vista tablet onstar pc...
while, for one, welcoming our new hydrogen overlords...
From TFA:
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.
I thought that it was 35% energy created from the explosion, the rest in waste heat? The fuel is most certainly fully burned. I always thought that efficency would come from producing less heat with less friction, not more heat. It most certainly sounds fishy.
Oz
No, this means 35 per cent of the available energy is extracted as useful work, the rest being lost to heat/friction. This is typical of all heat engines.
In more common terms (to Brits and US citizens at least), the mpg ratings from the tests on page 4 are 26.1 with the device versus 22.4 according to the manufacturer standard mileage rating. Impressive if true, but I'll be skeptical until a well-recognised motoring group does some tests too.
If it works, it might cut costs for road transport, but what about air transport and industry use? I'm not sure this will save the planet. I'll continue to walk to work for now.
This is not a sig
Didn't we all do this in chemistry class? I wonder how the patents are going to work on this? Pushing air and combustable gases into an internal combustion engine is not new? (nitrous oxide?)
From TFA:
"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."
Oh, and have you seen the cost of distilled water? Its not much cheaper than gasoline some places.
I sort of doubt the safety and savings claims on this. It certainly won't get much play from petroleum companies. I can just see them actively lining up to help sell you a hybrid vehicle that gets over 100 mpg in the USA.
This, I predict, will be another promise that goes unfulfilled....
Where is the F/OSS spirit? Guess it goes away when there are billions of dollars to be made?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Hey Guys rtfm, the article says that the hydrogen produced by the box, from excess electricity coming from the engine causes a cleaner burn. It is the cleaner burn that increases fuel efficiency. Pretty simple really.
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.
This is BS.
Most of the fuel is already burned. Most inefficiency comes from the fact that a lot of energy is lost as heat that does no work.
wow. you're such a bitch.
the other guy is right, you're wrong.
and instead of trying to prove why you might be right, you just say "nu-uh, you're wrong!" like a child.
How can the efficiency of an internal combustion engine be 97%!?!?!?!?!? Didn't we all learn in physics that it's simply not possible!
-Palal
And you can pre-order this _patented_ technology for only $19.99! Call within the next five minutes and receive a second for FREE!
Right.
"It is the stillest words which bring the storm. Thoughts that come with doves' footsteps guide the world."
Ok, I'm not too sure about this 35% figure. I'd always taken that to mean that 35% of the energy generated by burning the gas actually goes into moving the car - the rest being mostly dissipated as heat. I was under the impression that any properly tuned car is burning very nearly all of the fuel, or we'd all be backfiring constantly.
AC draws power because the engine turns a compressor which physically increases drag on the motor. This device sounds like it's using electricity and if the alternator is already producing more power than you actually need you won't be increasing drag on the motor by using the rest of the power. (Your lights might dim and your battery might not charge as well however.)
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Good deal! I will do it for that, and make about $7.5mln profit.
Anyway: Reducing polution by about 100% would mean polution free while still burning petrol? Where does the CO2 go? That is a greenhouse gas and also polution.
Safety worries and this complex solution: Lets say the water storage capacity of the unit is about 1 litre of water. In H2 compressed into a liquid that would mean a 1 litre=1 kilo, molecular weight of water= 18, molecular weight of H2=2, resulting in 111 grams of H2. Larger gas cartridges than this size are freely available for methane/butane/propane. Just as explosive as H2. If inserting H2 in the cilinder of the car gives such an efficiency boost, would a 450gram liquid H2 cilinder not be more efficient? The total setup would be lighter, easier to use (just plug in a cilinder), less chance of something breaking, no chemicals, and not to mention (what I already started with) CHEAPER!
The 20 pound module filled with chemicals and electronics, can then be replaced or it can be integrated into the electronic injection system.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
The 35% efficiency is the thermal cycle efficiency, with 65% of the heat being lost through the cylinder walls, cylinder head, and exhaust.
The problem is that to maximise the T1-T2 difference, heat loss must be minimised, and the compression ratio needs to be high since the gas expansion is what drives the temperature change. Spark ignition engines cannot run at very high compression ratios due to the phenomenon of pre-ignition, and this limits their efficiency. Diesels can run at very high compression ratios indeed, because the fuel only burns when it is injected. Their burn cycle also reduces heat loss. That is the reason why Diesels are more efficient than spark ignition engines. Direct injection gas engines (semi-Diesels with auxiliary spark ignition) have been developed by the Japanese but they still require a fuel that costs more to refine than Diesel, and are no more thermally efficient.
Adding hydrogen can promote more complete combustion and perhaps allow a slightly higher compression ratio, but it still does not get you anything like Diesel efficiency. (You can actually raise the compression ratio a little by injecting ordinary water, but the complication -DI water, extra tanks adding weight, injection gear- outweighs the advantages.) And anyone who has spent time fighting, as my R&D dept did over a period, with those water/KOH hydrogen generators will be aware of the problems. Like keeping the KOH out of the output gas stream.
In short, sorry, nothing to see here, Sir Harry Ricardo did all this stuff so long ago it was already old when I went to U and I'm over 50. There is no cheap fix to the internal combustion engine, but lots of expensive R&D is producing ever cleaner and more efficient Diesels at ever more competitive prices. Just as fuel cells advance a notch, so do Diesels in lockstep which is one reason why fuel cell tech is always just around the corner. Dr. Diesel's invention is not glamorous, it is perceived as being dirty, noisy, old tech but with companies like VW, Daimler Chrysler, Peugeot Citroen and BMW betting the farm on it, perhaps they know something small inventors don't.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
However, if you have an engine designed for low temperatures (esp. with a lean mix) via valve timing, etc. you can make it efficient w/o the water and then at full throttle boost the torque without burning a valve, knock, etc.
I suppose you could consider water injection to be an antiknock additive, sort of.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I'm curious as to how many people read the entire article before jumping to conclusions. I know that I took the time to read the article (It was in my local newspaper on the front page, with a huge photo, leading to a story on A3, Saturday Edition... I am skeptical of the press, sure, but not to that extent).
If you read towards the end it goes on to say how the device has 80 million miles of on road testing already, also the plan is not to put them into everyones home car (although that would be ideal), its moreso for large trucks, and public transit, where it would greatly help fuel emissions.
The cost is steep, however the energy savings over a 10 month (this is from the article, probably a little fudged, i'd say a year-two years before complete ROI).
Where the article did take a turn for the worse was when he mensions wanting to cash on on Carbon Credits. He wants to become a billionaire off of (what could be) a genuinely revolutionary product, by basically holding other countries who cant afford the technology hostage, as he will be issued a TON of carbon credits.
My 0.02
Come on - it puts out hydrogen and oxygen. How much more vapory do you think it can be?
Car runs on water...yeah...how many times have we heard that before.
Let the shredding of ridiculous claims commence!
1) 80 million miles of testing.
That's 500 man-years of driving at 55mph for 8 hours a day. The article says he employs 15 people and he's been in the business for 11 years. If we believe this claim at all, we know he hasn't been doing the testing in a scientifically controlled manner. At best, we have to assume his customers are doing it. But if the savings are only around 10%, how do you distinguish variations in driving style from actual fuel savings. There are plenty of ways to get a 10% fuel saving from a typical car by limiting it's accelleration ability for example. If he glued a half inch wooden block underneath the gas pedal he could probably get a 10% saving from most people's driving habits.
2) Montreal Gazette drove the test car on cruise at 63mph and saw a 10% fuel saving.
Well, that's really unsuprising. A carefully set up vehicle with properly inflated tyres and driven at the optimal speed on a single highway run can easily out-do the manufacturers milage rating because the test conditions for highway milage ratings from the EPA (or the Canadian equivelent) are less optimal than that.
3) "The tailpipe was not hot" "...proves that hot polluting emissions are not coming out of the tailpipe"
Hmmm - everything that goes into the engine (air, fuel) has to come out again - and it has to come out of the tailpipe. Even if what comes out is non-polluting, it *does* have to come out again. Removing the pollutants from the exhaust would make little if any difference to the temperature of the exhaust gasses. This proves *NOTHING*.
4) He's selling this unit himself.
This is a HUGE give-away. If this thing was real and had worked solidly over millions of hours of testing - the car manufacturers would be all over this development. He could walk into Ford or GM and pick up a cheque for a billion dollars tomorrow if this worked.
5) The amount of hydrogen his system could produce must be microscopic.
The amount of water that's in that little box lasts 80 hours. He talks about his company doing development work to shink the weight of the box down from 20lbs. If the box was mostly one huge water tank then you'd have to deduce that the only way to shink it noticably would be to reduce the size of it would be to shrink the amount of water it holds - but doing that wouldn't require significant development effort. It would be a trivial matter of telling people to refill it more often. So we have to assume that most of the 20lb box ISN'T water. Let's be generous and guess that half of it is a 1 gallon (10lb) water tank.
So just how much water is consumed over 80 hours of driving? 80 hours of driving would consume - what - 200 gallons of gasoline? So one gallon of water - when electrolized in to hydrogen - drastically improves the fuel efficiency of 200 gallons of gasoline?! Mmmm'K.
6) How come the hydrogen fuel cell developers aren't making a killing by injecting hydrogen into conventional gasoline engines? The amount of hydrogen in even a modest fuel cell would provide that tiny amount of hydrogen to the engine and last for maybe a year! Much more practical than this gizmo I think.
Electrolysis driven by a car battery...sheesh!
7) There are a LOT of unverifiable 'facts' in this paper.
Google this 'Gene Stowe' guy - who'se plastic version exploded with enough force to fling plastic disks 200 to 300 feet into the air...which we're told were then sighted as UFO's. No sign of him anywhere.
Oh - come *ON* - if you throw a plastic disk 200 to 300 feet into the air, it comes back down about 20 seconds later. How the heck could anyone ever imagine they'd seen a UFO? Furthermore, if they had a 'lot' of UFO sightings, that means that these things exploded an awful lot. How come the guy continued testing them after they exploded? Why isn't this story all over the Internet?
Bogus.
www.sjbaker.org
If he would generate the electricity form the brakes than at least this device would make at least *some* sense.
"Most internal combustion engines operate at about 35 per cent efficiency."
/ carnot.html
Isn't this efficiency topped by the Carnot Efficiency? The only way he can improve on this
theoretical efficiency, is by driving up the
temperature.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo
Ok, the injection of H2/O2 may very well increase the degree of fuel burned and there is a vague possibility that a device like this may work, however certain points in the article are complete crap.
'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.'
This is so wrong it's stupid - 35% efficiency absolutely does not mean only 35% of the fuel is burned. It could however simply be a mistake by the journalist.
'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.'
WTF!!! No hot gas is coming out of the engine, eh? Adding H2 makes this occur, eh? Not too likely.
Uh, ok, so our car getting 25mpg now gets 10-40% more, lets make it 25%, as an average. so 25*1.25 = 31.25, we'll round up to 32 to give this guy the benefit of the doubt. Take your 4000 miles divide it by 32 for gallons used and again by 15 for an average tank size and you get ... about 8 tanks between water fillups.
I'd argue that's fairly accurate. Smaller cars have roughly 10-11 gallon tanks, midsize cars and small trucks around 14-16, and large trucks SUVs are somewhere in the 20's. Plus you don't run the tank completely dry, so putting 15 gallons into a car is likely fairly typical.
How about this, instead of yelling that I am wrong, and telling me to shut up and go away, why don't YOU come up with a better model?
I remember seeing directions online 8 years ago, this guy was getting 40-50 miles to the gallon on his Jeep. Only thing is that the electrodes need to be changed every so often.
Something like this would be cool in a true hydrogen-powered car. - You could plug in the car at night and generate hydrogen for the next day. If you're on the road and you're running a little low, stop at a hydrogen refueling station.
It would be sort of like an electric car but one that could be instantly refueled as well.
quite a while. There may be some slight benefit to introducing gaseous hydrogen into the combustion chamber in improving the combustion of the atomized (fine droplets) gasoline, but I find the overall benefit doubtful. Adding a drain on the electrical system puts more of a strain on the engine - if you don't believe this, start your car and let it warm up, make sure the AC/blower and radio are off so that you can hear. Now, turn on your headlights and listen to the change in the sound of your engine - it will bog down slightly. If you have a tach, you will be able to see the slight change in engine rpm there too. The engine has to work harder because the alternator is now harder to turn. Adding any electrical drain will have the same effect. Since there is loss of energy in splitting the water, less energy is returned through combustion than was used to produce the hydrogen, there would be little real benefit and actually a possible loss of fuel effeciency. It is possible that water vapor is entering the combustion chamber which DOES actually increase effeciency by increasing the amount of expansion of gasses during combustion - that can be done with a simple passive system much cheaper and consumes no electricity and has nothing to do with hydrogen production.
The idea for this has been on the net a long time, I made one of these 5 years ago out of a PVC pipe using baking soda and water with stainless steel kitchen knives from a thrift store and hooked it up to my PCV valve. It did boost my gas mileage until I went on a long trip and burned out the switch I had it connected to since it was pulling so much power once it got hot.
Anyways, this guy is just the first to finally put a product on the market, which is great. but keep in mind you are going to have to be responsible for constantly adding whatever and whatever else it needs all the time, which most people wont do since they don't even want to change their oil every 3,000 miles!
Yes, Oz is right - you are burning hydrocarbons - so no matter how much "thermal efficiency" you achieve (putting energy to work as opposed to wasting it as heat), you will still have all the same elements you started with: after mixing
+ fire and
+ oxygen your
+ hydrocarbons (gasoline)
= will now be
+ hydro+oxygen (water) and
+ carbon+oxygen (carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide),
+ unburned, hydrocarbons
+ ozone compounds
+ carbon soot,
+ nitrogen+oxides and whatever else.
Carbon doesn't corrode your engine, that would be oxygen. You're exposing your iron/steel engine parts to heat and oxygen, and eventually you're going to see oxidation (rust) of your metal parts.
How much more boost on pump gas I can run with this hydrogen module in my talon tsi before the engine goes knockity knock?
Worst. Article. Ever. (or at least today):
Most internal combustion engines operate at about 35 per cent efficiency.
While I don't know if 35% is the correct figure, I would agree that the process of converting explosive energy to mechanical energy isn't very efficient. 35% sounds possible.
This means that only 35 per cent of the fuel is fully burned.
At this point, I call bullshit! I'm not a chemist, but I recognise that if 70% of your fuel is not burnt, your internal combustion engine isn't much of an internal combustion engine! (Let's increase fuel efficiency a factor of 3 by catching the gasoline that dribbles out the exhaust!) Besides, the sub-perfect mechanical efficiency of the engine is not necessarily related to combustion efficiency. Does it also convert all the heat from burning gasoline into mechanical energy?
The rest either turns to carbon corroding the engine or goes out the exhaust pipe as greenhouse gases.
Carbon is corrosive? (I bet all that carbon dioxide acid rain is causing a heck of a worldwide problem...)
And carbon (or in this case carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas) is produced as the result of burning most organic materials (including gasoline). What else is supposed to happen here? Burn carbon dioxide? (..the idea of which, frankly, is retarded).
And on another note, it seems like the quack inventions always have a magical box in a lab and everyone stands around poking at it (like the dude in the photo). The inventions that work are outside, being demonstrated to and used by the journalists. I'll believe their claims when they fit a device to the journalist's own car and let them try it out for a week to see the gains for themselves.
This guy made front page headline in the Montreal Gazette this week - if any Montreals are out there, they can confirm this.
In the article (I don't have an online account for the paper and cannot copy/paste, and I recycled the paper out already, sorry) they had a lead tester from Wardrop (a huge international firm) testifying that they built a module from this guy's specs and it *did* work. And the paper had a test drive with the unit too - with a 2000 V6 Jeep Cherokee. Their recordings were dead on with the guy's claims - the vehicle was using 12% less fuel than Chrysler's claims on a 7 hour trip from Montreal to Toronto, and when they got to Toronto they had an Ontario Government certified garage do a standard provincial vehicle emissions test on the modified vehicle - and the modified vehicle turned out zero harmful emissions.
I had to admit I was skeptical (and still am) but they gave this guy the front page headline, and about 3/4 of a full newspaper page on the inside for explanation and details. The test by the journalists themselves, plus the testimony from Wardrop, adds up to a very convincing argument. (though the paper themselves said that their testing should be taken as purely anecdotal, and not a scientific fact, as it was not done under controlled circumstances)
There was also a quote in the paper by an oil company execute (can't remember which, sorry) saying that, of course, this guy was a snake oil salesmen.
Can any fellow Montrealers back me up, or find the article online?
Of course -- it's water. You know what fish do in water, don't you?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I saw it on fark with a COOL tag several hours before it hit slashdot. If that doesn't convince you I don't know what will.
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.
:)
See? Now that is thinking. The government gets the units for free to add to the vehicles. If it doesn't work, the government is not out any money, and only he loses. If it does work, and he gets, say 25% of what they saved? They spend 75% less on fuel for no investment, and he makes a fortune. It's a win win situation all around. That's the kind of business thinking that is going to make him exteremely wealthy. Assuming it's not vaporware. Pun intended...
WWJD?
JWRTFM!
------------
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From TFA:
:)
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.
Kinda funny in and of itself, but then I had to wonder, was that in any way related to this next line?
Stowe died six months after their meeting. Williams was intrigued enough by that time to try to take the idea to the next level.
Hmmmm......
WWJD?
JWRTFM!
It's annoying how this kind of stupid things can be published. The overall performance will clearly decrease... generator(~0.95%)+battery(~90%)+hydrolysis(70%)+en gine(0.35%)
==0.21% performance (aprox) compared to the 0.35% of the engine performance.
The number of stupid things published is proportional to the oil price. It has be this way in the past.
I remember back in '94-'95 running across a "mad science" page with all sorts of these things. This one was supposed to basically attach to the carb and the hydrogen would reduce some of the more complex hydrocarbons into simpler ones or somesuch. I also remember a charcoal fuel filter (involving panty hose), and an electrolysis device based on cavitation... along with a "disk" internal combustion engine (think inside of a harddrive with fuel burning under pressure at the edges and exhaust coming thru the center axel.)
funny how this stuff shows up time and again
meh
What next? Cow Magnets?
When we will be seeing stories like "Make Money Fast" on Slashdot? Seriously, Slashdot's editors are really letting out some BS stories recently. They really need a science editor to vet these things.
Here is a list of mileage scams posted on the FTC site. Keep an eye open for these as Slashdot stories in the near future:
Devices Tested by EPA
The following list categorizes various types of "gas-saving" products, explains how they're used and gives product names. Those with asterisks may save measurable, but small, amounts of gas. All others have been found not to increase fuel economy.
Air Bleed Devices. These devices bleed air into the carburetor. They usually are installed in the Positive Crankcase Ventilation line or as a replacement for idle-mixture screws.
The EPA has evaluated the following products: ADAKS Vacuum Breaker Air Bleed; Air-Jet Air Bleed; Aquablast Wyman Valve Air Bleed; Auto-Miser; Ball-Matic Air Bleed; Berg Air Bleed; Brisko PCV; Cyclone-Z; Econo Needle Air Bleed; Econo-Jet Air Bleed Idle Screws; Fuel Max*; Gas Saving Device; Grancor Air Computer; Hot Tip; Landrum Mini-Carb; Landrum Retrofit Air Bleed; Mini Turbocharger Air Bleed; Monocar HC Control Air Bleed; Peterman Air Bleed; Pollution Master Air Bleed; Ram-Jet; Turbo-Dyne G.R. Valve.
Vapor Bleed Devices. These devices are similar to the air bleed devices, except that induced air is bubbled through a container of a water and anti-freeze mixture, usually located in the engine compartment.
The EPA has evaluated: Atomized Vapor Injector; Frantz Vapor Injection System; Hydro-Vac: POWERFUeL; Mark II Vapor Injection System; Platinum Gasaver; V-70 Vapor Injector; SCATPAC Vacuum Vapor Induction System: Econo-Mist Vacuum Vapor Injection System; Turbo Vapor Injection System.
Liquid Injection. These products add liquid into the fuel/air intake system and not directly into the combustion chamber.
The EPA has evaluated: Goodman Engine System-Model 1800; Waag-Injection System*.
Ignition Devices. These devices are attached to the ignition system or are used to replace original equipment or parts.
The EPA has evaluated: Autosaver; Baur Condenser; BIAP Electronic Ignition Unit; Fuel Economizer; Magna Flash Ignition Control System; Paser Magnum/Paser 500/Paser 500 HEI; Special Formula Ignition Advance Springs.
Fuel Line Devices (heaters or coolers). These devices heat the fuel before it enters the carburetor. Usually, the fuel is heated by the engine coolant or by the exhaust or electrical system.
The EPA has evaluated: FuelXpander; Gas Meiser I; Greer Fuel Preheater; Jacona Fuel System; Optimizer; Russell Fuelmiser.
Fuel Line Devices (magnets). These magnetic devices, clamped to the outside of the fuel line or installed in the fuel line, claim to change the molecular structure of gasoline.
The EPA has evaluated: PETRO-MIZER; POLARION-X; Super-Mag Fuel Extender; Wickliff Polarizer [fuel line magnet/intake air magnet].
Fuel Line Devices (metallic). Typically, these devices contain several dissimilar metals that are installed in the fuel line, supposedly causing ionization of the fuel.
The EPA has evaluated: Malpassi Filter King [fuel pressure regulator]; Moleculetor.
Mixture Enhancers (under the carburetor). These devices are mounted between the carburetor and intake manifold and supposedly enhance the mixing or vaporization of the air/fuel mixture.
The EPA has evaluated: Energy Gas Saver; Environmental Fuel Saver; Gas Saving and Emission Control Improvement Device; Glynn-50; Hydro-Catalyst Pre-Combustion Catalyst System; PETROMIZER SYSTEM; Sav-A-Mile; Spritzer; Turbo-Carb; Turbocarb.
Mixture Enhancers (others). These devices make some general modifications to the vehicle intake system.
The EPA has evaluated: Basko Enginecoat; Dresser Economizer; Electro-Dyne Superchoke; Filtron Urethane Foam Filter; Lamkin Fuel Meter
This sounds very similar to other products I've seen around in the past, just maybe better engineered, since references are made to older ones being rudimentary.
At a previous job of mine, we tested one of the older products, and also made our own electrolyzer to compare it against. Running an engine connected to a generator with a constant load, we compared fuel economies and did pollution testing. Following the directions that came with the electrolyzer we bought, there were no improvements or changes. Various attempts at tuning the engine, and running either electrolyzer at lower and higher levels didn't seem to have any effect either.
At this point, I am pretty skeptical of such a device, as there have been many shady predecessors already. This one may be newer and better engineered, but I can only think of that offering improved safety and reliability, which would not affect short term tests, and maybe an increased output, which we tested some cases by dumping more power into the electrolyzers.
If it is just a case of us not tuning the engine or installing it right, I hope that this model comes with better installation procedures and instructions than its predecessors.
The responses to this article have proven something I've long suspected -- the average Slashdot poster is really, really fucking stupid.
This article screams snake oil and junk science. It's not even funny junk science, it's just sad and depressing. The article describes people who are sinking their life savings into these scams. And a full 3/4 of the posts so far on slashdot are just dipshits with absolutely no understanding of basic high school physics trying to defend the most outrageous claims in the article.
It was one thing when this article hit fark at 3am last night, and the tin-foil hat crowd started on their "acetone" crap. You can forgive the bad science on a website full of drunk people asking "what would happen if I drank poison ivy?" But it's just not excusable here.
Can anyone recommend a decent website for technology news and science reporting?
I work at a place that manufactures "saltwater" chlorine generators. Essentially its a 20-28V variable power supply pushing 8 amps through a "cell" which is really just 7-13 "blades" made of a platinum alloy, fit into a length of PVC pipe. You fit the "cell" into your swimming pools filter line (on the return side), add 300 lbs of salt to your swimming pool, apply the current from the power supply to the cell, and viola! No more need to buy chlorine!
Only difference between this and that tech is that we use salt as the impurity to facilitate current flow, and this device uses potassium hydroxide or hydrochloric acid.
The current splits the NaCl, into Na, and Cl, the Cl does the work of reducing or oxidizing impurities in the pool water, then combines back with the free Na.
Our supply peaks at 250W, and I know some of your car radio systems have single 250W amplifiers, so I doubt that this would bog down your electrical system. Simply put in a bigger (or a second) battery, and a high output alternator for $100 along with it, and the electrical side should be taken care of.
Lousy facepalm.
Just FTR: "Vaporware" is, i guess, actually quite an adequate term for hydrogen-fuelled equipment. Should it produce anything besides vapor, things are obviously not quite right;b
TFA mentioned a rival company Hy-Drive.
http://www.hy-drive.com/
They are making pretty much the exact same claims - although a lot less stridently and with no exact claims of fuel savings.
They'll sell you one right now:
http://www.hy-drive.com/main/Default.asp?Page=20
This one needs filling up with water every 5,000km - and since it fits into a 14"x14"x20" box - you know there's not a lot of water inside.
www.sjbaker.org
My friend sells units from a company at http://www.burnh2o.com/ . No one is claiming anything spectacular here. The power for the electrolysis comes from your electrical system thus your alternator thus it adds more load to your engine. However the net result is an increase in power and efficiency because of the way the hydrogen affects the burn. The hydrogen gas has far less energy density than the fuel it is displacing, but it burns quicker cleaner and more controlled while the heavy gasoline molecule is cumbersome and less predictable. The hydrogen ignites first, igniting the fuel air mixture more quickly and uniformly. That is where the net increase in power and efficiency come from.
100% combustion would give you emission free power.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Distilled water requires energy to produce.
What is the real energy saving balance, if we take into consideration the amount of energy that is needed for getting distilled water?
If this doesn't turn out to be vapor-ware or just a regular scam, it could turn out to be one of the biggest recent innovations in transportation history.
RTFA! It says this thing is small and only weighs in at 20 lbs. This is one of the BIGGEST recent in transportation history? Hell, even the smallest hybrid car will dwarf this little box.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Let's see, he's got to
- Arrange financing
- Create manufacturing instructions (blueprints, designs, etc.)
- Obtain suppliers of components
- Obtain an assembler or set up an assembly plant
- Obtain marketing contacts or resellers, or in the alternative, market it himself
If it was said he was looking at 18 months to two years - or indicated he's already a multimillionaire and can afford to spend (a lot) of his own cash to decrease the time to market - I'd be more inclined to believe it.Remember the three-sided triangle: fast, good and cheap; you can only have, at most, two of these; the other automatically becomes inverted to make up for whichever two you do get.
This also presumes he has working technology ready, now, and not more vaporware as is often the case on some of these claimed developments to create so-called "pollution free" or "alternative fuel" vehicles or systems. There have been too many scams and frauds in the past in this field to be anything other than skeptical.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
... a man in Columbus, Ohio did this in the early to mid 90s. The day after getting the funds to start production/continue research he died mysteriously. =/
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
What will happen to this generator during the winter, will it survives?
How the distilled water will be kept liquid during the night?
How much power will be redirected to keep the water liquid during operation?
Will there be any combustion residues freezing into the engine during the night?
What impact on the engine components? I read metallic parts become fragile when hydrogen combustion occurs in the combustion chamber.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Never having to wait til April first.
It's hydrogen and oxygen, the exact amount released by electrolyzing water. This man is not just injecting hydrogen into the air intake, but one oxygen for every 2 hydrogen.
This results in a re-combining of the hydrogen and oxygen during combustion. This also creates high temperature water vapor which assists in the combustion process, increasing power output from the ordinary gasoline combustion. Brown's gas burns at several thousand degrees centigrade.
Here are some links:
http://www.watertorch.com/faq/faq2.htmlt m
http://www.energyoptions.com/tech/browns.html
http://bwt.jeffotto.com/bwt_catalogue/brown_gas.h
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy, and taste good with ketchup.
In a typical vehicle, there is a cam and crank sensor. The ECM reads these values and pulses the fuel injectors at the correct time in sync with the position of the pistons. 4 stroke, Fuel/air intake, compression, explosion, exhaust, repeat.
Adding a mixture of hydrogen to the intake will not affect the duration of the injector pulse. This means that the car will continue to burn fuel at the same rate it normally would. The only way to get the fuel burn rate down would be to modify the ECM to pulse the injectors differently.
Every car has a different ECM and sensor setup. There is no generic bolt on device that works with every car that would reduce fuel consumption.
If anything, changing the fuel/air ratio by addition of hydrogen will cause the ECM to get different values from the oxygen sensors and throw things out of wack and make your car run like shit.
Vehicle emissions equipment changes the fuel/air ratio in a cycle to heat and cool the catylitic converter to optiize it's effectiveness.
This is just hype used to get investiment capitol.
-koft
To quote from the article:
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.
----
Sorry, the 35% does NOT mean that 35% of the fuel is burned but that 35% of the theoretical energy from the fuel is used. Where does the rest go? It goes to heat up "stuff". Like the exhaust, engine itself, radiator water. If he could get 97% USEFUL work from the fuel, he would not need a radiator.
Right off, this pegged my BS meter.
Can it run on dead cats?
Can somebody with a scientific background please comment?
http://www.wasserauto.de/html/daniel_dingel.html
RTFA please.
There are far too many comments here from people who don't understand what the article is saying.
1) It is *NOT* a hydrogen powered car technology.
2) It is *NOT* a water injection system.
3) It is *NOT* claimed that the energy from burning the hydrogen is what makes the savings.
Any of those claims would be trivial to destroy.
The actual claim is that injecting tiny amounts of hydrogen (generated from electrolysing water) into the engine makes the gasoline burn more completely.
Since it is *NOT* true that only 35% of the gasoline is burned, that can't be what he's really claiming - unless he's a complete nut-job. Only really inefficient gas engines - such as found on weed-eaters and snow blowers - burn so little of their fuel.
The gasoline engine *DOES* leave some unburned residues - carbon monoxide for example could theoretically be combusted down to carbon dioxide to extract more energy and produce less pollution - but that's a *TINY* fraction of the problem. Nothing like the 10% to 35% that's claimed here.
However, there are enough large holes in what's claimed to wrap the bogosity meter around the end-stop.
www.sjbaker.org
http://www.himacresearch.com/
IHMO, the oil industry started using additives around that time (like lead) to keep this method from working.
Do your own research.
There will be no 'magic box' that will enable you to cut deep into the oil companies profits.
They'll never allow that.
If hydrogen takes off, it will be because it will be regulated and controlled & you'll still have to go to your well known oil company pumps and pump it into your vehicle at about the same rate you do now.
Think not? Watch how they 'clean up' veggie oil users and low budge biodiesel manufacturers in the next couple years through strict regulations.
Not unless it's a spankin' new 42V DC automotive system...
r oj_6641.asp ...but personally I think switching electrical loads to thermoelectric waste-heat recovery systems is a better option overall:
0 7-09-05_7
http://www.designnews.com/article/CA187806.html
Or a custom job...
http://nyserda.org/programs/transportation/TransP
http://www.autoindustry.co.uk/news/industry_news/
Fun fact: At $3 per gallon gasoline, with current ICE and alternator efficiencies, electricity onboard a moving car costs 55 cents per kWh.
Someone had to do it.
I am getting really tired of this scuttlemonkey rubbish, he doesnt have a clue about anything. Constantly posting crap non technical stories. Flash Eula story which was just plain wrong.
A comment such as
Heck, with numbers like that it seems like Linux could run circles around XP Pro for audio/video apps such as streaming, recording, and playback!"
regarding low interrupt times on some RT linux distro.
Now this.
The guy obviously hasn't got a clue and can't filter stories.
I want real technology, I want technical details, I don't want crap! nothing personal but maybe you aint cut out for this scuttle?
I can't believe that people can publish this, let alone someone is trying to market it. Firstly their statement:
"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."
Is completely wrong. It operates at 35% efficiency because the remainder of the chemical energy coming from the fuel is lost as heat. The fuel is definitely burned, and what isn't is typically further converted in the Catalytic Convertor, to make sure that we aren't just pumping out hydrocarbons into the atmosphere. And of course it outputs greenhouse gases. No matter what it will always be outputting CO2, if we are using gasoline as the fuel.
As for the system, I have my doubts about the improvement. By putting extra H2 and O2 to the engine with the fuel you may get a bit better combustion, along with possibly more waste heat. But definitely the cycle of using car battery electricity to split H2O, with the electricity coming from the car alternator, and thus the engine, and then burning the H2 again will Always Lose Energy in the cycle.
You might get a bit of a boost from just having the feeds compressed as it enters the cylinder, but that could be duplicated much cheaper and easier with a Turbocharger or Supercharger, which Will improve fuel economy at least a little.
It takes about 4 seconds for an object 300 feet in the air to fall to the ground. In other words, even less of a chance this thing would be mistaken for a UFO.
Best. Webhost. Ever. Dreamhost.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
No- the original math is flawed because it assumes all the engine use is during driving. If you let the car sit there idling all day long, the distance you've traveled is 0 miles, yet you've burned thru a tank of gas.
I always though that the reason injecting water as droplets works is because the oil will cover the outside of the water droplet, increasing the overall fuel / air surface area.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Err, no, it's not. Generally, adding hydrogen to a combustion will consume some of the oxygen, thus depriving the other combustible from O2 and making the burn LESS clean. Granted, here, the described system adds the O2 obtained from the electrolysis, which is just enough to burn the hydrogen and turn it back in O2, but not more (stoechiometric mix). But when an article starts with "it's a scientific fact that" followed by a fallacy, it's a bad omen for the rest.
So the H2 + 2O2 recombines in water, creating some heat in the process. This amounts to injecting hot steam in the cylinders. Nothing more.
Note that it would be more efficient to use exhaust heat to evaporate water and use steam, because getting electricity from the battery creates a load on the alternator, which applies a torque on the engine, hence increasing gas consumption (an alternator that doesn't have to supply current doesn't create as much a torque).
Turbo coolers sometimes inject water in the admission air, but the goal is to reduce air temperature to decrease the incidence of engine knocking due to auto-ignition. However, here, this Williams guy's system doesn't cool the air, so it's not comparable.
So my conclusion is: bad physics + scam.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
A Canadian inventor killed for no apparant reason, Canada is once again urged to get on board with te USA's terror war.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Art Sez,
Take one physics course, and one chemistry course, and call me in the morning if the symptoms persist. In severe cases, a stiff course of thermodynamics might be required, but we hope that it won't come to that. In the meantime, stay away from junk science articles.
Good Luck,
Art
I put a gallon of water in the tank when I fill up and I have a 100% reduction in emissions, plus without the inefficient water splitter the fuel consumption is also reduced by 100%.
Blank until
Project revolves around an engine that can run of compressed air up to a certain speed, and uses a mixture of petrol and gas to push the speed further.
So... running on compressed air, the tank can be refilled of a compressor (yes, that'll be really useful when someday our electricity is derived from clean-er sources) and the overall amount of petrol needed to drive around is reduced.
I've been following the project with interest. I can't do much to help these guys, though... just thought I'd get the project mentioned again and hopefully their effort will rise a few eyebrows.
...will Bill Gates consider him a peer?
If you're going to crash you need something to burn.
Blank until
I cannot believe that anyone of average intelligence would even suppose this is worth reading about. Can we blame this on one editor or all of them? Can we make the editors accountable for stuff like this? I would like to know whether there is just one idiot or the entire staff has been replaced by the FARK team. Perhaps scoring the stories as well as the responses would parse this out.
These sort of scams date from the early 1930's. Perhaps people forget after a while, and they re-emerge.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I never knew that.
It seems to me the alternator would spin at whatever rpm based on engine rpm regardless of how much power was being used. I was under the impression that the rpm produced the power and that no additional drag was put on the motor with more electricity being drawn.
I guess I'll have to go read how alternators work because I'm still not picturing in my head how it increases drag based on electricity demand.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
From reading the article:
Apparently Gene Stowe, the guy who invented what sounds like an early prototype of this machine died six months after meeting Joe Williams.
Conspiracy theorists, go at it!
-------
Incite and flee.
>Dr. Diesel's invention is not glamorous, it is perceived as being dirty, noisy, old tech but with companies like VW, Daimler Chrysler, Peugeot Citroen and BMW betting the farm on it, perhaps they know something small inventors don't.
Maybe they know that Diesel engines do not require fossil fuel to operate.
Rudolph Diesel oriingally powered his engines on peanut oil and invented the diesel engine after the gasoline powered engine because he predicted the problems we are having now being reliant on fossil fuel.
The best "FUEL" for our vehicles is HEMP oil.
HEMP gives an ultra high yield for oil crops... unfortunately you can't grow it here in the USA (even though you couldn't get high off it if you smoked a garbage bag full).
So why can't our farmers grow hemp again?
I was reading all these comments and had a really weird idea: Instead of insulting the people who are trying to make cars more efficent, try to be quiet or maybe think of ideas to make cars more efficent.
The article said the typical engine is 35% efficient and with this device, they expect 97% efficiency. That would be a 200% increase over default. So, 25MPG becomes 75MPG. 4000/75=53, 53/15=3.5 or 3.5 tanks of fuel before refilling H2O tank.
If this thread was trying to make a point of how often the water tank needed refilling, the 80 hour number is more important than how many miles/tanks of gasoline.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
and you're not a bitch. you're what a bitch disposes in the toiled after a hearty winter chili. so it sits all day long in your driveway. well, most people don't use cars to sit there idling all day long, but then again, they're not dump phallic symbols such as you. ON AVERAGE, 50mph is about the right number. I go 74mph on the expressway, I average about 15mph in traffic - I'd say over the life of my car, this guy is in the ballpark. the parent DOES NOT assume all engine use is during driving. do you know how do calculate an average?
it seems you don't, so in my opinion, there is a high chance that you haven't hit 2nd grade yet. If that is the case, I do apologize for writing harsh things to a kid. If you are indeed 9 years old, like you seem, ignore the post, and please stay off of Slashdot. this site will fuck with your fragile little mind. instead, your time would be better spent playing with daddy in a dark closet.
This may be slightly off topic - but BMW has been demonstrating the 750hl model throughout the world for a few years now. IIRC, the only issue was the cost of making hydrogen. Google for 'BMW 750hl'.
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
If you let the car sit there idling all day long, traveling 0 miles, yet burning thru(sic) a tank of gas, you are a fucking moron and will probably die of carbon monoxide poisoning. Most of the rest of the world actually use their cars to go places (riceboys not withstanding) and one contrived example does not render the OP incorrect. So yes, assuming the engine is being used during driving as it was intended to, it sounds like the math holds up.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
It surprises me how crappy science seems to be a fav in Nerddom. Can't we get scientific about energy anymore?
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these things!
Athy, athier, athiest.
this is a gas generator that (supposedly) reduces CO and NO emissions and improves fuel efficiency by injecting gas mix into combustion chamber. The advertised fuel efficiency effect is 10%. This effect is rather marginal and the tests they have done are unconvincing.
(If you measure your fuel consumption with the device on, you cannot compare it with the manufacturers rated consumption - you must compare it with the same car/engine against the device off.)
Something may come out of this but I do not like these guys. I especialy do not like them raving about making Kjoto protocol obsolete - because they apparently have no clue what they are talking about. If physics and chemistry knowledge is lacking in their promo, I have doubts about their product too.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
It takes about 4 seconds for an object 300 feet in the air to fall to the ground. In other words, even less of a chance this thing would be mistaken for a UFO.
Well Mr. Imprecise Nit-Picker, you're not taking aerodynamics into effect.
There. I nit-picked you now. How does it feel?
Wouldn't pure oxygen help the combustion (theoretically)?
Just wondering if discarding the pure oxygen makes sense? What if it accumulates in a pocket under the hood (bonnet) then sparks via excess heat?
Just thoughts I'm having -- anyone know more about this type of thing?
From TFA:
"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.'"
80,000,000 test miles? Assuming they've had (many) working prototypes installed in vehicles for, let's say, 2 years, and drove those vehicles quite regularly at a rate of 20,000 miles per year, then they must have a FLEET of test vehicles! How many? 2,000 for 2 years at 20,000 miles per year! Doesn't that sound a little unlikely for a 13 person company?!
Another gripe/question with this claim is that TFA and everyone else are so excited about "100 percent of pollutants" being eliminated, and "the Kyoto protocol [becoming] obsolete." Is it just me, or does not a "more complete burn" (a.k.a. 100% oxidation) of a carbon-based fuel still result in CO2? How does this guy suppose he's going to cut greenhouse gases by making CO2 production more efficient? And don't say "Well, if your car goes further on a tank of gas, you've used less fuel" because the argument here is that 100% of the fuel you *are* using is being oxidized, right? So while our currently inefficient engines leave behind many carbon compound byproducts, they are producing as much CO2/mile as this guy's invention would.
If you remember freshman chemistry better than I do, please correct me.
On a side note, I'd love to be wrong in this case.
I'm not saying that something like this is entirely impossible, but some of the numbers don't add up. Firstly, if the combustion efficiency rate were to elevate from ~35% to ~97%, don't you think that the fuel economy would double/triple as well? Instead, it is said to increase mileage by 10-40%. Rather modest increases for such proposed efficiency leaps... Secondly, I believe that the 35% quoted in the article is taken out of context. Instead, it is refering to the amount of energy that is actually converted to useable power. The other 65% or so is lost as heat and through friction which cannot be used as power for the typical engine. One final thing to note is that most cars today are produced with small computers on them that monitor emmisions and adjust the fuel/air ratio accordingly. This brings about the closest reasonable stoichiometric levels possible, meaning the most complete burn you can get. Think about it, California emission standards (some of the toughest you can get) state that your car must put out fewer than 200 parts per million hydrocarbons (unburned fuel). You can easily figure that .02% of your emmisions are going to be made of unburned fuel(200/1000000=.0002 or .02%) while the rest of the fuel is emitted as CO2, or fully combusted fuel (about 120000 PPM or 12%). As you can see, the ratio of burned to unburned fuel is highly exagerated by the article and to suggest that burning the excess .02 percent hydrocarbons would increase mileage substancially is absurd.
My bad, I should have realized this flaw. ICE engines are 35% efficient because of all the other losses like heat and friction. There is no way to get 97% efficiency without a new engine design...
There's another thread on the idea that this is just another version of a water injector system. It was pointed out that there's a significant electric load needed to split water. So this could be just a water vapor generator and a replay of an old idea.
Sorry about the oversight.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Vista, that Virus/Infections/Spyware/Trojan and Ad-ware Operating system.
On the History Channel the other night I watched the Modern Marvels segment on Sugar. Brazil has all but given up on petrolium and are using ethanol that they brew from sugar. It is nearly as efficient as gas and is 100% renewable, and for those eco friendly types, it is carbon neutral. They have a law that requires all gas stations to sell gas, diesel, and alcohol. They require all manufacturers to make multi-fuel cars and they are succeding.
We don't need a box that does some fake magic hocus pocus, we need something like what Brazil is doing!
It takes about 4 seconds for an object 300 feet in the air to fall to the ground. In other words, even less of a chance this thing would be mistaken for a UFO.
I told my kite so, but it won't listen to me.
That seemed like a rather large dollar amount. So I looked up CN's annual report (2004). It says that CN's total operating expenses amounted to $4,380 million in 2004. Hmm, that's 4 billion. I guess I don't understand accounting somehow.
No, just a bit further down, they say that the fuel costs were $528 million (8% of operating costs, which is typical for transportation companies).
So I don't know where he is getting that $11 billion number from.
I'm not sure which is more sad: that this article made it through the editorial process at the Monreal Gazette, or that the /. moderators' understanding of simple thermodynamics is so damn bad.
The confusion here is between thermal efficiency (which for internal combustion engines is typically 35%), and combustion efficiency (which for internal combustion engines is well over 98% under normal circumstances). This is why we all love the hemispherical combustion chamber. Go hemi!
While it is true that the addition of hydrogen to the intake mixture will drive up combustion efficiency slightly under some circumstances, the maximum increase in overall efficency (read: gas milage) will be negligible (at best a couple percent). (1/0.98 =~ 1.02041) After the energy input required to drive the electrolysis process via the alternator is accounted for, you're talking about a net efficiency loss.
Of course, this is all subject to the whims of our intelligent designer, the flying spaghetti monster, and so rather than looking at science for a rational explanation of why we shouldn't invest billions in crackpot engineering, we should really be asking, "What would the Flying Spaghetti Monster do?"
(...and in other news, the Kansas State School Board has allocated $10 million for the installation of H2N-Gen boxen on all of its school busses.)
I don't see how it can possibly reduce greenhouse gasses. I can see how it could reduce CO, how it could reduce unburned fuel in the exhaust, but CO2 is the biggie and I just don't see how this does anything about that.
Burning petrol frees carbon, that's either going to come out as C (soot), CO (carbon monoxide, bad for you and me), or CO2 (carbon dioxide, the big bad guy of global warming). Introducing hydrogen doesn't do diddily about the carbon.
It might increase fuel economy a bit, but at $7k (even if that's Canadian dollars) it seems like there'd be other tech that does more for the price.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
The fuel you put in has to come out in some form. The whole thing about combustion is liberating some of the energy from the fuel by chemically altering it. The chemical components exhausted by the engine will be the same chemical components that went into it. Engine fuel is made primarily of hydrocarbons. This means, a bunch of carbon atoms and a bunch more of hydrogen atoms. Mix in some atmosphere (primarily nitrogen and oxygen), combust, and exhaust.
Primarily, exhaust is composed of air (primarily nitrogen), unburned fuel, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. Even assuming that we could increase the percentage of fuel burned (to suggest that only 35% of fuel is burned is clearly erroneous), you still have NOx, CO and CO2 to deal with. How are these emissions reduced to zero? If they are reduced to zero, what happened to all of the carbon that we started with? I suspect the article was using some definition of "polluting emissions" that was not properly defined.
Further, the article made the absurd statement that the tailpipe was cold to the touch, and even went on to suggest that this meant there was no exhaust. This is completely ridiculous. The fuel doesn't just disappear when it's burned. This box doesn't convert an internal combustion engine into a nuclear reactor capable of converting the fuel's mass into energy. The elemental components of the fuel MUST be exhausted somehow. And since an internal combustion engine works through combustion, that exhaust is going to be hot.
I also see comments suggesting that this device works on some sort of "spare" or "unused" energy to perform the electrolysis. This is also a bit ridiculous. Alternators do not pull a fixed amount of mechanical energy out of the engine, converting the unused electricity into heat. They vary their load depending on the electrical needs of the vehicle. Turn your lights on even in a brand new BMW, and you will notice an effect on the engine. (Air conditioning is a bit different, since the compressor uses mechanical energy from the engine, not electrical energy out of the alternator.) You have to make the engine work HARDER in order to electrolize water.
Now, this technology COULD still work in the following way:
1. It MAY, by injecting hydrogen, allow the fuel to burn more completely.
2. By burning more completely, less unburned fuel is released as part of the exhaust. Less hydrocarbons means less smog, and less "pollution". But you have other emissions, such as CO2 and CO to deal with.
3. By burning more completely, more fuel is used to drive the vehicle, increasing fuel efficiency. However, there's no way any modern vehicle is burning less than 90% of its fuel. Modern engines are designed specifically to maximize the amount of fuel burned. More likely, your engine is burning over 99% of its fuel already. In order to get a 30% increase in your fuel economy, you're going to need to burn 129% of your fuel. Clearly that's ridiculous.
So while this technology may not ultimately be entirely snake oil, there are so many ridiculous claims in the article that I can't take the core claims very seriously.
Finally, this has nothing to do with creating a hydrogen-powered car. If an engine produced more energy from the burning of hydrogen than required to electrolize it, we could power our civilization with water.
That sentence alone blew my kook alert fuses.
As for efficiency: if Romancer(s car) is doing the driving, the efficiency drops form his alledged 30% to 0% as he has no idea whatsoever what he is talking about or where he is going.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Gasoline Direct Injection is already in use. It isn't just the Japanese either. Current Audis (like the A3) with the 2.0T use it. (Audi calls it FSI).
In the US, since we have sulfur in our gas (outside California), the sulfur will crystalize in the catalytic converter if we used lean-burn techniques on the 2.0T. So Audi switches that off in the US. In Europe, the 2.0T uses lean burn as much as possible (it has to switch back from time to time to keep the catalytic converter hot enough to work).
These still rely on spark ignition, but of course, when you lean burn, it would usually ignite itself if they didn't spark it. There is talk of developing engines that proceed more heavily into the compression ratios on gas, and therefore would essentially become Diesels, even if they run on regular gas.
Honestly, you can keep your Diesels. I know they're a lot better than they used to be. They don't even rattle, except at startup. But they still make soot under heavy acceleration and they still smell funny. I don't like either of those. And finally, it seems to take gobs of extra doodads to extract decent HP out of Diesel per powerplant unit volume (dip volume, not displacement). Witness Mercedes' new tri-turbo 320, the pinnacle of car Diesel power output right now. A state of the art normally-aspirated gas engine of similar size and weight would produce about as much power, and a turbocharged one would make it look poor. Of course, both would use more fuel, but given the high initial cost of Diesels, I'm not sure you ever make it back in light-duty (car-type) applications.
Most comparisons that actually show Diesel ahead for regular car usage typically are matching a Diesel with far worse power and acceleration versus the gas engine. Match those up, and it doesn't make nearly as much sense. Otherwise, I'll just take a smaller gas engine, and save a lot of money.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
They forgot to mention that ambient temperature at the test site was 0 Kelvin.
The increase in efficiency that is being talked about is due to the fact that hydrogen, when it bounds with oxygen gives off a great deal of energy and this energy helps the accelerate the combustion process. If the fuel is burning faster then less fuel is needed to get the same amount of force required to move the piston cylinder heads.
This idea is also skethcy since most modern car manufacturers try to get every little piece of hydrocarbon to burn completely. Unburnt hydrocarbons show up in the O2 test in a cars exhaust pipe. Before people flame me for being inaccurate: The car knows how much air went into the engine and how much fuel went into the engine and how well the car is running. So it knows how much unburnt O2 should be coming out of the pipe. If there is unburnt O2, then the system is running too lean and needs more fuel. If the system is two rich, then the system will start pinging or knocking and the car will adjust the mixture/timing back to help prevent that. Car manufacturers dont want the system to run too rich or too lean because you don't get the most out of the car as possible.
Realistically, an increase of more then 2-3% would be quite astounding given the chemistry of the matter: You still have to burn fuel to get power. You are adding a small amount of hydrogen to the mix from the beginning, which short cicuits the normal combustion process. To the machine's credit: it does add more energy to the combustion process, which helps the hydrocarbons break down. I would want to see some controlled tests over several thousand miles.
As a comparison for thought: Modern fuel cells (for house power) are talking a fuel efficiciency in the range of 40%, with the possibility of 50% if heat generation is recycled into a domestic hot water heater.
This sort of reminds me of people trying to put emissions restrictions on cars to lower the amount of Nitrogne-Oxide (and the rest of the NOx family) coming out of a tail pipe. The problem is that there is a fixed amount of nitrogen in the fuel due to impurities, it is going to come out of the tail pipe. The N2 in the air is not going to be a problem, its basiclly inert and you only have to account for how much energy is required to heat the N2 during combustion. But you can't reduce the NOx emissions without reducing the amount of Nitrogen in the fuel supply. Most fuel manufacurers don't want to do that because it would be very expensive to do that beyond the level they already have.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
2 x H2 + O2 --> 2 x H2O + heat --> Vapor
If anything deserved the name "vaporware", that's it.
- Anonycous Moward
TO all of you engineers out there who think engines of consumer cars run at 90% efficiency. Think again. If that were true then there would be no modifications necessary to race them, or the difference between a race engine and a production engine would be less than 10%. A mass produced engine can be made to run more efficiently by increasing 02 intake, injecting water, increasing exhaust flow, ingnition timing and power.... on and on. The standard consumer car is not the height of efficiency, it is the best compromise between efficiency and reliability.
No one here gets out alive
So turbo manufacturers decided to cool the air before it is pumped into the engine. The easy choice is to add an intercooler. It looks like another radiator on the car.
Second choice is an intercooler with water jets. The water jets spray on the outside of the intercooler and evaporate, cooling the inside.
Then there is direct injection: Water is sprayed into the airstream. The water evaporates, reducing the air temperature in the engine.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
heheheh you're cute. Can I fuck you?
The article uses this electricity to release the power that is naturally stored in the water solution. Einstien proved that all mater has a great deal of energy but getting it out has always been the problem. With gas we are getting no more than about a third of the actual energy out of the material we use up.
Maybe i missed the article and its dupe on nuclear powered cars but this guy seems to think cars run on nuclear energy and not chemical energy.
I hope you realize Hydrogen is more like a battery then like oil. Otherwise you should have just kept you mouth shut.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I love it when people who don't have a clue make comments like this. Surplus electricity, yeah. I suppose there is a little drain somewhere so all that surplus electricity can run off. Can't have little puddles of that stuff laying around, ya know! Alternators supply electrical energy. This energy is converted from mechanical energy taken from the motor depending on load. The more load you put on the alternator the higher the torque load on the engine. More electrical consumption = more power taken from the motor. There are no extra watts floating around not doing anything.
There's no way to get 97% efficiency without a new set of physical laws. At least not as we understand the universe... I could be proven wrong some time in the future.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Not quite perpetual motion. It needs power input that's released from the running engine, and that power comes from the gasoline, not the hydrogen. That's an awful lot like a supercharger which gives you more horsepower, but requires horsepower to drive it. The difference is, the 8-10HP required to drive the supercharger is dwarfed by the 40-50HP the engine makes with all that extra air in there. (These numbers are approximate, based on some calculations a friend of mine did for the supercharger on my car.) I imagine it's a similar power balance for this device.
And that's the point. Adding straight up oxygen and hydrogen into the intake apparently makes the resulting combustion more efficient. This shifts the stochiometric ratio the engine operates at, it sounds like, such that more of the fuel gets burned.
There are two fuel/air ratios that matter for gasoline engines: The air/fuel ratio when your cruising is the stochiometric ratio (about 14.6:1), and the "max burn" ratio (forget the name for it, but around 12:1). The former ratio is the mixture where all (or nearly all) of gasoline gets burned, and the latter is the one in which all the oxygen gets consumed (leaving some fuel unburned). Obviously, a properly functioning car would only run near 12:1 during heavy acceleration.
I imagine throwing oxygen and hydrogen in the mix during periods of acceleration, rather than merely richening up the mixture would have very positive effects on fuel economy, since you really are burning nearly every bit of gas you put in there.
You're right that cracking water into H2 and O2 doesn't give you enough of either that you can make it self sustaining. This system still could actually work because you're getting continuous energy input from an outside source.
--Joe
Program Intellivision!
...should be required of all Slashdot editors.
(And for members of the general population, for that matter.)
Adding hydrogen to an IC engine to improve the combustion process is a well known technique. Refer to any number of papers by Dr Harry Watson and his PhDs.
Whether you come out ahead on the energy balance depends on how much more efficient the reaction is, compared with the inefficiency in the electrical/electrolysis side, which I admit is unlikely to exceed 30%.
The point is that the hydrogen is somewhat acting as a catalyst, or reaction improver, not just as extra fuel.
By the way, I agree with your scepticism, but that argument is not the killer.
...too bad he's going to be sued into oblivion if it actually works.
Maybe I'm being a little too optimistic here, but as long as we're using electrolysis to split water into Hydrogen and Oxygen gas, why not use a lot of it and just pump pure oxygen into your fuel injectors? Isn't it about 70% of the air we pump into the cylinder (nitrogen) is not reacting anyway? And when it does react, it forms pollutants AFAIK.
If we can pump more oxygen into the cylinder (rather than the hydrogen mix it seems the author is pumping in), that means that we can pump in more gas as well; like turbocharging without the forced induction. It would also theoretically be able to reduce the need for much of the complicated air intake equipment we see on cars; filters, turbos, superchargers, cold air intakes.
The only real shortcoming that I see with pumping in the oxygen rather than the hydrogen is that the electrolysis reaction would have to produce a much larger volume than would be practically feasible, and in the end would still result in a net loss. Either way, there might be some potential there.
"Operating systems suck: you're better off using only the BIOS" --trainsaw.com
No, you were plausible sounding but completely wrong. Therefore you are more dangerous than the usual trolling fool we get around here, therefore you need extra doses of abuse.
Sorry and all that, but jumping on misleading posters is a necessary form of interaction in this environment (ie one where the vast majority of the audience and the mods is operating way outside their level of expertise, and where re-editing of posts is not possible).
So, consider your head jumped on.
Squelchy squelchy squelch.
Specicifically, almost all of the fuel in a modern iC engine is burned, except when we deliberately over-richen the mixture to cool the combustion at some operating conditions.
If you don't believe me check the composition of the feed gas to the cats. How much HC is there? CO? compared with CO2?
One of these miracles put on a motor on a dynamometer and tested in a lab. Just once! Screw road tests. Put the damn thing on a dyno, put a known load on the motor, and measure fuel consumption at the same speed and torque on the same motor under the same conditions both with and without the magic gizmo running. Also collect waste gases for analysis with and without, under identical operating conditions. I don't care if it burns dead cats, consecrated Barbie dolls, or whatever. If there is a difference, a dyno test will show it. If there isn't, it will show that too.
You are correct, there is no nuclear reaction. But techincally there is a difference in mass from H2 and O seperate and together H2O, as water. The former has more energy and therefore more mass (e=mc^2). Of course it is a very small amount of mass, which can be calculated from the heat of combustion of hydrogen and using e=mc^2 to solve for mass.
Thank you. Now, to explain why you chose those numbers.
Tc is the temperature at which 'waste' heat is rejected to the environment. It obviously can't be less than that of the surroundings, and for a practical size of heat exchanger it'll be above this - for instance in a car it is more like 330 K - that's your bottom hose temperature.
Th is a bit of a fudge. The maximum temperature is limited by metallurgy - basically your pistons melt and the valves soften and fall apart.
The technological metallurgy limit is a bit higher than 900K, but the IC engine's heat transfer does not occur at one temperature, it is more of a pulse, and you've used an average Th, in effect.
Now we know your idea works. Oh, wait, my exhaust is cool too. Maybe I should start my car and see what happens?
You'd be reducing the efficiency of the system, not exactly a worthwhile goal :) It woud take more energy to obtain the O2 than you would recover from using it.
But here's a question: Could this technology be used to clean up the burn and increase efficency in a two-stroke engine, which really does leave a significant amount of unburnt fuel in the exhaust?
That's a motionless electric generator. I guess those naughty oil companies missed that one.
Laws will be passed regarding water and distilling of it. You will also have to get a federal ID implant that approves you for the purchase and use of water .... if it can blow up, it can be used as a terrorist weapon of mass destruction....
As extreamist as this might sound, one thing is absolutely certain, it's still gonna cost you the same increasing amount for transportation.
Its a sure thing any savings that you could see will be taken from you in one way or another.
I wonder if anyone has come up with an einstien law like that covers financial/energy exchange. E = MC2...
The logic of greed.
-FL
It seems to have all of the benefits of Water Injection technology that has been around pretty much since the I.C.E., being used on many forms of sports vehicles including rally cars.
In its simplest form you can use a pre-loved coffee pot as a water reservoir, punch a hole in the lid for ventilation, and run a length of aquarium airline from the pot into the carburettor allowing it to form a mist in the venturi.
Maybe $1 for all the benefits and complexity of this $7,500.00 beast.
I think the state of our schools really sucks when people believe these things.
Energy from the battery....and where do you think that comes from? magic?
Lets see, we take electricity from the battery to power electrolysis generating hydrogen and oxygen. In the process we lose energy to heat. Then, recombine them in combustion, losing about 2/3's of the energy to heat. Now, since the energy from the battery is being consumed, the engine must work harder to power the alternator to charge the battery. Again, more energy is lost to heat.
Simple high-school science should show you that this is snake oil and will actually make the engine less efficient.
Maybe everybody is so busy learning creationism instead of science, that they even think this crap is plausible.
Unbelievable
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
that the conspiracy theories are already circulatimg.
This is hard to believe and my uncle who lives 2 houses over from me has been telling for the last 7 years he was working on a device that would change power consumtion for the world. Knowing he had no formal scientific background I just said ya uhm and the rest of the family laughed. In saturdays paper on the front page there is an article about this device with the title CAN THIS MAN SAVE THE WOLD! I go to page a$ and its the biggest photo ever placed in the Montreal Gazette I've seen. 1/3 page. Now we all flipped out and art to embarased to call him. He isn't the presedent of this firm so I imagine it's based on the ability to put up money to launch the business and go through RD so i will ask him where he is in the firm. His name is Peter Romanuik. Needless to say seeing these words next to his photo in the paper made me feel very humble.
If you want this type of tech goto http://www.eagle-research.com/ and by the book and start saving on gas.
35% of the energy released makes it to the crankshaft. The rest is lost as heat. That is what is meant by 35% efficiency. The only thing that will change that is greater thermal efficiency. Even with magic fantasy materials in the block, pistons, valves, and head that don't conduct heat, there will still be a significant amount of energy escaping as heat in the exhaust.
The benefit of this supplemental hydrogen and oxygen system is that less fuel has to be injected in the first place, not that the fuel is burned with significantly greater effiency, as it only has 1% to go to achieve a 100% burn. How much less? I'm guessing closer to 10% than 40%.
"No. Hybrids are successful mostly because they recapture braking energy and allow the engine to be shut down when it is making more power than necessary."
Partially. Getting 55mpg milage is nothing new. Infact early 90's Geo Metros could hit 55+ no problem. The problem with 55mpg cars is that they have absolutely no balls. When you have an engine that only develops 80ft/lbs of torque and a set of highway gears that keep crank speeds under 3k on the interstate, you have a car that will take about 3 miles to get to 60mph.
Hybrids improve on this in a few ways. First, they turn the engine off when it's not being used. Less waste, more milage, especially in town. Second, they use the braking to recapture energy for the batteries. And Third, they use an electric motor to assist/replace the engine acceleration. That means that you can run a very efficient but very week engine, and still be able to hit 60 in under 20 seconds (12.7 for the Prius). The Prius, running on it's electric motor develops 295ft/lbs of torque up to 1200rpms. That's more off the line grunt power then most cars on the road, and better then most muscle cars. Most performance engines can beat 295ft/lbs, but they do it at slightly higher rpms, which means the new Prius should have some very impressive trap times and 0-25 performance.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
http://theepicenter.com/tow082099.html (Part way down the page).
There is no denying that alternators do work, nor that loads increase. Suppose that you have a 100 amp alternator and the current load on the system is only 50 amps. The amount of mechanical load increase is trivial when adding those extra amps, hence "surplus" electricity. Work is still being done, but not like you've presumed.
Regardless of the physics involved or your belief that this is snake-oil for sale, a 3MPG increase has been measured with the load between 10 and 15 amps. We were completely unable to test emissions output on our own, but having read the article, we're curious to do so. We intend to test different electrode styles and higher and lower amperages and measuring what works best for this particular engine (the 3.0L V6 in the Nissan Maxima). The parts cost to build this particular Brown's Gas generator is ludicrously low, less than $50 (and if we use cheap stuff, half that). The guy peddling a box for $7500 is not gaining much over our cheap bottle and electrodes and manual switch set. You can build your own and see, or you can try to explain it away, discounting evidences from multiple sources that this is real.
It used to be that someone would claim 100MPG engines and people would cry, "FAKE!" Now when someone claims a 3MPG increase, which is reasonable (it's a 12.5% gain), you're just as prepared to decry it as a baseless flim-flam. Your loss.
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy, and taste good with ketchup.
Many many years (ok, decades) ago, when I was a kid, I got this really cool toy for Christmas. It was a flashlight. But instead of batteries, it had a little generator inside, and a crank to turn. It also had a switch so you could flash the light on and off as you cranked.
Funny thing is, when the light was switched on, the crank was harder to turn then when the light was switched off.
Honest! I'm not making this up. Somehow the generator "knew" when the light was on, and it put up more of a fight to turn. Really!
I think if you had this toy to play with for about ten seconds, you'd see what's wrong with your theory.
Professor Julius Sumner Miller taught great science with toys. We need more cool toys. Toys for science!
His box seems to add a trickle of hydrogen + oxygen to the ingoing airstream of an engine that is already running on petrol, *not* running purely on the hygrogen coming out of the box. That for a fact would not work as many correctly state. I read somewhere that free hydrogen does in fact aid combustion, something about hydroxyl radicals and CO late in the combustion cycle or something. Apparently it is similar to injected water being thermally dissociated (separated back into hydrogen & oxygen components by absorbing lots of heat -unburning if you like) and then this free hydrogen does it's stuff in a similar way. Looking.. looking.. Ahh.. here we are.. "The highest energy particles are the hydrogen atoms - and they penetrate the charge about 5 times as far as the rest of the particles. As they lose energy and return to normal temps - about 5000 k - they begin to react chemically with any surrounding fuel and oxygen particles. The effectiveness of spark ignition is directly related to the availability of free hydrogen. Molecules containing tightly bound hydrogen such as methanol, nitromethane, and methane are far more difficult to ignite than those with less bonds. During combustion - water - H2O ( present and formed ) is extremely active in the oxidation of the hydrocarbon. The predominate reaction is the following: OH + H ==> H2O H2O + O ==> H2O2 H2O2 ==> OH + OH Loop to top and repeat. The OH radical is the most effective at stripping hydrogen from the HC molecule in most ranges of combustion temperature. Another predominate process is the HOO radical. It is more active at lower temperatures and is competitive with the H2O2 at higher temps. OO + H ==> HOO HOO + H ==> H2O2 H2O2 ==> OH + OH This mechanism is very active at both stripping hydrogen from the HC and for getting O2 into usable combustion reactions. Next consider the combustion of CO. Virtually no C ==> CO2. Its a two step process. C+O ==> CO. CO virtually drops out of early mid combustion as the OH reactions are significantly faster and effectively compete for the available oxygen. Then consider that pure CO and pure O2 burns very slowly if at all. Virtually the only mechanism to complete the oxidization ( Glassman - Combustion Third Edition ) of CO ==> CO2 is the "water method". CO + OH ==> CO2 + H H + OH ==> H20 H2O + O ==> H2O2 H2O2 ==> OH + OH goto to top and repeat. This simple reaction accounts for 99% + of the conversion of CO to CO2. It is important in that fully two thirds of the energy of carbon combustion is released in the CO ==> CO2 process and that this process occurs slow and late in the combustion of the fuel. Excess water can and does speed this conversion - by actively entering into the conversion process thru the above mechanism. The peak flame temperature is determined by three factors alone - the energy present and released, the total atomic mass, and the atomic ratio - commonly called CHON for Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen. The chemical reactions in combustion leading to peak temperature are supremely indifferent to pressure. The temperatures and rates of normal IC combustion are sufficient to cause most of the fuel and water present to be dissociated and enter into the flame. As can be seen above, water is most definitily not only not inert but is a very active and important player in the combustion of hydrocarbon fuel. Ricardo and others have documented that under certain conditions ( normally supercharged ) water can replace fuel up to about 50% and develop the same power output, or that the power output can be increased by up to 50% addition of water. This conditions were investigated by NACA and others for piston aircraft engines. It is important to note that these improvements came at the upper end of the power range where sufficient fuel and air was available to have an excess of energy that could not be converted to usable pressure in a timely manner."
Rydberg's constant (about 11 inverse microns) tells us about the emission spectrum of hydrogen atoms and other related quantities. The R in PV = nRT is the ideal gas constant (about 8.3 Joules per mole-Kelvin), which is the product of Avogadro's number and the Boltzmann constant.
Imagine my surprise as I've been looking at the exact same sales pitch from http://www.burnh2o.com/ all week and wondering if it's bunk. They are 25 miles from me and you can supposedly get your hands one one right now.
so if most of the waste is in heat, what are the prospects for getting a sterling engine added to the cooling system? seems like that'd be a real good addition, espically to a hybrid vehicle. the added weight (2nd engine, gear box to generator) is a consideration but it should provide enough energy to compensate.
fear is the mind killer
What about the situation I recall reading recently about hydrogen combustion being worse for the environment than gasolene?
What article was that? Hydrogen compusts to form water. That's it. Very clean
There are many claims that since production of hydrogen is not 100% efficient, that more energy would be required to power the current state of the earth (and thus more fossil fuels or alternative sources) if hydrogen became the main conduit, and this is very true, so fueling cars entirely off hydrogen could be worse, (but that's not at all what this article is talking about, now is it?)
However, I subscribe to the belief that 1 electrical plant is way more efficient than the sum of the 10,000 cars it's powering via hydrogen production had they been running on gasoline, and it's easier to put bulky polution control systems on a stationary power plant than to try and minimize those solutions to install in every single car on the road, so fueling cars entirely with H2 would probably be better for the environment.
--
Downloading in Firefox got you down? Cheer up
TFA states that they want to use this H2 generator in large, presumably diesel engines. If the H2 is mixed in with the air, this may cause premature detonation on the compression stroke. This is bad; ask your ex-girlfriend about it.
I don't see how they could mix the H2 in with the diesel fuel, either, as it still has to be compressed to very high pressures by the injection pumps.
the obvious point that putting more electrical load on the alternator means a heavier mechanical load on the engine, so there goes your power savings.
Ever jump started someones car? It goes like this:
1) Start your engine
2) Hook up the cables to your car
3) Hook up the cables to their car
4) Hear your car rev up? That's your engine working harder to charge their battery.
5) Start their car. Notice how your car rev'd even harder? Again, greater electrical load=greater mechanical load.
6) Unhook the cables and loo loo loo.
--
You could BugMeNot, or you could just click. You decide
There's a way to use regular air, cheap regular old air. But your way sounded real good too, of adding some oxygen into the cylinder before TDC. BUT, if you did that you would have compensate: lower the amount of gas or reduce cylinder compression ratio. Here's a few real good links for you, something NEW to roll over: Life After the Crude Oil Crash > http://tinyurl.com/aecgz 99% newpath4 links on this page > http://tinyurl.com/8p7r3 Perp?
Regarding you 3MPG increase. I suggest you look carefully at the plugs in this testbed. The hydrogen might be increasing the heat in your combustion chamber. Which will lead to increased effecency but cost you in sparkplug, valve and engine life as well as increased NOX.
Have you run 1000 miles on it? Look carefully for errors in testing, you are expecting the increase.
What's your point regarding single wire alternators? Find one on a car.
Alternator output voltage is regulated by coil current which is regulated by the volatage regulator (pulse modulated on modern machines, electromechanically on old ones). Move power from the alternator is more power on the shaft. Same as all electric generators. You eather need to control the output power or waste the extra power in a controlled way.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
What do you think it costs to seperate the hydrogen?
H2 is a way of storing energy. There is NO H2 around, it is a slut, combining with just about any atom it bumps into, any that doe'nt combine but is released escapes the earths atmosphere eventually. To get H2 you ether extract it from water (charge the hydrogen battery) or you cook it out of fossil fuels. In eather case it just a way of transporting energy you got somewhere else (a battery).
Perhaps you should return to /. once you've pased highschool physics. Pay attention to the law of conservation of energy.
You want H2. Water and electricity generate it as well as any other way. Why tank it at all untill your car needs it? (this of course assumes abundent electricy 'too cheap to meter')
Untill we have a use for H2 that outstrips the current distribution network gas station owners don't NEED to do anything. An economics class would'nt hurt eather.
You obviously don't understand how a battery works eather. 'Batteries are METALLIC elements' nope traditional batteries are 'electrochemical' elements. Most but not all contain metals.
The term battery has come to take on a more general meaning as any device used to store and release energy. The water/H2O2 fuel cell is one example.
The point is we find oil in it's energised state. We never find H2 that way. In a larger sense everything is just a way of storing energy. But when we need to put the energy in ourselves you can't call it an energy source.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Cotton needs loads of pesticides. It's a pork barrel product for the Southern states which also benefits agribusiness. So (apply tinfoil hat) growing hemp is illegal.
By the way, I totally agree with your post. Hemp, rapeseed,corn oil, sunflower oil can all be used to power Diesel engines, especially if you grow sugar beet to add the alcohol required in the mix. Growing oil in the US and importing food from the Third World would reduce US dependence on imported oil while diverting US dollars from corrupt Middle East regimes to poor farmers in S. America and Africa. But, if you were an oil company, would you want people to use a product that any farmer can produce on his farm and sell from pumps without needing the oil industry? Farmer-produced oil threatens the entire industry model. And we know how well that goes down (e.g. RIAA)
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
So, with this magic box, no excess heat will form! -Liar, Liar! -Who said that?
You don't have to necessarily have a degree and/or a background in science to experiment just like you don't have to have either in literature to write a book. I've attained a very high profile position in my company simply by hard work and common sense, I hold no degrees, I don't even have a certificate in anything. I also like to write on the side and I have a partially finished novel and me and my nephew are working on a screenplay. I'm not saying that going to college is a waste of time because it's not, that is unless you spend your time in a drunken stupor, learning nothing, which is what I would have done at the age of 18 had I went. I'm sure that some of the most famous people in particuliar fields were never trained for them, they simply had a knack and some common sense to back it up. It's great that your uncle is part of such an innovative team. Even if they fail, at least you'll know that he tried even when his family didn't believe/support him, he is trying because he believe in what he's doing and he believes in himself. Faith and common sense are two things they can't teach you in school!
Jay Dale "If you're not living on the edge then you're taking up too much space!"
I wondered how long it would take for the Brown's gas cronic scam folk to surface.
http://www.phact.org/e/bgas.htm for one debunk with links (Top item returned by Google, by the way.)
Short answer: "Brown's gas has been going to revolutionize automobiles, welding, and lots of other stuff for many many years. Too bad that in all these years direct experiment still doesn't confirm the claims.
You don't get more power by adding hydrogen to your engine intake. There has to be a proper ratio of fuel to air in order for efficient combustion to occurr and the ration isn't 1:1. If you add more fuel (hydrogen is a fuel) your richening the mixture which makes it burn inefficently and actually increases emissions and decreases power. You have to have more oxygen in the combustion chamber when you add more fuel. The only way to do that is by forced induction. This is a bullshit product.
strain ... you can't more by using water. ... but some help? :) ... i guess it's like buying a mac :P
the problem like many parent poster have stated,
is that the energy needed to split the water into
hydrogen comes from the gasoline tank. since it
is not very efficient, maybe another way might
work: why don't modern cars have a solar panel on
the roof? everybodies bitching about the low
efficiency alternator, but what about a sunny day
in the parking lot? why not use as much as
possible from the sun to charge that battery?
of course some people drive around at night, but
i'm nor saying "be gone!" wif the alternator alltogether
anyways, there's soooooo much to improve inside
your modern (low-cost!) combustion engine. it's
redicilous. and it's not going electrical, but
(ta-da) more and smaller mechanical parts
of course everybody buys cars by volume and
weight. if you can get 3 tons for 50'000 US$ with
a 20 MPG -or- a 1 ton for 60'000 US$ with 60+ MPG,
well you decide
-or- a DIY system
Ok time to tear apart another of your comments.
..." something or other. I am uncertain whether or not this is particularly useful as a catalyst for electrolysis but nonetheless, he did mention it which would reduce the energy required to crack the water. So in the end the higher efficency engine would be able to burn less fuel because it is a more complete burn if maintaining the same energy usage.
/. once you've pased highschool physics. Pay attention to the law of conservation of energy."
"Where do you think hydrogen comes from" I said two comments before that we needed more hydrogen refineries, I did not mention the method of doing it, whether cracking water, extracting it from oil, or other compounds.
"What do you think it costs to seperate the hydrogen?"
Energy naturally. However, the specifications of this device, as noted in the article says that it is capable of being attached to the electrical system of the car and generate hydrogen which is then 'injected' into the intake manifold. Normally it takes more energy to crack water than you would get in return inside an engine, but come on thats just basic science. This inventor said he used a catalyst "potassium
"Perhaps you should return to
Did that and currently taking more physics courses are required by my engineering major. I never once violated locoe. Higher efficency engine = higher excess energy capacity per unit of fuel burned if you maintain the same amount of consumption. YOU take a physics course.
"You want H2. Water and electricity generate it as well as any other way. Why tank it at all untill your car needs it? (this of course assumes abundent electricy 'too cheap to meter')"
Automotive engines, whether petrolium-combustion, or hydrogen-fuel cell, today are too inefficent to crack water, power the electrical systems of your car, and actually do the job that they were designed to do in the first place, move your vehicle. Sure you can fit a bigger engine in, but that adds weight which places additional strain on the engine, forcing it to consume more fuel, as whatever it may be. You must tank the H2 gas today for the future hydrogen fuel cell cars because they are not going to be able to generate enough fuel for themselves (there is no such thing as a 100% efficency engine), if they are even capable of doing so without burning a higher energy source. I have no idea what the reference to "too cheap to meter" is, because I never said anything, so I have no idea who you are quoting.
"Untill we have a use for H2 that outstrips the current distribution network gas station owners don't NEED to do anything. An economics class would'nt hurt eather."
Ok class. Listen.
You have a new product that requires a fuel source that is not currently mainstream. Hell, most people don't want it anywhere near their backyards. This product you have is several margins better than the old product, but again, it is using a very uncommon fuel source. Now, you have Company BIG that sells fuel for the old product to Customers X,Y,Z who act as distributors. You convince Company BIG that when this product of yours becomes mainstream, if they supply the new fuel, they will make tons of cash and ensure that when the supply for their old fuel product dwindles beyond profitability, they will already have a good footing within the new fuel market that will hold for a long time unless a newer and better fuel source is created. Company BIG, knowing that their current product will eventually become prohibitably expensive within the next 50 years, signs on to the deal and invests in creating state-of-the-art refineries to cost-effectively produce this new fuel. Now because you are Company BIG and you have Customers X,Y,Z you convince them that you will eventually have to discontinue large shipments of your fuel to them and instead have a replacement product that they too can be profitable on. Some, not all, will sign on and will distribute the new fuel as
[!] No, I can't see my comments. They are not worthy of +3 moderation.
Dihydrogen Monoxide can kill you.
Won't anyone please think about the children?
I don't think you would be able to "convert" a normal gas car into a hydrogen based or hydrogen supported car. You would have to take out both the engine and luggage area.
On the other hand, the hydrogen car not only is possible, but absolutely viable, environment friendly, and depending on the fuel price (hydrogen) also a lot more economical.
I'd recommend you check out BMW's research so far, they've been on it since the 80's.
http://www.bmw.com/com/en/index_highend.html?prm_c ontent=../../com/en/insights/technology/cleanenerg y/_highend/xml/overview.xml
It wasn't just some little 'human-interest' article tucked away on page 8.
Saturday's Montreal Gazette is kind of like the New York Sunday Times.
Well, kind of... (LOL) "Remember, friends- if it's Canadian, it's GOT to be Provincial!"
Perhaps it was a just a slow news day. But that's no excuse.
Can you imagine this water-brained headline as the front page header of the New York Sunday Times?
I used to have a subscription to the Montreal Gazette, but gave it up. One of the reasons was this increasing usage of "National Enquirer" type stuff. Indeed, the Montreal Gazette is sold at the supermarket checkout counter in the Quebec small town where I live.
I actually bought this issue. I think I'll keep it as a memento.
.
- aqk
F U
Ummm.. the last time a big 18-wheeler went by me, I noticed a lot of DIRTY BLACK SMOKE coming out of the smokestack behind his cab.
I had to roll up my car windows until the bastard was well down the road!
Hey, what was this stuff- blackened cajun fish?
And almost every city BUS I see, is usually blowing loads of these black particulates out of their exhaust.
Gosh! Why dont these trucks and buses convert their engines to Diesel?
Your mission, if you are willing to accept it: Get them to install your Diesel engines!
.
- aqk
F U
My third paragraph should state 76 hp for the ICE, and 67 hp for the electric. Horsepower, not watts!
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
Quote from you:
3 &sid=514a95e08fb5257758100b9a855bec32
s _7_20/ai_55030843
s up.htm
y drogenfuelpage.htm
"Catalysts increase the rate of reaction, but they don't increase the amount of energy released. I would be very, every surprised if increasing the rate of combustion in a modern internal combustion engine in turn increased the efficiency of that engine."
Because the gasoline/oxygen mixture stays in the cylinder for only a limited amount of time before being ejected into the exhaust system, the rate of reaction is a very important factor. You are right, adding small amounts of hydrogen won't increase the total amount of energy released. However, when igniting in an engine, gasoline only has a fraction of a second to push the cylinder and do work. Any gasoline that hasn't gotten around to burning in time will still release energy, but it won't be in a usable form. Hydrogen just helps the explosion to be more instantaneous.
There are lots of technologies that try to increase the rate of reaction. Just look at the large variety of aftermarket spark plugs and fuel additives that try to address this problem. This is the problem that the acetone promoting crowd tries to adress too.
I find that adding the quotes for the websearch helps a lot in google, as it actually searches for the phrase, not the words separately. Here are some links I found in a brief search:
Here are some experts discussing the topic:
http://icubenetwork.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=159
Here is a link to a Discovery magazine article from 1999, where a different method was attempted, called the "plasmatron". Love the name.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/i
Here is a paper from someone in England on the subject:
http://www.nutech2000.com/webtext/milage/hydrogen
Here is a really informative article. The bibliography he provides is prodigous, so would be useful for you if you wanted to study this in depth:
http://www.wlhs.wlwv.k12.or.us/students/marcusb/h
I also find google searches on "hydrogen enriched gasoline" were quite fruitful. The general consensus on all websites I visited so far is that hydrogen enrichment of the fuel offers a measurable improvement in fuel efficiency. It's a neat subject I am finding.
I hope that helps you in realizing that this isn't a crackpot theory, but rather, a practical application of a long known effect.
"if you pulled off the belt from your alternator the engine would use less fuel," especially when the battery dies and the engine stops.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Regarding the poster who doubted the real-world performance of Diesel engines: he should take a look at the torque curve of a modern turbodiesel. The torque levels available from even a modestly-rated modern Diesel make highly-tuned spark-ignition engines look a bit sick. And while the peak revs are not as high (helping to reduce frictional losses, by the by) appropriate gearing can ensure that you get plenty of thrust at the contact patches - which means that midrange acceleration is excellent. Automobile drivers are only using a small fraction of their engine's potential power output most of the time on the road, but if you want to accelerate hard at any given speed and in any given gear, you are likely to be using 100% of the available torque. So torque characteristics (and appropriate gearing) are more significant than peak power. A little smoke (no smoke, in the case of the latest catalysed engines) is a very small price for the massively higher efficiency (both theoretical and actual) of the Diesel. If it's getting the same on-road performance but using 20 or 30% less fuel, it must be doing something right. One last thought: Heavy trucks always use turbodiesels: in hilly conditions they will be using 100% of the available torque and, quite often, 100% of the available power (the figures are typically 2,000Nm @ 1,200rpm and 420hp @ 2,000rpm for a 12-litre engine). And yet a decent driver would expect to get around 7 to 9mpg from a truck weighing 40 tonnes all-up; compare that with the 30-40mpg you would expect from a 1.5-tonne automobile. A remarkable difference in efficiency, wouldn't you say?