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."

Comments

Simple question:

[overshoot]

Where does the power to crack the water come from?

It's another perpetual-motion machine, people.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Re:Simple question:

[mjfgates]

H2 and O2 are not catalysts, nor do they "improve" combustion of other things in the neighborhood. One's fuel, the other's oxygen, and they just plain burn.

If you actually want to use water to get more motie power out of a given amount of fuel, just inject the water straight into the combustion chamber. This increases pressure in the combustion chamber and thus increases torque. It also forces water into the engine oil... not so good for the engine in the long run. Useful for drag racing, and for dogfighting in WWII-era military aircraft, but I wouldn't want it on my car.

Re:Simple question:

[Rei]

This can't be the most efficient way to increase efficiency. 30% engine efficiency, 90% alternator efficiency, 80% electrolysis efficiency -> ~20% hydrogen production efficiency. You're then using that hydrogen to burn residual gasoline (again at 30% efficiency), in addition to getting (30%?) of the hydrogen's energy back, so 0.2*0.3+0.2*0.3=0.12, so you'd need to get more than 8 times more energy's worth of gasoline burned than you inject energy's worth of hydrogen.

Then, you have to refill it with water every 80 hours. Surely there's a liquid catalyst that you could buy, or (less dense) compressed hydrogen made by a more efficient process, that would increase efficiency that wouldn't take some convoluted electrolysis process.

From a chemistry standpoint, what would the hydrogen be doing to increase efficiency? I suppose it would increase the temperature of combustion, but wouldn't it take such a significant percentage hydrogen to make a difference in the percentage of fuel that is combusted that you're outpacing the amount of uncombusted fuel left in the exhaust? It just doesn't seem like it would be effective.

Re:Simple question:

[roseblood]

20-pound unit for $7,500

Damn, 20 pounds, $7500. That's a whopping $375/pound.

When did the exchange rate between the UK and the USA get so skewed?

Sorry. Couldn't help myself.

Re:Simple question:

[Fortress]

you have extra power in your car because of the altenator. it is turned because your car is running and producing more power than you are using unless you're going up hill or accelerating. If you're at a dead stop and your engine is at idle where is the power of the combusing gas going? into heat, noise, and the altenator recharging your battery which is probably full after the first 5 min. So you have extra electricity.

No. There's no extra energy. The resistance of the alternator to turning is proportional to the electricity generated. Add more electrical load, and the alternator is harder to turn.

They have tried using this extra electricity for charging batteries for use in hybred electric cars but you have the offset of dragging around large batteries that weigh 50 lbs each and you have to have a couple to really get any extended electric mileage out of the system.

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.

They have tried using this extra electricity to power flywheels to store the power and release it back into the system when you release the brake but again you have this giant heavy flywheel to drag around.

No. Such systems were mechanical variants of a hybrid; that is, capturing the energy of braking and storing to use to accelerate the vehicle. There were some systems that used a huge flywheel as the vehicle's store of energy, but they never caught on.

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. That means that out of a gallon of gas we get the output of 1/3 actually making our car go. The rest is waisted.

No. Cars are not nuclear powered. Einstein has nothing to do with internal combustion. No material is used up or converted to energy. We're just rearranging the matter to a state of less potential energy. We harvest that energy as heat, which we then try to convert into kinetic energy. We only convert about 1/3, the rest stays as heat.

If we made an engine that recaptured the unspent fuel or had a system of burning the fuel completely we would have a better ratio of conversion from matter to energy.

No. There is very little unspent fuel, less than 1% in most modern engines. Again, the car is not nuclear powered, no fission or fusion taking place, no matter converted to energy.

Now we can't get the entire subatomic amounts Einstein was talking about but we can have the best chemical reaction amounts if we make a system that extracts the energy more effeciently from this reaction.

I don't know what you're talking about here, and I don't think you do either.

An example of this is when we add oxygen to gas (common practice now) to make a better chemical reaction inside the engine. We are taking a cheap additive and mixing it with a relitivly expensive main ingredient to make it burn better. If we add different chemicals we get different outputs, some help some hurt, most do both. Adding water helps the combustion by adding pressure and oxygen but hurts the engine by pressing water vapor into the oil and making our engine grind and wear out. Additive are nothing new and they have been proven to work. The main difference is that the right additivs are dangerous and hard to introduce to the system easily.

No. Oxygen additives don't produce a better chemical reaction, just a cleaner version of the same reaction. Adding water doesn't help combustion, just try adding some to your campfire. The old water injection systems reduced intake charge temperature by the phase change of water to steam, allowing greater compression ratios and greater efficiency.

The article stat

I don't know....

[menorikey]

I still think the cat-fueled method would provide a greater return in the long run....

Uses

[Saiyine]

I'll use it to power my 6'8GHz laptop!

--
Superb hosting 4800MB Storage, 120GB bandwidth, $7,95.
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Oil Companies

[drivinghighway61]

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

Re:Oil Companies

[Pharmboy]

Ok, that IS funny. But seriously, they would like this product much more than other alternatives, like solar, electric or biodiesel (my personal favorite)

According to TFA, the main advantage of this system is it makes much less polution. The fuel savings looks around 10%-20% realistically. This is very good but is about the same as global fuel need growth. It means people will have a reason to still use gas instead of alternate technology, so the move to full hydrogen might be slower since this would take some of the urgency out of it.

Very interesting (slightly fishy...) and worth more investigation. Don't look for it soon, it seems the different companies making similar stuff are more interested in margin % than in producing millions of them.

Re:FTA:

[mrgreen4242]

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.

Ho Ho Ho

[cdrguru]

Yes, adding water to an internal combustion engine will make it burn gas more efficiently and increase fuel economy. This is a well-known fact.

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 dunno

[Ozwald]

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

Re:I dunno

[Pharmboy]

I noticed that too. 65% of the raw fuel is NOT expelled out the back. I believe most cars are over 99% efficient at burning the fuel, just 35% at turning that burn into the motion of the crankshaft (ie: waste heat, as you state).

I also wonder how the CO2 is reduced from 5.5% to 0%, unless the hydrocarbons go up, and the simple oxidized carbons go down. There were other statements in the article that looked a bit odd as well. Still, conceptually interesting.

More poor technology reporting

[delibes]

"Most internal combustion engines operate at about 35 per cent efficiency. This means that only 35 per cent of the fuel is fully burned.

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.

Re:Pricey!

[Stripsurge]

From TFA: At first they're not even marketing to average joe. They're going after major consumers like the CN (railway) that spends $11 billion a year on fuel. 10% of 11 billion is a lot.

Presumably if/when this works for the big guys the company will have more money to throw around. Economy of scale will kick in and bring the device to the average consumer at a lower price.

Unfortunately, article is garbage

[panurge]

It says only 35% of fuel is burned in conventional gas engine. This is pure bullshit. Only 35% of the combustion energy of the fuel is turned into useful work - quite different. This arises simply from the physics of the gas engine cycle, which says that the percentage of the burn energy that can be turned into work depends on the difference between the temperatures at which heat is supplied and rejected. In a modern gasoline engine, 90% plus of the fuel is burned effectively. The waste is due to gas mixture going out of the exhaust during valve overlap, failed ignition, gas shielding in squish areas.
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.

Let the ripping apart of bogus claims commence!

[sbaker]

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.

Re:Where does the energy come from?

[greebly]

You'd think that, but it just isn't so. Common alternators place a constant load on the engine once they spin at a few hundred RPMs, even when the regulator is off.

You can make a DIY version of this same thing. Other people sell kits to do this exact process. Electrolyzing water into Hydrogen and Oxygen but not separating them produces what is called Brown's Gas (the Hydrogen and Oxygen mix). Brown's Gas can be generated easily with a very few amps of current. The draw on the circuitry can be regulated by way of control of molarity of the electrolyte.

My friend is currently experimenting on a cheap version of this with a manual shutoff switch (hey, it's cheap!) and has gone from 24MPG to 27MPG in a recent model Nissan Maxima (3.0L V6 model). We're not even done experimenting!

This stuff is for real. It just uses surplus electricity being generated by the alternator whether the battery needs charging or not. The engine is already doing the work, we're just recuperating it in the form of a mileage increasing, emission reducing water electrolysis system.

LOL

[the eric conspiracy]

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