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Truckers Choose Hydrogen Power
hipernoico writes to tell us Wired News is reporting that hundreds of semi trucks now on the roads are being partially powered by hydrogen. From the article: "These 18-wheelers make hydrogen as they go, eliminating the need for high-pressure, cryogenic storage tanks or hydrogen filling stations, which, by the way, don't yet exist. These truckers aren't just do-gooders. They like Canadian Hydrogen Energy's Hydrogen Fuel Injection, or HFI, system because it lets them save fuel, get more horsepower and, as a bonus, cause less pollution."
The trucks aren't using hydrogen as their main source of fuel. They are using hydrogen to enhance the combustion of the diesel.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
How are they getting the hydrogen again?
Electrolysis powered by the alternator.
How do they start the vehicle moving down the road?
It's still a diesel-fueled vehicle. Adding hydrogen to the mix is supposed to improve milage somehow.
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This pdf file might be helpful (or search for it on google to see the html version).
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
This is not the first marketable apparatus using this technology. H2N-Gen has their very own unit that will cost about 4 grand, will fit under your car's hood, and will be on the market by March. There's been several articles on this (and a recent one in Popular Science, December issue). Here's one http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000373059415/
I assume that their hydrogen source is probably mostly produced from electricity from coal burning plants.
Umm, No...read your own quote: Electricity (from the alternator in the engine) is used to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen.
The fact that water weighs in at over 8lbs is fairly moot -- gasoline weighs in closely, so adding a tank that holds a few gallons of water is not a major addition to trucking weight. Additionally, FEWER emissions. All in all, a good idea, if it is all that it's cracked up to be.
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quote...
Through electrolysis, the Hydrogen Fuel Injection (HFI) kit generates hydrogen and oxygen, which are injected directly into the intake manifold. Published data show that hydrogen burns nearly one order of magnitude faster than petroleum fuels, thus approaching ideal thermodynamic cycle; and hydrogen has a shorter flame quench distance, allowing flames to travel closer to the cold zones, thus improving combustion. These hydrogen properties improve engine performance and emissions.
Not quite. BMW has been researching and promoting hydrogen cars for some time now. They installed a hydrogen refilling station in Munich in '99(IIRC) and more are on the way, some in the US. The interesting thing about the BMW hydrogen car is that it can burn either hydrogen or gasoline so you can burn hydrogen when its available but not be hampered by the current dearth of hydrogen stations. As for the source of the hydrogen, Electricity generated from solar power is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. . The range on the 750H is only 400 km right now. The other trade-off of course is that there is still combustion so it's not as clean as fuel cell cars. Nonetheless, it's a start and not a bad way to transition us into a hydrogen economy.
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The trucks are NOT "partially powered by hydrogen" except in a meaningless technical sense. The trucks are generating small amounts of hydrogen that they have generated (somewhat inefficiently) from water and alternator electricity, using energy derived from diesel fuel as usual. They then inject some of that hydrogen back into the engine for a cleaner burn.
Diesel engines produce soot (dirty filthy polycyclic aromatic compounds) which represents wasted energy and this is merely a way to cut down on the inefficiency represented by the unextracted energy leaving the exhaust. The mechanism by which adding hydrogen to the air-fuel mixture actually accomplishes this involves some complicated physical chemistry beyond the scope of the article- which goes into a misleading nonsequitur about how trucks might use hydrogen-powered fuel cells someday.
Yes, but the more current you draw, the more the alternator serves as a brake on the engine. You know all those "regenerative braking" hybrid systems? Same principle: they brake by dumping electricity from motors now running as generators back into the batteries.
You could've hired me.
Why does everybody keep calling hydrogen a "catalyst"? Come on, people, high-school chemistry tells us that a catalyst is a substance that does not itself get used up in a reaction...it just lowers the transistion state energy. So, quit calling hydrogen a catalyst. It is a reactant. The product is, again, water. Geez!
A very clever system, I hope whoever came up with it has a patent on it, I'm not a big fan of IP, but that sounds like a real invention.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"You know the one thats been posted to slashdot before.
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http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/20/0
Based on the tests done with a Jeep Cherokee outfitted with the Canadian device, fuel economy increased by 40% and burn efficiency increased from somewhere around 30% to 97%. There were also no detectable CO emissions and the tailpipe remained cool after an hour drive. So therefore the amount of electricity required from the alternator to split the water is far outwieghed by the increase in burn efficiency.
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I would assume similar results are to be found in a diesel engine.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/
the link inside the Slashdot article no longer works.
I'm probably a bit rusty on my car mechanics, but as long as that thing is spinning you're generating electricty
Not necessarily. If you turned a generator and the poles weren't hooked up to any circuit, it's not moving any electrons through that circuit.
Take a motor sometime and turn it with the leads disconnected. Then short the leads and try to turn it.
This isn't replacing the diesel fuel at all. Somehow the injection of Hydrogen into the intake air improves the efficiency or burning of the diesel, resulting in a more complete burn.
From the article, and from the CHEC HFI page, I'm assuming that what they're doing is allowing the fuel to burn more efficiently at points such as going uphill, flooring the gas, shifting and so on, which are generally weak points for diesel engines. The engines can't burn all the fuel fed, and as a result create the familiar black-clouds-of-crap. If you could burn more of that, you would directly increase horsepower/torque and decrease emissions. By adding the hydrogen, the engine will run a bit hotter, and probably burn the diesel a bit more efficiently.
So it's basically energy recollection. Generate electricity when the engine's doing fine, and re-use that energy when the engine runs poorly. Sorta like regenerative breaks on a hybrid, except not as obvious.
All in all, however, I have a hunch that a well designed computerized fuel injection system could probably result in just as much polution reduction and energy consumption. Although it may not give as much horsepower as the hydrogen method does. (Mind you, it's not really the hydrogen giving the power.)
Burning the hydrogen produces more energy than it takes to extract it. This is not a transfer of energy from the electricity to the hydrogen to the engine. It is similar to a turbo charger or super charger. You are using power from the engine to compress air which makes the engine run better. This also is not a direct chain of energy transfer. That is the trick with enhancing car performance, either harnessing wasted energy ( brake systems that recharge batteries in hybrids ), or enhancing the combustion reaction somehow ( HFI, turbo, NOS ).
Hydrogen spiking allows for a faster, more uniform ignition + higher initial flash temperature.
Usually we have to inject more fuel than can be burned up completely, or else the mix would not reliably ignite (hence some fuel MUST be wasted or else the engine simply would stall). Unlike a 'normal' diesel, H injection allows us to use less diesel per cycle, and still allow the reliable ignition, which ultimately translates to greater fuel economy!
Ever heard of 'critical mass'? There is something fundamentally elegant here, since a tiny amount of a hydrogen isotope (3H, tritium) can be used to significantly increase the energy yield of a plutonium bomb...
"Chemist" my ass... But seriously, getting a "C" in freshman chemistry does not make one a "chemist", an neither does talking outta your ass about an article that one did not bother to read.
While the truck is not accelerating, the engine is still running and expending much more energy than the truck needs to keep rolling. Remember, the truck has a lot of inertia. Read this article for an idea of what is going on:
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question262.htm
Do you have any idea how much fuel a truck buys at one time? I usually fuel when I get down to about quarter tanks, which that means I will getting about 175 gallons, using your average of 2.759 gallon comes out to about $483. This fill up will get me about 1200 miles, being that My truck is an team operation with an average of 4500 miles weekly. This adds up to a lot of money out of my pocket monthly/yearly. Trucks most generally do not get good fuel milage. So every little bit that can help save on fuel consumption helps in the long run.
Exactly. What's confusing people is the assumption that the hydrogen is being used to power the vehicle. The article summary is quite misleading.
Think of the hydrogen here as something a bit like a spark plug, though IIRC diesel engines have something a bit different from spark plugs. Spark plugs used stored power to initiate combustion, spending stored chemical energy in the battery to release more chemical energy fromm the fuel. The hydrogen here is using stored chemical energy to release more energy from the fuel than would normally be released. The chemical energy from the hydrogen doesn't power the vehicle, just like the chemical energy from the battery doesn't; it's the diesel fuel. The benefits are higher fuel effeciency.
You get the hydrogen for free basically, especially if the vehicle were equipped with more advanced ways to generate electricity like regenerative braking. This isn't in violation of thermodynamics or anything, it just squeezes a little more effeciency out of the system than you'd otherwise get.
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Because Hydrogen is VERY hard to store. It's such a small molecule it'll just diffuse right through.
TODO: Something witty here...
My question, though, is why not just produce the hydrogen at a plant and enrich the diesel with it at the refinery?
Maybe the hydrogen would evaporate out too fast? It'd certainly float to the top of the fuel pretty fast, so you'd have to mix it constantly. Maybe you could suspend it in something solid, but then you have a new particulate matter in the fuel stream, that also has to burn fast enough to make the hydrogen useable...
I suppose folks could carry tanks of hydrogen with them, that they inject into the air intakes--but I understand that gaseous hydrogen is a storage problem as the molecules are smaller than the molecules of any container, so they will evaporate straight out of even "air-tight" containers. One of the reasons that we don't yet have fuel-cells. And if you have a tank of hydrogen, you have other issues like explosion etc that you wouldn't with this device. You can electrolyze the water for hydrogen moments before it's consumed, so the storage issues are minimal.
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Why is this so confusing?
You're suggesting replacing a small, on-demand hydrogen generator with 1) a hydrogen plant, 2) distribution network, and 3) storage tanks.
The tanks alone could cost more than the electrolysis device.
Sometimes (most of the time) there is no such thing as economy of scale. Anything that 1) can be automated (most everything), 2) doesn't suffer from inherent physical limits (like Carnot efficiency), and 3) can be scaled down, should be made as small as possible.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Thats because Hydrogen is injected into the engine as a gas. You would need to cool or pressurise the diesel & H2 mixture during distribution and storage if you mixed them at the refinery.
Diesel engines use MUCH less fuel at idle than gasoline engines do. At idle, a gasoline engine is fully throttled, so it's got to strain itself t opull air through the Idle Air Control valve or idle circuit of the carb. A Diesel engine, however, is not throttled at all, its speed is controlled by the fuel mixture (it doesnt have to be as perfect a mix as gas, because a diesel engine wont asplode from leaning out.)
So doing some number crunching, you have about 235 gallons on a full tank which gets you 1600 miles. Or $648.37 to get you 1600 miles.
So you'll save $64.84 every 1600 miles.
216 tank fulls and you've saved the original $14000 investment.
(Or around 285 fill ups since you fill up at quarter tanks.)
Let's say you're driving 2500 miles a week. That's 138 weeks driving to break even. 2 and a half years, last time I heard trucks last much longer than that so you're going to save money in the long term.
If you mean that 4500 miles is your truck on it's own, then you'll break even even sooner, after only 77 weeks.
Perhaps it's not worth it for a family car going to the shops once a week, but it's *very* worth it for truckers on the road every day.
You are not getting any net energy gain out of burning the hydrogen. You are using the hydrogen as an accelerant to make the combustion of the diesel more efficient at generating mechanical power. Right now an engine burns 95% or better of the fuel injected into the combustion chamber... however they then only convert about 35% of that into mechanical energy at best. That leaves a lot of room for improovement.
It has been known for some time that increasing compression increases that efficiency. But it also causes a problem... at some point the higher levels of compression will cause enough heat to initiate combustion. If this happens before the piston reaches top dead center it is known as pre-ignition and it is very bad for the engine. However by injecting an accelerant that will speed the combustion process once it occurs you can increase the pressure simply because the reaction happens faster in the same size combustion chamber. NOS injection is an example of a real world application already commonly used. Methanol is used in race cars specifically because it allows for higher mechanical compression rates without suffering from pre-ignition.
So the point of the hydrogen is not to serve as a net boost in and of itself, it is used here as an accelerant which enables the combustion in the chamber to happen quicker. This means higher compression rates due to faster expansion of the gasses, not by squishing the fuel air mixture more with the piston. This avoids pre-ignition and means more energy transffered to the piston with less energy wasted as heat in exhaust gasses and radiated off the engine.
So you take a small hit initially to generate the hydrogen but burning it with the diesel fumes allows the conversion of energy to be more dfficient. Ie that 25-35% efficiency at creating mechanical energy from the explosion up to 65-70% efficiency with a corresponding drop in energy wasted as heat which in turn means lower operating and exhaust temps. So there is no net gain here. Just an increase in conversion efficiency.
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Glow plugs are only used very briefly during the initial seconds of a cold start. Diesel engines compress air in the cylinder. According to Boyle's law, the air get very hot. At the peak of compression, diesel fuel is injected into the cylinder. The superheated compressed air ignites the fuel. The only time the glow plug is needed is for those rare occasions in the first few moments when the piston, cylinder, air, and fuel are too cold for the compression alone to ignite the fuel. I don't know what the hydrogen does, but I guarantee it has diddley-squat to do with the glow plugs.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Methanol and water injection do that to gasoline engines, too. See the War Emergency Power rating on WWII US fighter planes for an example of water injection, and MW-50 for an example of methanol/water injection in German fighters. They work by cooling the intake charge, which inhibits detonation, allowing more boost to be used.
Mind you, he was talking about methane, and methane is not the same thing as methanol.
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
> Virtually all race cars run on Methanol too.
For "virtually all" read "Indy Cars"
F1 cars run on unleaded petrol.
Nascars run on 110 Octane gasolene
etc. etc.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Diesel motors don't have spark plugs. They don't need electricity to keep the cycle going.
"Why can't we just work out the bugs with water injection?"
What are you talking about?!
Water injection works just fine, and has been on a production vehicle since at least 1962.
The Oldsmobile Jetfire was turbocharged, and came equipped with water injection, direct from the factory. It worked fine.
I used to run a turbocharged vehicle back in the 70's, and I added water injection to it because I'd made so many performance mods that it became a necessity.
Hydro lock?
More like brain lock...
Elf Racing fuel is 102 Octane
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Not to be a nit-picker, but you don't measure the Octane in diesel. It's the Setane. Similar idea though. That said, adding the hydrogen will, if anything, decrease this. Not increase it. By adding hydrogen, your gas will combust much more easily, exactly what you DON'T want to have in a high compression ratio engine that runs on high octane gas.
Interesting side note. Higher octane/setane means the gas is LESS volatile. It won't burn as easily. The reason your high-comp turbo charged car requires high octane is because if it were standard unleaded, the high temperature and high rate of spontaneous combustion (that is, un-intended combustion happening at times other than the spark ignition) causes knocking, which will damage the engine.
One reason to use methanol for racing cars is because it has such a high octane rating, that you can seriously increase the compression ratio (which would normally blow the engine if it were running standard gassoline) because it doesn't cause knocking under the same conditions as gassoline.
As for diesel, the high setane rate is one reason that diesel engines have a longer life than gas engines. (Remember, diesel engines have a much, much higher compression ratio than gas engines, in order to be able to combust anything in the first place.) Bio-diesel generally has a very excellent setane rating. On the other hand, it's a bitch to start in the winter. You need fuel line heating.
But back to the topic of the article... The hydrogen is used to efficiently burn fuel that is otherwise wasted under certain conditions. More fuel burnt (rather than being spat out raw from the exhaust) means more power, better fuel efficiency, and thus (as a side effect, depending on how you look at it) decreases undesireable emissions. The hydrogen itself probably has a negligible effect as a fuel alone. And no, this is NOT the same as the effect achieved by using NOS on a gas engine. (NOS rapidly expands in volume at high temperatures, so in that sense it's closer to a fuel itself, although it absolutely requires another fuel to initiate the burn.) It's closer to a well tuned computerized fuel injection system, except that it takes a drastically different approach.
A so-called "Diesel" engine works by compressing something until it heats up enough to ignite a bit of oxygen mixed in with it. You can use almost anything in a diesel engine as fuel, provided you adjust the compression appropriately. We use diesel because it's relatively cheap, for a hydrocarbon, and part of "relatively cheap" is "easily available near the highway".
Diesel is essentially the same as the kerosene in your camp light, the fuel oil in your home heating unit, the jet fuel in the airplane you last rode in, and the solvent you might have cleaned your paint brushes in. And any one of them would light up just fine in a diesel or jet engine without modification, and it's hardly news that people do, from time to time, use alternate fuels in those engines when necessity arises.
One fuel people sometimes use in Diesel engines is vegetable oil. It works fine, and essentially that's what BioDiesel is. It's neither particularly rare, difficult, or even new to use it provided you can find it. Farmers, mostly, have been users in the past, and it was not unheard of in the 1930's for the tractor to be running on corn oil or whatever the farmer had lots of and couldn't sell, or at least couldn't sell at a price that allowed him to buy an equivalent amount of diesel fuel from hydrocarbons.
The question for BioDiesel is basically: do we have enough extra corn, cottonseed, canola, peanut, coconut, or [enter locally grown oilseed] to run our trucks and jet engines while still feeding ourselves, and de we eat enough fried chicken and french fries to use the waste oil to run all our trucks, buses, and airplanes. I tend to believe not, but I'm open to contrary evidence.
f you are swayed by celebrities, I can tell you that there is a restaurant that gives it's used french-fry oil to Darryl Hannah, who uses it in her diesel engined vehicle. Kind of a wild child, that one, but hippies do some things right, occasionally.
You forgot to mention that Nascar uses leaded gasoline. http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detai l&pk=NASCARLEAD-02-28-05
People here are saying they have seen similar things sold on the internet (or to be announced) for insane amounts of money. I have seen these devices sold on Ebay - every time there is an "energy crunch", you see the number of auctions skyrocket. Most of these are for plans or sometimes actual devices - some knowledge of your car and engine, and some level of mechanical aptitude is required to install them.
At the same time, all of these things sound like a scam. I have heard all of the arguments, some make sense, some don't. So, instead of arguing about it, why don't we slashdotters construct our own, test it out, then see what is real? First off, start by googling hydro-boost. One of the first few links will take you to this page, which is a complete set of "plans" on how to build this kind of device from parts picked up at Home Depot (or the building supply place of your choice/location) and AutoZone or Checker (or whatever auto parts store is near you).
These devices are simple - they make what is known as Brown's Gas - a HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE MIXTURE of hydrogen and oxygen gases (note that if you build a "hydro-boost" cell for your car, that you want to make sure all of the gas is going into your engine, and not building up in areas under the hood/bonnet - unless you want a "car that goes BOOM!" literally) - used industrially for welding (similar to an oxy-acetylene torch system) - in fact, from that google search link you will find many suppliers of industrial Brown's Gas welding systems.
I don't know if these systems are the equivalent of fuel-line magnets or if they really work. If you are willing, try it yourself. Also note that I am not sure how your local environmental testing spot will treat you if you leave that device hooked up under your hood for a smog/emmissions test. They would probably fail you outright for unlawful engine modifications. However, they probably wouldn't have a problem helping you test such a system if you are willing to pay the fees needed - to see if emmissions go down if nothing else (other measurements they may or may not be willing to help out on). Just don't go through there "on the sly" - they don't look kindly on loose hoses, never mind funky emmisions modifications they don't approve...
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