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."

Comments

Hydrogen Wells?

[geomon]

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.

How are they getting the hydrogen again?

"But the HFI system uses electricity from an engine's alternator to power the electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen as needed from small amounts of distilled water."

Are we talking about perpetual motion? How much water do they have to take with them to produce the hydrogen (8 pounds per gallon)? How do they start the vehicle moving down the road? I assume that their hydrogen source is probably mostly produced from electricity from coal burning plants.

No doubt that the particulate levels are lower using hydrogen over diesel, but considering where the hydrogen is produced, this fuel source may not be exactly the "less" polluting alternative as one may think.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Skyfire]

The trucks aren't using hydrogen as their main source of fuel. They are using hydrogen to enhance the combustion of the diesel.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Short Circuit]

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.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I can tell, it doesn't actually provide much fuel, it just promotes a cleaner and more efficient combustion.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the Article, they only add the Hydrogen, meaning they still use desiel. Thats how they start. None from Coal plants. Jesus, get informed, then make a comment.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[geomon]

It's still a diesel-fueled vehicle. Adding hydrogen to the mix is supposed to improve milage somehow.

Right. It is the details I'm having problems with.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[njfuzzy]

Er, no. From just the summary, this sounds more like a hybrid using internal combustion -> electricity -> electrolysis -> hydrogen -> energy than anything like what you described. As I didn't RTFA myself, I can't complain there-- but at least RTFSummary. kkthxbye.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called a catalyst.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Short Circuit]

I assume it starts like any diesel vehicle. You heat up the glow-plugs, and turn the engine over. Compression ignites the diesel fuel.

Removing the hydrogen shouldn't make the engine any more difficult to start.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[pin_gween]

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.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[geomon]

I assume it starts like any diesel vehicle. You heat up the glow-plugs, and turn the engine over. Compression ignites the diesel fuel.

I thought the combustion had to be modified for hydrogen. Unlike gasoline engines, diesel engines use extemely high compression.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[radicalnerd]

Are we talking about perpetual motion?
No, the trucks still run mainly on diesel augmented with hydrogen.

...this fuel source may not be exactly the "less" polluting alternative as one may think.
It's less polluting because the hydrogen boosts the performance of the engine over burning diesel alone, lowers particulates, and all that good stuff. So it does pollute less, by burning the fuel more efficiently.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[MillionthMonkey]

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.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[shawb]

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. It seems like this is a very small amoung of Hydrogen that's being added. I have a feeling that has nothing to do with the concept of an actual Hydrogen powered car that people are going on and on about. You know, the cars that won't actually do anything to help the environment because you have to MAKE the Hydrogen in the first place, which uses electricity, which is mostly made from fossil fuels including coal which is far less clean burning than gasoline or diesel.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Bullfish]

Further, even if the electricity came from a plant (which it doesn't) the vast majority of Canadian plants are hydro-electric.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[i41Overlord]

Umm, No...read your own quote: Electricity (from the alternator in the engine) is used to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Ok, so the hydrogen is extracted from water with the energy produced by burning diesel fuel.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aromatic compounds can certainly be hydrogenated (usually at very high H2 partial pressures and high temperatures, so the conditions inside the engine might do the trick), but such hydrogenation is carried out over a transition metal catalyst, typically platinum. What is the catalyst here?

Energy is derived from the hydrogenation, and the hydrogenated products can then be combusted, but I seriously have to wonder if this actually yields a net benefit energetically. The Second Law of Thermodynamics ensures that all energy transformations are inefficient (specifically, cannot exceed the Carnot efficiency if I recall correctly), and electrolysis is one heck of an inefficient transformation. I am quite surprised that less energy is lost to the surroundings as part of H2 generation than is converted to mechanical energy in combustion.

(Yes, I am a chemist.)

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[TuballoyThunder]

Conservation of energy and thermodynamics tells us that this system has to operate with a net loss in efficiency for the *same* operating conditions. Perhaps the enhanced combustion improves the thermodynamic efficiency of the engine enough to offset energy required to produce the hydrogen and yield a 10% reduction in fuel consumption.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, how can I attach this to the 100MPG carburetor I just ordered for my '69 Caddy? With a little help from the split-fire spark plugs, I'll have to carry around a jerry can to siphon out the gas tank before it overflows!

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[i.r.id10t]

Much like why speed records are often set at the GatorNationals- the weather here in N Fla in the spring can be *perfect* for engine performance at times, with that just right combination of humidity and temperature.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[letxa2000]

Conservation of energy and thermodynamics tells us that this system has to operate with a net loss in efficiency for the *same* operating conditions.

The alternator is being driven regardless of whether you use some of the electricity to split water into hydrogen or not. This isn't a matter of getting something for nothing... it's a matter of not throwing away electricity that's already being generated by the alternator.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Anonymous Coward]

...considering where the hydrogen is produced, this fuel source may not be exactly the "less" polluting alternative as one may think.

I am so f sick and tired of gd SUV wanks and oil company astroturfers trotting this one out everytime someone mentions anything that sounds at all like it's going to challenge rotten dinosaur corpses as the fuel of choice.

RTFA numbnuts! The hydrogen is generated in the engine by the alternator. Despite the vast overhead of this electrolytic separation these guys are still saving 10 grand a year in fuel which easily pays for the simple bolt-on mod within a year or too. The source of the hydrogen is no more polluting than the engine it modifies because it is the engine it modifies.

Then I notice another equally brilliant mind observing the vast additional burden of 8 lb of water on an 80,000 lb truck. Grab a snatch of a clue as it goes over your head, Sparky. By my calcuations, the entire system, water and all weighs less than the fuel it saves every day.

For those who can't be bothered to RTFA and aren't completely offended, the system basically adds a small amount of hydrogen to the diesel. The effect is similar (though the mechanism may not be...IANACE) to adding a squirt of acetone to your gas tank.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[geomon]

I am so f sick and tired of gd SUV wanks

I don't own an SUV, but thanks for asking.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[JonathanR]

I'd say that the hydrogen is beneficial because of its wide flammability limits. This would help a diesel engine, which doesn't necessarily have a homogenous fuel/air mixture throughout the combustion chamber. Diesels are different to gasoline engines, in that the fuel is added during, or just before, the power stroke. This timing limits the fuel-air mixing somewhat, leading to leaner/richer pockets. The presence of Hydrogen in these regions would possibly serve to initiate combusion earlier, giving more chance for completion of the combustion process before exhausting.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[RicktheBrick]

There was a similar article in slashdot a while ago.( http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/1 8/1638204&tid=187&tid=14 ) It made much bolder claims about reducing the carbon dioxide emissions and reducing gas consumption from 10 to 40%. It stated that they would give theirs away for free with the purchaser paying a percent of the fuel savings.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[MillionthMonkey]

Aromatic compounds can certainly be hydrogenated (usually at very high H2 partial pressures and high temperatures, so the conditions inside the engine might do the trick), but such hydrogenation is carried out over a transition metal catalyst, typically platinum. What is the catalyst here?

I think you're on the wrong track. This isn't related to the way we saturate aromatic compounds with hydrogen gas- the polycyclic aromatic compounds aren't formed until the diesel burns, and the goal is to keep them from forming in the first place. The idea here I think is to get away with a higher air to fuel ratio than you could otherwise accomplish without the sputtering and misfires ordinarily associated with lean diesel mixtures. If you can get less C and more O and H into the cylinders, you'll see more energy-poor C-O and H-O bonds leaving the exhaust, and fewer energy-rich (and stinky) C-C and C-H bonds.

Energy is derived from the hydrogenation, and the hydrogenated products can then be combusted, but I seriously have to wonder if this actually yields a net benefit energetically.

Of course it takes more energy to produce the H2 than you can get from burning it, since the process isn't 100% efficient. You have to compare the losses associated with the hydrogen exchange to the losses associated with dirty diesel exhaust. I don't know how well it works. If a little hydrogen can prevent a lot of soot formation then this would be a big win energetically. But it's still annoying to see this setup described as "powered in part by hydrogen" since that doesn't describe it accurately at all.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[SoloFlyer2]

The way they do this is actually much less efficent than it could be!

it should be performed similar to the way NO2 is used on sports cars with the trucker changing bottles when required and the injection controled by a new EMS it would work out signifigantly cheaper to buy and run and deliver more power and better milage

the truck isnt optimised to make hydrogen so having it do it instead is far less efficent than buying it made from natural gas by a gas company and means that benifits of using hydrogen as a catalyst are reduced

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[radl33t]

Injecting hydrogen will alter the combustion and subsequently change the operating conditions. Hydrogen burns faster and hotter. Both of these things should improve efficiency according to whatever nebulous definition you like.

To what extent is the real question. I recall a link to this company in the not too distant past. Some company exec said he would provide the equipment to the Canadian government for free in exchange for a cut of the fuel cost savings. Without RTFA, is this the deal he's providing the truckers? They seem like an appropriate bunch. I would be curious about the whole thing if he reneged the claim.

Certainly it is not difficult to imagine cascading heat engines to improve efficiency. However, engineers need to be practical where science doesn't. If thing helps, then good for him, if not, then welcome to the club.

JQ

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[spectre_240sx]

This isn't a new concept, either. Alchohol and Water injection have been used for quite some time to add a little extra power / efficiency to an already capable gasoline engine by lowering air charge temperatures or creating a more complete burn. I was seriously considering setting up an alchohol injection system on my car once I got the turbo in, but the project didn't end up going the way I wanted it to... Most notably, water injection was used in the P-51H Mustang.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[RsG]

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.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[huber]

Are we talking about perpetual motion? Yes! Yes we are.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[gerardrj]

The flaw I see in this reasoning is this:

Black smoke from a diesel is caused by incomplete combustion in the cylinder. Incomplete combustion occurs because too much fuel is present per mass of air in the cylinder, the oxygen runs out before the fuel does. If the incomplete combustion were a heat issue, it would not happen under the highest loads which create the highest engine temperatures.

Diesel oil is a fuel and hydrogen is a fuel. If you get incomplete combustion due to lack of oxygen then adding more fuel results in less combustion.
Further, the hydrogen is more volatile than diesel oil and would combust first, leaving less oxygen for the diesel to burn with.

At least in my view this entire system is bunk and the person interviewed must have some financial interest in the promotion of this product.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[DutchUncle]

No, we aren't. They're not powering the truck *only* off the separated water. Read a bunch of other posts.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Johnny Mnemonic]

i>How are they getting the hydrogen again?

Strangely, those answers are in TFA. Thx for proving yourself a loon.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Incomplete combustion occurs because too much fuel is present per mass of air in the cylinder.

Ever have a campfire? Although you had unlimited air supply, why did you have unburned logs at the conclusion of it? Answer: because the material that didn't burn didn't reach the heat needed to combust. If you took a blowtorch to those remaining logs, you may be able to get another fire going, as the particulate that didn't reach it's combustion point the first time is burned off. With enough unburned logs, you might be able to get more energy back than the blowtorch uses. Same principal here.

At least in my view this entire system is bunk and the person interviewed must have some financial interest in the promotion of this product.

Or maybe he just knows what he's talking about, and doesn't draw conclusions from a single faulty premise.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[geomon]

Strangely, those answers are in TFA. Thx for proving yourself a loon.

Well thank you for your positive comments.

You don't know how much that means to me.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[gerardrj]

No, it's not.

In your log situation there is an effectively unlimited supply of oxygen for combustion.
In the combustion cylinder of an engine there is a fixed amount of oxygen. If you burn hydrogen in there it will consume some of the oxygen and leave less for the diesel to burn with. Making the cylinder environment hotter will do nothing but get your hotter soot in this situation. Possibly, the soot would spontaneously combust as it exits the exhaust pipe and locates available oxygen (assuming gas temperatures are still above the ignition point).

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[modecx]

You're absolutely correct, as far as I can see. Diesel smoke is influenced by a) the air-fuel ratio b) the timing of the injection of fuel into the cylinder. Since diesel engines typically rarely run at stoichiometric (where some smoke could result) ratio for very long, I don't see the hydrogen having a smoke reducing/power+efficiency increasing ability as a result of being used purely as a fuel.

The thing is, after the diesel is injected into the cylinder, there is a sort of lag in the combustion of the fuel, because of oxygen availability and proximity. It's not instantaneous, just like gasoline in an engine, it takes time for the flame to propagate in the cylinder, however short that time is. Obviously, more efficiency is obtained when the flame is contained going at full blast for the entire power stroke, but since there is a lag in combustion, the fuel has to be injected before the cylinder reaches top dead center on the power stroke. Under full load conditions, the combustion lag is longer because the increased fuel, but similar fuel/air proximity. This results in unburnt fuel getting exhausted, resulting in higher exhaust gas temperatures, and typically more boost if there is a turbocharger present--the unburnt fuel is being combusted in the manifold, just before the turbo. It's not obvious, but in the diesel truck tuning industry, this is actually desirable--it increases efficiency and performance because that fuel is still being utilized--to increase boost pressure (increasing the effective compression ratio and therefore efficiency) and allow for even more fuel to be injected, but I'm sure it causes more stress on the engine's materials.

Consumer trucks can already have propane injection installed as aftermarket modifications. Propane is injected into the intake manifold. It's just a guess, I'm not a diesel guy, but I know a bit about it... I'd guess the result of doing so is to effectively decrease the ignition lag of the diesel fuel itself, thereby allowing injection timings nearer TDC... Thus giving the fuel more time to completely burn in the power stroke, increasing efficiency, power, and reducing particulate emissions--but only at high load conditions. If any of that makes any sense, particularly to a non-gearhead, I'd be surprised, but oh well.

If this is the case, they're obviously touting hydrogen because "everyone" knows hydrogen is "green", and propane is not, you know, even though it's probably more efficient and cheaper to just use propane.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[TenLow]

I was waiting for someone to bring this up. If any of you were car guys, you'd know how simple it is. The hydrogen is probably just acting the same way propane injection does. It's not so much being added to the diesel, as it is replacing some of the diesel. It burns cleaner, and the byproduct of that is the efficiency of the diesel is increased (and the efficiency of the hydrogen is similarly decreased)

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[budgenator]

The device doesn't effect the air-fuel mixture, the website says

Hydrogen Fuel Injection System (HFI), is an onboard generator of hydrogen and oxygen gases for internal combustion engines
The HFI introduces gases to the air intake manifold of the truck, weighs approximately 90lbs and measures 12x12x24 inches.
The gases generated , once introduced to the intake manifold, are mixed with the incoming air. The gases are produced only while the engine is running. The gases generated , once introduced to the intake manifold, are mixed with the incoming air. The gases are produced only while the engine is running.
Hydrogen is not stored under significant pressure at anytime eliminating any safety concerns. The introduction of these gases results in a more efficient and complete burn of existing fuel.

Note the word gases, plural stong implication that both H2 and O2 are inputed to the manifold of the engine. My industry sometimes uses H2 O2 gases for welding, the gases are generated elctrolyticaly and delivered to the torch handle combined, frequantly the gasses are passed thru ethanol to cool the flame down from it's normal 5000 K temperature

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[budgenator]

4 L of HOH per 10Km pretty much tells you the effect is more like catalytic, than fuel

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[budgenator]

The thing uses 15 Amps, about the same as the headlight, a car alternator can put out 50 - 100 amps, a semi-truck tractor is probaly closer to 150- 300 amps in 24 volt systems so they are a long ways from peak.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[TuballoyThunder]

You are not throwing away electricity--the load on the alternator requires energy from the engine. While it is true the alternator is always turning, the work being performed is not constant. To keep a constant load on the alternator would be wasteful.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[QMO]

For the last 70 years the world land speed records have been set in Utah and Nevada.
Which speed records do you mean?

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[RafaelGCPP]

No we aren't. Hydrogen works as a catalyst on burning the oil. It only improves the oil burning, that is in no way 100% efficient.

Hydrogen will not make the burning 100% efficient either, but ANY improvement to the efficience is welcome, as it is reflected in less emissions and more power or milage...

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Johnny Mnemonic]

If you burn hydrogen in there it will consume some of the oxygen and leave less for the diesel to burn with.

Certainly.

Making the cylinder environment hotter will do nothing but get your hotter soot in this situation.

Only if soot is a product of the diesel running out of oxygen; I don't know that to be true. There may be plenty of oxygen in the cylinder, or you can adjust the mix to provide more oxygen.

Rather, I think it may be because the diesel takes longer to reach combustion temperature than it is allowed to remain in the cylinder. If this is the case--and that's an if--if you increase the temperature fast enough, you'll burn more of the otherwise unburnt fuel.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Joe E. Deacon]

The article summary is quite misleading.

Gnnn mue mer GA. Gnnnmnnn.

[Joey says you must be new here]

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not even replacing any of the diesel. It's there as a supplement that helps the diesel ignite faster, because at the rates it's added to the air, propane simply will not burn efficiently.

This method is not to be confused with diesel-cycle combustion busses and whatnot that actually full time run on propane or natural gas.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[i.r.id10t]

1/4 mile drags/NHRA/top fuel/funny cars, etc. IIRC (not likely, since i'm not a race fan) first to break 250mph in the 1/4 mile and first to break 300mph in the 1/4 mile happened here in Gainesville... OK, some quick googling shows that I of course don't RC, but here's the blurb -

"Gainesville Raceway opened in 1969 and held its first Gatornationals event in 1970. Long considered one of the fastest tracks on the NHRA circuit, it was from this legendary launch point that drivers clocked the first 260-, 270- and 300-mph Top Fuel runs. It also was from this starting line, during the 2000 Mac Tools NHRA Gatornationals, that eight of 10 national records were set in the professional classes."

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Luminary Crush]

From the company's website, the device is injecting a hydrogen-oxygen gas MIX. This is highly EXPLOSIVE, and is not well-suited to long-term storage. H2 from a bottle would provide many of the same benefits to combustion, but then you have to produce it, add a storage facility, refueling facility, etc etc.

With their system, you add water.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Luminary Crush]

No, it's nothing like a hybrid. RTFA :)
Hydrogen combustion has a flame propagation rate several times that of hydrocarbon fuel. This 'kickstarts' the combustion process and causes more hydrocarbons to be burned, rather than spewed out the tailpipe. More power, improved mileage, reduced emissions.
These have been installed for a little while now, and there are distributors all across the USA and Canada.

Re:Hydrogen Wells?

[Luminary Crush]

Not exactly - it's actually a case of the performance gain by the improved fuel consumption initiated by the hydrogen injection offsetting the current used by the electrolysis system. From the company's website documentation, this draws about 35A - that is far more than any 'excess generated power' available from a freewheeling alternator.

Your headlights draw about that kind of current, maybe a bit less.

The more current draw, the harder the alternator is to turn.

trucker hats

[cococpdalbert]

GNAA Announces Corporate Downsizing and Administrative Reformation GNAA Announces Corporate Downsizing and Administrative Reformation Misha Borovsky (GNAP) - Hollywood - GNAA President timecop announced at a press conference this morning that the Gay Nigger Association of America is in the midst of a large effort to reduce operating costs and streamline business processes. "Layoffs of approximately fifty percent of the gay workforce are to be expected, as well as a shifting in administrative functions," timecop was quoted as saying. Analysts predict this corporate downsizing was made necessary due to over-investment into the New Orleans area, when it was announced last year that the GNAA would be opening a state-of-the-art branch office on the coast. The building was nearing completion and just opening for business when it was destroyed by hurricane Katrina, which has been recently found to be the responsibility of Jews. As George W. Bush is noted for not caring about black people, FEMA has refused to pay for the repairs, and the project was scrapped. "We are also making internal changes to the corporate information technology intranet," said supers, CTO for GNAA Worldwide Operations. "Many of our information moving processes were running on the Lunix platform, and this was generating large costs due to system slowness and instability. After a careful usability study, we have found that we will be saving millions of dollars [USD] per year by switching to the Microsoft Windows 2003 Server System". timecop ended the conference by announcing, "We'll always be there for the gay niggers of the world. With this restructuring of the organization, we are enabled to offer twice the service for a fraction of the cost. It's a new gay universe ahead." About GNAA: GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS. Are you GAY? Are you a NIGGER? Are you a GAY NIGGER? If you answered "Yes" to all of the above questions, then GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what you've been looking for! Join GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) today, and enjoy all the benefits of being a full-time GNAA member. GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the fastest-growing GAY NIGGER community with THOUSANDS of members all over United States of America and the World! You, too, can be a part of GNAA if you join today! Why not? It's quick and easy - only 3 simple steps! * First, you have to obtain a copy of GAYNIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE and watch it. You can download the movie (~130mb) using BitTorrent. * Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA First Post on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website. * Third, you need to join the official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on irc.gnaa.us, and apply for membership. Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today! Upon submitting your application, you will be required to submit links to your successful First Post, and you will be tested on your knowledge of GAYNIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE. If you are having trouble locating #GNAA, the official GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is NiggerNET, and you can connect to irc.gnaa.us as our official server. Follow this link if you are using an irc client such as mIRC. If you have mod points and would like to support GNAA, please moderate this post up. .________________________________________________. | ______________________________________._a,____ | Press contact: | _______a_._______a_______aj#0s_____aWY!400.___ | Gary Niger | __ad#7!!*P____a.d#0a____#!-_#0i___.#!__W#0#___ | gary_niger@gnaa.us | _j#'_.00#,___4#dP_"#,__j#,__0#Wi___*00P!_"#L,_ | GNAA Corporate Headquarters | _"#ga#9!01___"#01__40,_"4Lj#!_4#g_________"01_ | 143 Rolloffle Avenue | ________"#,___*@`__-N#____`___-!^_____________ | Tarzana, California 91356 | _________#1__________?__________

Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[nizo]

Perhaps we should investigate additionally using methane as a source of fuel for these trucks. Not only could we keep these guys in business, but in some cases (such as trucks that haul cattle) they might actually produce more energy than they burn.

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[Luckster7]

Actually, Methanol/Water Injection on Diesel engines is like NOS on a gasser. The Methanol does make the diesel burn cleaner like the hydrogen in this article, and the water cools the EGTs (Exhaust Gas Temp) enough to keep everything from melting down. Virtually all race cars run on Methanol too.

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[woolio]

I thought you meant the truck driver as the sole source of methane...

Bean burrito == +5MPG!

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[Now.Imperfect]

Lol, I know a guy who served at the pentagon, and he was one of the main propponents of methane. xD

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[MechaStreisand]

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.

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who started this stupid fucking thread so full of uninformed bullshit?

The methanol makes a hotter flame kernel, causing the diesel to burn faster.

The water doesn't act primarily as a coolant: Water vapor expands rather rapidly when heated, which then causes a more rapid expansion, causing the piston to move faster, increasing the HP.

Water injection works. Methanol injection works. Water/Methanol injection REALLY works. All three have drawbacks that make them impractal for everyday use.

p.s. (non-sequitor) I'm really beginning to hate gentoo.

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[BigBuckHunter]

Agree'd. This is nothing more than water injection.... without the problematic "hydro-locking" scenarios (which is the reason we don't have cars with water injection). Which leads me to a question... Why can't we just work out the bugs with water injection?

BBH

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[DrSkwid]

> 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.

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't we just work out the bugs with water injection?

Cars have enough of a rust problem as it is.

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[somersault]

I also thought that guy seemed a bit strange. Hehe. I'd say virtually all race cars run on unleaded. And isnt gasolene unleaded also? I'm not sure what Octane F1 cars run on, but unleaded over here (Scotland) is around 98 octane for the good stuff.

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[damsa]

Virtually all drag cars run on nitro methane, including Monster trucks, top fuel and funny cars and the like. I have a feeling that's what the GP was refering too. It's the same fuel that runs little gas RC cars and planes.

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[FidelCatsro]

Most politicians seem to be big proponents of methane .. well enough of it comes out of their mouths

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[nyno]

GP said methane, not methanol.

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[DrSkwid]

Elf Racing fuel is 102 Octane

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[DrSkwid]

methanol CH3 OH != nitromethane CH3 NO2 .

But I think *you* knew that

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[mferrare]

Big planes run on JetA1 which is a kerosene/diesel fuel. Little planes (pistons) run on Avas which 100 octane petrol. Some of 'em even run on plain ol' petrol petrol - like what you put in your cars.

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[SlashHack]

remind me again where they're getting the hydrogen, and how that process does not create "pollution"? bah.. as long as you "feel" good, i guess it doesn't matter what the result is.

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[cblood]

Some one did not read the article. The hydrogen comes from electrolysis. This is powered by the alternator on the truck and results in some pure O2 as a byproduct. The energy ultimately come from the diesel fuel but the net result is improved efficiency.

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[Anonymous Coward]

" Agree'd"

Perhaps you can work the bugs out of grade 3 spelling before moving on to bigger things, eh Sparky??

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[TooMuchToDo]

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

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[Anonymous Coward]

The octane level of unleaded gasoline can only go up to 100. Octane numbers higher than 100 are found by measuring the amount of tetraethyl lead that must be added to pure isooctane -- therefore making it leaded gasoline. Gasoline without isooctane has a knock index of around 70 -- which is why the octane is added to the fuel to prevent knock when there are compression ratios that are over 8:1 (im pretty sure that is the limit on compression without octane).

--mike

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[Now.Imperfect]

He wasn't really a politician... I think he was more of a scientist...

Actually he was a trucker later in his life...

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[karrot]

LET THEM TRUCKERS ROLL! 10-4!

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[Gilmoure]

Water also helps cool the intake air, leading it to be cooler and denser, putting more O2 into the system. The cooler temps also allow you to run more advance on a gasoline engine, creating more power, or run more compression. Yum!

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[Luckster7]

To quote http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/chemweek/methane/metha ne.html

In the chemical industry, methane is a raw material for the manufacture of methanol (CH3OH)

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[suitepotato]

Elf Racing fuel is 102 Octane

Working for Santa Claus, living in trees making chocolate-covered cookies, riding wolves, and wising off to dwarves... now racing?! Is there anything they won't stop at?!

Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen?

[walstib]

For "virtually all" read "Indy Cars"
F1 cars run on unleaded petrol.
Nascars run on 110 Octane gasolene

And everyne knows only F1 counts as real race cars...

first post!

[Anonymous Coward]

first post!

What??

[rscoggin]

That doesn't fit the rugged stereotypical trucker at all! "Goshdernit, we're gonna pollute all we need to get this convoy to San Antonio by Saturday!"

Re:What??

[BobPaul]

Wha? I always thought the stereotypical trucker was pissed about how much gas prices were cutting into their income (or the corporation was if the trucker didn't own his rig).

In either case the diesel is cutting into someones proffits and someone is eager to cut costs. Maybe the ends isn't a decrease in pollution, but it's a natural by product in using less fuel, which is a major goal for any semi-truck owner.

Re:What??

[value_added]

That doesn't fit the rugged stereotypical trucker at all! "Goshdernit, we're gonna pollute all we need to get this convoy to San Antonio by Saturday!"

Don't be too quick to dismiss bad stereotypical behaviour. The Daily Show devoted an extended segment to the subject, so it must be true.

Re:What??

[StikyPad]

No, no.. truckers say, "We're gonna do all the crystal meth we can in order to get this convoy to San Antonio by Friday. What?!? Who keeps saying my name!!"

Maybe you were thinking of tankers.

Re:What??

[identity0]

Yeah, no kidding! What next, an ethanol-powered General Lee?! 'Course, if they used moonshine, it'd be alright...

But how can I take Smokey & The Bandit seriously if Burt Reynolds has to stop every now and then and go, "Gosh darn it, the H2/Oxygen ratio is all gummed up, I gotta recalibrate the electrolysis diffuser and recompile the firmware matrix!"(kicks tires). They're turning my redneck flicks into Star Trek! Nooooooo!!

Re:What??

[Associate]

Oddly enough, I believe Chrysler had a concept Charger that ran on some 'alternative fuel'. I forget when it was exactly or what it ran on. It may have even had an orange paint job.

Re:What??

[ksheff]

Bottles or jugs of urine wouldn't be that bad as the article portrayed it. Jugs full of tobacco spit on the other hand is nasty. Of course there is a downside of not spitting into a jug and letting it fly out the window. My grandfather practically painted the front of a VW bug brown on a trip when my uncle was a long haul trucker. The driver of the bug was stuck behind the truck for a few hours and couldn't avoid the spit coming out the passenger side window.

Re:What??

[narkotix]

It may have even had an orange paint job.
yeah thats what happened when they tried rocket fuel.

Re:What??

[mikael]

There are many stories of people using vegetable oil to power their cars and trucks.

But if you use vegetable oil for this purpose, you have to pay additional "fuel duty tax", otherwise the customs and exise people will be after you like Sheriff Hogg.

Re:What??

[kabocox]

They're turning my redneck flicks into Star Trek! Nooooooo!!

I thought Kirk was a redneck in space.

Re:What??

[accessdeniednsp]

There was an episode where they had a competition to develop a new fuel thing, and Jessie smuggled moonshine in his car driving it to the show. He ran the engine off of moonshine so that Boss Hog and Sheriff couldn't find it when they tore his car apart looking for it.

I'm an 80s kid and I just showed my age...

"Oh boy".

(hah! a double pun...)

Re:What??

[carlos_benj]

The driver of the bug was stuck behind the truck for a few hours and couldn't avoid the spit coming out the passenger side window.

I believe a bit of distance would have done the trick as far as avoiding the juice.

Re:What??

[adarn]

good thing smokey and the bandit was made like 30 years ago.

Re:What??

[mpe]

Oddly enough, I believe Chrysler had a concept Charger that ran on some 'alternative fuel'. I forget when it was exactly or what it ran on. It may have even had an orange paint job.

With or without the "Stars and bars" on the roof. Anyway there can't be that many left, the Dukes of Hazzard wen't through at least 3 an episode.

Re:What??

[Gilmoure]

Did he put Hi-Jackers and side pipes on the Enterprise?

Re:What??

[adpowers]

And I'm pissed at how much damage truckers do to roads that is then paid for by my tax money. Let's see how well the truckers do if the cost of roads weren't externalized. Railroads are way more efficient and, even though they have to pay for their own infrastructure, still manage to compete with truckers when it comes to shipping.

Re:What??

[BobPaul]

Well, they pay those taxes to. I suppose you could make large trucks illegal and force rail transfer instead.

That would mean every department store would require at least 1 rail line running right up to it. That's a lot of train crossings to stop for...

Re:What??

[kabocox]

Did he put Hi-Jackers and side pipes on the Enterprise?

What do you think those big round things in the back were? He was always having Scotty rig up the Enterprise to go faster. If that isn't a hitech military redneck, I don't know what is. And don't forget he had a shoot or bed it first policy. The only aliens he talked to were those that he was trying to bed. That character must have had issues. ;)

Re:What??

[Gilmoure]

At least he wasn't a lawyer.

Re:What??

[feijai]

Well, they pay those taxes to. I suppose you could make large trucks illegal and force rail transfer instead.

Ummm... how about the simpler: make trucks pay a per-mile road-destruction tax to the state they're presently in?

Re:What??

[BobPaul]

Easier? How are you going to keep track of how much each trucks/truck company owes each state? That's going to cost a lot of overhead for administration and end up costing you more in the end.

Yes, costing you more. Either you pay it as a tax or you pay it in increased prices at the register. Lots of stuff got more expensive as gas prices went up. Do a tax on the companies/truckers and you'll get the same increases, plus you'll be paying a group to keep track of who owes which state how much money.

Tax is cheaper.

Re:What??

[adpowers]

Except I don't shop at Walmart. I tend to shop at places that care local food and I'm near a port, so good don't have to travel far. I try to eat local food as much as possible. Right now Walmart and others are getting an advantage because they can keep their inventory in trucks on roads and not have to pay much transit cost. We are subsidizing Walmart's (and others) business.

Re:What??

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a trucker, and I can tell you that I'm all for saving trees and bunnies and deer and such. (I need something to shoot at in my spare time.)

Besides what, it's probably chromed. I like to put chrome stuff on my rig.

Re:What??

[buck_wild]

I would tend to say you are the exception rather than the norm. You also pay taxes used for building bridges you don't cross, and handicap ramps that (I hope) you don't need to use.

Also, there is a per-gallon tax (at least in my state) so truckers who buy gas really ARE paying more for the roads than you are.

Re:What??

[buck_wild]

"I gotta recalibrate the electrolysis diffuser and recompile the firmware matrix!"(kicks tires)."

I prefer to call this "percussive maintenance." (if I knew who coined the term, this would be where I'd give them credit)

Re:What??

[adpowers]

The gas taxes don't nearly pay for roads, though. Especially freeways and the like. I don't mind paying for handicap ramp because they are a lot cheaper and absolutely required for some people.

I'm trying to be a considerate citizen (for example, environmentally) using the most fair means possible: capitalism. I put my money where my mouth is and support green causes like not driving, buying organic food, or green power. It is usually more expensive for me, and yet the money I give through taxes is still being used to build roads and subsidize oil companies. It is hard to be a conscience individual when my money is being taken for hugely expensive projects like roads and pork freeways in Alaska. If people had to pay the real cost of their destructive behavior, they would be more inclined to go the green route and it wouldn't be as high an incremental cost (aka, if drivers actually paid for the roads, going to public transit or bikes would save even more money then it does now... because you wouldn't have to pay that in taxes (although, I'd rather have them keep the tax level and just balance the freaking budget)).

Andrew

PS: If you can't tell, I'm trying to be an environmentalist in the most libertarian way possible.

Re:What??

[feijai]

Easier? How are you going to keep track of how much each trucks/truck company owes each state? That's going to cost a lot of overhead for administration and end up costing you more in the end.

Ahh, the miracle of GPS and odometers! It's like magic! A $250 device for a $100,000 rig.

Believe it or not, modern trucks often have this stuff built-in already, to guarantee compliance with a variety of federal or company regulations, including feedback on estimated delivery time, limits on how long drivers may drive in a day, and company-imposed rules about speed limits or routes.

Re:What??

[ksheff]

I would have thought so too, but apparently he couldn't. Knowing where he used to drive, it was probably a case of a 2 lane mountain road and a pack of cars stuck behind the truck.

Re:What??

[BobPaul]

And now you have to setup a database and get everyone to register, and write software to make all the different GPS units compatible and hire people to administer the system and the consumer is still paying for all of this in the end... I really don't see the benefit.

Re:What??

[buck_wild]

I hear you, and feel your pain. Personally, I would support a flat tax of X percent. I had heard a rumour that G.W. Bush was going to try that, and it would have been a perfect because he's a lame-duck (can't get elected again) president. But I've heard nothing about it in a year or so.

I too, and tired of what you call 'pork projects' like the massive bridge in Alaska. Too bad that people don't seem to remember those things come voting time.

Thaings will all change once I'm king. :)

Re:What??

[adpowers]

Yeah, a dictatorship would be so much easier :).

When I think about it, in years past I probably could have been a Republican, but their homophobia, warmongering, and runaway spending really turns me off to the party. 2004 was the first election in which I could vote, and I voted Libertarian. FYI, my state was an easy Kerry victory, so my voting for Badnarik didn't win Bush any electoral points (now... if I was in Ohio...).

Re:What??

[buck_wild]

You know, the electoral college does not HAVE to vote the way of the people, from my understanding. The majority of the people could have voted for Bush, and they STILL could have cast their votes for Kerry.

I wonder if we'll ever get rid of the electoral college? With today's electronic voting, and electronic methos of counting even hand ballots (Florida aside, of course) I'd like to see the people cast the difinitive votes. Let the people be heard, without their response being interpreted.

Re:What??

[adpowers]

I don't know, that is a good question. I wonder how things would turn out if it was gone. Also, I'd like to see Condorcet voting take hold, because the system right now encourages a two party system.

Re:What??

[buck_wild]

Interesting! I'd never heard of the Ranked Pairs method of voting before. I'm afraid that a lot of folks wouldn't understand it, though, and people fear what they don't understand.

Personally, I dislike the party systems altogether. I've seen some republicans that acted like democrats, and vice-versa, so the only sense it seems to make is that when I run for office as a member of a club (Republican, for example) I have a shot at getting votes based on part affiliation. NOT the best way to pick the leader of the free world, in my opinion.

Re:What??

[adpowers]

One of the best things about Ranked Pairs/Condorcet is that there are almost no strategic voting strategies. It would be in your best interest to vote to your actual belief. Putting Bush last behind Pat Buchanan wouldn't change Bush's chances again Kerry, Nader, or Barnarik. The more people that can be educated about it, the more likely it is to be adopted.

Exactly. The only thing parties are for is fundraising and voting along party lines (where that vote is citizens voting for candidates or legislators voting for laws and such).

The conversation seems to be winding down, but it has been good talking to you.
Andrew

What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Short Circuit]

The article is light on details, and there's no Wikipedia article on HFI.

Burning the hydrogen in the engine can't produce the same amount of work that went into producing it. So if there's a milage benefit, where does it come from? Does it raise the temperature of the fuel enough to cause greater combustion?

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[nizo]

This pdf file might be helpful (or search for it on google to see the html version).

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[nizo]

Oh and don't forget the company's website. Under the technology tab they have some info as well.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to not RTFA...

"Fuel efficiency and horsepower are improved because hydrogen burns faster and hotter than diesel, dramatically boosting combustion efficiency."

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[David Frankenstein]

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.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Superfarstucker]

It seems that that is the only likely explanation, unless they used super capacitors to charge batteries on braking to power the electrolysis, the system does cost *quite* a bit to install (14k USD or CAD?). Trucks have a shitload of energy to convert to thermal energy when braking so it certainly seems feasible, (also converted into mechanical energy normally via 'compression brake, which raises pressure inside of cylinders by cycling valves at the 'wrong' times, which makes the engine do more work to get the same w (or it slows down)).

It is hard to believe, though I have little knowledge of chemistry or the mechanics of combustion, that a synergistic reaction would be efficient enough to make up for the terrible inefficiency of electrolysis, or so i'm told,

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[jmorris42]

> This pdf file might be helpful (or search for it on google to see the html version).

Yes, very helpful. Note that the test appears to have been made WITHOUT the alternator being loaded with the hydrogen extraction. When something sounds too good to be true, always look for what they skate around. In this case the report discusses where the manufacturer claims to obtain their hydrogen but by implication that means they didn't actually have one on hand, so they didn't have one connected to the electrical system.

So I'd say snake oil barring a more honest test. Yes it might provide some green benefits, but as for fuel savings, bull. And anyway, even if we take them at their word it isn't anything to write home about. Run the numbers people. Up to $14,000 for the initial investment for at best a 10% fuel savings? And I suspect there is some installation expenses as well. So lets round the numbers and say $15,000 to save 10%. Assume diesel averages $2.75 (It is back down to levels way under that here) for the next couple of years. That means until you save 5,454 gallons you aren't ahead. Even for a big rig that translates to a LOT of hours of operation. And that assumes no additional expenses to maintain either the device or additional wear on the engine from running it hotter.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Superfarstucker]

here is more information on it

It seems my initial analysis is way off and rather than adding energy to the reaction the hydrogen is used to get the most out of the diesel fuel (i.e., burn it completely). It says it only uses ~15 amps of electricity which is the equivalent of the headlights drain on the truck, so certainly it is a rather insignificant amount of hydrogen being added to the combustion chamber.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[yabos]

You get more energy back than it took to produce the hydrogen because you are burning the deisel fuel more efficiently. So instead of unburnt deisel fuel being pumped out the smoke stack that causes all the black smoke, you are burning it. You will get more energy out of the now burnt deisel fuel than it takes to make the hydrogen. So, you have more energy doing work in the engine. Thus it is more efficient, and cuts down on fuel costs. You don't have to mash your foot on the floor and waste fuel.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[KarmaOverDogma]

I'll take a stab at this one...

If you think about the alternator that exists in every automotive vehicle with an internal combustion engine, it's probably reasonable to assume that not all of the power output from the alternator is needed at any given time to power the vehicle's components, especially at highway speeds, where the alternator is really moving along; why let that excess energy go to waste?

If my assumption is correct there (someonle please correct me if this idea is full of bunk), then this idea could be expanded even further by having a larger, yet more efficient alternator which doesnt take any more kinetic energy from the drivetrain, yet still puts out more volts/amps, which, since it isn't needed anywhere else at the time, can be used in electrolysis and saved for later use - or used on the spot - or slowly put into the engine at a controlled rate.

Just my thoughts, anyway.

People in the know: did I guess this right or is it just ignorant speculation?

Anyway it seems like an interesting idea to me. And no, I didn't RTFA, I admit it...

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Ariane 6]

Fine, but as parent mentioned, as soon as the engine starts powering the electrolysis you'll be below break-even.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[RedWizzard]

Fine, but as parent mentioned, as soon as the engine starts powering the electrolysis you'll be below break-even.

No. You are only thinking in terms of the energy put into the system by burning the hydrogen compared to the energy removed by making the hydrogen. What you are not considering is the energy put into the system by burning the diesel more efficiently. It's a similar sort of prinicple to using a supercharger: just because the supercharger is being powered by the engine doesn't mean you can get a net power gain. In case of a supercharger the extra power is due to increased fuel and air consumption, in this case it is due to increased efficiency combustion of the diesel fuel.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a fuel Cell so no catalyst.

A big diesel engine wastes a lot of energy. If you can harness a little bit of the waste energy into electricity, then you can essentially make 'free' hydrogen and oxygen. If you push the hydrogen and oxygen back into the engine, it is putting the waste energy back towards turning the engine. Therefore you get an overall increase in efficiency.

No new energy, just a better use of the energy that already existed.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think about the alternator that exists in every automotive vehicle with an internal combustion engine, it's probably reasonable to assume that not all of the power output from the alternator is needed at any given time to power the vehicle's components, especially at highway speeds, where the alternator is really moving along; why let that excess energy go to waste?

Good idea but...

The energy that goes into the alternator is the sum of the the energy lost to friction and the work it does. The energy lost to friction is lost: nothing you can really do about that. The work it does is basically charging the battery and running the power systems. Once the battery is charged, the only work it does is to run the power systems. It may seem weird but that's the way it is.

A simple experiment you can do at home: find a small DC motor that you can crank reasonably fast by hand (should you be so lucky, a Lego motor is perfect otherwise any electric toy or even a naked motor with a string on the spindle...AC might work too) and a resistor (you can just use a wire but be a little careful). Crank the motor with and without the resistor across it. Notice any difference?

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Anonymous Coward]

The hydrogen is injected into the engine the engine burns it makeing more power, Ie more fuel economy and less pollution. The conversion of water to hydrogen only takes 15 amps. (From the companies site) Thats nothing for a big rig, all their lights use more. Four litres of water, Nothing on a big rig, lasts 10,000km. What is you peoples problem. If truckers use them they work, they work for money like the rest of the world.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[number11]

not all of the power output from the alternator is needed at any given time to power the vehicle's components... why let that excess energy go to waste?

That energy isn't going to waste. The greater the load, the harder it is to turn the alternator, so the more power it consumes from the engine.

But that's not how this gadget works. The hydrogen generated isn't really used to get more power directly, but to make the existing combustion of diesel more efficient. Which results in more power, and less incompletely combusted crud (that noxious cloud of soot when the truck accelerates represents wasted energy). At least, that's what TFA says.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[InvalidError]

Compared to the 12V/60-100A that goes into an electrically-coupled air conditionner, it would be even more negligible.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[TigerNut]

Alternators are pretty efficient. The power output of an alternator is controlled by how much current you apply to the field windings. The field current, in turn, is controlled by a voltage regulator, which maintains the car or truck's electrical system at about 13.5 to 14 volts, which is what's necessary for optimal battery charging. In this way, the alternator produces exactly the right amount of energy to run the electrical accessories, as well as maintaining a good battery charge. The mechanical to electrical conversion process is about 90 percent in a good alternator, and the belt drive is also pretty efficient if the tension is properly maintained. All in all, the alternator takes exactly as much energy from the engine as it needs, all the time, so there is never any "wasted" electrical output as such.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[ogl_codemonkey]

Consider for a moment that the alternator, during normal running of the vehicle - produces enough electrical power to drive every device fitted, and still charge the battery - hence it is producing (especially when the battery is full) more power than is used, but still causing the same amount of load on the engine.

The hydrogen seperation process could be run for instance, only when the battery was above 90% capacity, assuming it did drain more than the excess power generated (as allueded to in the above posts), and maintain a small reservior of H2 for when it was needed (engine under heavy load during acceleration or ascention).

This reservior could be expended either by computer control or manually... whatever. Just my two yen.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Johnny Mnemonic]

When something sounds too good to be true, always look for what they skate around.

Or, look for failures of logic and/or math. Using your numbers, and the numbers of a reply to your post: his truck drives 4500 miles a week, and he gets about 7mpg (1200 miles on 175 gallons). 4500/7=640 gallons consumed a week; 2.75/gallon=$1767 in fuel per week.

Your numbers assumed that this device might allow for a 10% in fuel savings--that'd be $176/week, or x4=$707/month, or very close to what the article estimated the savings were--$700/month. On a $14K device, you'd make it back in 20 months or so-although I also question the consequences of running a (10%?) hotter engine for those kinds of periods ie does it stress the cooling system, or wear the engine components faster?

The only ones suggesting that there is some magic in the hydrogen didn't RTFA. It was pretty clear to me, at least, that the extra power/fuel savings isn't from the hydrogen burn itself, but that the energy released by that burn allowed otherwise unburned (and therefore uncaptured) exhaust particulate to be consumed.

When you go to light a fire with a match, you get more energy in return than what it took to produce the match; you burn the kindling. Here we have kindling flowing out the tailpipe because it wasn't ignited--so the hydrogen is just a match. You naysayers are forgetting that ICE aren't 100% efficient already--so this process raises the efficiency of the primary fuel source, which apparently it can do in greater gains than it took to produce the hydrogen in the first place.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[ehrichweiss]

"(also converted into mechanical energy normally via 'compression brake, which raises pressure inside of cylinders by cycling valves at the 'wrong' times, which makes the engine do more work to get the same w (or it slows down))."

You know what? I think that what you are talking about already exists. It's called Jacob's Engine Brake AKA a "Jake Brake". That "waaaaahddubbadubbadubba" sound that you hear when they let off the accel, the only one that's quite different from the turbo-whine that's present most other times, is probably a Jake Brake. If you look carefully, in areas like NYC or places with long tunnels, there'll be signs saying truckers are forbidden to use these because of the noise factor...they are LOUD, you just don't realize it cause the sound isn't bouncing back down onto your car most of the time.

My dad was a master diesel mechanic and a part-time trucker; what can I say..I picked up on a thing or two.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[SteveAyre]

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.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[jmorris42]

> ...hence it is producing (especially when the battery is full) more power than is
> used, but still causing the same amount of load on the engine.

Oh God, what are they teaching kids in school these days. No. The more electrical load on an alternator the more force is required to drive it.

When a high load device, such as a high torque motor, starts up a generator will noticably bog down for a moment and the engine will rev to compensate. Trust me on this, I'm in Southwest Louisiana, Rita taught us a thing or two about generators. :)

Same thing on a rig with one of these puppies. If it is going to generate non-trivial amounts of hydrogen it is going to require a non-trivial quantity of energy in the form of electrical current and an alternator driven by an internal combustion engine isn't very efficient. Most use simple shunt regulators for heaven's sake! That means the power you get from burning the hydrogen is a lot less than what went into seperating it from water. So unless it makes the diesel burn a LOT better it won't be paying its way.

It will make the engine run 'greener' though, which is what this is likely mostly about.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[DigitalRaptor]

Alternators produce the electricity whether you use it or not. That's one of the reasons the Toyota Prius works, in addition to regenerative breaking.

So if the electricity is being produced anyway, why not use it to perform electrolysis on water to generate two parts hydrogen gas, one part oxygen gas, mix them together into browns gas and inject it into the intake manifold.

It works, plain and simple. And it produces a consistent, predictable, measurable increase in fuel efficiency.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[sumdumass]

Well,you numbers seem corect.

I would like to add that when i drove truck, as a team driver we average more like 6000 miles a week. This could potentialy increase the amount of savings over what you estimated. Some other things will come into play though that might drop it down still.

With the engine running 10% hotter, the cooling system should still has enough power to keep things running withing specs. Most newer engine have 500,000 mile warrenties and are claimed to get around a million mile of service withotu a major overhaul. My engine cooling fan was operated by an air clutch that only came on once the engine was over a certain temperature. It rarly turned on unless i was idleing in trafic, or climbing a big hill/mountain. Once it did come one, the amount of force required to turn it actualy slowed the truck down on some steep grades. I know the truck wasn't underpowered (it had a detroit desiel 550hp), it just took that much energy to run. I think if the cooling fan is comming on more often, it might use more fuel then normal and drop the average savings a little.

My truck whith idle time and all averaged around 5-6 miles per gallon and durring the moderate temperature were I didn't need to run theheater or air, i could average7-8 miles per gallong. i got out of trucking when desiel prices went from around $1.00/gallon to almost $2.00/gallon. The different ment over 1/3 of my weekly pay. It just wasn't worth it any more to me. I can see why truckers and trucking companies are jumping at the chance to save on fuel costs. With desiel as high as it is, they cannot be making much at all. the frieght rate havn't increased enough to make up for it. Although i hear they are getting fuel surcharges now, it still doesn't amount to the amount of fuel price increases and state or federal fee increases.

Off topic but, Think about this a little, most states charge around 24-35 cent per gallong tax on desiel while the feds charge around 24.4 cent per gallon. Using the same math for the fuel savings, each truck pays around 16,000 a year in taxes just for the roads. Imagine how many trucks are on the road and then wonder why they aren't in good shape.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternators combined to the crankshaft have been under investigation in the automobile industry for some time now. They might have been called inline alternators if my memory is correct.

They should be entering production later this decade as an alternator/motor combination. Adding the hydrogen mechanism to a setup like should be easy. Basically a hybrid with hydrogen assisted inline combustion.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[arivanov]

Nothing new. It has been a standard feature on public transport buses for 10+ years in most European countries with the only difference that it uses propane instead of hydrogen. It is known as diesel bianco, ecodiesel and a number of other names. The idea is that mixing a bit of propane (or hydrogen) results in changing the burn parameters of a diesel so that it burns nearly 100% of its fuel (normally it is under 80%). The only country which does not have it is guess who - UK.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[__aajfby9338]

Alternators produce the electricity whether you use it or not.

No, that is not correct. The mechanical load that the alternator presents to the engine increases proportionally to the electrical load on its output, exactly as the laws of thermodynamics predict. When the load on the alternator increases (for example, when the headlights are turned on), the alternator's pulley becomes harder to turn, and draws more power from the engine. If those headlights draw 200 watts or electrical power, then the alternator requires more than 200 watts of additional input power (due to less than perfect efficiency) from the engine when the headlights are turned on.

Adding a significant load to the electrical system will load down the alternator, which will in turn load down the engine. In order to keep the engine RPMs (and thus the speed of travel) constant, it will then be necessary to open the throttle more to allow more fuel and air to be burned in the engine per unit of time. In other words, adding an electrical load to the engine will either slow you down or increase the rate of fuel consumption. The effect is usually not very noticable to the driver because all of the electrical accessories in the typical automobile require a lot less power than is required to accelerate the vehicle and then maintain speed, but it's still very real.

Sure, the alternator produces voltage all the time, but the power that it draws from the engine is proportional to the power drawn by both battery charging and electrical accessories. Electrical power = voltage * current. The voltage is typically regulated to about 13.8 volts in common automobiles, but the current can vary from fairly small values to a hundred amps or more depending on the state of battery charge and the amount of power required by electrical accessories.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[ColaMan]

So why don't the truckers just get an LPG injection setup for only a couple of grand, and get 20-30% more power/economy? 13 grand pays for a lot of LPG.

It sounds like this is some company trying to hitch a lift on the "Look at me! I'm Hydrogen Powered Eco-Friendly!" bandwagon.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternators produce the electricity whether you use it or not. That's one of the reasons the Toyota Prius works, in addition to regenerative breaking.

eh? what's that? Then where does it go when there's no load? What you're saying is that an alternator is constantly producing ~120 watts ALL of the time. So...where does that 120 watts go? Surely it must go somewhere.

Enough of that. It goes nowhere because there is nothing. An alternator CAN'T do work unless it has work to do.

Try this sometime: push in the cigarette lighter and turn on the headlights at the same time while listening carefully to your motor. You'll notice a momentary dip in the idle RPM of your motor, because the alternator has placed a higher load on the motor. Why, you ask? Because it's suddenly doing more work than it was the moment before. You can also see this by attaching a battery tester while the car is idling. I can think of a few more ways to demonstrate this, but you're probably bored already.

-Your local friendly anonymous mechanical engineer and former mechanic

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider for a moment that the alternator, during normal running of the vehicle - produces enough electrical power to drive every device fitted, and still charge the battery - hence it is producing (especially when the battery is full) more power than is used, but still causing the same amount of load on the engine.

huh? Say that again, because you didn't make sense the first time.

You made not one, but two mistakes:

1) An alternator does not necessarily need to be fitted such that it can convert sufficient mechanical energy to electrical so that it can supply every device fitted; it doesn't have to. An alternator need only be of sufficien capacity to keep the battery charged at slightly above-average use. Normal simultaneous loads to account for are: the fan on a medium setting, air conditioning clutch engaged ~50% of the time, the radio and the headlights. Note that this doesn't account for the 4 (or more) windows motors, the cigarette lighter, the (timed) window defroster, windshield wipers, brake lights, turn signals and some other doodads which might be turned on. It would be silly to think that all of the window motors might operate continuously, now isn't it?

2)The alternator does not produce "excess" power. Read a thermodynamics text. If you ignore inefficiencies, an alternator CANNOT produce more electricity than is consumed. Try this sometime: Turn on the headlights and puch in the cigarette lighter at the same time, while listening to you motor. The idle RPM of the motor will dip momentarily because you've placed a greater load on the alternator, hence on the motor.

Sorry for the sarcasm, I had a beer too many.

-Your local friendly anonymous mechanical engineer and former mechanic

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Anonymous Coward]

When something sounds too good to be true, always look for what they skate around.

Or, look for failures of logic and/or math...

I also question the consequences of running a (10%?) hotter engine...

Does none of the extra energy produced translate to more mechanical energy? If it doesn't, then the drivers are getting a bad deal.

You naysayers are forgetting that ICE aren't 100% efficient already--so this process raises the efficiency of the primary fuel source, which apparently it can do in greater gains than it took to produce the hydrogen in the first place.

hmmmmm...Well, a car (or truck) will convert from ~18% to 24% (some more, some less) of the chemical energy to mechanical energy, so yes, it's not 100% efficient. What's happening here to improve the efficiency of the motor is multifold: The burn is decreasing in duration, increasing in temperature and slightly increasing in totality. (That last sentence is a WAG, but makes sense to me.)

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Mithrandir]

The mechanical load that the alternator presents to the engine increases proportionally to the electrical load on its output, exactly as the laws of thermodynamics predict.

That assumes you have an alternator that only delivers the amount of current needed by the system. Have a look at how the regulation system works. Many are shunt-type, meaning that the alternator always produces the same amount of current and the regulator deliberately wastes any that is not used by the system through heat. If you've ever owned a mid-80's + Honda motorcycle you'll know all about this problem as they all burn reg/recs on a frequent basis because of this design.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[somersault]

the 'new' part is that this mechanism produces its own hydrogen, I doubt the buses are producing their own propane :s

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Anna Merikin]

Not exactly. Diesel engines cause ignition through compression; this is why diesel engines don't use spark plugs. Because they use compression to fire the charge (air mixed with fine particles of fuel oil) and the compression only rises to its peak for a short period, at high rpms some of the fuel particles are left unburnt because there isn't enough time to burn it completely before the exhaust valve opens and compression is lost.

And since horsepower is torque (twisting power) expressed through time (work), greater horsepower requires more rpm, all other things equal. Which makes the above situation worse.

This works because compressing a gas (the air in the mixture) causes the temp to rise (First law of thermodynamics) but only near the top of the stroke. Adding hydrogen causes the mixture, apparently, to fire quicker (at a lower temperature) so it can burn more completely, producing more power (efficiency) and less polluting compounds and unburnt fuel.

So it is not exactly a catalyst in that it has no part to play in the *chemical* reaction process. But it helps manage a diesel's combustion, appartenly, in a way that otherwise could not be accomplished.

I'd like to see an organization like Anandtech do a piece about this....

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[yabos]

Well, according to this company http://www.dieselgas.com.au/home.htm it's possible but it takes about 100000KM to break even. Not worth it I'd say seeing how the truckers are already seeing $700 per month per truck in fuel savings without having to buy any LPG. This company in the article seems like a pretty good trial to me and more trucks should get this system in the future.

Sure it probably wouldn't make much sense for a regular car unless you drive a lot or really care about the environment, but for trucks that can be driving 12 hrs a day or 24 hrs a day sometimes with 2 drivers it's worth it.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Anonymous Coward]

THAN you dozy fucker.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[ColaMan]

If you've ever owned a mid-80's + Honda motorcycle you'll know all about this problem as they all burn reg/recs on a frequent basis because of this design.

That's nice , but we're talking about automotive alternators, and you simply have no idea what you're talking about there.

Every regulator design for cars since the dawn of automotive history has been a switching type regulator, simply because having an alternator run at full load with a load dump would cause it to burn out, as Honda bike owners discovered.

They were the old-school moving points type regulator first, (basically a relay, switching the field current at a set voltage) and moving to transistor-based in the 70's.

So. To reiterate for everyone on this thread, take it from a qualified auto electrician and listen up, I'm only going to say this once:
Truck and car alternators *do not* run at full load all the time.
A fully loaded alternator at 12V draws 4 or 5 horsepower. Do you seriously think that auto manufacturers would take that performance (and economy) hit?

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Shotgun]

I also question the consequences of running a (10%?) hotter engine for those kinds of periods ie does it stress the cooling system, or wear the engine components faster?

Actually, a more efficient engine will quite possibly run cooler. It is a function of where the fuel burns. If to slow, it will burn in the exhaust system, where the heat isn't easily transferred to the coolant and removed by the radiators. Furthermore, that exhaust heating burn isn't contributing to horsepower, so the driver has to give a little more pedal to get up the hill, which means more fuel and heat overall for the same output. Built up deposits from partially burned fuel are also a big contributor to heat buildup and (by far) the biggest contributor to wear.

The everything being equal, engine that burns the most fuel in the cylinder will always be the coolest, cleanest and and longest running. The trucker quoted saving $700/month in fuel. That's the easy number to calculate. I'd estimate that he's saving half that again in repair cost and engine life extension.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Shotgun]

Most use simple shunt regulators for heaven's sake!

Uum..I was corrected on this not very long ago. All modern altenator use a feedback loop into the rotor field windings to control power output. PM generators typically use a switching regulator.

Shunt regulators went out of style in the '60s.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[jilles]

Yes, the process makes use of the fact that internal combustion is a particularly wasteful process that transforms most of its energy straight into heat instead of movement (ultimately 100% is transformed into heat of course). Apparently the efficiency gains of injecting hydrogen into an internal combustion engine are more than enough to compensate for the energy lost in generating the hydrogen. Amongst others. the fuel burns more completely (instead of unburned particles being ejected straight into the atmosphere).

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[LWatsonIII]

This is similar to Propane injection which exist today. Except that you have to carry a bottle of Propane with you! Diesels have gotten more efficient with technology like common rail injection which is injecting fuel at PSI levels raching 20k+ PSI . The black smoke of days past and grey smoke of newer units, is unburn fuel. By injecting at this level many of the newer systems can inject up to 5 times per stroke. This enables the fuel to not just get in the piston but to get there when it will be burned the best. Sometimes this timing is at the cost of Preformance. My Truck a Chevy Duramax can be reprogramed to adjust the injection timing and I will get better Fuel milage AND power which seems odd at first but it is at the cost of some emisions. Propane is slower burning than Diesel and continues to release the unburned fuel through the stroke of the piston as its burn window is longer.

Currently the emissions timing are likely a balence of Power and emissions (and fuel economy) even in big trucks. If you can burn up otherwise unburned fuel with Hydrogen then you can likley tune the emisions for more power as well. The net result could be 1) more Power from Hydrogen, 2) more power from Fuel otherwise not burned, 3)emisions that are not any worse to better, and possibley reduced oversite from goverment about emmisions or reduced road taxes. Oh yea and a saving at the pump.

One more thing, the heat. Diesels require high heat. Since it is the compression of the contents of the piston chamber reaching a high enough tempature that it ignights from heat not spark. Consider that Diesels run at compression rations that are only in race engins on the Gas side of the engines. Similar compression rations would require racing fuel in a Gasser to avoid it "Dieseling"/Spark knoking/Pinging. Extra heat in the engine is not such a problem within reason. It is in the exaust where it starts to be a problem in my experience. White hot pipe on a "big rig" is a problem.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[Kodack]

comparing electric hydrogen production from water, to lighting a match shows how little you RTFM about physics. Your comparison has nothing to do with the article. The energy in the match already exists as potential energy. The potential energy of water is next to nothing. You can't light water on fire with a match. The law of conservation of energy says that you will never get more energy out of a reaction than you put into it. This is a basic law of physics that prevents such bullshit as perpetual motion machines, and generators that make more power than they consume. Look I'll spell it out real simple like In order to create hydrogen from water they have to split the water molecules with electricity. This puts a higher load on the alternator which makes the engine burn more fuel. The hydrogen you get out of this reaction will never equal or provide more energy than the energy it took to create the hydrogen in the first place. Secondly simply adding more fuel to an engine will not make it more powerfull or more give better gas mileage. Fuel needs air to burn. You add combustible gas to a cars intake in any meaningful amount and you have to add more air to burn it as well. Otherwise the engine will run too rich and stall. So by sending small amounts of hydrogen into the engine they are effectively richening the fuel mixture a little but there is also no gain in horsepower. Any meaningfull amounts of hydrogen would stall the motor unless they also forced air in like a forced induction kit. This is no different than those stickers that claim to increase battery life if put on laptop batteries or those little cell phone antenna boosters. it's bogus science. Argue all you want but it is a scientific law that you don't get more energy out of a reaction than you put into it. You don't even get close to breaking even. Nothing is 100% efficient. If it takes 15 watts of energy tocreat hydrogen then you will never get 15 watts of energy back from burning that hydrogen, you will get far less. This is a LAW of nature.

Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst?

[newpath4comVersion2]

You're a school teacher in Louisiana? You know all there is to know about generators? What if someone else wrote a few new pages & you weren't aware of it? http://www.newpath4.com/millenialdawnpowerandlight secure21.htm . What do you know about the modern-day push for a new Manhattan Project? Are you aware how many people in this country believe the YOUNG PEOPLE ARE GOING TO SAVE US? Are you aware that everyone has been brainwashed to believe the solution to our problems has to come FROM A GIANT THINK TANK CORPORATION spending billions of YOUR taxpayer dollars? Prepare yourself then to be un-brainwashed: http://www.newpath4.com/01manhattanproject20056789 fromnewpath410302005.htm . As has been true many times in our history -& as we all be knowing how History just LOVES to repeat itself- so it happens once again. The one who you believe to be the tortoise has once again blown the doors off'a the hare: http://www.newpath4.com/enginewow.htm .

Maybe a problem

[suso]

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."

Could our root problem be that we consider less pollution a bonus instead of a motivating factor?

Re:Maybe a problem

[Sarisar]

As always money first, pollution second.

Although IMHO this is the only way to actually make people stop polluting - make it cheaper for them not to. Of course I'm sure the power that be would just tax polluters as they can make a LOAD of cash that way (oh wait...)

Re:Maybe a problem

[dada21]

Yes, the root problem is finding a way to obtain $sys$pollution.

Re:Maybe a problem

[GungaDan]

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm... undetectable pollution...

Re:Maybe a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

In a word, no.

Re:Maybe a problem

[spectre_240sx]

So... all your pollution are belong to Sony?

Re:Maybe a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Wah wah wah

Re:Maybe a problem

[NardofDoom]

Precisely. It boils down to one of the cardinal rules of good human interface design: Make the right thing easy, and make the wrong thing hard.

Re:Maybe a problem

[mookie da wookie]

True. But unfortunately, our society is capitalist, not altruistic (and in many cases, those do appear to be mutually exclusive). People will not cut down on pollution unless there is immediate economic benefit. Myopic? Yes. If governments had a clue, they'd make pollution expensive. Real expensive.

Re:Maybe a problem

[BobPaul]

Have a tissue???

Re:Maybe a problem

[dfenstrate]

Spoken like someone who's never been depended on to run a business. When your employees have to feed their families, you've got to feed yours, the mechanics have to be paid, the lights have to stay on, your investors want some dividends, and some old trucks have to be replaced, you'll find out your priorities would be pretty damn similar.

It's the way it works in our capitilistic society, which fortunately produces enough wealth that we can still be pretty darn clean about these kinds of things, especially compared to even two or three decades ago.

Re:Maybe a problem

[killjoe]

Unfortunately that's rarely possible. Evil is always easier, it's always cheaper, it's always more fun.

Re:Maybe a problem

[jlusk4]

Ya know...

I've got a Green Republican friend who states that (almost) all pollution is simply excess reagents. Using juuuuust the right amt of reagents would result in the same reaction, w/no waste (i.e., no pollution), and save money. Fully oxidizing your fuel is one example of this. More efficiency == less waste == profit! It IS a simple equation.

(I know, I know, we still have to deal w/the CO2. However, (slightly) less fuel to get the same amt of power == (slightly) less CO2.)

John.

Re:Maybe a problem

[JesseMcDonald]

In the short term.

Re:Maybe a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

A way to obtain what? Fnord.

Re:Maybe a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

And your comment is spoken like someone who has never been depended on to run a successful business with a focus on the longer term.

Once basic salaries are met, there are a great *many* things that keep your employees happy.
Those often include making employees feel good about what they're working on, and shareholders fell good about what they're supporting.

And of course I'm sure you realize that your "employees have to feed their families" isn't even a requierment - various apparel manufacturers do just fine running sweatshops in asia paying less than a living wage. But I won't invest in them and I try not to buy their products and the only way I'd ever work for them is in a position to reform their despicable business practices.

Re:Maybe a problem

[progkeys]

I don't deny that these are real pressures, but it's not an excuse. By your logic, you could justify anything in the name of share-holders. If, while running a business, you accidently discovered that by killing babies you could make more money for your investors, create more jobs, blah, blah. Would you do it? Of course not. I believe the grandparent's point was that until our society makes it a priority to reduce pollution (yes, even higher than preserving jobs and maximizing share-holder profit), we're in trouble.

Re:Maybe a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't deny that these are real pressures, but it's not an excuse.

Sounds like someone needs to learn the difference between an excuse and a reason.

hello, sir

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you would be interested in trying our revolutionary new pharmaceutical, Antafail. With Antafail, every time you fail it, you'll feel an immediate, sharp pain in your testicles. Some patients have reported that this aversion technique has led to a 75% decrease in failures in as little as six weeks!

See your doctor and find out if Antafail is right for you.

Antafail: For when YOU FAIL IT.

Awsome

[JoeShmoe950]

The faster and farther we get away from oil the better IMHO. I think the bonus should be the extra MPG, and the environmental impact should be the reason. We can spare a few $$$ for environmentally friendlier vehicles. I guess the real problem is, if the government does not intervene, companies will only do what will profit them, and if it does, we end up with violations of rights. Will we ever make the switch in consumer end vehicles in the long run?

Re:Awsome

[Anonymous Coward]

Away from oil?
How will we ever lubricate our bearings, chains, gears, and other metal parts?

Re:Awsome

[iceanfire]

Why is it environmentally friendly? You're still burning fossil fuels to get electricity to get the hydrogen from the water. The only difference is the location of the pollution has changed from the car to whereever they produce the hydrogen.

Re:Awsome

[slashkitty]

Did either of you read the article?

This device is not "getting farther from fossil fuels" as all the input fuel on the truck is still diesel. In fact, I'd say it rather confuses the whole matter. just because hydrogen is in the mix, it doesn't make a fully hydrogen powered car any closer.

The device IS environmentally friendly because it uses less fuel and produces less polution.

Re:Awsome

[Trepalium]

I'd suggest reading the article, but this is Slashdot. The device isn't hydrogen power, it's more of a hydrogen suppliment to make diesel burn cleaner and more efficiently. It may a useful device, but does nothing to reduce dependance on oil. It cracks water into hydrogen and oxygen and feeds that into the engine, producing a cleaner burn.

Re:Awsome

[ak3ldama]

These guys travel so many miles that $700 a month (ftfa) would be fairly easy to acheive. But all in all it seems like a good idea. The basic premise for those who haven't gotten it yet: If you can increase your horse power (hp) through a means other than turbo charger(though they should have that already) you can use less fuel since you'll be naturally able to run at lower rpms. By introducing hydrogen to the fuel-air mixture the fuel will combust more efficiently, producing more hp, and sending less comtaminents out the exhaust. The truckers in the article mentioned that there was less 'black smoke' which is one sign that your engine is revved up high, wasting fuel, and not producing optimal power for what your foot is asking. The electricity needed to produce the hydrogen is negligible since the power from the hydrogen mixture thrown in is more than taken to produce the intial electricity.

I seem to remember this being on slashdot before, but the article talked about the engineering company trying to finish their work on the product and get it to another engineering firm to review before a full marketing push. Also, I think that right now this is a deisel only thing, but I could be wrong. Their marketing right now is for deisels, since this could be for larger companies, that could retrofit their existing fleet of vehicles.

Re:Awsome

[misleb]

I have a particular sympathy for the trucking industry here. Most of them are barely making a profit as it is. And gas prices are REALLY hurting them. They don't really have the extra $$$ to think of the environment first, unfortunately.

-matthew

Re:Awsome

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I speak for all of us when I say: What?

Re:Awsome

[Phil06]

The only thing missing is the phrase "As Seen on TV"

Re:Awsome

[Anonymous Coward]

Lithium, graphite, silicon...

Re:Awsome

[Anonymous Coward]

Vegetable oils will work. They used to lubricate locomotive parts with rapeseed (canola) oil.

Re:Awsome

[stevek]

The electricity needed to produce the hydrogen is negligible since the power from the hydrogen mixture thrown in is more than taken to produce the intial electricity.

WTF?

The electricity needed to product the hydrogen may be negligible, because there may just be a tiny bit of hydrogen produced, but it surely takes a lot more energy to create it than you get by combusting it. There are energy losses all around the process, from the alternator and electrical systems, the electrolysis, the combustion, and the mechanical losses themselves.

It sounds like a net gain because you get more efficient combustion of the diesel fuel, and also, perhaps, from a hybrid effect, in that you're using more hydrogen during peak loads, but storing energy (in the form of hydrogen) all the time, especially during the engine's most efficient operation (constant-speed cruising) as well as during deceleration, etc.

Re:Awsome

[mwood]

Whale oil! Save the whales, we need the lubricants. :-)

Re:Awsome

[ak3ldama]

They don't store the energy, they produce it on the fly. And if it wasted more of the engines energy to produce the hydrogen then it was able to obtain from the hydrogen production and hydrogen mixing with fuel and air, then they wouldn't do it! Because Miles per Gallon would drop, and these guys aren't going to just do something because it helps the environment, it has to also help their pocket book.

what the hell?

[dirtsurfer]

160-0023 Japan Tokyo-to Shinjuku-ku Nishi-Shinjuku 3-20-2

^^^ this is right next to where I live. Seriously about 1 block away from my house.

Zuh?

Re:what the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for sharing.. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

yea

[UprlghtCitizen]

If we start using hydrogen fuel then How We Gonna Keep Bombing Iraq?!?!?! GG

Re:yea

[UprlghtCitizen]

Hahaha "-1 Flamebait" What a bunch of sheep you are.

Re:yea

[CasmirRadon]

Your Iraq comment is nonsensical, but worth bringing up. I guess.

Why does the U.S. need to secure vast amounts of oil? Because adequate sources of energy are critical to preserving and expanding the power, wealth, and influence of the U.S.

Why does this energy have to come from oil? Because if we switched to something else, although we might maintain or expand our current wealth, it might be other people (read: not oil companies and those that profit specifically from oil) who will be wealthy.

There is a lot of interconnections between those who profit from oil, and those who run our politics (usually completely overt connections). This need not be an observation strictly about any one politician, or any particular party.

OK, so is it starting to become clear why it might be more expensive to pollute less? In this case, I am simplistically tying "polluting less" to "not using oil for energy" but I'm sure you get the idea.

If anyone is going to use the argument that economic forces shape our environmental policies. Therefore, people will only do what is profitable (the assumption being that right now, using oil-alternatives is not as profitable). Then I wonder if you truly believe that this is a "free market" issue, and that the U.S. Government is not actively assisting the profits of the most egregious polluters.

Re:yea

[UprlghtCitizen]

Why does the USA even need to "expand it's power wealth and influence"? When is enough enough? USA should be finding ways to MAKE THE WORLD BETTER, as in educating people, curbing poverty. Why is it always, plunder pillage destroy? Just plain Satanic.

Re:yea

[Anonymous Coward]

You are aware, of course, that the United States was getting more oil from Iraq pre-war than they are now?

Re:yea

[CasmirRadon]

"You are aware, of course, that the United States was getting more oil from Iraq pre-war than they are now?"

Wow, really? I did not know that. But I think maybe that is a really bold claim to make without any attempt at a citation or source.

Considering that demand for oil is continually growing, and considering that the U.S. has quite literally taken control of the Iraqi oil infrastructure. What source is telling you that we have decreased our supply of oil from them? How could that make sense?

Re:yea

[kb7oeb]

Here is one, it doesn't say how much the US is getting but does say total output is down from 2003 pre-war levels.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/20 05-10-10-iraq-oil-usat_x.htm

Re:yea

[TheSuperlative]

Well, it is right and does make sense. It is true that Iraq was technically restricted from selling oil for profit and only for food/infrastructure/medicine. In reality, the money was syphoned off more than pre-Gulf War and little money was spent on any of those things. The only thing that hurt Iraqi oil production was its lack of proper investment in oil production infrastructure in the twelve years that followed - thus reducing the rate of production growth. Nevertheless, the shock of war proved incredibly destructive to the deteriorated oil infrastructure - combined with insurgency, Iraq is not yet producing as much oil as it did before the 2003 war. As for how much the United States received at any given time, it seems irrelevant. Most of the US' oil comes from domestic sources, Canada (the largest foreign share), Venezuela, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia. Given transportation costs, it seems unlikely that Iraq will ever be a major supplier for the U.S., and will more likely supply Europe and Asia - particularly India, China, and east Asia. Where oil comes doesn't that matter except for geopolitical reasons, as any producer or buyer anywhere affects the world price.

Re:yea

[Anonymous Coward]

>if we switched to something else, although we might maintain
>or expand our current wealth, it might be other people (read:
>not oil companies and those that profit specifically from oil)
>who will be wealthy.

You have this backwards. If another source became cheaper than oil then people and business would be crawling over each other to start using it. As it is switching to something else is just shooting yourself in the foot economically.

Re:yea

[Anonymous Coward]

Iraq
Oil - production:
2.25 million bbl/day (2004 est.); note - prewar production (in 2002) was 2.03 million bbl/day (2004 est.)

From the CIA World Factbook Web site:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ iz.html

How does this help?

[Ironsides]

But the HFI system uses electricity from an engine's alternator to power the electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen as needed from small amounts of distilled water.
R Given that diesel engines are not 100% efficient, and even assuming that water->hydrogen is. How is it this produces a net gain in energy? The burning hydrogen should only produce as much energy as is used to seperate the oxygen and hydrogen. Disconecting the alternator (which many cars do right now to increase fuel efficiency) should save more gasoline than seperating the water to hydrogen/oxygen.

Re:How does this help?

[LSD-OBS]

You mean some cars physically disconnect the stator wheel from the crankshaft? I'm probably a bit rusty on my car mechanics, but as long as that thing is spinning you're generating electricty. That electricity has to be enough to cover the maximum current draw of the electrics system plus some headroom, so you're always generating more power than you need.

Surely it's a No Brainer that putting the excess power back into the engine (electrolysis, hydrogen, blah blah) is Good Thing.

Re:How does this help?

[renehollan]

Surely it's a No Brainer that putting the excess power back into the engine (electrolysis, hydrogen, blah blah) is Good Thing.

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.

Re:How does this help?

[willisbueller]

You are correct, it does not produce more energy. However, hydrogen allows for much better combustion and operation of the engine which improves the efficiency of the next cycle to allow the total energy to be above the break even point.

Re:How does this help?

[shawb]

The addition of hydrogen causes the air/fuel mixture to combust a little hotter at a little faster rate. This allows for a more efficient burning of the fuel. An added bonus is that currently the "infefficiency" is being released through the tailpipe as black soot. The compounds that made the soot are now being burned, which is where the extra energy comes from. Well, that and the fuel being burned quicker means the mechanical energy released is able to be captured more efficicntly.

Re:How does this help?

[Anonymous Coward]

in case you really do not understand...

injecting a small amount of hydrogen with fuel (step that costs some energy) allows for a faster ignition, higher flash temperature, and thus more complete combustion of your fuel (giving off more energy than spent on actually producing hydrogen). Overal efficiency gain comes not from the hydrogen, but from a more complete gasoline combustion; think of hydrogen as a catalyst of some sort!

Think of this as running after the school bus: Costs you more energy to catch up to the leaving bus, but will ultimately save you from walking those 5 miles to school!

Re:How does this help?

[LSD-OBS]

Yeah, I wasn't going to get into that, but it would seem their idea allows them to obtain a higher overall efficiency, more than compensating for the added resistance on the engine.

I'd think of it as distance 2nd cousing of the turbocharger and the nitrous injection, if you look at the common principles (though instead of burning more fuel per stroke, it burns cleaner fuel)

Re:How does this help?

[cytoman]

IANAME (Mech Engineer), but I guess that the alternator recharges the batteries normally, and once the batteries are recharged, the work done by the alternator is not really being harnessed. So, instead of letting that energy go to waste (heat), it is channeled to split water...small amount of energy conservation but a little bit is better than none.

Re:How does this help?

[cytoman]

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!

Re:How does this help?

[ScrewMaster]

I don't know but you're hurting my eyes!

Re:How does this help?

[i41Overlord]

IANAME (Mech Engineer), but I guess that the alternator recharges the batteries normally, and once the batteries are recharged, the work done by the alternator is not really being harnessed. So, instead of letting that energy go to waste (heat), it is channeled to split water...small amount of energy conservation but a little bit is better than none.

You seem to be operating off the assumption that the alternator always takes the same amount of effort to turn, and that after it's done charging the batteries it's just wasting energy.

It doesn't work that way, though. If no electrical load is on the alternator, it's basically freewheeling without much resistance. However, if you put an electrical load on it, it becomes harder to turn. If alternators were 100% efficient, they'd sap 1 hp from the engine's crankshaft to generate 746 watts. But they're not 100% efficient. Doing what you suggest would just waste energy.

Re:How does this help?

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm, meant to say "distant 2nd cousin". It's past 3am here, oops :)

Re:How does this help?

[i41Overlord]

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.

Re:How does this help?

[LSD-OBS]

You're right, I know. I've done that before :)

Re:How does this help?

[cerelib]

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 ).

Re:How does this help?

[cherylchase]

Exactly. And that means that you would get more fuel efficiency by allowing the alternator to run without an electrical load. If you load the alternator to drive hydrolysis to generate hydrogen, then you consume more energy (to drive then alternator) than you produce (to generate the hydrogen). It's basic physics. Each conversion process (engine kinetc energy to electicity via alternator; electicity to hydrogen via hydrolysis; hydrogen to engine kinetic energy via combustion) is inefficeint -- probably under 50%. So the whole gizmo should reduce overall fuel efficiency, not increase it. You can't increase the efficiency unless you convert some energy which would *otherwise be wasted* into hydrogen. That's why a hybrid combustion/electric engine works. It converts the kinetic energy of braking/deceleration (which would otherwise be wasted as heat) into electricity. But a combustion engine's alternator just sucks kinetic energy that was otherwise destined to drive the vehicle forward.

Re:How does this help?

[Sigl]

How is it this produces a net gain in energy?

From the sounds of it

article: "Fuel efficiency and horsepower are improved because hydrogen burns faster and hotter than diesel, dramatically boosting combustion efficiency."

I read this as improving overall combustion efficiency. Although it's stretching their words alittle, what else could it be? The extra heat from the hydrogen must increase the efficiency of the diesel burning. It might be they spend %10 of the energy creating hydrogen (what is the efficiency of electrolosys?) and the little bit of hydrogen burning as fast as it does forces the combustion to reach an optimum temperature quicker. It can then spend more of the cycle in a more efficient state. Of course there can be other reasons that a different fuel mixture is better than others like the extra water produced by the hydrogen burning is acting as a catalytic for some chemical process.

The point being there could be some info out there that says that a 20:1 diesel to hydrogen mixture produces a 20% increase in combustion efficiency and something else that says a mechanical system is 50% efficient at producing hydrogen and that a normal diesel engine is %30 efficient converting diesel to mechanical energy then you email it to someone who's better at word problems than I am and you'll have your answer.

Anyway the only thing I found was that a 15:1 NOx mixture produces from 18% to 25%

Re:How does this help?

[timeOday]

RTA, the hydrogen helps the diesel combust more completely so you get more energy from each gallon. Some of that is lost in the water->hydrogen conversion, and some is a net savings.

My question, though, is why not just produce the hydrogen at a plant and enrich the diesel with it at the refinery?

Re:How does this help?

[fitchmicah]

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

Re:How does this help?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hydrogen is not used up here! It gets regenerated!!!

Water -> Hydrogen -> Engine -> Water vapor/Rain -> Water

Yay, an addition to Water Cycle (high-school ecology?)

Those high-school AP courses you took are NOT the pinnacle of wisdom, you know.
For example, you can study a transmembrane ligand-gated ion channel (e.g. GABA-A) by putting its mRNA into an oocyte for Xenopus

yeah, yeah, the geeks here know Jack Anything about anything, but think their opinion matters more than anyone else's.

Re:How does this help?

[cytoman]

You can't increase the efficiency unless you convert some energy which would *otherwise be wasted* into hydrogen. That's why a hybrid combustion/electric engine works. It converts the kinetic energy of braking/deceleration (which would otherwise be wasted as heat) into electricity.

So, maybe that's what is going on with these trucks...enormous amounts of kinetic energy is usually wasted when braking such behemoths...maybe that's where the application is and that's why it is in use...I would hardly assume that without such rigorous analysis of the benefits/liabilities such a technology would be thriving now.

Re:How does this help?

[Anonymous Coward]

The burning hydrogen should only produce as much energy as is used to seperate the oxygen and hydrogen.

Unless the burning of small amounts of hydrogen results in more complete combustion of large amounts of diesel fuel.

Re:How does this help?

[Tyler Eaves]

Because Hydrogen is VERY hard to store. It's such a small molecule it'll just diffuse right through.

Re:How does this help?

[Johnny Mnemonic]

You can't increase the efficiency unless you convert some energy which would *otherwise be wasted* into hydrogen.

No, not quite. You can increase the efficiency if you convert any energy that would otherwise be wasted in excess of the cost to generate the hydrogen + conversion inefficiencies. If the proposal was to use the generator to create hydrogen, and the hydrogen was being consumed as a primary fuel source, of course you'd come out behind due to conversion inefficiencies.

Instead, this case uses hydrogen as a reactant to realize more energy from the diesel fuel that would otherwise go unburned out the tailpipe. Fortunately, that unburned fuel is also a pollutant--so by burning more of it, you not only get more power but also cleaner exhaust.

Essentially, it's like holding a match to kindling. By capturing the energy of the now-burning kindling, you receive more energy than it cost to produce the match in the first place, and the heat of the match itself is inconsequential (as is the energy that was required to produce it.)

That so much wasted energy was going out the tailpipes is a travesty, so it's great that someone has figured out how to capture more of it. I wonder how many other applications this would be useful--home heating by oil, for example? Jet engines? Assuming they have the most expensive unit (at $14K), and if they're saving $700/month, these units will pay for themselves in a little less than 2 years. I wonder if it does long term damage to the engine + cooling system by running hotter than it was designed to?

Re:How does this help?

[Adriax]

From what I've read it's the physical properties of the gasseous hydrogen that helps combustion, not the fact there's extra hydrogen in there.
In a normal diesel cylinder the fuel closer to the glow plug ignites first, and the combustion travels to the rest of the fuel in time. But since hydrogen burns faster, what happens here is the hydrogen works as a carrier, it ignites and carries the ignition energy to the outer edges of the cylinder before it would normally get there. The time delay between the outer and inner areas of the fuel mix igniting is smaller, allowing it to burn more before the piston can move down and lower the pressure in the cylinder. Faster burning means more pressure on the piston and less unburnt fuel exiting the cylinder.
 
It's actually a really good idea, as long as it doesn't alter the engine's timing too much (if it ignites faster, some of the explosion might happen durring the upstroke and work against the rest of the engine).

Re:How does this help?

[spectre_240sx]

If you load the alternator to drive hydrolysis to generate hydrogen, then you consume more energy (to drive then alternator) than you produce (to generate the hydrogen).

That would depend on whether the hydrogen is being produced or released wouldn't it? Producing energy at more than 100% efficiency is, of course, impossible. Releasing stored energy by adding a small amount of energy to start a reaction, on the other hand, is done all the time. So which is it? Is there latent energy in H20 that is being released by the electrolisis?

Re:How does this help?

[misleb]

Why would you need headroom? The current draw creates a load on the alternator and the alternator creates just enough to satisfy the draw. The more you try to draw, the more energy is taken from the engine. If it was just about using the excess electricity, wouldn't it be much easier just to run an electric motor instead of converting to hydrogen? I don't think the priimary benefit is from the hydrogen itself as a power source. I think it is just a matter of making tthe diesel burn more efficiently,

-matthew

Re:How does this help?

[Johnny Mnemonic]

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.

Re:How does this help?

[Salis]

Rofl, the OP is correct and you're wrong.

Water != Hydrogen.

Re:How does this help?

[gerardrj]

"Burning the hydrogen produces more energy than it takes to extract it."

By George, you've invented a perpetual motion machine! How could we have not seen this sooner?

Re:How does this help?

[benjamindees]

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.

Re:How does this help?

[calmncool]

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.

Re:How does this help?

[Forbman]

Well, it's the same reason that most diesel-powered trucks have turbochargers. It's hard to increase displacement much more than they already have, so there have to be other ways to either get more power out of existing engines or match power in a smaller engine with an existing larger, but less efficient, engine. Turbochargers increase volumetric efficiency of gas and diesel engines (more air in engine = more mass energized by fuel combustion = more power from engine).

What does this HFI do, then? Well, it sounds like it uses energy from the alternator that is probably not being used (like energy from exhaust gasses powering turbochargers...) and extracts it in a more usable form (into the crankshaft). It seemed like the article mentioned that both H2 and O2 from the electrolysis system are injected into the engine, which is good.

One of the big "wins" of Nitrous Oxide injection in cars is that increases the charge mass of the air going into the engine, it "burns" in a way that releases a little more O2 in the combustion chamber, thus helping burn the gasoline better, resulting in instant power boost as long as the Gas is on. I think this is a bit similar, too.

Again, the goal isn't increasing the overall thermodynamic efficiency of the engine, but to get more usable efficiency, i.e, HP and torque into the transmission and to the wheels for the same amount of diesel used.

Re:How does this help?

[tmortn]

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.

Re:How does this help?

[gerardrj]

"...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..."

Diesels don't run like gasoline engines. There is no pre-ignition possible since the fuel is not introduced with the air.

In any case, I've now read the articles at the manufacturer's web site and the hydrogen itself is not increasing the fuel efficiency. The hydrogen is cleaning the carbon deposits from the cylinders and increased fuel efficiency occurs in "0 to 0 months"

Re:How does this help?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are making diesels with spark plugs now?? I have never seen a diesel engine with spark plugs before..... Can you show me a link?

Re:How does this help?

[Biogenesis]

Probably because to get enough of it disolved in the diesel to be worth it you'll need a high pressure fuel tank.

Re:How does this help?

[Dun Malg]

In a normal diesel cylinder the fuel closer to the glow plug ignites first,

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.

Re:How does this help?

[SnarfQuest]

Because then you would need to get a perfect (expensive) seal on the storage tanks, fuel tanks, plumbing to the engine, etc., and continually maintain them to keep that seal. Else you'll lose all that hydrogen you put into the fuel very, very quickly. Hydrogen is very hard to store, due to its size. It can, and will, leak through a hole that a larger atom, like oxygen, can't fit through. Holes like those between the metal atoms of a storage tank.

It also burns very well, which is something that desiel doesn't normally do. Adding something as flammable as hydrogen to it would make it much more dangerous to use.

Also, what chemical reactions will be going on between the hydrogen and the diesel. Don't they use hydrogen to gel some types of oil?

Re:How does this help?

[Dun Malg]

From what I've read it's the physical properties of the gasseous hydrogen that helps combustion, not the fact there's extra hydrogen in there. In a normal diesel cylinder the fuel closer to the glow plug ignites first, and the combustion travels to the rest of the fuel in time. But since hydrogen burns faster, what happens here is the hydrogen works as a carrier, it ignites and carries the ignition energy to the outer edges of the cylinder before it would normally get there. The time delay between the outer and inner areas of the fuel mix igniting is smaller, allowing it to burn more before the piston can move down and lower the pressure in the cylinder. Faster burning means more pressure on the piston and less unburnt fuel exiting the cylinder. It's actually a really good idea, as long as it doesn't alter the engine's timing too much (if it ignites faster, some of the explosion might happen durring the upstroke and work against the rest of the engine).

I suggest you 1) RTFA:

"Fuel efficiency and horsepower are improved because hydrogen burns faster and hotter than diesel, dramatically boosting combustion efficiency."

and 2) go read the wikipedia entry on how diesel engines work.

Good old slashdot. You can get +3 Informative for spinnin' fanciful but plausible sounding yarns, no matter how inaccurate they are.

Re:How does this help?

[Adriax]

Heh, it's only a +1 mod, but it's still probably more than you'll get for correcting me.
And I didn't even have to resort to soviet russia, profit, or $sys$ jokes.

Re:How does this help?

[BobPaul]

Yes, but the more current you draw, the more the alternator serves as a brake on the engine.

True, but the amount of current required for electrolosis is very low, probably low enough to have a negligable breaking effect (say, slowing the fly wheel by less than 0.1%). Water=>Hydrogen can be very efficient (80%+ quite easily) but you can't regain that energy by burning hydrogen and making water again.

However, if you can improve the efficiecy of the diesel burn by, say 5% while only requiring a few mA of current for electrolosis you can end up with a net increase in energy.

I was skeptical when I first saw this on slashdot, but it's hard to look away when a shipping company actually measured increased gas mileage.

Re:How does this help?

[BobPaul]

Disconecting the alternator (which many cars do right now to increase fuel efficiency) should save more gasoline than seperating the water to hydrogen/oxygen.

I tried this in my car once. But it turns out the radio, headlights, blinkers, breaklights, rear A/C & Heating, and, oh yes, spark plugs all run on electricity generated by the alternator. Needless to say my battery died pretty quickly.

Cars don't disconnected the alternator. The need it to keep the combustion cycle going.

You can turn off electronics to save fuel (less current = easier to turn alternator) but disconnecting the alternator won't work for more than a few hundred miles at best.

Re:How does this help?

[temojen]

Well, that or the fact that if the hydrogen and Diesel come into contact witrh nickel they'll catalyse into a carcinogenic form of margarine.

Re:How does this help?

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but the amount of current required for electrolosis is very low, probably low enough to have a negligable breaking effect (say, slowing the fly wheel by less than 0.1%). Water=>Hydrogen can be very efficient (80%+ quite easily) but you can't regain that energy by burning hydrogen and making water again.

huh? Who fed you full of that? Without a (thus far) mythical catalyst, it takes quite a bit energy to convert water to its constituents. Water is really quite stable.

As a kid, I converted a little bit of water to its constituents for some, um, experiments. My father's belt (just after the electricity bill came in) convinced me that this was quite energy intensive. (College chemistry convinced me that maybe dad wasn't over-reacting.)

Re:How does this help?

[An Ominous Cow Aired]

"Use it or lose it" applies to many things, including brain cells.

Ever looked at the reactivity data for hydrogen? Ever witnessed a demonstration wherein a candle contacts a hydrogen-oxygen baloon?

Re:How does this help?

[Anonymous Coward]

Diesel motors don't have spark plugs. They don't need electricity to keep the cycle going.

Re:How does this help?

[eelke_klein]

You cannot mix hydrogen with diesel. Hydrogen is a gas. An other method (mentioned in the FA) would be to have a hydrogen tank but there are no tank stations for hydrogen so the only option left is making it along the way.

Re:How does this help?

[crutchman]

Yes, there's a good idea. Disconnect the alternator. Let's see...chain of events....

1. Disconnect Alternator
2. Go Driving down the highway
3. Battery runs out of power
4. Spark plugs stop firing
5. Engine stops running
6. Power stearing and power brakes now fail
7. Sharp turn in the road and "Bye Bye"

Ever driven in a car where the alternator crapped out? Or how about been on the highway and just had your engine quit on you. Those are NOT fun things to happen, and I know from personal experience.

Re:How does this help?

[i41Overlord]

That would depend on whether the hydrogen is being produced or released wouldn't it? Producing energy at more than 100% efficiency is, of course, impossible. Releasing stored energy by adding a small amount of energy to start a reaction, on the other hand, is done all the time. So which is it? Is there latent energy in H20 that is being released by the electrolisis?

No. Basic physics tells us that there is not latent energy in H20 that is being released by the electrolisis. It takes more energy to separate the hydrogen and oxygen from water than you'd get by burning them. Any extra energy that comes from this must come from the diesel fuel.

Re:How does this help?

[mennucc1]

"You cannot mix hydrogen with diesel. Hydrogen is a gas."
That, in itself, is not a reasonable statement. By the same reasoning, "You cannot mix CO2 with water. CO2 is a gas"... and so long for carbonated water.

Re:How does this help?

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Don't they use hydrogen to gel some types of oil?

Yup, hydrogenated vegetable oil, ya know like margarine or as it's been known in the last few years TRANS FAT!!!

Can you imagine trying to pump 'I Can't Believe It's Not Butter' from your fuel tank into your engine!!

Re:How does this help?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately for you, you're still a moron...

Re:How does this help?

[corngrower]

4. SPark plugs stop firing

        These were diesel engines. They do not have spark plugs. The engine can run without
      a battery.

Re:How does this help?

[Anonymous Coward]

dear Ass Hat,

A cycle is a cycle, it has NEITHER a single beginning nor an end

Water -> Hydrogen -> Engine -> Water vapor/Rain -> Water is also
Water -> Hydrogen -> Engine -> Water vapor/Rain -> Water -> Hydrogen -> Engine -> etc etc

rewrite:

-> Hydrogen -> Engine -> Water vapor/Rain -> Water -> Hydrogen ->

Think outside the butt (tm)

Master's at CE cannot be wrong :)

Re:How does this help?

[BobPaul]

Yeah, I thought about that after I hit send...

Re:How does this help?

[BobPaul]

Well, industry has been using "mythical" catalysyts for years then. You'll be hard pressed to find industrial applications where electrolosis is performed that are less than 70% efficient. Norsk Hydro, produces some nice ones
Norsk Hydro Electrolysers (NHE) is today a leading producer of alkaline electrolysers. Some of NHE's electrolysers have an efficiency of over 80% (high heating value). (http://www.bellona.no/en/energy/hydrogen/report_6 -2002/22871.html)

There was also an article/news brief I found last time this was being discussed on http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/ describing using certain mildly radioactive elements to improve Water=>Hydrogen up to the 90%s

If your father noticed a change in the energy bill, you must have been producing a LOT of hydrogen really quickly (and probably put a lot of salt in it). I did the same thing as a kid with small batteries, and they tend to be limited to arround 1 A max output. Given that water is a poor conductor, I have a feeling it wasn't drawing the full 1000mA, esp since it lasted for several hours.

Re:How does this help?

[Ironsides]

Yes, there's a good idea. Disconnect the alternator. Let's see...chain of events.... 1. Disconnect Alternator 2. Go Driving down the highway 3. Battery runs out of power 4. Spark plugs stop firing 5. Engine stops running 6. Power stearing and power brakes now fail 7. Sharp turn in the road and "Bye Bye"

Many cars being built today have a feature where the alternator automatically cuts out in order to save gas while the battery is sufficiently charged. When the battery drops below a certain point, it kicks back in. It doesn't save much, but is does improve fuel efficiency by at least 1mpg from what I remember. I am not talking about removing the alternator permanently.

Re:How does this help?

[MemeRot]

The addition of hydrogen to the combustion of diesel is slightly important for the energy that burning it by itself adds to the combustion process. It is much more important for the fact that the heat it adds allows the engine to burn a lot of diesel that would otherwise be pumped out the smokestack. There is a large amount of wasted diesel pumped out normally, let's say about 80% gets burned. This brings it to say, 95% of diesel burned. That's where the extra energy comes from that makes this a net positive source of energy, perfectly good furel that was previously being wasted.. Say you use 15% of the extra energy you get from better burning of the diesel to create the hydrogen - fine, you're still way ahead.

Re:How does this help?

[Shotgun]

I'm probably a bit rusty on my car mechanics, but as long as that thing is spinning you're generating electricty.

Not a bit rusty. Your car mechanics are a crumbling pile of red dust.

The alternator has to have it's rotor windings energized to produce electricity. Cut the rotor field power and you get not electricity no matter how fast you spin it.

Airplane power systems typically have a switch to cut the power to the rotor as a gaurd against a runaway alternator.

Re:How does this help?

[LSD-OBS]

All I know about internal combustion engines is from taking apart and putting back together various motorcycle engines. Their stator wheels used normal permanent magnets and they put out current and generate heat all the time, necessitating their cooling by oil from the sump.

Re:How does this help?

[Shotgun]

I wonder if it does long term damage to the engine + cooling system by running hotter than it was designed to?

The fuel is now burning in the cylinder which has coolant passages designed to carry the heat away vs the exhaust system that doesn't have that advantage.

The driver doesn't care where the fuel is burning except where it concerns getting up the next hill. If it takes 10gph with 20% burning in the exhaust, that was 8gph actually getting him up the hill. If only 10% is now burning in the exhaust, the driver will put his foot on the accelerator till he's burning 9gph, and still have more oomph to get up the hill. Overall, the engine will be running cooler.

Yes, those numbers do not resemble reality 8*)

Re:How does this help?

[tmortn]

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/diesel1.htm

Diesel's most certainly can suffer from pre-ignition. The difference here is that it is the direct injection timming which can cause it.

And again it isn't about increasing the fuel efficiency. Diesel and gas engines are both extremely efficient in combusting the fuels and releasing the energy they contain. What they are not so good at is converting that energy to mechanical force. Faster combustion makes for cleaner combustion and more energy imparted to pushing the cylinder

Re:How does this help?

[afidel]

Well, at least for areas where natural gas is used you are going to see an increase of around 12% in the coming years. Federal standard are requiring that all furnaces sold after next year are high efficiency. That means that instead of extracting 80% of the energy from the fuel, they must extract at least 92%. This helps out everyone because lower demand means lower prices and the payoff period for high efficiency furnaces is only a couple years even with todays lower volume production of the higher efficiency units.

Re:How does this help?

[Shotgun]

The permanent magnet are on the rotor (rotor rotates, stator stays put). They're arranged this way to eliminate the need for brushes, thus increasing reliability. (Which is a great idea, btw)

Older motorcylces (and cars) did use shunt type regulators, ESPECIALLY those of the British persuasion. Lucas Electronics was one of the last companies to switch away from this technique, I'm made to understand. Anything approaching modern will have a switching type, though. Instead of dumping excess electrical energy through a resistor to produce heat, the circuit is simply switch off at a high frequency then filtered.

Take an older generator, and have it power the shunt resistor while you spin it by hand. Now disconnect the resistor and feel the generator spin up as the resistance goes away.

Re:How does this help?

[Hawke666]

I disagree with point 6. You'd have to be pretty weak to not be able to steer a car with no power steering. The dangerous point is the transition, when the car doesn't respond as expected. It doesn't take very long to acclimate to the changed response of the car, but I guess that if the power steering failed just before a sharp bend there's a chance that you could go off the road. Likely not though, if you have a decent reaction time.

And the power brakes...oh no, you have to push a bit harder! Unless something leaps out in front of you at that moment, or (I suppose) you're coming up on a stop sign/light faster than you should be, you should be fine on that one.

Re:How does this help?

[Hawke666]

er...point 7! that is.

Re:How does this help?

[renehollan]

Er, 2 H+ + 2e -> H2

You need two electrons to make a hydrogen molecule out of two hydrogen ions. (Damn, /. does not support <sub> and <super>).

So, to get one mole of hydrogen gas (22.4 litres at STP), weighing 2 grams, one needs two moles of electrons, or -2 Faradays of charge. A Faraday of charge is 96.5 kilo Coulombs. And, a Coulomb is the amount of electrons transported by one Ampere for one second.

So, to get 22.4 litres of hydrogen gas, one needs 193,000 Amperes of current for one second, or 193 amps for 1000 seconds, etc. Lets say you draw an extra 160 Watts at 16 Volts from the alternator for electrolosis, and you need 1.6V to elecrolosyze the water. You can have 10 electrolosis cells in series. Each cell carries a curent of 10 amps (160W/16V), so in one second, you get 22400 ml / 19300 = 1.16 ml hydrogen gas, or 11.6 ml hydrogen gas per second for the bank of electrolosis cells. Since 160W is 0.214 horsepower, you get 54.1 ml of hydrogen per horsepower of alternator draw.

The engine in my 1995 Ford Thunderbird DOHC V8 (thirsty little bugger) has a displacement of 4.6l or 4600 ml. At 2000 RPM, the engine "breathes" 500 times, being a four stroke engine using the Otto cycle. So, in one minute, it consumes 2300 litres of fuel-air mix. In one second, it consumes 38.3 litres of fuel-air mix. Let's say we need to augment with 1% hydrogen. That's 383 ml of hydrogen, which, given ideal alternators, and electrolosis, would require 7 horsepower.

Will one get better than 7 horsepower in return?

Re:How does this help?

[Luminary Crush]

According to the company's website http://www.chechfi.com/ it can be used on ALL internal combustion engines:

Q:
Will this product work on Gas, Diesel, Propane or Natural Gas?

A:
Yes. It will work on any internal combustion engine using hydrocarbon fuels.

One question: how long until we can get downsized (and hopefully down-priced) units for personal automobiles and trucks, be they gas, diesel, or other dead dino hydrocarbon fuels? Will Detroit need to use this type of device to meet emission standards in the future?

Re:How does this help?

[John Courtland]

Off topic a bit, but if you have a MN12 Thunderbird of any year - unless you swapped an engine, computer and other assorted parts - you should have a SOHC 4.6L.

Re:How does this help?

[Luminary Crush]

This might be a good match for a car with regenerative braking - the power created from the braking action could power electrolysis. Of course, then you'd need some type of hydrogen storage, which this system doesn't have... but, the point in general is that using braking to generate power is not only useful in an electric/hybrid car...

Re:How does this help?

[BobPaul]

Will one get better than 7 horsepower in return?

Obviously, or trucking company mentioned in the article wouldn't have "tested 4 trucks, noticed a substantial cost savings and decided to outfit the entire fleet"

But probably not really, because I don't think you need nearly as much hydrogen as your 383mL.
I have a feeling the mixture is more like 10% of the fuel used, not the fuel-air mixture as a whole. The mix as a whole contains a substantial amount of air, especially for diesel. Since diesel injects fuel after the air is compressed, I'd assume they inject a hydrogen+diesel mixture or the hydrogen would ignite the compression cycle was completed (if you were injecting with the air).

But I don't think a large shipping company (Great Plains Trucking) would outfit their fleet after testing on 4 trucks if it didn't work on those 4 trucks.

Re:How does this help?

[eelke_klein]

You can only mix large amounts of CO2 with water under pressure, if you leave a bottle of carbonated water open for some time allmost all CO2 will dissappear from the water.

Re:How does this help?

[renehollan]

You are right.

Wishfull thinking. :-)

Not Alone

[Altec at LM]

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/

Re:Not Alone

[Anonymous Coward]

This technology was thoroughly debunked here on slashdot a couple months ago, it's obviously just an attempt at a perpetual motion machine. You cannot take energy out of the alternator (which is generated by the diesel burning) and then use that energy to get hydrogen out of the water, and then take the hydrogen out and put that into the Diesel compression (it doesn't combust does it?) process, and expect a net positive.

Re:Not Alone

[Grishnakh]

and put that into the Diesel compression (it doesn't combust does it?) process

Obviously, you're not a credible debunker since you don't even understand the Diesel process. Of course it combusts; what else do you call burning? The high compression of the diesel-air mixture is required to make it combust, but in the end it is still combusting.

No one's attempting to sell a perpetual motion machine here. The claim is that adding hydrogen to the mixture causes it to combust more efficiently, yielding more energy, making up for the energy used to create the hydrogen in the first place.

Now whether this claim is true or not I can't testify to, but if you're going to be a skeptic, at least read and understand the article so you don't sound ignorant.

Re:Not Alone

[marvinglenn]

>http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000373059415/

FTA:

  [...] upping efficiency from 35% to at least 97% [...]

My BS detector started to go off. Something doesn't sound right here.

Re:Not Alone

[paulpas]

I think it's blasphemy that somone thinks they could use exhaust gases to power a turbo to make MORE power. Don't they know the energy it took to push the exhaust gases would negate the benifits of turbo charging?

I also think it's asinine that somone would use a supercharger, ran off of the crank pulley, to increase power of the egine too. Don't they realize they will probably get a decrease in gas mileage in the process, decreasing efficiency?

Obviously anyone using these systems are paying more for nothing more than a tweaked fuel map from the factory to properly tune the engine to making you feel as if you're seeing benifits from these systems. They're funded by the oil companies.

End of sarcasm.

Re:Not Alone

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the nitrous or propane injection systems. Those "fuels" are so much more expensive and less powerful than gas and diesel, what a waste.

sounds familiar

[Keruo]

this article mentions something similar

they're Canadian truckers

[Anonymous Coward]

they're Canadian truckers

"let's save the environment, eh?"

Not Quite

[Comatose51]

"hydrogen filling stations, which, by the way, don't yet exist. "

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.

Re:Not Quite

[BigDumbAnimal]

The other trade-off of course is that there is still combustion so it's not as clean as fuel cell cars.

What pollutants do you think you get by burning hydrogen? That evil waste known as H2O?

Re:Not Quite

[Michael Woodhams]

there is still combustion so it's not as clean as fuel cell cars

Hydrogen burns to water. What is less clean? Do nitrogen oxides get formed in the high temperatures or something?

I would expect it to be less efficient than fuel cells - the maximum efficiency of internal combustion engines isn't very good.

Re:Not Quite

[cbiltcliffe]

Do nitrogen oxides get formed in the high temperatures or something?

In a word, yes. Although with a good catalytic, a hydrogen combustion engine has an exhaust cleaner than the ambient air in major downtown centers. So by running a hydrogen combustion engine, you're not only making no more pollution, you're cleaning pollution as you drive. Unlike fuel cell vehicles, which don't make anything worse, but don't make anything better, either, as they're not taking in any air and making it cleaner.

I think the one thing I really like about the hydrogen combustion engine is that it still has the potential to sound like a small block V8. As much as fuel cell vehicles are cool from a tech and enviro perspective, there's just something about the sound of a combustion engine that I don't want to go away, no matter what. Imagine the black Mad Max Interceptor running on hydrogen!

Re:Not Quite

[jgc7]

The other trade-off of course is that there is still combustion so it's not as clean as fuel cell cars.

Very intersting info, but burning hydrogen is just as clean as running hydrogen through a fuel cell. There is only water in the exhaust in both cases. The reason fuel cells are preferred is because they have approximately twice the net efficiency.

Re:Not Quite

[dryeo]

Various forms of nitrous oxides from atmosperic nitrogen getting burnt in the very hot combustion. Some OH from incomplete hydrogen combustion and various hydrocarbons from whatever oil leaks past the rings.

Re:Not Quite

[Naffer]

Yes, H2+O2 -> H20 But in your engine, you're going to have more then that. H2+O2+N2+CO2+bits of lubricant -> H20 + NO + CO + CO2 + etc

Re:Not Quite

[cgenman]

I think the one thing I really like about the hydrogen combustion engine is that it still has the potential to sound like a small block V8. As much as fuel cell vehicles are cool from a tech and enviro perspective, there's just something about the sound of a combustion engine that I don't want to go away, no matter what. Imagine the black Mad Max Interceptor [aussiecoupes.com] running on hydrogen!

Hmm... Maybe I come from another generation, but noise is usually associated with something running badly, inefficiently, or otherwise incorrectly. Things channeling all of their energy into going faster should be silent.

That, and my apartment is on the second floor next to a busy street. Shaddaup down there, already!

Re:Not Quite

[John00001]

Also in Iceland there is at least one hydrogen filling station in Reykjavik that supplies hydrogen to the new hydrogen buses in the city. The hydrogen there is generated by geothermal power (Iceland produces way more electricity through geothermal and hydrothermal power than they could ever need and more capacity is planned.)

Next they want to begin converting their fishing fleet (and presumably whaling ships!) over to running on hydrogen. Apparantly they want to stop importing fuel and become completely self sufficient for all their energy.

Re:Not Quite

[NardofDoom]

If the oil companies as much of their "record profits" into hydrogen distribution as the cable companies put into spreading broadband, it wouldn't be a problem.

But I can see why they don't: Fuel thay you can make with sunlight and water doesn't have much of a profit margin.

Re:Not Quite

[cbiltcliffe]

I don't think it's a generation thing. There are people in every generation who think making their cars louder is cool.

In the 70's and 80's you'd get hot-rodded rear-drive V8's with rumbly exhausts. In the 90's you got hopped up V6 compact pickup trucks. Now you get Hondas with fartcans.

I'd agree with you that noise isn't always a good thing, as the fartcan Hondas sound like souped up weed whackers. A V6 can sound good or terrible, depending on the engine. But it's pretty hard to find a V8 of any sort that doesn't sound good with a, shall we say, less restrictive exhaust.

Of course, there are people who's opinions differ from mine, but they're wrong.

Re:Not Quite

[n0tammused]

I remember some years ago hearing about an option to have a radiator coated in a catalytic material to help reduce ambient pollution as you drive. The theory being that the heat from your engine would heat the coating on the radiator to bring the material up to an effective temperature, much like the catalytic converter in a car works best when warmed up. Fuel cell vehicles will need some for of radiator and they should be able to clean pollutants out of the air by having some form of catalytic coating. I also think it would be great, especially in the greater L.A. area in which I live, to look at applying such a coating to air conditioning systems as they have to move a lot of air to pump that heat out of the house. If this would not be too pricy, it seems like it could be a reasonable way to help clean the air in the best place possible, our homes.

Re:Not Quite

[Firethorn]

I'd like to point out that Iceland is a fairly unique case, with a smaller population and extremely available and easy to tap geothermal.

I'm all for Iceland going to geothermal, given that it's a good resource for Iceland, but you have to be cautios about implying that it'd be good for everybody to go to geothermal, because, well, we just can't.

How Do I Mod Down An Article?

[John Hasler]

I've got 5 mod points: how do I use them to mod down this article? This is crankery at best. The gadget does nothing but inject a bit of water.

Why are slashdot editors such suckers for pseudoscience? Do you all have CS degrees?

Re:How Do I Mod Down An Article?

[LSD-OBS]

I think you've probably misunderstood the article, but it might interest you to know that combustion with humid air gives you a better compression/expansion ratio than with dry air.

Re:How Do I Mod Down An Article?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well hopefully you DON'T use them to mod anything around here, because either you're too idle to RTFA, or too thick to understand it. I do hope you don't stay at "2, Insightful" for much longer.

Re:How Do I Mod Down An Article?

[imboboage0]

I'd just like to point out, H2O != H . They are using electricity to (drum roll, please) SEPERATE THE HYDROGEN AND OXYGEN IN (distilled, but nonetheless) WATER! The hydrogen then creates what can be referred to as 'cleaner ignition and exhaust strokes' of a 4-stroke motor. Less diesel is wasted (black smoke), Less nitro is exhausted into the air, more power (hp- and torque-wise) is created from the same amount of fuel, and excess energy from the alternator is put to use. more efficiency all around. This is no hoax, it is what seems to be a new trend in (in the words of our infamous commander in chief; cue drum roll) THE WAR ON UNSPENT REFINED OIL (AND ITS COUSINS).

Re:How Do I Mod Down An Article?

[IdntUnknwn]

It's not water that is being injected, it's hydrogen. Very big difference. Injecting hydrogen into the engine along with gasoline has been shown to increase combustion efficiency and lower emissions. This has even been covered on Slashdot before.

"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."

Re:How Do I Mod Down An Article?

[SnarfQuest]

The reason for distilled water should be obvious. Take plain tap water and boil it away on you stove. Notice the crud left over in the bottom of your pan. Now, imagine that crud coating your H2O -> H2 electrolysis gear.

You can distill it before putting it in the supply tank, or put additional equipment to deal with the crud under the hood. How much more weight/complicated gear (i.e. something else to break down) do you want to add to the truck?

Re:How Do I Mod Down An Article?

[imboboage0]

oh yes, it is obvious. I was just pointing that out for those who do not know the difference. Had I not said that, someone other than you (maybe) would have said something about it being distilled.

Does not compute

[vik]

So by using diesel to power the vehicle's alternator, they can generate hydrogen and squirt it back into the engine.

Why does the cynic in me think it might be more energy-efficient to not load the alternator with a hydrogen generator in the first place?

Surely, if the alternator is not placing the additional load of the electrolysis equipment on the engine, the efficiency of the engine will go up?

Personally, if hydrogen does somehow improve things I'd suspect an even cleaner burn would result by injecting the oxygen from the electrolysis plant too...

Vik :v)

Re:Does not compute

[RollingThunder]

You're right, they must be imagining the decreased fuel costs. After all, it's easy to think that you're spending $700/mo/truck less when you actually aren't.

Re:Does not compute

[WolfWithoutAClause]

The trick is that the hydrogen is not there to produce energy, but by burning hotter it improves the combustion of the diesel, so the efficiency improvements of the combustion out weigh the losses in the electrolysis system which is driven off the alternator.

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.

Re:Does not compute

[Malc]

What is the effect of burning the H2 on the burning of the diesel? Perhaps that is the missing part of the equation.

Re:Does not compute

[college_nerd08]

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.

I would assume similar results are to be found in a diesel engine.

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/1 8/1638204&tid=187&tid=14

the link inside the Slashdot article no longer works.

Re:Does not compute

[Anonymous Coward]

well, that would work if the load caused by the alternator was directly proportional to the current drawn from it. in fact, a desiel motor needs no electricity from the alternator to run, unlike a car, which needs a spark at the sparkplug. compression alone causes heat and combustion.

some of that parasitic power loss from the alternator now actually gets reinserted into the system. that said, the claims made here sound WAY too high for fuel savings. an OK idea with a solid dose of snakeoil marketing.

-r

Re:Does not compute

[Anonymous Coward]

Automotive alternators must be able to generate *much more* power than is being used by the engine's systems (spark, computers, pumps, etc) because there are many electrical subsystems the driver may be using, and the battery must be kept at full charge. Until you inven a variable-resistance/load alternator, there is an enormous amount of electrical energy going unused much of the time to ensure that enough is generated for peak periods.

This formerly wasted energy is what they use to process the water.

Duh.

Re:Does not compute

[yabos]

Think of it as a camp fire. If you blow on it(or if you're crazy shoot hydrogen gas into it) it's going to burn like hell and extremely hot. More energy from the wood is being released instead of making that dark black smoke(if your fire is starved for oxygen) or the typical white smoke that camp fires produce.

You will get a lot more energy by pumping some oxygen into the fire than you would if you just let it burn by itself. Same goes for your car engine. You are going to get a lot more energy out of the fuel if you get it to burn hotter, which the hydrogen does. Producing the hydrogen takes relatively little energy for the gains in heat output you get.

Re:Does not compute

[MrEnigma]

Think of it as a supercharger. It's driven off the engine, so it takes a percentage off --say 10%...I think that's about normal, but the compressed air that it feeds the engine gives the engine a 20-30% gain in power. Granted this is for fuel consumption, so it's not exactly the same, but same idea I think.

Some are saying that an alternator throws a lot of it's energy away. I always thought the higher the load on the alternator, the harder it would be to drive it, and when less load, easy to drive...maybe that's wrong.

Re:Does not compute

[Planesdragon]

Why does the cynic in me think it might be more energy-efficient to not load the alternator with a hydrogen generator in the first place?

Because you're reading slashdot?

It might very well be more effecient to not draw out the energy for electrolysis. It also might veyr well be more effecient to use this cimmick.

Thankfully, we're talking about a real device with a real principle, a real claim, and a real, easily falsifiable data set. I suspect that this sort of thing does improve fuel effeciency in the trucks; otherwise, it would have been soundly debunked by now. (Just as hybrids are widely seen as NOT a cost-saving measure.)

Re:Does not compute

[vik]

It's also easy to claim that you are, when in fact you are not.

Vik :v)

Re:Does not compute

[vik]

Um, sorry, missed that. Producing hydrogen from water requires less energy than you get from burning it? OOooh! Perpetual motion machine!

Still wondering here why the oxygen is not injected too. As you say, that'd increase the burn temperature as well.

Vik :v)

Re:Does not compute

[vik]

Probably more to do with me having seen similar things beifgre and finding that they're either crap, or someone has changed something else to get the efficiency. Case in point was someone who claimed injecting steam to petrol engines improved milage. It did, but not because he was using steam; the engine had in effect acquired sophisticated fuel injection.

My suspicion is that the vehicle alternator is being managed better, and that this is producing the fuel saving in a similar way to the now common practice of disconnecting engine fans when not in use.

Vik :v)

Re:Does not compute

[pipingguy]

A very clever system...

Heh, the automotive engineers are complete idiots and hadn't thought of this already.

Without spilling the beans on anything, I can tell you that the major car manufacturers are in serious discussions with the makers of industrial gases. This sort of thing takes time and many details have to be worked-out.

Re:Does not compute

[yabos]

I didn't say you get more energy from burning the hydrogen alone. It's from burning the deisel fuel more efficiently producing more energy than it takes to create the hydrogen.

Re:Does not compute

[Luminary Crush]

Bear in mind that the system is injecting not just hydrogen, but hydrogen-oxygen gas. The first is relatively safe; the latter is HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE.

That is the reason it's not stored in the vehicle is because it's so very explosive. Others have mentioned that the hydrogen is causing more of the hydrocarbon fuel to burn, thus the net increase in efficiency.

No laws of thermodynamics broken today.

Three Rule Monte

[Errandboy of Doom]

We're all still wondering where the extra energy comes from. The Engadget article helps:

"[The system] uses current fed from the car's battery to generate the hydrogen and oxygen from a distilled water and chemical mixture."

Ah ha! So the battery generates the hydrogen and oxygen, which are used to create energy, thereby saving some extra gas, gas which you can then use to recharge your battery.

To quote the Guinness gentlemen:

BRILLIANT!

Re:Three Rule Monte

[Trepalium]

No, you're missing the point. The extra energy comes not from the hydrogen, but from the petroleum burning more efficiently. A certain amount of fuel leaves the vehicle unburned (or incompletely burned), the addition of hydrogen apparently helps this process (I don't understand how), and this was covered in TFA. It seems the energy used in cracking water is easily recovered by having a cleaner, more efficient burn of the fuel.

Mod moron down

[Anonymous Coward]

1st: since you responded, good luck using those mod points - as if you can mod articles.
2nd: it doesn't inject water (which, Mr. Science, is not combustible) it injects hydrogen formed by splitting water. (thanks for reading the "crank article" before you respond) Hydrogen is quite combustible and helps the diesel burn more completely. Water would be a by-product.

Pretty sure it works

[Alcimedes]

For all the naysayers, keep in mind, these truckers make their LIVING hauling product long distances. If this didn't work, or made the overall process less effecient, they'd know it. We're talking about their own profits it would be eating into, not some mystery lab result.

Sorry, but doubt hundreds of truckers are going to do that just to help out a company that involved in "psuedo science".

Re:Pretty sure it works

[gerardrj]

Unless the people touting the product have a stake in the company that's making the system.

Re:Pretty sure it works

[Alcimedes]

Right, because long haul truckers tend to invest their extra cash into venture capitol on new technology.

Re:Pretty sure it works

[gerardrj]

Or... the company started paying a few long haul truckers to peddle this thing.
"Hey, buddy. I'll pay you $500 for each time you get interviewed and mention how great out product is".

Re:Pretty sure it works

[beej]

Yeah right. You're in on it, too, obviously!

Re:Pretty sure it works

[Anonymous Coward]

And how many truckers have you known that could calculate their actual costs. I imagine a good looking woman selling these at truck stops and the truckers never noticing a change in fuel efficiency...

Next time you're on the road..

[Anonymous Coward]

Beware of Hindenberg Trucking Lines! Oh, the humanity.

RTFA! Not hydrogen powered, but cleaner burning

[Anonymous Coward]

The trucks are NOT hydrogen powered. A quick read through the article reveals that they are generating their own hydrogen using energy from the engine. This, by itself, does not contribute any power and in fact it is wasting energy. HOWEVER, adding hydrogen increases the efficiency of the engine so there is a net gain; it also reduces pollution.

Repeat: NOT hydrogen powered. But hydrogen makes the engine run better.

Sounds alot like the legendary Hydro-booster

[Anonymous Coward]

You know the one thats been posted to slashdot before.

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/20/02 32253&mode=thread&tid=134

Did nobody read up on this?

[canadianunixbum]

Did nobody read up on this? The hydrogen helps the engine burn more of the fuel that would have been released unused. That is why you use less fuel and have lower emissions.

Re:Did nobody read up on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

We already read it in the comments above, but thanks. :-)

Re:Did nobody read up on this?

[Guido von Guido]

Welcome to slashdot!

bah

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want artificial gas in any car I buy. I make enough natural gas in the car already.

Boo H2 ...'Termite guts can save the planet'

[ScrewTivo]

http://www.physorg.com/news3700.html

Now that's what I'm talking 'bout

H2 is BS.

Re:Boo H2 ...'Termite guts can save the planet'

[Rakshasa Taisab]

H2 is BS.

Ahem, it is CH4 that is BS, not H2.

Slashdot Ignores 9/11 Story - Scooped by MSNBC

[Bob Gortician]

Slashdot.org, a supposed news for geeks site, is blatantly ignoring the recent controvery surrounding a Brigham Young physics professor who has presented a 9000-word paper detailing how the three collapsed towers in New York on 9/11 were brought down by explosives.

Just another compromised "news" site?

Sounds like nasty nitros

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the quickest, cheapest way to boost your car's horsepower is with nitros injection. It really improves your combustion just like tfa says hydrogen does.

Of course the down side is that you start measuring engine life in milli-seconds. OK so I exaggerate slightly. But it is really hard on the engine. Tfa didn't mention engine life. These truckers will be really steamed if they have to start replacing engines every 50000 miles instead of every million miles.

The other problem is finding drivers willing to keep their boots off the gas (diesel) pedal. I once had a lightly rodded Camaro that actually got better mileage than stock; as long as I drove like a good citizen. Fat chance.

Re:Sounds like nasty nitros

[DigiShaman]

Nitrous Oxide in of itself is not hard on the engine. What makes it hard on the engine is the amount injected into it. Being that speed and performance is an addiction most street racers, they often get greedy on the Nitrous shots. Ever more and more, they crank up the mixture. And for the really clueless idiots, burn a fucking hole in the piston head.

Point being, it can be safe for everyday use so long as its computer controlled automatically. But, let the user control the amount injected...and you will end up with a short lived engine.

Re:Sounds like nasty nitros

[Anonymous Coward]

OK so I exaggerate slightly.

You exaggerate a lot. You exaggerate your knowledge of what the article is about and also appear to have a poor understanding of nitrous oxide systems.

In this house...

[headkase]

...they might actually produce more energy than they burn...

[HOMER]
In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
[/HOMER]
;)

Causing less pollution is a bonus?

[macosxaddict]

When will people finally figure out that causing less pollution should be a goal, not just a pretty side-effect? Unless people do, our planet is doomed.

Re:Causing less pollution is a bonus?

[tomstdenis]

As Carlin would have it ... the planet in no way shape or form is doomed by our actions. We however, are totally screwed.

Long after we kill off our ability to live here the planet will still exist. Organisms will adapt, and life will continue. Human life won't but life otherwise will.

Just make sure your lawn chair has a view when the world goes to hell in a hand basket.

Tom

Re:Causing less pollution is a bonus?

[markov_chain]

That viewpoint is just as selfish as of those who demand the big gas guzzling SUV, because it is not the planet that is doomed, but the people living on it. The planet doesn't care about pollution.

Another quip is that reducing pollution IS a goal, except it is not the only one. It is usually lower on the priority list, somewhere under putting food on the table and keeping a roof over the head.

Re:Causing less pollution is a bonus?

[grimJester]

This is a shining example of something that can only be accomplished by taxation. Most of us want everyone to pollute less, even if it costs them money. No one wants to be the only one to pollute less, if it costs them money.

Re:Causing less pollution is a bonus?

[Shotgun]

The goal of capitalism is always to use your resource more efficiently than the next guy. The competitor that wastes their resources will always lose out.

Pollution is simply the result of unused resources. Simply put, less pollution has always been a goal...just not an obvious one. Smog only occurred because the cost of fuel resources was less than the cost of engineering and quality manufacturing resources. Today we have computers and CNC equipment and OPEC is forcing us to put them to good use 8*)

Re:Causing less pollution is a bonus?

[schlick]

Others have stated it but it bears repeating. Less pollution is a goal but it is a longer term goal. The short term goal is feeding yourself and providing for your everyday needs and wants. What good is a clean planet if you live in a cardboard box? The only way people are going to pollute less is if it is cheaper to pollute less. I believe that with our level of technology we can actually be all around more efficient (i.e. pollute less and save money). Capitalism is about using your resources more efficiently than your competitor. Most pollution is caused by inefficiency.

Re:Causing less pollution is a bonus?

[macosxaddict]

Could you justify "most pollution is caused by inefficiency"? I assume you mean economic efficiency, since you mentioned capitalism, rather than production or energy efficiency. For example, coal power is more economically efficient than solar power, but also much more polluting.

Re:Causing less pollution is a bonus?

[macosxaddict]

Well, maybe. I'd certainly like to believe it. But I can imagine a situation where Earth ends up looking like Venus, with no hope for return.

Anyone tried this yet?

[MrNougat]

http://www.h20car.org/

I emailed the guy a while back to find out how much the materials cost. $300US for a carbureted engine, more for injected. Injected requires some additional stuff, akin to converting a gasoline engine to natural gas.

Plans are $20. I'm broke. Someone with some spare time on their hands, please give it a try and report back kthx.

They've had such technology for years!

[i41Overlord]

They made an engine that could run on water but the Big Oil companies bought the patents and hid it in a dark room and behind closed doors, black helicopters, Area51, republicans, Bob Lazar, tin foil hats, mind control beam, yada yada yada.

Re:They've had such technology for years!

[Anonymous Coward]

read the article first, asshat.

your political affiliation is not a choice, it's a diagnosis.

Re:They've had such technology for years!

[TheSuperlative]

Let me get this straight... the big oil companies have a technology that will give them full market share on all engines, but choose to lock it up sell something that will run out about the time their patent expires? Makes sense. I'd watch out if I were you, I hear they patented conspiracy theories too.

Re:They've had such technology for years!

[Grey_14]

patent expires? for big oil?

heh... that's a good one.

Re:They've had such technology for years!

[sstidman]

A car that runs on water...are you sure you're not talking about this?

Re:They've had such technology for years!

[paxmark1]

well, three years ago I was listening to people talk about kits that cost $700 to electrolyze water via electricity from the alternator. Technically, it sounded good, good for someone driving a pick up truck long miles on rural roads. But the claims were not verifiable. I figured that if there was anything to it, that it would start happening.

Evidently there is.

So - how can the price be brought down? When will auto makers bring this on as an acessory?

Peace.

Re:They've had such technology for years!

[VisualStim]

If it was patented ... it would be public information.

http://www.uspto.gov/

Re:They've had such technology for years!

[Firethorn]

Don't forget that patents, by law, are public. It'd be more along the line of them purchasing and hiding trade secrets.

With the problem that if somebody else invents it and trys to patent it, the worst they can do at that point is yell 'prior art', making it unpatentable and open to all.

All this before getting to the third law of thermodynamics.

Methane Powered

[straight_up]

I know certain people who produce a lot of their own methane. Can they get methane-powered vehicles, or at least office chairs with gas-powered motorized wheels?

not hydrogen power!

[DaveBarr]

This is not hydrogen power. Not even close. All it's doing is generating a small amount of hydrgen to make the diesel combustion more efficient and complete. This is not perpetual motion (taking energy out and putting a greater amount back into the system), it's just a bit of fancy chemistry to make the existing diesel burn better. This has nothing to do with the hydrogen fuel debate.

Re:not hydrogen power!

[Aidski]

This is true, this is using a product of a reaction to assist in allowing more reactants to react.

Re:not hydrogen power!

[Shotgun]

Now, if they'd just generate the hydrogen with a braking motor, they'd be much better off.

Most of the junk is thrown own when accelerating...lots of low RPM, full throttle operation through un-optimum power ranges...and accelerating nearly always occurs right after...wait for it...decelerating. Save their brakes (putting all that mechanical energy to good use) and get more hydrogen just when they need it most.

BTW, they also get a lot of free oxygen from this reaction. Do they pump it into the cylinder, too?

Re:not hydrogen power!

[Firethorn]

Long haul trucks, the ones to benefit the most from this, don't actually start and stop that much. Trying to produce the hydrogen from braking energy would require: A generator($$), probably hooked up to the drive shaft, a method create hydrogen in a rush(more heavy duty unit, $$), a method to store said hydrogen($$$), etc...

These trucks generally don't start and stop enough to justify the extra weight and cost.

You'd be better off making the semi a hybrid, maybe like trains are today, maybe a scaled up version of the ford escape or something. I'm sure they'd love the extra low end torque.

Re:not hydrogen power!

[Shotgun]

These trucks generally don't start and stop enough to justify the extra weight and cost.

That wholly depends on which truck is where.

Short haul trucks (like I used to drive) do a lot of city driving, speed going up and down just like in a car. Truckers also spend a lot of time on the brakes when going down hills. Burn augmentation is most effective in the high torque/low RPM operational range (a sparked engine uses spark advance for this purpose), and the polution aspects have their most visible results in the city.

The generator($$) would be no more expensive than a quality alternator, would save on brake wear (eliminating the need for obnoxious JakeBrakes), store excess energy in a relatively small battery bank (that would increase acceleration efficiency further). The storage vessel could be a container of only a few cubic feet, providing for a big boost when it is needed most.

The typical dual-axle tractor has one axle (4 tires) that is there simply to support the load. They do not have a drive axle to them. The retrofit to tire generators would be a simple bolt-on operation, and the axle would serve as a perfect containment facility. A few hundred pounds of battery wouldn't even be noticed, and that will generally weigh less than all the chrome and extra lights the typical trucker adds 8*)

Re:not hydrogen power!

[Firethorn]

I'll comment that I was disagreeing with the parent who thought that making the system generate extra hydrogen via electricity generated from 'regenerative' braking would be a good idea.

I retorted that you'd be better off making the truck a hybrid. Your idea for making a semi into a hybrid after the fact makes a good point. The very nature of a semi makes it easier to modify it. Extra axles, large size make finding room to install parts easier.

Given the power-weight ratios that trucks operate on, and the fact that they're at their most polluting at high power operations, adding this sort of system would help the truck pollute less, use less fuel, and accelerate quicker. A winning solution, as long as it repays for itself within a reasonable period.

TANSTAAFL?

[lazarus]

Can someone please explain to me why TANSTAAFL does not come to bear on this? If I am using fuel to produce electricity to produce hydrogen to improve efficiency, why is there a net gain from this? Is this a matter of improving the efficiency of a closed system? Is the 10% gain in efficiency due to the reduction of deposits in the engine and the rest just marketing?

While I would love to believe this I'm somewhat skeptical.

Thanks.

Re:TANSTAAFL?

[SuprCzr]

this really isnt so hard.

in a normal engine, when you burn diesel you dont actually get all of it burned.

If you commit a little of the combustion cycle to creating hydrogen and oxygen that you can add to the mix, you can get a lot more of the unburnt hydrogen burned, hence you can get a larger total percentage of fuel burned, and therefore more power, less pollution in the form of unburnt and/or partially burnt fuel, and due to the higher power burn, more MPG's.

Re:TANSTAAFL?

[adrianmonk]

Can someone please explain to me why TANSTAAFL does not come to bear on this?

Yes, anyone who has read the article and has good reading comprehension can explain it. Here's a sentence from the article:

Trucks with the HFI system produce half the amount of particulates -- microscopic, unburned bits of diesel.

Now, let's see... we're talking about a diesel engine whose efficiency is claimed to have been increased, so what seems interesting about that sentence? How about the words "half", "unburned bits", and "diesel"? In a diesel engine, unburned diesel fuel would seem to be a source of inefficiency, I would think.

So, the answer here appears to be that this system causes less of the fuel to be sent out the exhaust. And by the way, you're right that TANSTAAFL: it costs $4,000 to $14,000 to modify the vehicle to increase its efficiency by 10%, and I'm sure there are increased maintenance costs on account of the fact that you're adding new mechanical bits that didn't exist before. On the other hand, for a vehicle where the monthly diesel bill is $7000, it might be worth it to increase efficiency.

Re:TANSTAAFL?

[DutchUncle]

Yes, it takes energy to separate the water. That's not the whole story.

The hydrogen and oxygen don't just re-combine - that would clearly not make up the energy spent - they improve combustion of the diesel fuel. Presumably that improvement more than makes up for the energy spent.

Think: SUPERCHARGER. That also takes energy away from an engine by putting a mechanical load on it, and it's worthwhile because the higher air pressure gives a better fuel burn. Plus, as anyone who watched "Mad Max" knows, you can put an electrical clutch on a supercharger so you're only using it at high speed when that tradeoff is most effective.

As others have noted, truckers and trucking companies are in business to make money, and they wouldn't be doing this if it didn't work on the road. And for everyone whining about how ecology should be the primary issue: Nobody wants to pollute, they're just saving short-term money on prevention. Make NON-pollution cost less and everyone will adopt it in a heartbeat.

Re:TANSTAAFL?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your alternator produces more electricity than you use.

They're taking that waste electricity (which normally just gets converted to heat and shed) and using it to make hydrogen.

Re:TANSTAAFL?

[geekoid]

While I would like to beleive you RTFA, I'm somewhat skeptical.

Re:TANSTAAFL?

[lazarus]

You can think what you want, judging by your lame marketing .sig which contains what seems to be random capitalization and a hanging sentence, I doubt you understood what I was asking.

Been done before w/o hydrogen

[Anonymous Coward]

Some news. It's amazing how we forget. A similar technique was achieved nearly 10 years ago WITHOUT the need for hydrogen --it just applied the electrolysis to the fuel itself. Our car engines could be 90% more efficient right now, but hmmmm for some reason the techonology never came about --oh, that's right, the problem was it offered no way to increase consumption addiction. Silly me V-8

Re:Been done before w/o hydrogen

[markov_chain]

You hypocrite-- here you are preaching about less polluting engine and yet you drive a V-8! ;)

How can it use less fuel and reduce pollution?

[A nonymous Coward]

Yes I RTFA. The diesel engine runs a generator which electrocutes water to produce hydrogen which is burned along with the regular diesel oil.

How can this possibly burn less oil? TFA implies the hydrogen from the generator produces more power than is used to turn the generator which produces it. Push this to its logical conclusion and you have a perpetual motion machine.

Re:How can it use less fuel and reduce pollution?

[Ariane 6]

They pump the Oxygen and the Hydrogen thus derived into the combustion chamber. The Extra O2 makes all (as opposed to most) of the diesel fuel burn, and gets a little kick from the H2. Nearly all the benefit, however, comes from burning diesel that would otherwise be part of the exhaust.

Re:How can it use less fuel and reduce pollution?

[Bahumat]

Don't ignore there's more components in the "fuel" than diesel. Oxygen is the other part of the equation. It's not a perpetual motion machine if it is still consuming fuel. It might produce more energy than the diesel alone can generate, but it still requires free oxygen.

Re:How can it use less fuel and reduce pollution?

[ceoyoyo]

Exactly... the extra power is from more complete combustion of the diesel. Diesel doesn't burn particularly well, especially not in the fraction of a second that's allowed in an internal combustion engine. So a lot of the fuel isn't completely burned, which pollutes and reduces efficiency. Adding hydrogen (which does burn rather well, and quickly), helps the diesel burn along with it.

Re:How can it use less fuel and reduce pollution?

[Anonymous Coward]

The diesel engine runs a generator which electrocutes water
Hey, hydro man was never a bad enough super-villain to deserve the chair!

A TRUCKERS' OPINION

[Anonymous Coward]

I like my hydrogen truck. Now drop your pants and bend over!

Re:A TRUCKERS' OPINION

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw you trucker. I am a woman and I wont bend over. Youll have to fuck me the regular way.

Another factor?

[electrosoccertux]

Wouldn't this be somewhat counteracted by the fact that when Hydrogen burns (say in a tube), the product has less volume than the reactants?

Re:Another factor?

[mwood]

Does it? Take a volume of H2 and an appropriate volume of O2 at STP. Burn. What's the volume of the resulting H2O at standard pressure and *flame temperature*?

Why use additives? Use existing combinations

[Anonymous Coward]

Hydrogen is already found combined with other stuff in useful forms such as a CH4 (methane) or C8H18 (octane)

this is great

[digitallysick]

so they use electricity to create a "small amount" of hydrogen, my question is, how much electricity is needed to product hydrogen from water? can X amount of water on product X amount of hydrogen? or more electricty = more hydrogen??

Re:this is great

[Chucklz]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday's_law_of_elec trolysis

Breaker...

[Anonymous Coward]

Breaker one nine, we got a big old hydrogen powered generator in the cab......come on!!!

How's it lookin westbound?

Would help pollution a lot...

[axonal]

I would think there are a lot more 18-wheelers driving constantly than there are regular cars. Thus, it would only make sense that pollution would nationwide might decrease a lot even with cars that are without the technology. Infact, there should be steps for all commercial vehicles (delivery trucks, phone/gas/electric trucks, other fleet vehicles) implement the technology since I would think a bulk of pollution would be coming from them.

Why not Solar panels on roof?

[JonTurner]

Well, the alternator is necessary for powering on-board electronics, refrigerators, lights, a/c, radios, the engine management computers, fuel injectors/pumps, etc. so it can't be abandoned. However, it seems to me that putting photovoltaic cells on the top of the vehicle would be an efficient no-load (on the engine) source for electricity while operating during daylight hours. At night, the alternator could be used but there's no reason why the solar powered hydrogen generator shouldn't be running during all sunlit times storing surplus H and O for future use.

Gratuitous Canadian Joke

[Anonymous Coward]

" ... eliminating the need for high-pressure, cryogenic storage tanks ... "

The reason they don't need cryogenic storage taks is because (a) it's November and (b) they are in Canada.

Offtopic: Is it bad to say that men shouldn't cry?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, we were having a discussion, and she tells me she's considering becoming a grief counselor. I repled with, "If a guy comes in you just tell him to 'Grow up and be a man!' and give him a solid cockpunch. That's half the job right there." She asked if I was kidding and I said, "Yes and no." That is literally all I said. Then she proceeded to spend the next hour lecturing me on how heartless I am, how dead inside I am, how various men have cried (when their kids died, etc), how I have no compassion, how I should have no friends for saying something like that, how it made her sick to hear me say that, and how she's not sure she could continue talking to someone who thinks that. I pretty much said nothing the whole time, other than "okay" and "uh-huh". A few times I chimed in with things, like explaining that neither I nor my brother cried at my dad's funeral and how my (adopted) cousin did cry at my grandmother's funeral, but he's a pansy.

Based on that: Is there something seriously wrong with what I said? Am I evil or psychopathic or what? Would you say that she overreacted to a pheonomenal degree and has some major issues? Should men not cry? Regardless of if they should or shouldn't cry, is it wrong to believe they shouldn't?

Coincidentally, while I was typing this I was watching the scene in "The Godfather" where Brando was slapping a guy and yelling at him to "be a man" because he was crying.

Lastly, a number of times, when she was saying how heartless/compassionless I am, I told her how funny that was for her to say. I know she didn't understand why it's funny, I even told her so, but she never asked why it's funny. I'll give you a hint and leave it at that: "Hey Kettle, it's me Pot, you're black!"

Higher temps = Lower Engine Lifespan?

[OfNoAccount]

Since higher combustion temperatures are mentioned, won't this adversely effect engine lifespan?

s/beifgre/before/

[vik]

Vik :v)

Not the Truckers...

[Mo B. Dick]

Its the trucking companies and the owners doing this, not the truckers. Half of the truckers I've ever met are hillbillies that probably don't even know what hydrogen is

Re:Not the Truckers...

[shis-ka-bob]

So what? The truckers don't need to design the truck, they just drive it. By this logic, I suppose that I can't use Linux because I'm too much of a 'hillbilly' to have written an operating system on my own. Who cares about the education and social status of the truckers, as long as they can add fuel and water, they can use this system.

Awsome-Oil Rigging.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcriptNOW145 _full.html

With the rigging by the oil industry, one can certainly understand.

http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/gasprices05.html

Of course some good may come of all this if it forces the american consumer to be more efficient. Shame it has to be at the sharp edge of a crook.

Re:Awsome-Oil Rigging.

[Anonymous Coward]

Higher prices brought about by increased taxes are what enviro's have been harping about for a long time. The only difference is that the govt crooks will waste the revenue and the private industry crooks won't. That's why Congress is really pissed. "Dammit! Those sheeple will continue to drive their gas guzzlers even with higher prices. We should have raised fuel taxes and diverted the money to my special pet project!"

Idling engines

[EarlW]

What about idling engines? I still see trucks running at rest stops, even though their driver is inside having lunch or getting coffee. It's clear that many drivers (and owners) don't really care about saving money OR the environment...

Re:Idling engines

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because it is better for diesel engines to run constantly. It actually reduces the wear and tear. 70% of engine wear comes from starting an engine. Most large hospitals leave their diesel powered ambulances running 24-7.

Re:Idling engines

[Vegeta99]

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.)

Re:Idling engines

[HeavyD14]

What about refrigerated trailers? They kind of need to keep those cold, and you need power to do that.

Re:Idling engines

[Anonymous Coward]

You do understand that you can't just turn off a large diesel engine when it's all heated up, without risking significant engine damage?

Re:Idling engines

[Anonymous Coward]

It is hard to start the engine and warm it up vs. just keeping it running. Uses very little fuel. Reefers by the way have their own fuel and they run just as effeciently, with out the mispellings ;).

Truckers may or may not watch fuel prices, but the comptrollers at trucking companys do. I am getting the impression that people don't realize that most trucking companies have at least 50 trucks, and that the larger companies that you see their trucks all the time most likely have 1000's of trucks. I know a company that adds 450 trucks to it's fleet at a time. Adds to the fleet, not replacing other trucks.

Re:Idling engines

[dptalia]

What were they hauling? I have a friend who drives a refrigerated semi and he has to run the engine to keep the cargo frozen.

Re:Idling engines

[Eliminate5]

The large diesel engines on modern trucks are turbo-charaged. A turbo-charger is a moving part that gets VERY hot especially when the engine is running under load. They need to keep these engines idling to cool the turbo.
Dave

The Effects Sound Similar to Water Injection

[Spoke]

The effects of hydrogen injection sound similar to the effects from water injection, except that it may work better without additional engine tuning.

Water injection (often mixed up to 50% with alcohol or methanol) has been used to improve the detonation resistance of combustion engines for many years. It was pioneered by WWII engineers looking to extract more power out of their engines during takeoff and landing, but now is typically only used by people modifying or racing their cars/trucks.

In your typical combustion engine, maximum power is very often limited by a phenomenom call detonation, also called ping or knock. What happens is that during the compression stroke, the air/fuel mixture overheats and spontaneously combusts which results in a huge spike in combustion chamber pressure. If it is bad enough, it can break pistons or damage rod/crank bearings leading to engine failure.

There are a number of ways to reduce the chance of detonation which primarily involve cooling temperatures in the combustion chamber. A very common way of doing this is to add extra fuel to the mixture, but obviously this is not efficient or clean.

By injecting a small mist of water into the air/fuel mixture, the presence of water will help cool the mixture and prevent detonation, letting you lean out the engine to where maximum power is produced as well as adding additional timing advance and/or add boost (if running a turbo or supercharger).

As a side effect, the water ends up "steam cleaning" your combustion chamber which keeps carbon deposits to a minimum and your engine running well.

However, water injection does nothing unless your power output is detonation limited. In fact, if you inject water with no other changes, power output will go down a small amount.

It sounds like hydrogen injection may improve power and combustion efficiency in all situations.

Since the amount of hydrogen generated can't be that large, I imagine that using hydrogen injection in addition to water injection for heavy engine loads would be a great combination.

Hmm, maybe I better patent that idea.

Re:The Effects Sound Similar to Water Injection

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to build your engines totally stainless also...

Don't know if this applies to engines using their device, meethinks it produces so redicilously small amounts of H2 that corrosion is not a problem, but water injection and serious H2-burning eats away on your engine and speeds up electrolytic corrosion (two materials of different electronegativity joined).

Re:The Effects Sound Similar to Water Injection

[Anonymous Coward]

But this technique applies to diesel engines. And diesel engines rely on detonation to ignite the fuel - so you dont want to suppress it. The limit on power generation of a diesel engine is the speed at which the fuel can burn. There is plenty of air in the cylinder, but the fuel does not all combust at high engine revs/high fuel amount - that is when the engine produces smoke. It is possible that the hydrogen causes a quick 'flash' at the start of combustion which ensures that all the fuel can start burning at the same time.

Re:The Effects Sound Similar to Water Injection

[Spoke]

Yes, but I've also heard of water injection being used in diesel engines to improve efficiency and power output, a quick google search should turn up some hits.

I was thinking about it, and really the effects aren't really all that similar to water injection, but rather the opposite. However, the end effect of both is more efficient and cleaner combustion.

Water injection slows down the burn process, similar to the effect of having a higher octane fuel, while hydrogen speeds it up.

Speeding up the burn process is very useful when trying to fully burn lean mixtures, slowing it down can be useful when it might be useful to slow down the burn, for example under high load in gasoline engines.

Re:The Effects Sound Similar to Water Injection

[Anonymous Coward]

Read up on DIESEL engines, smart guy.

Re:The Effects Sound Similar to Water Injection

[Spoke]

And in case anyone was wondering how a diesel works:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/diesel.htm

Re:The Effects Sound Similar to Water Injection

[Big Nemo '60]

A similar technique has been experimented in Italy for several years. Basically you feed an unmodified diesel engine with an emulsion made of 88% standard diesel fuel, 10% water and 2% additives (to prevent emulsion from separating). The combustion is much cleaner, mileage is only slightly higher (but since the fuel is 10% water, actual mileage from the diesel fuel is better).

This is currently used for public transportation in about 80 Italian cities. France and China (Bejing and Shangai) are experimenting as well. Availaiblity is still limited (emulsion is made 'on the fly' at the gas pump, so you need special equipment).

Alas, all I could find on the 'net is a .pdf in Italian:
gasolio bianco

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Effect on Octane

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Someone else has already posted the link to this: previous story about the same company improving gasoline engines.

What I would like to know is will this gadget have the same effect as increasing the octane rating of the gas? So, if I have a turbo-charged engine that wants the high-octane stuff, can I, at least in theory, use the cheap gas plus a little itty-bit of hydrogen and get the same effect?

Re:Effect on Octane

[arodland]

No, not even close. In fact, since this process makes combustion somewhat easier it might have the opposite effect. In any case, I don't think randomly adding some hydrogen to your gas is going to do anything even vaguely useful, and forget the safety implications ;)

Re:Effect on Octane

[EmagGeek]

This would actually probably DECREASE the octane "rating" of your fuel. Basically, the octane "rating" really has nothing to do with the amount of octane in your fuel. It used to be called the "Anti-Knock Index," but some marking buffoon decided to call it the "octane" rating instead because it sounded cooler. Anyway, the AKI is a measure of how easy it is to ignite your fuel. In an internal combustion engine, a mix of fuel and air is compressed at high speed during the compression stroke. As the pressure increases, so does the temperature. As the temperature rises, the fuel, if unstable, can ignite on its own (this is the entire principle behind the diesel engine) before the spark plug fires. This is called pre-ignition, a ping, a knock, or whatever. It usually happens when there is a higher concentration of fuel in the cylinder, such as during acceleration or climbing a hill. Most modern gas engines have a knock sensor that will tell the computer when the engine is pinging, and the computer will adjust the mixture to compensate if it can.

The reason the AKI of fuel drops 2 points above 5000 feet is because the air pressure is about half that of sea level, so the compression stroke doesn't generate enough pressure to pre-ignite the lower AKI fuels.

Your turbo car, however, can produce sea-level equivalent pressures, so you still need to use higher AKI fuel even at high altitude. Most car manufacturers will not specify an AKI above 91, since that is what is commonly available above 5000 feet.

Anyway, back to the point. Adding a bunch of Oxygen and Hydrogen to the mix will make it far easier to pre-ignite. Free hydrogen gas can be ignited by the incident light of a camera flash. H2 can be ignited easily by a discharge of just a few Joules of static electricity.

By the way kids, don't use this stuff in your air-cooled engine. These cars depends on a rich, cool combustion mix to keep from overheating... add O2 and H2 to the mix and you'll have a higher combustion temp and blow up your motor...

Re:Effect on Octane

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Not Alone (not even close)

[MrRobahtsu]

This one's only $200 for now (normally $250) and has been around for years:
http://savefuel.ca/

This one's more expensive than that ($1200), but still less than the one in the article:
http://www.burnh2o.com/1000.html

savefuel.ca claims to have been doing this since 1991.

water stations..

[slashkitty]

for this device, they just need to fill up on water... which I assume they already have water tanks on the trucks?

damage to emissions systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

Before everyone runs out and buys these gimmicks for their cars, shouldn't we find out if they have any side effects on car emissions systems? I'm thinking it's possible that more corrosive gases could be produced by the system as a result of the modification of the burn. The downstream sensors and all the other crap we put in cars to save orphaned bald eagles are expensive, and not something you want to replace.

Effectively this is Enriching the Air...

[stvangel]

Air normally contains (roughly) 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, 1% Argon, and trace amounts of a couple of dozen other molecules. This is increasing the amount of Oxygen and Hydrogen in the air entering the engine and conversely lowering the ratio of the Nitrogen, Argon and other (mostly nonvolatile) gases. This will naturally allow for a quicker, hotter, more complete burn that generates more power and less naughty parts like Nitrogen oxides and particulate matter.

I would imagine that the additional Oxygen provides a large chunk of the benefits, rather than it just being attributed to the Hydrogen.

They've actually invented a way to use some handy prepackaged "air for burning" (distilled water) that is (relatively) efficient and simple to make by using electrolysis. Not too much of it, because there it can be too much of a good thing. Try running an engine off pure oxygen and see what you get. You'd still get explosions, but they'd likely be uncontained this time around. The amount of electricity to electrolyse a lot of water would be quite counter-productive anyway.

I would imagine you could get much of the same results if you could figure out a way to filter some of the Nitrogen out of the incoming air. Unfortunately, there's no good, cheap, efficient way to do that... yet....

Hype and hyperbole

[gerardrj]

If you go read the manufacturer's web site they don't claim that the introduction of hydrogen itself will increase the fuel efficiency, but that the hydrogen will clean out the carbon deposits in the engine.
The process will take "from 0 to 9 months" depending on the type of vehicle, amount of build-up, the weather, the speeds driven, the idling time, start/stop driving, etc. Once the engine is cleaned you can see up to "40% increase in fuel efficiency".

We're talking about some insanely small amounts of hydrogen here.

The standard kit holds about 4 liters of water and will run for about 12,000KM. If 2/3 of the water is converted to H and captured for use, that means there's 2,261 liters of hydrogen extracted.

I randomly took a Volvo VE D12 395 engine for specs:
12.13L displacement and 1500RPM suggested cruise RPM, I'll guess 95Km/h is "cruise".

12,000KM / 95KM/H = 124.3 hours
Hydrogen is produced at 18 liters per hour
124.3 hours * 1500RPM = 11,187,000 revolutions
11,187,000 revolutions * 12.13L = 135,698,310 Liters of displaced air/fuel mixture

If my conversions and guesses are close, that means there's .001% hydrogen to air ratio in the cylinders during combustion.

I say scrap the entire thing. Don't hack in to your electrical system and don't carry around the extra weight of the machine and water. If you want to reduce operating costs, increase fuel efficiency and reduce pollution then BURN BIO-DIESEL!! Bio-Diesel has a net zero effect on atmospheric carbon, is low cost (about $.50us/gal to produce yourself), and is a tremendously powerful solvent that cleans engines of deposits like nobody's business.

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[thatshortkid]

correct me if i'm wrong, but doesn't the "net zero effect" only happen if you use bio-mass created ethanol in the mix? i've seen instructions for using methanol, which i'm pretty sure is a fossil fuel. so it's like net-almost-zero.

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but how do you know it doesn't dissolve the engine itself?

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[ookabooka]

about $.50us/gal to produce yourself
 
I would like to see where you came up with this number, if truckers could produce their fuel at 1/4 the cost, I'm sure we would see bio-deisel everywhere.

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

The standard kit holds about 4 liters of water and will run for about 12,000KM. If 2/3 of the water is converted to H and captured for use, that means there's 2,261 liters of hydrogen extracted.

H2O weigths 2*1+16=18 kg/kmol hence 4 kg (1 liter ~ 1 kg) of water holds 4[kg]/18[kg/kmol]=0.22(2)[kmol] of H2 (and 0.11(1) kmol of O2)
since ordinary gas such as H2 takes volume 22.4 liters per mol, it means that 0.22(2) kmol would make 0.22(2)*22.4 m^3 of H2, or 4977.(7) liters of hydrogen.

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to reduce operating costs, increase fuel efficiency and reduce pollution then BURN BIO-DIESEL!! Bio-Diesel has a net zero effect on atmospheric carbon, is low cost (about $.50us/gal to produce yourself), and is a tremendously powerful solvent that cleans engines of deposits like nobody's business.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big bio-diesel fan, but there are a few problems. First of all, bio-diesel is not right here right now. It's here, and there, and in a few other places, but not in reliable volumes as these rigs would require. Also, while local production of fuel is efficient, the current methods that require methanol end up being not-so-efficient. Not to mention you have a slight little problem with taking care of your by-product methanol.

Also, yes, bio-diesel is a great engine cleaning solvent. However, this has a down side too. Some parts will literally melt away from using bio-diesel, so unless your car is rated for it (most european cars are) you will have problems. Or atleast you'll have a pain in the ass time identifying and swapping out these parts.

And finally... I have a hard time believing that a hundred truckers, who's fuel economy makes a big difference in the bottom line, would install something simply because it sounded cool. There must be some truth in it, or else you'd have a hundred mad truckers knocking down your door. Not a pleasant idea. So all in all, why not use bio-diesel AND this hydrogen thingy? Remember, bio-diesel has its own emissions problems. It may not have sulfur dioxide, but under particular conditions (which are suspiciously the same conditions where you have the nasty emissions with dino-diesel) it has higher NOx emissions, which presumably could be cut down by using a bit of hydrogen. And best of all, this hydrogen injector apparently would work just as well on both fuels, so no need to convert anything on your car/truck to reap the benefits.

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[Overzeetop]

And I'm not so sure about the net zero effect. You're still liberating C from the bio-deisel in the form of CO2, instead of burying it in the ground as waste, right? (at .50/gal, I'm assuming he's using waste oil). So you're adding to the CO2 problem by _not_ burying the oil (muhahahahaha!).

Actually, the GP had me going until he hit the bio-deisel part, then I realized he was just one of those BD nutjobs. It's like seeing a GNAA post that doesn't let you in on the joke until the last paragraph.

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[gordguide]

" ... If you want to reduce operating costs, increase fuel efficiency and reduce pollution then BURN BIO-DIESEL!! ..."

Keep in mind that no matter what "fuel" we use in an internal combustion engine, what we really are burning is oxygen. Whether it's hydrocarbons, alcohol, or vegetable oil (BioDiesel), the fact remains that the only substance that is critically necessary is oxygen. Without it, there is no smoke, let alone spark or flame. The fuel is relevant only as a detail of design; it does no work itself; oxygen does it all.

It's the application of miniscule amounts of hydrogen, and it's effect on the combustion of oxygen, that's important here. Whether your engine uses BioDiesel or not is irrelevant as far as how and why it works is concerned. Use BioDiesel with Hydrogen, same result: leaner mixtures = less fuel burn for equivalent work compared to BioDiesel alone.

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[corngrower]

I would like to see where the $.50 /gal came from as well. By my estimates, it would run about $5/gallon.

That said, diesel fuel sold in Minnesota now contains at least 2% Biodiesel, by law.

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[gordguide]

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.

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[gerardrj]

Okay, so its .0022% hydrogen in the mix.

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[gerardrj]

You can not burn oxygen.
Burning is a process of rapid oxidation. Something needs to react with oxygen for there to be combustion. That something is fuel. You also need heat sufficient to cause the oxidation process to begin and become self-sustaining.

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[gerardrj]

I'm no DB nut job. I've argued that, logically, even petrol diesel is a zero net carbon fuel. The arguments occur because people want to arbitrarily define the timeframe and locations of measurement of the "net zero" status.
On human timelines, certainly, petrol is not net zero; but on geologic times it certainly is. All of that carbon was in the atmosphere at some point.

And, yes, the $.50 assumes using waste oil that is free. The economies of BD will certainly change as the process becomes more available to general people and/or larger refineries start making and distributing the stuff. Still, it should always be lower cost to run and be better for the engines (assuming the engine is assembled to tolerate the solvent nature of the fuel).

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[DemENtoR]

You forgot the 4.50$ in taxes, that would get ontop of that. Well maybe not that bad :) As far as I know tho, Bio disel in Germany unlike regular disel, or gas isn't taxed. That's done to promote the greener fuels (and basicaly subsitize them). Read it, in one of these fancy airplane magazines, while flying back from Europe, you know the ones that try to sell you random stuff, you can get way cheaper on land.

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[clueless123]

Been running Bio-diesel for a year now (on a 2005 VW Passat TDI)

Here are some facts to enhance the discussion:

Fact: In most places commercially produced BD (BioDiesel) runs about the same price as DD (Dino Diesel).

Fact: BD is wildly available, specially on main interstate hwys where a trucker can fill up for the next 800 miles. Also if you don't find BD available, just fill-up with DD until you have a chance to drop by the next BD friendly pump. (you can mix&match with no issues)

Fact: BD is a powerfull solvent. That said, most diesel vehicles produced after the late 90's can use BD with out any worry of "melting their hoses".. The main problem you might find by switching to BD is that it will clean your gas tank from all the previously DD deposits on your tank, so you might have to change your fuel filter.

Fact:(?) As far as I understand, the only by-product of producing BD is ~ 10% of glycerin, which is readly purchased by the cosmetics industry..

Finally.. I regularly get 40 miles per gallon on a fun, fast & very fine looking german coupe.. with significant pollution reduction and no war required ! what else can you ask?

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[jred]

Aren't many of the farmers in the US paid *not* to farm? What about all the fields that have never been farmed. Aren't there crops that can have multiple maturation periods in one traditional growing cycle? (thinking primarily of hemp, which has other useful resources)

I believe we wouldn't have any problems with supply, there needs to be demand first.

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[gordguide]

" ... You can not burn oxygen. Burning is a process of rapid oxidation. ..."

Or, burning is an exothermic chemical reaction limited by the availability of oxygen.
Or "A self-perpetuating exothermic reaction that ... increases the temperature of the reactants above the initial air temperature until an explosion, flame, or sustained glow occurs." There's dozens of definitions, actually. It seems something as simple as fire is fairly complicated to define comprehensively. These guys spend more than a few paragraphs trying:
http://saber.towson.edu/~schmitt/pyro/chapter1.htm l#Nex/

But, I'm willing to amend it, to:
Strictly speaking, Oxygen doesn't burn, even though you cannot burn anything without oxygen; and if you do have oxygen, once all the oxygen is gone the fire must always go out.

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[DerekLyons]

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.

For suitably large values of 'essentially the same'. Kerosene is lighter, and paint thinner is lighter still. Jet fuel is refined to a much tighter set of specs, and fuel oil to a lesser (and heavier) spec.

IOW, pretty much every petroleum derived liquid is 'essentially' the same, so long as you ignore the differences. (And the differences are significant - else there wouldn't be differences.) For that matter gasoline is 'essentially' the same as diesel, but then so is pariffin and motor oil.

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.

Certainly they do so from time-to-time, generally in an emergency situation, or whenever no other real choice exists. Sometimes the engine even survives without damage. Those various fuels are refined to specified centane/octane/viscosity/etc.../etc.. rating, and few engines take kindly to running fuels outside of the range they are designed to for any length of time.

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[gordguide]

" ... For suitably large values of 'essentially the same'. Kerosene is lighter, and paint thinner is lighter still. Jet fuel is refined to a much tighter set of specs, and fuel oil to a lesser (and heavier) spec.
IOW, pretty much every petroleum derived liquid is 'essentially' the same, so long as you ignore the differences. (And the differences are significant - else there wouldn't be differences.) For that matter gasoline is 'essentially' the same as diesel, but then so is pariffin and motor oil. ..."

Okay, I'll bite. Since you quoted it, I'm assuming you realize l specifically said Diesel is "essentially the same" as Kerosene, Fuel Oil, Jet Fuel, and what sells here at the Paint Store under the Exxon brand name Varsol but consists entirely of standard grade Kerosene.

I did not say it was essentially the same as Pariffin, motor oil, or gasoline. And there's a reason why, because you can substitute any of the items I specifically mentioned one for the other without issues, but you can't substitute gasoline for diesel without damaging someone or something.

It's a wonder you didn't conclude I implied we can run our tractors on chipped empty bleach bottles, since plastic is also derived from petrolieum.

For the record, just to make you happy:
Plastic, gasoline, sealing wax and 10W-30 is not essentially the same as Diesel fuel.

Certainly they do so from time-to-time, generally in an emergency situation, or whenever no other real choice exists. Sometimes the engine even survives without damage.

How about "all the time". How about the specific fuels I mentioned are listed in the manual of jet airplane engines as being suitable emergency replacements with no implications regarding warranty, time between overhaul, or damage. You don't even have to tell anyone you used them.

However, Pratt & Whitney does say that if you substitute gasoline for JET-A, the time between overhaul for a PT6A goes from 3,000 hours to 4 hours. That's spending five figures to correct the engine damage with gasoline versus going for a normal amount of time with Kerosene, with zero engine damage beyond normal wear. Because they are "essentially the same" , like I said they were, and Gasoline is not, like you implied I said when I most certainly did not.

Re:Hype and hyperbole

[DerekLyons]

Okay, I'll bite. Since you quoted it, I'm assuming you realize l specifically said Diesel is "essentially the same" as Kerosene, Fuel Oil, Jet Fuel, and what sells here at the Paint Store under the Exxon brand name Varsol but consists entirely of standard grade Kerosene.

I did not say it was essentially the same as Pariffin, motor oil, or gasoline.

No, you didn't say it - but what you did say obscured the differences between them.

And there's a reason why, because you can substitute any of the items I specifically mentioned one for the other without issues, but you can't substitute gasoline for diesel without damaging someone or something.

Um - no, you cannot. Try putting Kerosene into a heater designed for household grade fuel oil - and you could be in for a surprise, and vice versa. They are different weights, with different flashpoints, different viscosity, etc... etc... They are only 'essentially the same' at the gross chemical level.

How about "all the time". How about the specific fuels I mentioned are listed in the manual of jet airplane engines as being suitable emergency replacements with no implications regarding warranty, time between overhaul, or damage. You don't even have to tell anyone you used them.

If it were truly 'all the time' then they would not be listed as emergency fuels - but would be listed as acceptable fuels. Aviation is picky that way.

However, Pratt & Whitney does say that if you substitute gasoline for JET-A, the time between overhaul for a PT6A goes from 3,000 hours to 4 hours. That's spending five figures to correct the engine damage with gasoline versus going for a normal amount of time with Kerosene, with zero engine damage beyond normal wear. Because they are "essentially the same" , like I said they were, and Gasoline is not, like you implied I said when I most certainly did not.

The problem is - you did say it, but you don't realize it. That frequently happens when you parrot things from websites and manuals. The things you claim are 'essentially the same', really aren't.

trucker behavior as idea market indicator

[Douglas Simmons]

Truckers know how more than anyone from being financially pressured to drive fuel-efficiently. For example, next time you're in a traffic jam, watch how trucks wait about five stop-and-go-5-feets the other cars do, and they idle at a constant speed equivilant to that. Hills. Wind tricks. Pee bags.

My point is that if it's economically ripe, the truckers will be the first to use a new form of energy. If they ain't using it, it ain't ripe (unless it's an amphetamine). Moreover, "If you got it, a truck brought it."

Easy does it

[Anonymous Coward]

We have to start from somewhere. Gradual improvements are the best.

Re:Easy does it

[Penguinoflight]

Exactly. Hybrid cars have very little effect on a electrical economy, but it gets the masses thinking this way. In addition simply using thousands of engines with hydrogen (instead of BMW using like 20) gives a bigger test base, and encourages more development of high compression engines. Personally I'd still like to see the goverment stop taxing ethanol so heavily. Ethanol is cheaper to produce than gasoline, it's renewable, higher octane, and solves the foreign oil crisis. Still the US governemnt uselessly taxes ethanol, and requires that ethanol be mixed with gasoline when used with vehicles. This 10% gasoline doesn't cost much, but when gasoline is used with ethanol, the ethanol must be degrees of magnitude more pure. Instead of seeing ethanol at about $1 a gallon, it costs about $2.40. The takes impressive savings on fuel to marginal (ethanol is 113 octane, so much more exotic than super premium ultimate gasoline), and leaves the market to racers almost exclusively.

Just an observation...

[mortong]

Strange, from all the truckers I've met, I would have guessed they would have chosen methane.

lost oppertunity to save on coal emissions

[SuperBanana]

As for the source of the hydrogen, Electricity generated from solar power is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Electrolysis is a tremendously inefficient process. "But it's solar, it's free!", you say.

An important aspect of commercial enterprise, which is often missed by many a slashdot poster when they assume "any profit = good". It's not matter of whether you make a profit on $X; it's a matter of whether you'll make more money spending $X on Y, or $X on Z.

It applies in this case. That solar-generated electricity would do a lot more good being fed into the grid where about 2/3rds of it could take the place of coal generated electricity. The coal-burning electricity generating industry spews more crap (much of it low-level radioactive particulate!) into the air than a modern car does. More than, in fact, a well-maintained diesel engine (a poorly maintained or overloaded diesel is another matter.)

It absolutely infuriates me to see electric vehicle owners claiming they're "doing the environment good" by plugging in their car to the grid each night. Some of them say "I'm buying GREEN electricity".

Here's a shocker: if you didn't charge your car using this "green" electricity, it could be replacing coal; instead you're "using" it to replace a fairly non-polluting internal combustion engine. All comes out of the same pot, boys and girls.

Same thing goes for the solar-charged cars. How about putting that power into the grid so that there is less coal burned?

Re:lost oppertunity to save on coal emissions

[at_18]

It absolutely infuriates me to see electric vehicle owners claiming they're "doing the environment good" by plugging in their car to the grid each night. Some of them say "I'm buying GREEN electricity".

They are correct. A power plant is much more efficent than an internal combustion engine, so while they are still using oil, natural gas & co. to power their cars, they are using less than gasoline cars.

if it made combustion hotter...

[YesIAmAScript]

It would greatly increase NOx production. The high temps of Diesel combustion already do this, more heat would make it worse.

Honestly, this whole thing is bunk.

Either the truckers are not paying attention.
Or they're bad at math.
Or they're being paid to lie.
Or they're not even real and someone just made them up to sell product.

This whole "these people are not stupid, they do this for a living, believe them" argument is interesting. Only problem is the argument has a built-in subtext of "but the people who make trucks/Diesel engines for a living ARE stupid, they missed a big fuel saver/energy gainer". Does not compute.

Look! This hydrogen BS works on gas engines too!

http://www.slspart.com/df.html

Re:if it made combustion hotter...

[jonbrewer]

Read about propane fumigation for diesel engines. It works.

Try here: http://www.dieselsmoke.com/info/propaneinjection.h tml

Hardly an innovation

[MattskEE]

"But the HFI system uses electricity from an engine's alternator to power the electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen as needed from small amounts of distilled water. "That's a big advantage and a bit of a novelty," said Venki Raman, an expert on hydrogen-energy applications who started Protium Energy Technologies." TFA claims (though it could be wrong) that the innovation is creating hydrogen from elecrolysis. Frankly, it's a fairly obvious idea to generate hydrogen with elecrolysis. There is a short list of practical well-known methods for getting hydrogen out of other compounds, and elecrolysis of right near the top. The metal-oxide coil in water car posted on slashy a while back was a more innovative, though not necesarily practical way to get at hydrogen. It also says that the idea of using hydrogen to boost efficiency has been published since the 70's. I don't see an innovation here, I just see common knowledge finally brought to the market in a product. My hat's off to them, but though IANAL I think a patent needs a more original idea, unless they patent some highly specific process used to electrolyse water or inject the hydrogen.

$$$ needs to come first

[BobPaul]

The faster and farther we get away from oil the better IMHO. I think the bonus should be the extra MPG, and the environmental impact should be the reason. We can spare a few $$$ for environmentally friendlier vehicles.

I totally agree, but I don't think you'll get where you want to be with that attitude. If money doesn't come first, we'll likely spend lots of money on things that don't make a significantly larger impact than on potentially cheaper things that weren't invented because everyone was spending money on the expensive items.

Yes, a market needs to be developed by spending some money, but I'd much rather see a lot of less expensive methods (such as this one) start going into cars without price increase in the next 2 years than 1 Fuelcell car that hardly anyone can afford in 5 years, even if it delays that fuel cell car by an additional 2-5 years. Changing habbits and spending a few $ (not $$$) will help force the discovery of cheaper solutions in a way unlimited research budgets often don't.

H2 is a gas

[orzetto]

Because you cannot blend hydrogen and diesel, you would have a gas phase since hydrogen is not (very) soluble in diesel. Therefore you cannot make a single product, and have to blend them at combustion time. However, I wonder why they don't use simple hydrogen tanks: electrolysis equipment is not necessarily cheap or light.

Re:H2 is a gas

[Bwian_of_Nazareth]

Is there such a thing as a "simple hydrogen tank"? From what I have read this seems to be the gist of the problem...

Re:H2 is a gas

[afidel]

Actually you could probably chemically bind hydrogen to the structure of the fuel. We do it all the time with fats. It's called partially hydrogenated soybean oil, you'll find it in all sorts of things that are bad for you, like twinkies. I don't know how easy it would be to add some percentage by volume to diesel, but it's worth looking into since it leads to better milage and more complete combustion.

How does it not reduce?

[BobPaul]

to make diesel burn cleaner and more efficiently. It may a useful device, but does nothing to reduce dependance on oil.

Cleaner + More Efficient burn = Less Diesel Used

Less Diesel Used = Less Oil Demanded + Lower Oil Prices

No, it's not a flat out alternative to oil, but it certainly reduces our dependence. Perhaps you meant "cut" instead of "reduce"?

How It Works

[Anonymous Coward]

The generated hydrogen and oxygen, when injected into the intake, promote the combustion of diesel fuel. So the thermodynamic efficiency of the engine increases nonlinearly.

On the downside, the alternator is now constantly loaded, which is an unusual situation and does require additional power.

Apparently the increase in overall combustion efficiency from the addition of H2 and O2 more than offsets the additional power requirement for the electrolysis. So in the end the engine is more efficient and saves money. Cleaner combustion should also lengthen engine lifespan.

It should be possible to do the same thing easily with most automobile engines. The only problem I see is ensuring that the alternator is not overloaded, which is primarily a function of the electrolysis electrode size.

This should also make automobiles easier to start, something useful in wintertime in high-altitude regions such as California where CARB gasoline is a requirement (and is a poor starting fuel).

Captain, we're reporting high bullshit levels

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you generate H2 and O2 from water through electrolysys, a process which is less than 70% efficient (the rest of the energy being released as heat). And that's not including the inefficiency of generating the electricity in the first place. Then you add that hydrogen to the fuel mixture, stir in some technobabble ("one order of magnitude faster", "approaching ideal thermodynamic cycle", "shorter flame quench distance") and voila, you've got greater overall efficiency and lower emmisions. I hope I'm just a cynical bastard, and this isn't yet another example of a junk science scam being posted on slashdot.

Diesel 101

[ishmaelflood]

Diesels actually have excess air available, with the possible (but unlikely) exception of full demand. They emit carbon because there is not enough time for all the fuel to burn fully. The hydrogen /may/ improve the combustion efficiency to reduce this, or even prevent it.

Of course, if they then richen the mixture again (and knowing truckies that's quite likely) then you are back where you started, but with more power.

I don't necessarily believe the hype, but the benefits of using hydrogen to improve efficiency and reduce emissions has been demonstrated by several groups over the past decade.

All that wasted heat

[Timberwolf0122]

Why are they getting the power from the distributer when there is all that lovely heat comming off the engine/exhaust that could be used to make electricity?

Re:All that wasted heat

[KnightStalker]

The increased efficiency comes from the fact that it makes the engine run hotter. I have no way to actually do the math for this (unless you want imaginary numbers) but if it's drawing power from the engine's heat, that'll make the engine run cooler, therefore decreasing efficiency. No free lunch there, I think.

French touch

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who read french... http://www.utopiatech.fr/ Enjoy!

Re:Why can't we just work out the bugs with water

[Anonymous Coward]

"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...

Oil stil dominating

[bjoeg]

As long as world economy is running by oil, it will still take a long time before this new technology would be commercially available, unfortunaly.

Else, it would be in everyones interest to adapt this technology to every type of compatible engine, so we can avoid the Ninja Penguins attacking New York in 2010, when antartica is all gone.

Re:Oil stil dominating

[gordguide]

Did, umm, you read the Wired article? Did you check out any links? They're selling them at retail for tractor-trailer rigs now. In fact, I found from the firm's website, that there's an installer in my city, a company I'm quite familiar with; one that has worked on some of my vehicles before, and did excellent work to boot.

Don't know about you, but to me, that sounds like "commercially available".

okay! cool now i would like to know:

[Anonymous Coward]

where can i buy a HFI kit for my car?
hurry up already damnit. some of us don't talk
but do so give me an addresse and a compatibilty
liste already!!!
and maybe if it's such a small amount maybe
insead of burdening the alternator, why not
a .50 x .50 m solar cell? of course there's not
always sunshine (duh!) but ...

Snake oil...

[Anonymous Coward]

News at nine: Dumb truckers caught by Canadian snake oil salesmen.
Nuff sed.

into Star Trek! Nooooooo!!

[dpilot]

We need to understand that "Noooooooooo!!" a little better.

Is it the classic, high-pitched "Nooooooooooo!!"
or
Is it the neuvo Star Wars, low-pitched, newly-minted Darth Vader "Noooooooooooo!!"

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Right sentiment, wrong conclusion

[Halo-]

You're forgetting the the truck's engines aren't 100% efficient. Not all the energy in the diesel is being extracted. By adding a little bit more hydrogen to the combustion process, the efficiency is boosted. (Not to 100%, but a small bit) So yes, the power to the wheels of the truck is marginally reduced by the additional load on the alternator, but that is more than offset by the increased energy extraction which results.

The hydrogen isn't so much a fuel, as a catalyst. A litte bit goes a long way, and more isn't necessarily better. Adding a small amount might improve efficency 10%, but adding twice as much doesn't result in a 20% boost, in fact, it would probably reduce the efficency.

Are they nuts??

[terrahertz]

From TFA: "HFI's manufacturer guarantees 10 percent fuel savings, which likely won't interest car companies or consumers, Raman said. But a reduction of pollution emissions could spur broader use."

Umm...who *wouldn't* be interested in saving 10% on fuel costs? As if biodiesel wasn't making diesel tech attractive enough...this is a true no-brainer. Go-go-gadget hydrogen-power.

Re:Are they nuts??

[Firethorn]

10% at 30mpg for 15k annual miles isn't the same as 10% at 7mpg for 300k annual miles, if the installed cost in each case is $12k.

Savings might also be less for a gasoline engine than a diesel.

Re:Are they nuts??

[ChazEatsKnomes]

The website for the add-on states that the technology is scalable; the Popular Science Article states that the SUV version will be available in March for $1,000. A friend has a truck that gets 15 MPG, gas costs him $2.10, and so he would have to drive 71,429 miles to break even.

1000 / 2.1 = 476.19
476.19 *15 = 7,142.86 miles.
1.1x = x + 7,142.86 .1x = 7,142
x = 71,429

I just did the math on hybrids with current figures, and calculated that you would break even at 41,423 miles, which my father drives in 10 months. If he replaced his car after two years, as he did with his first Focus, he would save $1,293.26, or 49% of the cost of hybrid technology. Well, it is something, but who else drives a car for even 40,000 miles? Who else drives that much?!

If a unit were made for the standard Accord for just over $600 it would break even after the same mileage.

My Local Honda dealership has two 2,005 Accord Hybrids. The less-expensive one is $30,655.00 and gets 29/37. They only have 2,006 Non-Hybrids and the most expensive V6 is $28,019 which is $2,636 more and is rated 20/29 which is 45%/28% better, averaging 36%. $2,636/$2.26=1166 gallons=41,423 miles.

I see the two technologies being mutually exclusive; the hybrid technology is already efficient and periodically turns off the engine!

same principle as hybrids

[peter303]

Current hybrids store excess mechanical and electric energy from braking and downhill in batteries to be consume by an electric assist-motor during low and high speeds. This hydrogen method replaces the batteries with electrolically created hydrogen gas from the surplus energy, and employs it as a super-burner rather than an assist-engine. I wonder which method is cheaper, including additonal parts and reliability?

FNORD

[just fiddling around]

You play too much INWO.

Taleban Choose Hydrogen Power

[Anonymous Coward]

>Truckers Choose Hydrogen Power

Are those truckers bearded and wear a green headband with gold calligraphic inscription? If the answer is yes, infidels better run for their lifes.

Hidrogen = Hindenburg

Re:Taleban Choose Hydrogen Power

[Luminary Crush]

Ummm, no. The hydrogen-oxygen gas mix is produced "on the fly" - there is never much onboard to cause an explosion, as it's fed right into the induction system, and is not produced when the vehicle is not running.

Hydrogen Embrittlement!!!

[bdleonard]

Nobody is disobeying thermodynamics. The injection of hydrogen improves the efficency in burning the hydrocarbon == less fuel used. The reason that nobody has used a system like this before is that the burning of hydrogen leads to making the iron and steel inside the engine brittle == catostrophic engine failure. I think these truckers will be in for a rude surprise down the road. (Bad pun possibly intended) For the truely dedicated: http://www.knovel.com/knovel2/Toc.jsp?BookID=776

Re:Hydrogen Embrittlement!!!

[paulpas]

Aluminium engines also subject to this?

Green Truckers

[freezin fat guy]

Funny, I just bumped into a trucker who's proudly crowing about how he's running machinery on soybean oil.

Patents kill inovation

[sgt scrub]

I've been mulling this concept in my head for years. Enriching desiel fuel with hydrogen created by the heat of the engine. The direction I started with was to generate the hydrogen using a "reverse peltier" methode. Two disimilar metals create a current when one side is hot and the other is cold. http://www.greencarcongress.com/thermoelectrics/ I wish I could find a link to the guy that actually created a generator out of this process using the exhaust system of a semi to create electricity in the 1Mw area. Anyway, using electrolysis was only good to create small amounts. The difficulties in pluming the hyrdogen into the fuel system, while keeping steam/water out of the mix, made the expense greater than the gain. Lately I've been thinking of routing the heat exhaust onto, or against, an area of a water tank. On the inside of the tank, where the heat is focused, I would like to place a zinc coil. In, an untested, theory the heated rod should suck the oxygen out of the water leaving hydrogen. Unfortunately, both ideas require me to cross into the area of patented technologies.

Re:Patents kill inovation

[sgt scrub]

Here is the link to the guy I was talking about. http://www.hi-z.com/websit07.htm

Re:Patents kill inovation

[Luminary Crush]

Peltiers are notoriously inefficient. If it were otherwise, we'd probably see them employed in this capacity in large-scale power production where heat is generated rather than turning a turbine.

Speaking of which, you could create a steam turbine with water heated from the exhaust, which could also generate electricity. There you take double-hits though - heat -> mechanical -> electrical. I'm guessing it's still more efficient than Peltiers.

One other note: this hydrogen-oxygen injection system is supposed to cool the exhaust gasses in the process - one comment I read was that the exhaust pipe could be "held in your hand". That might not work well if you are depending on heat at the exhaust to create electricity....

Uhm...

[C10H14N2]

There's a consumer-ready hydrogen filling station a mile from my house. Seriously.

Granted, you won't be driving cross-country, but I wish people would get their facts straight. They DO exist. There may only be a handful around the country, but cheeky statements like "oh, which don't exist by the way" just make the author look like an ass when I've been able to pull up to a hydrogen pump for two years...

Improved mileage vs repair cost / engine lifetime?

[ehud42]

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but doesn't a more fuel effecient vehicle will run at a higher temperature?

Maybe I missed it, but does the added hydrogen keep the cylinder head temperature down as well as increasing the amount of fuel being burnt?

There were a number of crack pot devices available for cars that 'injected exotic materials into the intake manifold, dramatically improving fuel effeciency'. These turned out to be nothing more then putting a controlled leak in the intake, thereby leaning the mixture - which saved gas at the cost of increased running temperatures which led to shortened engine lifetime.

As an example of people desperate to conserve fuel - look at pilots of smaller aircraft that have a mixture control by the throttle. The conventional wisdom has always been to lean out the mixture to save fuel (especially as you gain altitude). However, there have been some concerns that pilots may be over leaning the mix and causing pre-mature engine failure. (A much bigger problem when you rely on the engine to avoid a collision with mother earth.)

Old technology by WWII

[bluGill]

Water injection was OLD technology by WWII. The 1904 Hart-Parr tractor came from the factory with water injection. (the first known commercial application of water injection)

Water injection however has problems. Water freezes in winter, which is perhaps the worst on. So it is used where it is needed (Hart-Parr wanted to use kerosene fuel, but they needed some knock control), or where the hassle is worth the gains. (racing)

Re:Old technology by WWII

[Spoke]

Water freezes in winter, which is perhaps the worst on.

Yes, but you can mix water with alcohol or methanol 50/50 which will also keep the water from freezing, but that creates additional hassle. And didn't I say it was pioneered in WWII as well? Though the tractor you mention from 1904 is well before WWII.

I can see it now.

[paulpas]

Trucker hydrogen supplimental systems decrease the percentage of available Ozone.

Iraqi oil production - off topic as hell

[whitehatlurker]

Well, I didn't make the claim, but it apparently depends on whose figures you use.

The DOE show that the prewar production levels were on the order of 2.5 m bbl/day (peak) and 2.0 m bbl/day now.

CIA World Factbook shows Iraqi production as currently 2.25 million bbl/day (2004 est.); note - prewar production (in 2002) was 2.03 million bbl/day (2004 est.)

And the Iraqi gov't says they can return to prewar levels sometime in 2006.

Joy

[MemeRot]

Crisco powered trucks :)

Re:Not Alone (not even close)

[Firethorn]

I think that the old saying 'You get what you pay for' applies here. Having read the $200 page, it seems to assume that generating the hydrogen is free. It's also scaled for a car, not a diesel semi. The idea that it'll benefit every IC engine is also hooky, especially with the 21% claim. Basically, I'd want a guarentee and a positive review by a company I trust, such as consumer digest.

The second site didn't mention prices, but did mention that it uses a gallon of distilled water per 1000 miles, as well as some sort of electrolytic solution. The distilled water isn't a big deal if you figure on saving 3-4 gallons of gas/diesel per 1000 miles. But the ounce of electrolyte is questionable.

Like what other posters have mentioned, diesel tends to burn dirtier than gasoline. Modern gasoline cars already combust the vast majority of their fuel, but diesels were something like 10% lower. You have alot more to gain if the standard is only resulting in 85% burn, rather than 95-97%. Then again, all three sites claim to benefit even gasoline engines.

As for taking some time to notice the effects, cleaning the engine seems likely. This was seen when some older cars were switched to 10%ethanol. Performance would decrease for a little while, then improve. This could be attained purely by much cleaner burning resulting in new deposits not happening, and old deposits breaking off because of engine stresses (heat, vibration, etc)

If I was this company, I'd be offering free trials to big companies. If the payoff is really only 1-2 years, tractor companies will take them up on it left and right. I'd be encouraging trucker magazines to produce articles on it. I'd see if I could get consumer digest to test it.

Re:Improved mileage vs repair cost / engine lifeti

[leftCoaster]

The reason for leaning out the fuel mixture as the aircraft gains altitude is not for fuel efficiency, but to prevent fouling of the plugs.
As the aircraft gains altitude the density of the atmosphere goes down, making the fuel-air mixture much richer. If the mixture isn't leaned out the engine will flood, resulting the return of said aircraft to mother earth -- not necessarily in a location conducive to a happy meeting.

snake oil

[YesIAmAScript]

"Hot Smoke results from incomplete combustion during heavy engine loads. Hot smoke also results from an over-rich fuel mixture. Insufficient oxygen prevents the diesel fuel from completely oxidizing. Besides generating particulate pollution, hot smoke performs no useful work; it reduces net engine power and lowers vehicle mpg. Traditional engine adjustments do nothing to hot smoke production. Fumigation reduces most hot smoke production resulting in reduced pollution and increased vehicle mpg."

Hot smoke happens because you don't have enough oxygen in the chamber to burn the fuel. So you're going to fix this by adding more fuel and no more oxygen?

Also, this LPG injection makes it possible to burn all the air, even that near the cold cylinder walls! But then later it says, don't use it when the engine is cold. Those statements make no sense.

Please, give me a break.

I do understand adding LPG could make more power. But it's because you're burning more fuel. And you're paying for more fuel too. No magic here.

Re:Not Alone (not even close)

[mpe]

I think that the old saying 'You get what you pay for' applies here. Having read the $200 page, it seems to assume that generating the hydrogen is free. It's also scaled for a car, not a diesel semi.

Such a system might make more sense on a locomotive or a marine diesel.

The idea that it'll benefit every IC engine is also hooky, especially with the 21% claim.Also given that spark ignition and gas turbines have very different combustion mechanisms.

Umm, no.

[MasterShake]

The octane rating was an arbitrary scale much like the farenheight(sp) scale. When they began testing fuels for things like auto-ignition in ICEs, they thought iso-octane was the hardest to auto-ignite. Later they discovered things like benzene and toluene were even harder to ignite, having octane ratings near 106. Also, the "octane" rating at a fuel pump is not necissarily the original scale. There is a new method that is not based on the octane molecule at all. I suggest some googleing.

Re:Umm, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

umm no? google it yourself. the octane level cannot be higher than 100. period. arbitrary scale? wtf?

this website is geared towards morons -- so this may help you out a little.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question90.htm

Scam, or real?

[cr0sh]

This thing sounds like what has been sold on Ebay in various forms as "hydrogen boosting" or "hydro-boost", of a gas engine in an automobile. In this case, it is being applied to a diesel engine in a truck. But based on what I am hearing, it doesn't sound much different.

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...

The power of slashdotters

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to get the combined force of slashdotters to refute gravity.

I call troll

[Anonymous Coward]

You make generalized accusations. You say nothing that you can defend based on facts. You are a troll. If you want to be a better troll, study the works of Biff.

BTW, I rebuilt my first engine in 1966. I've done lots since then. They've all lasted a long time and they've all been way better than stock. And, no, I've never used nitros.

RTFA!

[Dire Bonobo]

> The energy in the match already exists as potential energy.

And the energy in the unburned diesel that's being lost out the tailpipe already exists as potential energy.

The hydrogen is only useful to aid in burning that otherwise-lost diesel, just like the KE involved in striking a match is only useful to aid in burning that otherwise-unburned match.

How many times do people have to be told to RTFA before they'll at least stop pretending they know what they're talking about?

Making more energy... ON TH FLY?

[newpath4comVersion2]

You've been reading my page: http://www.newpath4.com/enginewow.htm .

I know you're right; http://tinyurl.com/7aaca

[newpath4comVersion2]

Push comes to shove soon. I just released my last engine to the Internet: http://www.newpath4.com/millenialdawnpowerandlight secure21.htm . We will soon see which wins out, "Free Energy" or sockXXXholder profits er stockholder profits. I announced my engine from February to October 2005, told everyone what I had was going to change the World. I hope they listened. I encouraged that new laws be written to protect stockholders from the impact of a new technology. I tried to keep from hurting anyone. Now da cat's outta da bag and I guess no matter how hard I tried to protect them they'll soon be screaming bloody murder. Well, it was a toss up; stockholders of old technologies vs new babies being genetically damaged from hydrocarbon/lead/etc permeation. The world was able to ignore my previous engine: http://www.newpath4.com/enginewow.htm but I doubt it will ignore a waterwheel that sets up its own matter stream & can go ANYWHERE. http://tinyurl.com/7aaca .

Metamods: 'tain't informative if it's wrong.

[Engineer-Poet]

A partial list of errors:

1. It's "cetane", not "setane".
2. Higher cetane number is associated with easier self-ignition; it's the opposite of octane.
3. Cetane number has little to do with the durability of diesels (but plenty to do with NOx emissions and noise).
4. Engines burn their fuel very completely as it is. The only thing hydrogen would do is increase flame speeds and burn the fuel faster, allowing the combustion gases to do more expansion against the piston.

Hydrogen trucks.

[Geeky Trucker]

Okay I am gonna run an idea past you, tell me if I am off track. I drive a truck and would rather have a way to make electricity to run stuff like a 12v heater, the tv, a microwave, my laptop, a satellite system, and the stereo while I am stopped instead of idleing the truck. Wouldn't it make more sense to use the hydrogen to make electricity to charge batteries for 10 or 12 hours and not burn diesel. I know all about the Idle Air hookups in some truckstops but they are not numerous enough to be a help in being more profitable (I own my truck sorry I have to think of this first.) and more environmentally conscious which I try to be. Generators and APU units are heavy and undependable. Inverters are light and dependable and I would rather have one. Don't rip me too bad but please comment I would like to know.