supplimental hydrogen...

[edothas]

This guy seems to have his stuff together... however, what he can't tell me is what it would take to modify the ECU on a rover for this to work. I'm working on converting to a 1991 3.9 liter, and would like to concurrently put together a how-to for those with EFI v-8 engines. Anyone have any thoughts?

https://www.smacksboosters.110mb.com/

 

[RickB]

physics

you just gotta think about it

otherwise I'll see about posting a link to something written by a physicist about this tomorrow

 

[Dave Russell]

Doesn't take much physics. It's a total joke. The amount of oxygen-hydrogen that is generated by this device, 1.7 lpm, would not be enough to supply even one hundredth of the needed fuel to run a 1.8 l engine at a slow idle. It's all a matter of fuel needed vs fuel supplied by the device.

About the best it could do would be to make you feel good if you wished hard enough. You can mess with the numbers all you want but there is still no noticeable gain.
D

 

[PAUL161]

Doesn't take much physics. It's a total joke. The amount of oxygen-hydrogen that is generated by this device, 1.7 lpm, would not be enough to supply even one hundredth of the needed fuel to run a 1.8 l engine at a slow idle. It's all a matter of fuel needed vs fuel supplied by the device.

About the best it could do would be to make you feel good if you wished hard enough. You can mess with the numbers all you want but there is still no noticeable gain.
D

I agree with you Dave. Even though the technology for development is out there, I doubt very much if it's going to be another Bill Gates back yard discovery. Not saying that some of these people are not on the right track, but for now, their just fairy tails. Right now their looking for the "Pet Rock People" to sell their wares to. Money, it's all about money. Remember what P.T.Barnum said?

 

[aeronca65t]

Wishful thinking.

The energy needed to "crack" the hydrogen out of water has to come from *somewhere*.
It comes from an additional load on the alternator.
The loss is greater than the gain.

 

[RickB]

<span style="font-weight: bold">Hydrogen as a Fuel for Automobiles</span>

https://mb-soft.com/public2/hydrogen.html

and this one:

<span style="font-weight: bold">Battery-Powered or Hybrid Cars and Hydrogen-Powered Vehicles</span>

https://mb-soft.com/public/cars00.html

 

[Scott_Hower]

I work for the world's largest producer of hydrogen. If this device had any potential whatsoever to efficiently produce hydrogen to fuel a vehicle it would have been patented and off the market by now. It's a novelty.

As others have said, there is no magic bullet.

Most of the merchant hydrogen available at the moment is produced by natural gas or steam-methane reforming process.

 

[RonMacPherson]

Over here in Hawaii, there was an article in the weekends paper about a big island company forming to explore hydrogen conversion using solar power.....

Said something on the order of 44 hours needed to "crack" one quart of hydrogen....


Early development stages. Maybe by the time our grandkids are getting their drivers licenses it will be a viable solution.

 

[RickB]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:]to explore hydrogen conversion using solar power.....[/QUOTE]

There are no doubt (IMHO) many far better uses for solar energy.

Cracking hydrogen is not a lossless process, so you are essentially storing the suns energy as hydrogen minus the inherent inefficiencies of the process.

That being said, I'm for the development of solar energy - I just wish those who come up with these ideas would all be cured of their CRIS disease sooner rather than later.

It takes a certain fixed amount of energy to do any certain fixed amount of work. You can't bypass this, its cold hard reality.

If you convert one type of energy into another you will suffer loss. Sorry, this is the real world. Converting any type of electrical energy into another for storage and later use (or immediate use) means you are taking a loss right off the top.
It becomes a game to discover what medium to store your energy while experiencing the least amount of loss.

Gasoline is stored solar energy.
Follow my reasoning:
The sun shone on Earth, plants and animals were born, grew, died and eventually became oil, which was later extracted from the ground, refined and sent out to the pumps to end up in the tanks of our favorite LBC's.

This stored solar energy is already available, is part of the historic carbon load of this planet, and apparently will last us all a minimum of 'a few more years'.
After it is gone we <span style="font-weight: bold">will</span> do something else. How long it will last is a function of how efficient we become at using it.

Current tech in internal combustion engines has us at about 25% efficient. Increasing that at all will help in all of the ways that matter. Higher efficiency will mean less emissions and lower cost per mile. Higher efficiency can also mean more work done per gallon of fuel (higher mpg or faster car).

There are ideas out there, I think there will be a breakthrough soon. Atomizing the fuel better prior to or during intake can make a big difference, that's just one example. Making an 8 cylinder engine where two of the cylinders act as an air compressor injecting more air into the other 6 is another.
These things are already in the works, who know what else is on the drawing boards?

 

[kennypinkerton]

I kind of like this guy's rather simple idea...
homemade75mpg hybrid

 

[RickB]

Kenny, I love it. That's exactly what we were talking about at work - essentially an electric car with the charging system on board. You can feed a generator with many types of fuel, but they are designed for efficiency from the ground up.
Thanks for that link!

 

[racingenglishcars]

I kind of like that guy's hybrid also.

One of the biggest losses in internal combustion engines is thermal loss. Letting all that heat escape out the exhaust pipe, out the cylinder walls, out the water radiator, radiating directly away from the engine etc., basically everything that gets hot, the thermal loss is constantly around 30%. Add to that friction losses in just everything in the vehicle. The way to go is less conversion from one energy form to another. More conversion = more loss.
Our engines (MAN B&W Diesel), being so big, have the advantage that as an engine's cylinder volume increases, the cylinder surface area increases less (volume is to the third power, area is to the second power). 52% thermal efficiency is common in these giant engines.

 

[RonMacPherson]

If you've got time on your hands do a little research on Smokey Yunick. His last project before his death was on a heat engine. Early stage of development when he died, but he did have several large corporations following his progress, closely.

 

[edothas]

Everyone seems to miss the point of this mechanism. The purpose is to replace *a little* of the gas (about 10%), not all of it. and i have checked the physics. the original research was done by NASA, and my father is a astrophysicist. I have checked the pitfalls in the physics of it. It can give you better emissions and 10% to 20% better gas mileage, depending on the engine. But how do I get a rover computer to open the injectors 10% less? That's the part that stumps me.

 

[RickB]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:]It can give you better emissions and 10% to 20% better gas mileage[/QUOTE]

This is the part that would need a lot of independent testing.
Once again, you can't get energy from nowhere. My 10 year old son will tell you that "we can't create or destroy energy, we can only manage it"
(ok, he's a smart kid) :wink:
The point is, you have to expend energy to get the hydrogen.

An "easy" test would be to pipe a small hydrogen supply into your system so it could feed along with your gasoline. Run this and check mileage and power. Run it at different rates of flow to see if you can find an ideal amount to feed.
Now calculate the energy it takes to produce that amount of hydrogen and adjust your mileage by that amount.
Do you have a net gain or loss?

I'm off to discovery.com to suggest this to the Mythbusters.

 

[aeronca65t]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:]to explore hydrogen conversion using solar power.....

There are no doubt (IMHO) many far better uses for solar energy.....
[/QUOTE]

Since I've been living in a ~Passive Solar, Direct-Gain House~ for the last 25+ years, I'd agree with you.

Agreed: This would be a good one for MythBusters.

 

[RickB]

Well they are sick & tired of it over there.
I posted, and then found the thread deleted.

Here is the sticky thread at the top of the list:

https://community.discovery.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9551919888/m/2321969559

Makes all the points I've raised and many more.

Bottom line, it takes more energy to get the hydroxy than the hydroxy can deliver and there is no magic alchemy involved in mixing hydroxy with gasoline.

 

[74WannaB]

Just to put my two cents worth in, this site (https://www.switch2hydrogen.com/)shows a guy from New Mexico working on a hydrogen fuel system that uses tanks that store the hydrogen in solid form as a hydride. I remember reading about hydride storage systems for possible auto fuel way back during the 70s.

Recently I read an article (I think it was in Popular Mechanics)written by Jay Leno. He was testing a H powered BMW. It used a liquid hydrogen tank. A big thermos, I guess. It apparently worked well until the car was parked. The hydrogen has to be vented because it is boiling, and if the car sits long enough the tank will eventually empty out.

I guess there's no magic bullet.

I saw a youtube video on the Chevy volt. It runs for 40 miles on batteries then a 1L engine kicks in to charge the batteries. I guess if you ran less that 40 miles a day the engine never would run. If that's the case, whats the point in having the engine in the first place? :laugh:

 

[RickB]

1 litre engine = way too big IMHO.

Use a little and efficient motor with a nice big alternator to provide charging voltage. That kind of science is already tried & true.

Also what's wrong with charging while you travel?

 

[Nunyas]

Everyone seems to miss the point of this mechanism. The purpose is to replace *a little* of the gas (about 10%), not all of it. and i have checked the physics. the original research was done by NASA, and my father is a astrophysicist. I have checked the pitfalls in the physics of it. It can give you better emissions and 10% to 20% better gas mileage, depending on the engine. But how do I get a rover computer to open the injectors 10% less? That's the part that stumps me.

Replace the air intake piping with piping that's 10% larger in diameter. However, this could have the adverse effect of making your engine run too lean when you're not adding the H into the mix to burn. Actually, making the intake pipe 10% larger in diameter is probably incorrect. You need to select an air intake piping size that is large enough to reduce the intake air velocity by 10%. The MAS will sense a slower air velocity send it's data to the ECU cause the ECU to think you're drawing less air, and inject less fuel. Obviously, this is not ideal, because you won't be able to switch to normal gasoline operation "on the fly". Should you run out of H you'll be running your engine in a dangerously lean condition.