Inject hydrogen into your intake = double the mileage
 

http://www.hydrorunner.com/

Interesting product, it uses some of the electricity generated by the engine to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which is then sucked into the intake. I wonder if something like this will end up being common on trains and trucks.

At the current gas prices it would still take years to pay for itself (the website claims it costs $3500, but doesn't say whether this includes installation), so you would probably have to keep it each time you sold your car to make it worthwhile.

Oh god, not this here.

I'm not even gonna click on the link. All I'm gonna say is:

2 H20 -> 2H + 02 takes X energy
2H + 02 -> 2 H20 yields X energy

Therefore, you will never produce any net power to help push the car.

And turbochargers don't produce more power from smaller displacement engines when needed while permitting lower fuel consumption when cruising vs. large displacement engines.

And regenerative braking justs wastes all that tire warming heat by recharging hybrid batteries.

:rolleyes:

[Clearly this is a Dean and Scott bash heads kind of day.]

They installed one in a Furd truck and got nearly 40 mpg.

The internet got a lot more interesting.

I don't believe it. You cannot use on-board electrolysis powered by the engine to generate hydrogen as fuel for the engine. It's a perpetual motion machine. The laws of physics don't allow it.

Now if the hydrogen as an additive somehow makes the engine use diesel or gasoline more efficiently, then you might have a case. But I've never heard of any chemistry where burning hydrocarbons in the presence of hydrogen yields more energy out of the hydrocarbon combustion. Remember burning the hydrogen can at best yield the same amount of energy you already spent to get the hydrogen out of the water to begin with.

I still think it's snake oil, or this "technology" would be on production cars from the factory.

What does this have to do with the law of conservation of energy?

A turbo doesn't make energy out of nothing, it allows you to cram more air into a small motor so it has an effectively larger displacement. You still need to dump the appropriate amount of fuel in there which is where the energy comes from. And a turbo motor off boost is usually much less efficient than a N/A motor of the same size because the N/A motor has a much higher base compression. What do you think is more efficient a 2.0L 8.5:1 motor, or a 2.0L 10:1 motor?

And regenerative braking recovers energy that would otherwise be wasted as heat. It's not creating energy out of thin air (or water as it may be) either.

You want to talk about vastly improving combustion motor efficiency? Scrap all this water-as-fuel nonsense and start building 6-stroke Crower cycle motors that turn waste heat into kinetic energy.

The F150 takes off.

There's a hint of something about using "unused" electricity from the alternator for "on demand" H/O2 supply. If there is electrical current being created using energy fromt he motor that not being turned in to anything but heat, then theoretically there could be a gain sort of like regenerative braking charges hybrid batteries. But I can't conceive of any possibility of 75-125% gains in fuel efficiency. Maybe like 5%.

Nothing, which is what the conservation of energy has to do with on demand injection systems of any type which this is. :P

Perhaps you should click the link.

Tell me where the energy is coming from to do the electrolysis. Keep in mind that combustion engines are around 20% efficient. That means to make the power needed to extract 1 unit of hydrogen out of water, you need 5 units of hydrogen. I don't have to click the link (though I did and saw nothing to explain how it's supposed to actually work, it's just a bunch of marketing crap) to know that on-demand hydrogen systems that uses water electrolysis are bullshit.

There was one promising method of using an electrolysis type process on an aluminum alloy that releases hydrogen with a cost much lower than the energy created by burning the hydrogen, but the energy cost of creating the aluminum alloy was like 10 times more than that of the available hydrogen thus making the overall process not worth it.

If there's "unused" energy in the alternator, just slap an electric booster motor on the transmission that's directly powered by the alternator's "free" power. Why bother with this long drawn-out process of electrolysis generated hydrogen boosting the power of the ICE motor? Especially considering electric motors are more efficient than combustion motors.

I'm still calling bullshit. This stuff is a scam.

:concur:

That may well be true, but the hydrogen may also cause the fuel to burn more quickly and completely thus increasing the overall efficiency of the system.

That is why your "formulas" do not really apply as they do not include the entire system.

That was my point. You threw out pseudo formulas like they made you right without even clicking the link. That is what I was calling you on.

Yeah, 'cause I've never seen anything like this on the internet before. :rolleyes:

http://www.google.com/search?q=water...ient=firefox-a

I tell you what. If I were selling something like that and it wasn't a scam, I'd have my patent number for my chemical process that allows hydrogen to make diesel and gas burn 80% more efficiently all over my website.

I'd also be selling it directly to Toyota, GM, and Ford... not viral marketing it via MySpace, Craig's List, and eBay as a pyramid business where random people build kits out of masons jars based on my eBook instructions. :rolleyes:

And those "pseudo formulas" are in fact the formulas for electrolysis of water, and combustion of Hydrogen. And the laws of physics do require that the energy created by one equal the energy required for the other. This is basic high school chemistry. The formulas don't make me right, the laws of physics do. You cannot under any circumstances net surplus energy in a hydrogen powered engine fueled by electrolysis that's also powered by that same engine.

And as far as Hydrogen as a catalyst in diesel/gas combustion, I'd very much like to see the formulas for how that's supposed to work. If, as the site claims, the hydrogen from 1 liter of water is enough to get 80% more efficiency for 3000-4000 miles worth of gas, why isn't the gov't mandating just putting a tiny amount of hydrogen into the fuel at the gas station? Assuming a 20mpg car, that's only 2/3 of a liter of hydrogen per 175 gallons of fuel, or about a 0.1% hydrogen/fuel mixture.

No way I believe that a 0.1% hydrogen/diesel mixture burns 80% more efficiently than straight diesel. Give me a break.

But imagine if you used a Tornado with it? Gas would flow out of the tank!

They are formulas of sorts for electrolysis and combustion, but are not really related to conservation of energy and certainly not the entire combustion process of an ICE. E=mC^2, 2H+S+202=H2SO4...

That's just the thing, the formulas for burning hydrocarbons are actually very simple, and none of them involve hydrogen outside of the hydrogen contained in the hydrocarbon.

Here's the formula for propane that I just ganked off Wiki:

Propane + Oxygen -> Water + Carbon dioxide + heat
C3H6 + 5 O2 -> 4 H2O + 3 CO2 + heat

It's just a simple equation... for every propane molecule, you need 5 oxygen molecules to produce 4 water molecules, 3 carbon dioxide molecules and heat. Of course if you're burning in air (instead of pure oxygen) there's nitrogen involved, but it's just a present in the same quantities before and after the reaction.

Adding ambient hydrogen to that equation does nothing... if there's excess oxygen available, then the hydrogen will burn with the oxygen to produce water. But in reality, because the car is fueling the reaction based on a metered amount of air, you in fact should have just enough oxygen for the fuel, which means that if there's free hydrogen present, it will react with some of the available oxygen and therefore result in unburnt fuel in the exhaust. So what happens then? The O2 sensor in the tailpipe senses that the car is running "rich", and trims back the fuel. Hey, there's your so called "fuel savings" as noted by the car's on-board mpg computer, except you're now trying to run on hydrogen while adding drag to the alternator in the same amount of energy as the energy density of the hydrogen you're producing.

So what you're getting is something that reduces the injector duty cycle as seen by the ECU so your mpg computer reads that you're getting better mileage in trade for making less power, running the motor lean, and ultimately worse mileage. It would be far better just to reprogram the trip computer to report that you're getting 5mpg more than you actually are... it's the same effect w/o damaging the motor.

I think the only way to solve this is for Scott to buy the kit and install it on the wrx. If it doesn't work, then Dean must purchase said wrx. Its a win win.

Then Scott will just claim it blew his motor because we all know what happens when Scott tries anything on his WRX.

On a serious note, I'm skeptical but they do have actual evidence. I'd like to see this on mythbusters or something.

Now please describe in detail the thermodynamics, flame front propagation and combustion details in a mixed fuel of your choice and hydrogen environment at varying levels. Animation and ultra slow motion video would be appreciated with and without Tornado intake insert for extra credit.

Why? It's obvious at a much more remedial level that it doesn't work.

The first page of their test results says the test was conducted using the car's onboard mpg computer. Hardly a rigorous scientific examination of the system. They didn't even do the old drive 100 miles and fill it up to see how much gas it took.

So only Scott and I believe this is possible?

Things like this make me Picard...
:picard:

Ya I noticed that too and it made me laugh. We both went to engineering school, we both know the whole thing seems like BS. All I'm saying is that they do have actual non-scientific proof which is enough to make me want to see a scientific test. The concept seems stupid to me but I'm far from an expert so I'm not going to sit here and say it's unpossible.

Mythbusters, where are you???

Some other companies selling the same technology:

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005...enenhance.html
http://www.pureenergysystems.com/store/Hydrogen-Boost/
http://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/hydro...ators-cars.htm
http://www.poweredwithwater.com/index.html
http://www.savefuel.ca/hydrogen/
http://www.chechfi.ca/

Some of these sites look dodgy as hell, others look legit. The last site claims they have over 100 installed on tractor-trailers with over 6 million miles of data now.

From Mike's last link:

http://www.chechfi.ca/pdfs/hydrogen_injection.pdf

Now we're getting somewhere... finally something that makes a little sense. This I might actually believe. But the system they're describing would require a properly metered hydrogen injection system, not a mason's jar with two electrodes and a plastic tube.

And what else I'm curious about... if it takes such a small amount of hydrogen, why not just have a small carbon/kevlar pressure tank of the stuff with a regulator controlled by the injector duty cycle that bleeds the tank off into the intake? It would be smaller, lighter, probably safer in a wreck than the car battery is, not sap power for electrolysis, cheaper to produce, and more reliable than these goofy on-demand systems. And if you didn't want to have to fill them up from a gas supplier, you could still have the option of running a home electrolysis unit off the grid power in your house which is much more efficient that running a gas or diesel motor to do it on the fly.

Anyway, I'm at least seeing someone make an attempt at a real explanation at how this could work, but I'm still not convinced that it's just not a more sophisticated version of the same scam. If hydrogen really makes as much a difference as they claim it does, why isn't this on production cars? How much did Toyota spend to design the Prius to bump from 30 mpg to 45 mpg? Didn't they know they could have gotten 55 mpg just by boiling some water into the intake? :rolleyes:

Gosh, it speeds up the flame front and promotes more complete combustion? Imagine that... :rolleyes: See Post #14...

You couldn't pay me to drive around with a tank of hydrogen on my Hinden-car.

This kit looks like it was made with parts from the clearance rack at Kragen. How can you charge so much without some hard evidence that it works.
http://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/hydro...ators-cars.htm
This one looks a little bit more professional but just seems like one more thing to worry about. I am just so tired of people tricking you into doing something.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/11/hydrogenenhance.html

Why not, then your car could be all...

:manatee:

Sure, you said that... but the place selling it does not. They said it runs off "extra" electricity from the alternator. :unamused: Clearly the place selling the thing doesn't know how it works and can't even prove that it does. It's still a scammer device that merely makes your on-board trip computer read a higher mpg and is likely to cause problems in the long run.

As far as the flame front theory... IMO there's no chemistry that's making hydrogen a benefit... perhaps there's a physical effect that makes it work, but I haven't seen anything that's not a dumbed down explanation like the grass fire analogy in that PDF. So while there's one place putting out at least a plausible explanation and admitting that the power for electrolysis is basically a 100% loss, they're still not providing access to independent research that explains the process. So it's either a much better scam than the other places, or it's just that untested. Either way, I wouldn't want it in my car.

Put it like this:

The Subaru SVX uses an intake resonance system called IRIS in order to improve the intake efficiency at certain RPMs thus allowing the motor to make more power/torque without having to go to forced induction. The system probably cost Subaru a bunch of R&D time and money to develop and ensure that it was reliable over the life of the motor, which is one reason why the SVX cost over $30,000 in 1992, yet only makes a modest improvement over a normal intake track.

The Turbonator is an aftermarket device that's supposed to do a similar job by swirling the air in the intake thus allowing it to fill more air into the cylinders as well as mix the fuel better for more efficient burn. It's supposed to work on every car out there and make relatively huge gains for simple $10 device.

You tell me which one is the scam.

Now look at the difference between the HFI system that only claims a 10% gain out of what looks like an expensive system specifically designed for large diesel engines vs. the mason's jar crap that purports 80%+ better fuel efficiency on any vehicle running off 1 liter of water every 3000-4000 miles. It's a scam.

So, we agree. The original site's claims are likely exaggerated if not outright lies. Your formulas did not address possible combustion process enhancements that Hydrogen might actually have.

Great.

And burning hydrogen still can't produce more power that the power used to generate it by electrolysis. Or do you still dispute basic conservation of energy? :P

Also, my post #6 came before your post #14... don't act like I was saying the formulas for hydrogen combustion/electrolysis were intended to cover side effects. I acknowledged the possibility of more efficient gas/diesel burn, but I didn't (and still don't) understand how that is supposed to work.

What I'm wondering is when you're going to build your own system and get 40+ mpg on your STi. :?:

Your very first post which I chided contained your formulas and then said "Therefore, you will never produce any net power to help push the car." Turns out it may do just that. :p

I stand by my statement. The energy produced from burning hydrogen cannot add to the power output of a motor if that motor is also powering the electrolysis producing the hydrogen. That's what the formulas describe, and that's a fundamentally true statement.

If there's a side effect of the hydrogen injection that gains efficiency for the gas/diesel combustion, there may certainly be an overall gain, which I stated in post #6 before you mentioned it in #14. But that's unrelated to the issue of energy conservation which you were attempting to dispute by mentioning turbos and regenerative braking.

OK, it is probably a Bad Idea to get into the middle of a Scott and Dean argument, but I had an idea when I read the post above about using the built-in mileage meter.

Here's my theory:
The built in mileage meter is computed from vehicle speed and injector duty cycle. Now injector duty cycle is calculated from among other things, feedback from the oxygen sensor. I think what the hydrogen does is combine with some of the available oxygen in the cylinder and by doing this, the oxygen sensor gives a too-rich signal. The ECU compensates by leaning out the mixture. From this the engine computer calculates a better mileage.

In addition, the hydrogen is burning in the cylinder and creating heat. This does contribute to the power of the engine and may produce more power. Now, if the system was like Scott says, and there is just a little bottle of H2 from some other source, I would say the vehicle probably does get better mileage. So these claims I believe.

Now for the smoke and mirrors:

All these guys claim there is "extra" power being generated by the alternator -- this is not true it will only produce as much power as is being demanded. What there is with the alternator is extra capacity -- the ability to produce extra energy, and that is where fallacy with these systems lie. They are deliberately confusing the concept of power generation capacity with actual demanded power.

These systems use power generated by the alternator to produce the H2 (or Brown's gas or whatever the fuck they want to call it.) If you draw more electrical power from the alternator, it requires more mechanical power to drive. The problem with this is that the alternator is not 100% efficient at this conversion. and some of the mechanical power required to drive it is lost as heat. This is wasted energy, or an increase in entropy if you are a Physics geek. (Whatever you do to increase entropy, you don't get back.) Wasted energy as heat has to come from somewhere -- and where does energy come from in an engine? -- fuel.

So even though your engine is getting better specific power output, you are demanding more power from it by running the alternator harder.


Was that long enough?


C/N: the things actually lean out mixtures, but take more power from the alternator, thus decreasing actual mileage.