Quote:
Originally Posted by Dean
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...
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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.