Hydrogen generator

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dereckbc said:
Basically for every 100 watts you are only putting 50 watts or less back into the engine, a net loss of 50 watts. There is no way around this.
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I read somewhere that the US government almost shut down the Patent Office once....seems like it was about 80-100 years ago.

Why?.......The reasoning was that everything that could possibly be invented was already invented...so it wasn't necessary anymore.

I guess that there was no way around that.:smile:

steve
 
I've been trying to think about mechanisms by which this hydrogen generation system could actually improve gas mileage. These are just ideas, and some of them conflict; I'm just throwing them out there.

My basic premise is that the energy available in the chemicals coming out of the electrolysis process is less than the electrical energy that goes in.

My strong hunch is that any apparent fuel savings is actually caused by the placebo effect, where the driver unintentionally drives differently, in a more fuel efficient fashion, and that the fuel savings is not directly caused by the device.

But I decided to brainstorm some actual physical processes that might improve gas mileage.

1) The hydrogen/oxygen mixture is 33% oxygen by volume; air is only 21% oxygen by volume. You get more oxygen in the cylinder for a given amount of pumping losses, perhaps actually improving the efficiency of consuming the gasoline.

2) The H2/O2 input is essentially _water injection_, which increases the amount of mass flowing through the engine for a given amount of fuel burned. The increased mass flow means more 'thrust' on the cylinder head for a given amount of energy input, perhaps improving the efficiency of consuming gasoline. Of course, direct water injection might be even better.

3) The H2/O2 input somehow _reduced_ the performance of the engine, making an 8 cylinder engine act more like a 4 cylinder engine, thus giving less maximum power output, but in general operating at a greater fraction of full power. As is well known with 'economy cars', if you put a smaller engine in, you will get better gas mileage, but have worse acceleration and worse performance.

4) The H2/O2 input somehow makes the engine act differently (by its sound, peak output, torque profile, etc), in a way that essentially forces the driver to use the car in a more efficient fashion.

I think that the suggestion of validating these results on a dyno is a good one. I suspect that the objective efficiency change at any given fixed output level will be small and probably negative. But a car driven in the real world is not a car on a dyno; if this system makes you drive differently, or the system changes the performance of the car, or any savings results solely from the 'placebo effect', then so what? You are getting better mileage. _Understanding why_ is only important if you want to sell this to someone else.

-Jon
 
winnie said:
(cut)
1) The hydrogen/oxygen mixture is 33% oxygen by volume; air is only 21% oxygen by volume. You get more oxygen in the cylinder for a given amount of pumping losses, (cut)
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steve, ceb, kw -
Do the H2 injection systems you use keep the H2 and O2 mixed together from production to cylinder injection?

carl
 
What is happening is you are injecting the gas into your air intake. The gas is very explosive and when it is combusted you are completing the burn, not wasting fuel and leaving carbon deposits in your engine. My father has been an engine builder for over 35 years and owns his own shop. Putting an engine on his dyno will give you your hp and torque. Both improve very very slightly. On a side note I can take a white rag and wipe my tail pipe and find no black soot, it comes out just as white. The generator is not a solution, but it is a step in the right direction. Also, it depends on how it's built. Mine produces 2 liters a minute and works well on a small v6. Our test engine consisted of a Chevy 350 small block with about 85,000 miles on it. It was run on the floor for about 40 hours running with a generator. The engine was torn down and inspected only to find nothing! No excessive heat marks or excessive wear on bearings or on the cylinder walls. After these tests I decided to use my car as a real life test subject knowing if any engine trouble occurs my father would fix it. After about 1,200 miles, no problems. I used my fathers scanner for about the first 500 miles, one of the features is mpg. With the unit off I was getting 24mpg highway and with the unit on I was getting 31mpg highway. I do a lot of highway driving and always have and always will use cruise control, which I set at 73 mph, so I'm not feathering anything. As far as the alternator I can turn every possible thing on while on cruise control then turn them all off at once and not notice strain on the engine like when the a/c is on. Bottom line I get 30% better, I don't really care who believes me or not. It is fact. I'm not trying to sell these so I really don't care, I'm just an electrician and sick of high fuel prices. It saves me about a dollar a gallon so I am happy.
 
kjw444 said:
What is happening is you are injecting the gas into your air intake. The gas is very explosive and when it is combusted you are completing the burn, not wasting fuel and leaving carbon deposits in your engine. My father has been an engine builder for over 35 years and owns his own shop. Putting an engine on his dyno will give you your hp and torque. Both improve very very slightly. On a side note I can take a white rag and wipe my tail pipe and find no black soot, it comes out just as white. The generator is not a solution, but it is a step in the right direction. Also, it depends on how it's built. Mine produces 2 liters a minute and works well on a small v6. Our test engine consisted of a Chevy 350 small block with about 85,000 miles on it. It was run on the floor for about 40 hours running with a generator. The engine was torn down and inspected only to find nothing! No excessive heat marks or excessive wear on bearings or on the cylinder walls. After these tests I decided to use my car as a real life test subject knowing if any engine trouble occurs my father would fix it. After about 1,200 miles, no problems. I used my fathers scanner for about the first 500 miles, one of the features is mpg. With the unit off I was getting 24mpg highway and with the unit on I was getting 31mpg highway. I do a lot of highway driving and always have and always will use cruise control, which I set at 73 mph, so I'm not feathering anything. As far as the alternator I can turn every possible thing on while on cruise control then turn them all off at once and not notice strain on the engine like when the a/c is on. Bottom line I get 30% better, I don't really care who believes me or not. It is fact. I'm not trying to sell these so I really don't care, I'm just an electrician and sick of high fuel prices. It saves me about a dollar a gallon so I am happy.
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Yes, what KW said. I know in my younger day:smile: doing low budget drag racing we would take a metal coffee can, install a coil of copper tubing for the gas to flow through. We would then put dry ice in the can making the fuel cold, when the cold fuel would go into the hot intake it would vaporize, causing more fuel to go into the cylinder thus more power. I am with KW I am not looking to sell the contraption, only to just try it and see for myself and from what I have seen so far is it works.
 
ceb58 said:
We would then put dry ice in the can making the fuel cold, when the cold fuel would go into the hot intake it would vaporize, causing more fuel to go into the cylinder thus more power.
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It sure does work. :smile:

But the energy used to produce the dry ice exceeds any gains you get at the racetrack.

Of course for a race car this is OK, you end up with more power at the wheels but as a whole you did not gain an efficiency.
 
We should all try building particle accelerators and try creating mini black holes and we could have all the energy we would ever need. Take cp parody violation into account and hope we don?t all end up in a bizarro world! But I don?t think there is any money in that!:smile:
 
Gentleman use you head for something other than hanging your hat on. :grin:

The amount of hydrogen and oxygen gas produced by these system when burned directly is less than a BIC lighter. So just how much energy is that?:-?

The answer really does not matter because you are drawing at least twice that amount of power from the engine to generate the electricity. There is no free lunch period.
 
ceb58 said:
I know in my younger day:smile: doing low budget drag racing we would take a metal coffee can, install a coil of copper tubing for the gas to flow through. We would then put dry ice in the can making the fuel cold, when the cold fuel would go into the hot intake it would vaporize, causing more fuel to go into the cylinder thus more power. I am with KW I am not looking to sell the contraption, only to just try it and see for myself and from what I have seen so far is it works.
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Yes it worked, but you were tranfering energy from another outside source. Have any idea how much energy it takes to make one ounce of dry ice?
 
Just for informational purposes:

A "double-blind" experiment is one in which we have two experimental groups, one which is "normal" and one which is "modified". The experimenters do not know which is which until after the experiment. In this way, personal bias is removed from the process.
 
ceb58 said:
Yes, what KW said. I know in my younger day:smile: doing low budget drag racing we would take a metal coffee can, install a coil of copper tubing for the gas to flow through. We would then put dry ice in the can making the fuel cold, when the cold fuel would go into the hot intake it would vaporize, causing more fuel to go into the cylinder thus more power. I am with KW I am not looking to sell the contraption, only to just try it and see for myself and from what I have seen so far is it works.
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they used to make an aluminum intake manifold that had a box to put dry ice in for racing.
 
Well when I was young and dumb drag racing we used NO2. NO2 tanks are in the 3000/lbs PSI raqnge and have substansial flow volume. Same concept could be used with hydrogen. but the amount of hydrogen you could produce with water isn't enough to do anything, it would take an external tank to supply enough to act as fuel.

Modern ICE (internal combustion engines) are 99% effecient at burning the fuel, so injecting a small amout of hydrogen to increase effeciency only has a theoritical limit of 1% increase which aint squat.
 
sparky 134 said:
I looked into making my own bio-diesel fuel from vegetable oil and I learned that I would be required to pay road taxes to the government for doing so.

The fuel we purchase for our vehicles whether they be gas or diesel has taxes added to the price to maintain the roads. By making your own fuel you are avoiding paying taxes that help maintain the roads.

http://www.irs.gov/publications/p510/ch01.html#d0e1293
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yeh its called federal tax evasion. the IRS was in town about two months ago doing random stops and fuel testing. we have red diesel at the shop for the heavy equipment that we don't pay the tax on. if you get caught w/ it in your highway truck, i think its a $10k fine and repeated offenses your looking at possible jail time.
 
hillbilly said:
you are simply breaking a molecular bond.

When this happens, the result is a highly explosive mixture of hydrogen and oxygen in gaseous form.
Oh yea....It is a totally non-polluting gas when burned, the only by-product is water.
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So, you can take H2O and separate the molecular bond to create hyrodgen and oxygen gasses, BURN the hydrogen gas, and magically create water again as a by-product even with the hydrogen gas being BURNT UP!!! Sounds logical to me!:confused:
 
elvis_931 said:
So, you can take H2O and separate the molecular bond to create hyrodgen and oxygen gasses, BURN the hydrogen gas, and magically create water again as a by-product even with the hydrogen gas being BURNT UP!!! Sounds logical to me!:confused:
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Yes! Years ago, in a high-school science class, we generated hydrogen and filled a balloon with it, then set the balloon on fire.

It POP!'ed and, combining with oxygen in the air, made water droplets. Quite cool. :)
 
elvis_931 said:
So, you can take H2O and separate the molecular bond to create hyrodgen and oxygen gasses, BURN the hydrogen gas, and magically create water again as a by-product even with the hydrogen gas being BURNT UP!!! Sounds logical to me!:confused:
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The term "burning" refers to combining the "fuel" with oxygen to liberate energy. This results in oxidized fuel. The atoms themselves are not destroyed. Just recombined into different molecules.

In the case of hydrogen being burned, the product is indeed water and is a very clean way to release energy.
 
dereckbc said:
Modern ICE (internal combustion engines) are 99% effecient at burning the fuel, so injecting a small amout of hydrogen to increase effeciency only has a theoritical limit of 1% increase which aint squat.
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Where did you get that number?

If you mean that they are 99% efficient as far as burning gas and delivering 99% of the energy to the rear (or front) wheel to propel the car down the road.......No way.

If that were true, you wouldn't need a engine cooling system and the exhaust temperature would be (nearly) the same temperature as the intake air.

Automobile engines are much less than 50% efficient overall.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine#Energy_Efficiency

steve
 
ceb58 said:
Every one knows about the gas prices and there have been several threads on the topic. Has any one experimented with a hydrogen generator for their vehicle? I made a set of plates and placed them in a bucket of water with a little baking soda in it, applied 12v dc and was making hydrogen. I am going to try it for my truck. I am thinking of using a whole house water filter canister as I have seen them made with pvc pipe but the pipe breaks down.
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You are making hydrogen AND oxygen. I believe it is the oxygen that breaks down the PVC.
 
dereckbc said:
Quit wasting your time, the Brown Gas scam has been around a long time and pops its ugly head up everytime gasoline prices spike.

Unless you can re-write the physical law of Thermodynamic or have discovered Balck Matter, it will not work. You can't turn water into a fuel without expending more energy than you can get back (i.e. by electrolyzing it to get hydrogen).
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That in itself is true, however if you inject the 'brown gas' into the air intake of your car, mileage improvement can be significant. You are adding fuel -hydrogen- and feed the combustion with additional pure oxygen using the car DC system for the electrolysis. I don't know what happens to the emission or your cat converter.
 
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