Posted on 07/31/2008 11:54:15 AM PDT by Red Badger
The hydrogen gas systems being used by several mid-valley drivers cannot deliver any kind of efficiency, says Bob Paasch, the Boeing professor of mechanical design at Oregon State University.
“The process is a scam,” he said. “It’s wishful thinking. If it were true, every power company and auto company in the world would be using it.”
Paasch said the systems — which use water and baking soda to create hydrogen via an electrical charge from the battery and alternator — violate the second law of thermodynamics and can’t work.
“People who buy into this are wasting their money,” he said.
Paasch has conducted tests on a similar device in the past and found it did not live up to any of the claims made by the inventor, who said it would deliver 50 percent more horsepower and double the gas mileage.
The systems being used are electrolysis, according to Paasch. Hydrogen and water can be burned through this process but more energy is required to drive the cell than can be extracted from it.
Ray Warren of Millersburg and Elden Huntling of Lebanon have the systems installed in their respective gas- and diesel-powered trucks and say they have seen a significant increase in gas mileage.
“These types of systems have been proven to be frauds,” Paasch said. “It’s impossible for the process to produce more energy than it consumes.”
Nonetheless, Huntling and Warren stand by their mileage claims. Warren admitted his mileage dropped significantly after several fill-ups but says he expected it and that a simple adjustment to his computer will correct the problem.
“I stand by the system,” he said.
Huntling has seen no decreases. “All I can say is that I’ve increased the mileage on my diesel truck by 64 percent,” he said. “It runs off excess power from the alternator.”
Paasch says this can’t be.
“The alternator doesn’t produce excess power. The alternator requires more mechanical energy than the hydrogen process can produce.”
Paasch also says the system is potentially unsafe.
“You have a highly flammable gas and the possibility of electric sparks in an enclosed space,” he said. “It’s a very dangerous situation.”
It is easily calculated by the following formula:
E=MC2
What was your major. Mine is Nuclear Engineering.
Suppose we have a molecule of sodium chloride floating in space.
We can bombard it with a photon that has exactly the amount of energy needed to break the bond between the sodium atom and the chlorine atom.
So now we have an atom of sodium floating around, an atom of chlorine floating around, and no photon.
The photon is gone. It had mass and energy. It’s energy is represented by E=hf, where f is the frequency, and h is Plancks constant. It’s mass is then hf/C squared.
That mass went somewhere. It is now shared between the sodium and chlorine atoms.
Another link for your reading:
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Physics-1358/stability-matter-energy-4.htm
A nuclear bomb does not leave unconverted fuel behind; whether fission, or fusion, the reaction always completes.
With burning, the question of efficiency is dependent on the design of the combustion chamber, and the compression ratio. In a diesel engine, due to the high compression ratio, the vast majority of the fuel is burned in the chamber, as opposed to a gasoline or hydrogen fueled engine, where a significant portion of the reaction takes place in the exhaust system, where it cannot impart any energy to the head of the piston, and thus the efficiency is reduced.
Another good reference is “The Structure of Molecules: An introduction to Molecular Spectroscopy” Gordon Barrow, Case Institute of Technology, Benjamin Press, 1963
A nuclear bomb DOES leave incoverted fuel behind.
If I set a log on fire it gets smaller and lighter. Almost as if most of its mass just floats away.
I thought photons had no mass.
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/960731.html
My degree is in electrical engineering, specialized in power systems.
You are discussing the efficiency of a piston engine, not the chemical reaction.
Most electrical engineers do not take advanced courses in nuclear phyiscs.
It does float away. CO2 has mass, along with the other products of combustion. They do not have to be solid to have mass.
But we are talking about chemical reations.
No rest mass.
But as they buzz around, they have energy, mass, and momentum.
Thanks, but the discussion is on the application of combustion and the resulting efficiency.
Yes. But did you read any of the links I posted?
If you want to come at this from the perspective that Warren was referring to his normal gas mileage, before the drop, be my guest. IMO he is addressing a drop after short term improvement. It seems to me he could have simply said, “I immediately got vastly improved mileage after installing the device.” and have left it at that. Instead he addressed a drop off in improvement. That doesn’t exactly destroy his credibility with me. Unless I missed it, the article fails to clarify if this drop made the resulting mileage less than the average mileage before the device was added in.
BTW, after rereading the article, I’m not convinced the alternator couldn’t impact the overall efficiency of this device.
Is there improved mileage or not? Have there been controlled tests to find out?
The Astrophysics at NASA where I linked described photons as having momentum, but not mass.
The key word: "application". It is the application of combustion that is not 100% efficient. Just as the application of nuclear reactions is not 100% efficient.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.