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.”
Spectroscopy is the key to unlock what happens during combustion or any other chemical reaction.
Perhaps some microscopic amount, but from a statistical standpoint, it is the most efficient reaction we can generate, and is closer to 100% than 99.9%
The fact that these two 'inventors' have not done this explains it all ...
Yes, its pie-in-the-sky.
I agree that neither is 100% efficient.
Efficiency in this application is a a comparison of energy into the system to the work performed.
Efficiency of an automobile is concerned with moving the vehicle. The rejected heat is energy but we disregard it in our measurement because it is not the work we are trying to accomplish.
I guess a nuclear bomb efficiency should be measured by the destructive force, which can be heat, force and radiation. Interesting but not really relevant to the topic of the thread.
The concept seems to have promise, but Im not so sure this device can pull it off. Seems too good to be true, which 9 out of 10 times means its not true.
All of us here are discussing a practical application, except you, apparently.
Yes, it does. It reveals that folks like you are trashing this device without having ever seen it, without ever placing monitors on the vehicle, and without doing any substantive testing.
Whether the guy is a shyster or or not, that is my bottom line. If you folks think the device doesn’t work, then hook it up and prove it.
I’ve got no ax to grind, but all this poo poo hot air, is as ridiculous as you think the inventor’s claims are. He hasn’t proven anything. You haven’t proven anything.
You are WAY off on this one. Please cite a reference.
Why don't the 'inventors" prove that it works? The burden is on them to prove it works, not ours to prove that it does not.
How so?
How can adding a miniscule amount of hydrogen to a reaction that already has hundreds of times more hydrogen, that is statistically irrelevant to the process, have promise?
This is a sucker scam for sure.
You can cite any reference that you please, but for me this goes nowhere.
Here’s a good word:
Catalyst
“How can adding a small amount of something...”
When I was a yute, I played around with making my own gunpowder.
But I didn’t have Potassium Nitrate, I had a 5 lb jar of Sodium Nitrate.
To make a long story short, I experimented with various additives to get a bigger bang.
I eventually settled on a tiny almost unseeable amount of Potassium Permanganate.
It oxidizes and catalyzes the reaction.
Mum WAS NOT HAPPY about that discovery!
Obviously, you have made several statement based not on fact but opinion.
He claims that it does work.
You claim that it doesn’t work.
Both of you failing to prove your point, neither of your assertions can be seen as having been scientifically proven.
Even if the odds are 9,999,999,999,999,999,999 to 1 that you are correct, there is still no definitive proof that you are.
That being the case, it bothers me when folks who have degrees in engineering/physics jump to conclusions.
Look around the room you are in, the building you are in, the vehicle you drive, the garage at home. At some point in time, one person thought the devices found in those places were possible. Almost everyone else said they weren’t.
Amazing that the vehicle designers that spend billions trying to meet CAFE fleet standards missed this but an ex-plumber found it. Amazing ...
I'll take those odds. Life is never certain.
And neither is your conclusion in this matter.
No shiite Sherlock!
If you are operating under the false impression that only ‘experts’ in a given field can come up with innovations, you’re really outing yourself in an unflattering manner.
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