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.”
No, they do NOT work on the same principle.
Hydrogen being ignited requires both hydrogen and oxygen and this is a CHEMICAL combination.
A nuclear weapon uses plutonium and is a FUSION (nuclear!) reaction. They are NOT the same at all.
Mass is lost, even in chemical reactions. Look up mass deficit or binding energy. Water weighs less than the hydrogen and oxygen that make it up.
Yes, but not at a level that effects this discussion. This is all about the current wave of 'flim-flam' that has arisen due to the high price of fuels.
Mass is lost at the level needed to produce the energy released when hydrogen is burned. You can back into the mass lost by plugging in the energy released into the formula E=MC2
This is all about the current wave of 'flim-flam' that has arisen due to the high price of fuels.
I agree these units are a scam. If you buy one, buy it here.
The mass exchange is too small to measure on a desktop analytical balance, thus cannot possibly be recognizable for purposes of this discussion.
Yea, brown's gas electrolysers are nothing new; they've been in production numerous times since 1932, but they just don't produce enough boost in economy to justify the purchase price, and time it takes to install them, unless you are going to boost your compression ratio, and use water/alcohol injection, and even then it takes years to break even. Most don't keep their cars that long.
I know. I was just thinking about our poor fellow Freeper.
Disagree completely. Energy density in supercooled superconducting capacitors will exceed that soon.
The point I'm making is we could have doubled our fleet ave. MPG for the past 50 years with simple fixes like High Pressure Fuel Injection.
Your a first, most naysayers say 'Oh, it's too hard, so much pressure".
Meanwhile, look at the hydraulic pressure in our brakes?
If it could be done there, why not at the fuel rail?
If you put a couple of titles in front of a name, it is somehow expected that you get a better answer.
Assuming that the second law isn’t broken AND that these two people aren’t pulling a Bill Clinton, how could more MPGs be attained?
Hmmm...Could it be that perhaps 80% of the fuel is wasted in the normal process and burned off as exhaust?
For this “Professor” to make an ignorant comment like this makes me want to move to Idaho. Why wouldn’t he want to see the results first hand? Is he in the hip pocket of the Arab oil interests?
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