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, with hydro electric power we didn't have to consume other energy sources to get the water above the dam. Consuming more energy than you produce isn't going to help.
So whats your opinion concerning turbochargers / superchargers?
So the claim is changed from “extracting excess power from the alternator” to hydrogen acting as some sort of catalyst?
In the latter case, it should be possible to experiment with a hydrogen/hydrocarbon engine regardless of the source of hydrogen. (There gotta be cheaper, safer, simplier ways to get hydrogen.) I am *highly* skeptical that such alchemy has escaped notice for over a century of experience with the internal combustion engine.
If the former (”excess power from the alternator”) the claim reduces to a perpetual motion machine and can be dismissed out of hand.
Dear crotchety old rocket scientist,
An automotive alternator produces AC voltage (DUH! thats why they’re called ALTERNATORS!) and then at the voltage regulator a diode blocks half the AC leaving behind the DC our cars electronics operate on ... Maybe you’re stuck in 1964 and believe cars still have DC generators like my Corvair did... trust me they don’t.
Go back to designing your solid state coolers (note I’m not stuck in 1964 I didn’t call them Ice Chests) for truckers... looking back at your posts all I see are snide comments and put downs over minor wording issues.
I don't think so, because (in most cases) the water used to generate hydroelectric power already exists uphill from the turbine. Taking advantage of this positional potential doesn't require the expenditure of energy.
But is does take energy to create the hydrogen, and to run the alternator off of the hydrogen, etc. If hydrogen in an energy-useful form were plentiful, this wouldn't be an efficiency issue, although the safety aspects would remain.
Just my $.02
Are you sure that the electric system doesn’t use some variant of a full-wave bridge rectifier? It would seem quite silly to only use a half-wave rectifier. With a full-wave rectifier your loss is limited to the voltage drop of the rectifier diodes, not “half the AC.”
They are not fuel saving devices, but ways to boost power.
Ok how about fuel injection, which also requires electricity to boost power? Not a fuel saving device? When you increase the efficiency with in the combustion chamber arn't you in fact using less fuel to create more power?
Opening a electronically controlled valve to let the fluid flow is hardly comparable to converting energy from chemical to mechanical to electrical back to chemical.
Im not arguing the fact that this device works. Im arguing the fact that if you enhance the horsepower of the engine beyond what is lost to turn the alternator you require less fuel to do the work.
You can never get more power out of the alternator than what you put in. If you draw more power out of the alternator with increased electrical load, it requires even greater power delivered from the engine via the shafts, belts and pulleys. Frictional losses through all these devices create additional loss. If the speed is constant, the additional power is supplied by additional torque.
Don’t AC waveforms get rectified these days rather than simply clipped by a diode? Using a rectifier would give you the entire waveform to work with, not just half.
It was my understanding that the high-pressure injection systems are designed for compression-ignition engines not spark-ignited ones like gasoline fired.
Come on, I already know your a smart guy, but your making this waaay more complicated than it is.
Comparing a valve to electrolysis is hardly comparing apples and oranges.
Were not talking apples and oranges. Were talking about one thing, fuel to horsepower, nothing more.
I’m talking about real world application of the systems used to convert fuel to mechanical energy. Ignoring how that happens does not lead to productive conversation.
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