Posted on 08/07/2008 6:54:28 AM PDT by Red Badger
How would you like to run your car on water, laugh at other people’s $100 fill-ups and help solve global warming at the same time? Amazingly enough, online vendors say you can achieve all this with a set of plans you can buy for $65 on the Internet.
Or maybe the price is $105. It depends on where you purchase these documents “they” don’t want you to see, and whether there are bonuses included (like I.R.S. rebate forms). [snip] The problem is there’s little science, online or otherwise, to prove these homemade electrolyzers (which do produce hydrogen) actually do you any good, let alone achieve incredible energy savings. Therese Langer, transportation program director for the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, pointed out that electrolysis “uses a lot of electricity. On an energy balance basis, I find this not credible.”
She added that the pitches look “a lot like the magnets-in-the-fuel-line ads from years back. Maybe a low-cost, low-carbon water-to-fuel scheme will pan out eventually, but this burst of enthusiasm is ill-founded.”
Joseph Romm, the author of “The Hype about Hydrogen,” is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a former acting assistant secretary of energy during the Clinton years. “The notion of adding hydrogen to an internal-combustion engine is not new,” he said. “And it isn’t going to get you much extra mileage.”
Highly questionable fuel-efficiency gadgets have been with us forever — 40 years ago, I saw a huckster selling 100-m.p.g. carburetors to farmers at a Virginia state fair. But why the sudden proliferation of online offers? ...
(Excerpt) Read more at wheels.blogs.nytimes.com ...
so now I’m starting to get nervous about these little green pills I jsut bought....
The real news in on that page that FORD fired the designer of the Flex. FORD is wacko!!!
You should have gotten the blue ones instead. :-)
Most likely by a customer, or an outraged Science Teacher.
Just wait until I get my Mr. Fusion by mail order. I’ll show them.
1.21 jigawatts? Great Scott!!!
First, and I think most likely, part of installing this system involves changing the timing and fuel-air mixture of your engine. Currently engines are set up at the factory to minimize pollution even at the expense of mileage because a cloud of smog behind your car is considered worse than burning a little extra gasoline. Adjust your engine so it produces more pollution but burns less gasoline and it doesn't matter what hydrogen gimmick you have attached. The test for this is to just do the engine change without the electrolysis system.
Second, hydrogen injection may increase the efficiency of the engine. Hydrogen + gasoline might burn better than gasoline alone. The test for this is to just hook up a hydrogen tank and feed system without the electrolysis change.
I think that the computer “sees” a richer mixture, so it leans out the gasoline fuel injection to compensate. The hydrogen/oxygen gases being injected don’t change so the gasoline injection is reduced, so the engine runs on more of the hydrogen than the gasoline........Just a theory...........
And the ones that Mother gives you, don’t do anything at all...
Oh no! You mean the Enzyte won’t make that certain part of my male anatomy larger?
Shame on you, Smilin’ Bob!
It "sees" via an oxygen sensor, not a hydrogen sensor, so I'm not sure why adding hydrogen would make it "see" a richer mixture.
It must be true! It’s on the Internet!!!
I always wondered-If someone bought the "male enhancement cream", why isn't one of their hands bigger than the other one?
I bought some of the fast acting blue pills over the internet. All I got was a stiff neck. :o)
Reminds me of Atlas Shrugged.
Adding the pure oxygen might be also be the small real benefit as it increases compression and temperature, reducing N2 intake and resulting NOx emissions (whose association and dissociation processes might waste energy). I think it has more to do with O2 than H2.
A much simpler approach is adding a steam cycle, ie. to directly inject water as it cools the intake for intercooler purposes, and whatever is left boils in the piston resulting in higher pressure, more efficient combustion and work done by the steam, which would take from the engine temperature instead of having the heat lost and dissipated.
This water injection gimmick has been used in airplanes for ever. However it is important to flush the system now and then to prevent sitting water to clog and rust lines.
Popular science also showed an engine with an added water cycle that works.
Turbo 2 cycle in line engines are also light and very efficient and would do wonder there.
I’d say return to the steam engine which has effectively a single flip-flop cycle, with steam coming in one end of the piston while exiting the other end and vice versa at each cycle. We could apply that with the addition of gas and using a turbo to flush the piston.
The Space shuttle is technicaly a steam engine too, and I believe the fuel cell technology is also technicaly relying on water byproducts.
Hydrogen might cause detonation. Technicaly you want a heavy high octane fuel, not a light low octane fuel. I believe hydrogen might reduce your octane level as it lightens the fuel or cause it to burn at lower temperature. It might however allow for better mixing and maybe do away with the ignition system if it caused the piston to detonate without a spark but thanks to pure hydrogene compression.
Doing away with a spark plug system would increase fuel efficiency, but that power gain would be taken b the electrolysis of the water itself.
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