Hydrogen Generating Module to Help Your Car? 506
TomClancy_Jack writes "A Canadian man claims to have invented a hydrogen
electrolysis box that can be fit onto any existing internal combustion
engine. He claims that engines using his "H2N-Gen" box
'produce a more complete burn, greatly increasing efficiency and reducing fuel
consumption by 10 to 40 per cent - and pollutants by up to 100 per cent.'
If this doesn't turn out to be vapor-ware or just a regular scam, it could turn
out to be one of the biggest recent innovations in transportation history.
He claims it will be on the market in 6 - 12 months, so time will
tell."
Re:Simple question: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:FTA: (Score:5, Informative)
I don't get your comment.
Re:Simple question: (Score:4, Informative)
RTFA (Score:3, Informative)
The device adds hydrogen and oxygen to the mix, producing a cleaner, more thorough burn.
Supposedly.
More poor technology reporting (Score:5, Informative)
No, this means 35 per cent of the available energy is extracted as useful work, the rest being lost to heat/friction. This is typical of all heat engines [wikipedia.org].
In more common terms (to Brits and US citizens at least), the mpg ratings from the tests on page 4 are 26.1 with the device versus 22.4 according to the manufacturer standard mileage rating. Impressive if true, but I'll be skeptical until a well-recognised motoring group does some tests too.
If it works, it might cut costs for road transport, but what about air transport and industry use? I'm not sure this will save the planet. I'll continue to walk to work for now.
Re:Simple question: (Score:3, Informative)
It still uses fuel, but TFA says it will burn with much greater efficiency and much less pollution.
Re:Pricey! (Score:4, Informative)
Presumably if/when this works for the big guys the company will have more money to throw around. Economy of scale will kick in and bring the device to the average consumer at a lower price.
Unfortunately, article is garbage (Score:5, Informative)
The 35% efficiency is the thermal cycle efficiency, with 65% of the heat being lost through the cylinder walls, cylinder head, and exhaust.
The problem is that to maximise the T1-T2 difference, heat loss must be minimised, and the compression ratio needs to be high since the gas expansion is what drives the temperature change. Spark ignition engines cannot run at very high compression ratios due to the phenomenon of pre-ignition, and this limits their efficiency. Diesels can run at very high compression ratios indeed, because the fuel only burns when it is injected. Their burn cycle also reduces heat loss. That is the reason why Diesels are more efficient than spark ignition engines. Direct injection gas engines (semi-Diesels with auxiliary spark ignition) have been developed by the Japanese but they still require a fuel that costs more to refine than Diesel, and are no more thermally efficient.
Adding hydrogen can promote more complete combustion and perhaps allow a slightly higher compression ratio, but it still does not get you anything like Diesel efficiency. (You can actually raise the compression ratio a little by injecting ordinary water, but the complication -DI water, extra tanks adding weight, injection gear- outweighs the advantages.) And anyone who has spent time fighting, as my R&D dept did over a period, with those water/KOH hydrogen generators will be aware of the problems. Like keeping the KOH out of the output gas stream.
In short, sorry, nothing to see here, Sir Harry Ricardo did all this stuff so long ago it was already old when I went to U and I'm over 50. There is no cheap fix to the internal combustion engine, but lots of expensive R&D is producing ever cleaner and more efficient Diesels at ever more competitive prices. Just as fuel cells advance a notch, so do Diesels in lockstep which is one reason why fuel cell tech is always just around the corner. Dr. Diesel's invention is not glamorous, it is perceived as being dirty, noisy, old tech but with companies like VW, Daimler Chrysler, Peugeot Citroen and BMW betting the farm on it, perhaps they know something small inventors don't.
Re:I dunno (Score:5, Informative)
I also wonder how the CO2 is reduced from 5.5% to 0%, unless the hydrocarbons go up, and the simple oxidized carbons go down. There were other statements in the article that looked a bit odd as well. Still, conceptually interesting.
Article in local Montreal newspaper... (Score:1, Informative)
In the article (I don't have an online account for the paper and cannot copy/paste, and I recycled the paper out already, sorry) they had a lead tester from Wardrop (a huge international firm) testifying that they built a module from this guy's specs and it *did* work. And the paper had a test drive with the unit too - with a 2000 V6 Jeep Cherokee. Their recordings were dead on with the guy's claims - the vehicle was using 12% less fuel than Chrysler's claims on a 7 hour trip from Montreal to Toronto, and when they got to Toronto they had an Ontario Government certified garage do a standard provincial vehicle emissions test on the modified vehicle - and the modified vehicle turned out zero harmful emissions.
I had to admit I was skeptical (and still am) but they gave this guy the front page headline, and about 3/4 of a full newspaper page on the inside for explanation and details. The test by the journalists themselves, plus the testimony from Wardrop, adds up to a very convincing argument. (though the paper themselves said that their testing should be taken as purely anecdotal, and not a scientific fact, as it was not done under controlled circumstances)
There was also a quote in the paper by an oil company execute (can't remember which, sorry) saying that, of course, this guy was a snake oil salesmen.
Can any fellow Montrealers back me up, or find the article online?
LOL (Score:5, Informative)
When we will be seeing stories like "Make Money Fast" on Slashdot? Seriously, Slashdot's editors are really letting out some BS stories recently. They really need a science editor to vet these things.
Here is a list of mileage scams posted on the FTC site. Keep an eye open for these as Slashdot stories in the near future:
Devices Tested by EPA
The following list categorizes various types of "gas-saving" products, explains how they're used and gives product names. Those with asterisks may save measurable, but small, amounts of gas. All others have been found not to increase fuel economy.
Air Bleed Devices. These devices bleed air into the carburetor. They usually are installed in the Positive Crankcase Ventilation line or as a replacement for idle-mixture screws.
The EPA has evaluated the following products: ADAKS Vacuum Breaker Air Bleed; Air-Jet Air Bleed; Aquablast Wyman Valve Air Bleed; Auto-Miser; Ball-Matic Air Bleed; Berg Air Bleed; Brisko PCV; Cyclone-Z; Econo Needle Air Bleed; Econo-Jet Air Bleed Idle Screws; Fuel Max*; Gas Saving Device; Grancor Air Computer; Hot Tip; Landrum Mini-Carb; Landrum Retrofit Air Bleed; Mini Turbocharger Air Bleed; Monocar HC Control Air Bleed; Peterman Air Bleed; Pollution Master Air Bleed; Ram-Jet; Turbo-Dyne G.R. Valve.
Vapor Bleed Devices. These devices are similar to the air bleed devices, except that induced air is bubbled through a container of a water and anti-freeze mixture, usually located in the engine compartment.
The EPA has evaluated: Atomized Vapor Injector; Frantz Vapor Injection System; Hydro-Vac: POWERFUeL; Mark II Vapor Injection System; Platinum Gasaver; V-70 Vapor Injector; SCATPAC Vacuum Vapor Induction System: Econo-Mist Vacuum Vapor Injection System; Turbo Vapor Injection System.
Liquid Injection. These products add liquid into the fuel/air intake system and not directly into the combustion chamber.
The EPA has evaluated: Goodman Engine System-Model 1800; Waag-Injection System*.
Ignition Devices. These devices are attached to the ignition system or are used to replace original equipment or parts.
The EPA has evaluated: Autosaver; Baur Condenser; BIAP Electronic Ignition Unit; Fuel Economizer; Magna Flash Ignition Control System; Paser Magnum/Paser 500/Paser 500 HEI; Special Formula Ignition Advance Springs.
Fuel Line Devices (heaters or coolers). These devices heat the fuel before it enters the carburetor. Usually, the fuel is heated by the engine coolant or by the exhaust or electrical system.
The EPA has evaluated: FuelXpander; Gas Meiser I; Greer Fuel Preheater; Jacona Fuel System; Optimizer; Russell Fuelmiser.
Fuel Line Devices (magnets). These magnetic devices, clamped to the outside of the fuel line or installed in the fuel line, claim to change the molecular structure of gasoline.
The EPA has evaluated: PETRO-MIZER; POLARION-X; Super-Mag Fuel Extender; Wickliff Polarizer [fuel line magnet/intake air magnet].
Fuel Line Devices (metallic). Typically, these devices contain several dissimilar metals that are installed in the fuel line, supposedly causing ionization of the fuel.
The EPA has evaluated: Malpassi Filter King [fuel pressure regulator]; Moleculetor.
Mixture Enhancers (under the carburetor). These devices are mounted between the carburetor and intake manifold and supposedly enhance the mixing or vaporization of the air/fuel mixture.
The EPA has evaluated: Energy Gas Saver; Environmental Fuel Saver; Gas Saving and Emission Control Improvement Device; Glynn-50; Hydro-Catalyst Pre-Combustion Catalyst System; PETROMIZER SYSTEM; Sav-A-Mile; Spritzer; Turbo-Carb; Turbocarb.
Mixture Enhancers (others). These devices make some general modifications to the vehicle intake system.
The EPA has evaluated: Basko Enginecoat; Dresser Economizer; Electro-Dyne Superchoke; Filtron Urethane Foam Filter; Lamkin Fuel Meter
Re:Ho Ho Ho (Score:4, Informative)
No references, just reguritating what I remember.
Re:It's a fake (Score:1, Informative)
Man, you're an idiot. And so are the moderators who modded you up. You don't think you would notice all the gas coming out all the tailpipes of all the cars on the road? Unburned hydrocarbons in exhaust are a polution problem, but unburned hydrocarbons are normally in the PPM range. PPM means parts per million.
Almost 100% of the fuel is burned, but the amount of USEABLE energy to move the car is only about 35%. That is limited by thermodynamics, and you're not going to change that.
And then you wonder why the oil companies don't want this kind of tech to come out.
You know, oil companies are not nice people. But they can't break the laws of physics. Stop inventing insane conspiracy theories that have no basis in reality. If you want to pick on the oil companies, at least put together a plausible conspiracy theory, you kook.
Brown's Gas is not hydrogen (at least not only) (Score:2, Informative)
It's hydrogen and oxygen, the exact amount released by electrolyzing water. This man is not just injecting hydrogen into the air intake, but one oxygen for every 2 hydrogen.
This results in a re-combining of the hydrogen and oxygen during combustion. This also creates high temperature water vapor which assists in the combustion process, increasing power output from the ordinary gasoline combustion. Brown's gas burns at several thousand degrees centigrade.
Here are some links:
http://www.watertorch.com/faq/faq2.html [watertorch.com]t m [jeffotto.com]
http://www.energyoptions.com/tech/browns.html [energyoptions.com]
http://bwt.jeffotto.com/bwt_catalogue/brown_gas.h
Gimme A Break (Score:1, Informative)
Most internal combustion engines operate at about 35 per cent efficiency. This means that only 35 per cent of the fuel is fully burned. The rest either turns to carbon corroding the engine or goes out the exhaust pipe as greenhouse gases.
The H2N-Gen increases burn efficiency to at least 97 per cent, Williams said. This saves fuel and greatly reduces emissions.
----
Sorry, the 35% does NOT mean that 35% of the fuel is burned but that 35% of the theoretical energy from the fuel is used. Where does the rest go? It goes to heat up "stuff". Like the exhaust, engine itself, radiator water. If he could get 97% USEFUL work from the fuel, he would not need a radiator.
Right off, this pegged my BS meter.
Re:Simple question: (Score:4, Informative)
I think the poster knows how electrolysis works. I think this is what he's talking about, though: The car's battery is kept charged by the alternator, which is driven by the crank. You put more current-drawing stuff in the electrical system, you put more stress on the alternator, making it harder to turn. So, it's quite possible that the extra power you get from the hydrogen is consumed by the increased alternator load required to produce the hydrogen.
Re:Simple question: (Score:4, Informative)
When you plug something into your cigarette lighter outlet, the voltage regulator senses a dip in voltage, and sends more charge into the alternator feild coils. This causes the alternator to generate more power by adding more flux. The extra flux causes the alternator to become harder to turn, and the engine compensates by burning more gasoline.
If you own a living-room on wheels and drive down the road with the kids in the back seat watching spongebob, it costs you about $1/hour these days to power all the electricity being used in your car.
This Is Sick (Score:2, Informative)
Take one physics course, and one chemistry course, and call me in the morning if the symptoms persist. In severe cases, a stiff course of thermodynamics might be required, but we hope that it won't come to that. In the meantime, stay away from junk science articles.
Good Luck,
Art
Re:Ho Ho Ho (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Where does the energy come from? (Score:2, Informative)
Either / or.
Either the brown gas' oxygen is used for "better combustion",
Or the brown gas' hydrogen is burned - "increasing engine output."
There is no extra oxygen produced to acomplish both.
Re:Simple question: (Score:5, Informative)
you have extra power in your car because of the altenator. it is turned because your car is running and producing more power than you are using unless you're going up hill or accelerating. If you're at a dead stop and your engine is at idle where is the power of the combusing gas going? into heat, noise, and the altenator recharging your battery which is probably full after the first 5 min. So you have extra electricity.
No. There's no extra energy. The resistance of the alternator to turning is proportional to the electricity generated. Add more electrical load, and the alternator is harder to turn.
They have tried using this extra electricity for charging batteries for use in hybred electric cars but you have the offset of dragging around large batteries that weigh 50 lbs each and you have to have a couple to really get any extended electric mileage out of the system.
No. Hybrids are successful mostly because they recapture braking energy and allow the engine to be shut down when it is making more power than necessary.
They have tried using this extra electricity to power flywheels to store the power and release it back into the system when you release the brake but again you have this giant heavy flywheel to drag around.
No. Such systems were mechanical variants of a hybrid; that is, capturing the energy of braking and storing to use to accelerate the vehicle. There were some systems that used a huge flywheel as the vehicle's store of energy, but they never caught on.
The article uses this electricity to release the power that is naturally stored in the water solution. Einstien proved that all mater has a great deal of energy but getting it out has always been the problem. With gas we are getting no more than about a third of the actual energy out of the material we use up. That means that out of a gallon of gas we get the output of 1/3 actually making our car go. The rest is waisted.
No. Cars are not nuclear powered. Einstein has nothing to do with internal combustion. No material is used up or converted to energy. We're just rearranging the matter to a state of less potential energy. We harvest that energy as heat, which we then try to convert into kinetic energy. We only convert about 1/3, the rest stays as heat.
If we made an engine that recaptured the unspent fuel or had a system of burning the fuel completely we would have a better ratio of conversion from matter to energy.
No. There is very little unspent fuel, less than 1% in most modern engines. Again, the car is not nuclear powered, no fission or fusion taking place, no matter converted to energy.
Now we can't get the entire subatomic amounts Einstein was talking about but we can have the best chemical reaction amounts if we make a system that extracts the energy more effeciently from this reaction.
I don't know what you're talking about here, and I don't think you do either.
An example of this is when we add oxygen to gas (common practice now) to make a better chemical reaction inside the engine. We are taking a cheap additive and mixing it with a relitivly expensive main ingredient to make it burn better. If we add different chemicals we get different outputs, some help some hurt, most do both. Adding water helps the combustion by adding pressure and oxygen but hurts the engine by pressing water vapor into the oil and making our engine grind and wear out. Additive are nothing new and they have been proven to work. The main difference is that the right additivs are dangerous and hard to introduce to the system easily.
No. Oxygen additives don't produce a better chemical reaction, just a cleaner version of the same reaction. Adding water doesn't help combustion, just try adding some to your campfire. The old water injection systems reduced intake charge temperature by the phase change of water to steam, allowing greater compression ratios and greater efficiency.
The article stat
Re:Where does the energy come from? (Score:2, Informative)
1) The load produced by the alternator is proportional to the power it is generating. Drawing any power from the electrical system will cause an increased load on the engine. There is no "surplus electricity".
2) Splitting water into H2 and O, then recombining them into H20 is a net loss. With the efficiencies involved, you would be much better off driving a small electric motor connected to the drive shaft with your "surplus electricity".
Surplus electricity? (Score:2, Informative)
It's more like a supercharger or turbo. (Score:3, Informative)
And that's the point. Adding straight up oxygen and hydrogen into the intake apparently makes the resulting combustion more efficient. This shifts the stochiometric ratio [wikipedia.org] the engine operates at, it sounds like, such that more of the fuel gets burned.
There are two fuel/air ratios that matter for gasoline engines: The air/fuel ratio when your cruising is the stochiometric ratio (about 14.6:1), and the "max burn" ratio (forget the name for it, but around 12:1). The former ratio is the mixture where all (or nearly all) of gasoline gets burned, and the latter is the one in which all the oxygen gets consumed (leaving some fuel unburned). Obviously, a properly functioning car would only run near 12:1 during heavy acceleration.
I imagine throwing oxygen and hydrogen in the mix during periods of acceleration, rather than merely richening up the mixture would have very positive effects on fuel economy, since you really are burning nearly every bit of gas you put in there.
You're right that cracking water into H2 and O2 doesn't give you enough of either that you can make it self sustaining. This system still could actually work because you're getting continuous energy input from an outside source.
--Joe
No it isn't (Score:3, Informative)
Whether you come out ahead on the energy balance depends on how much more efficient the reaction is, compared with the inefficiency in the electrical/electrolysis side, which I admit is unlikely to exceed 30%.
The point is that the hydrogen is somewhat acting as a catalyst, or reaction improver, not just as extra fuel.
By the way, I agree with your scepticism, but that argument is not the killer.
99% correct, but... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Ho Ho Ho (Score:3, Informative)
Colder air is denser, everything else being equal.
However, "moist" or "humid" air, under the same conditions, is less dense.
A hypothetical cubic foot of any gas at the same temperature and pressure always has the same number of molecules no matter what gas is in the container
In humid air, molecules of water vapor (molecular weight 18) replace molecules of nitrogen (MW 28) and Oxygen (MW 32). So, replacing nitrogen and oxygen with water vapor decreases the weight of the air in the cubic foot; that is, it's density decreases.
In aircraft, high humidity can reduce engine, prop, turbine, and lifting surface efficiency and performance.
Excellent reply except: (Score:3, Informative)
Partially. Getting 55mpg milage is nothing new. Infact early 90's Geo Metros could hit 55+ no problem. The problem with 55mpg cars is that they have absolutely no balls. When you have an engine that only develops 80ft/lbs of torque and a set of highway gears that keep crank speeds under 3k on the interstate, you have a car that will take about 3 miles to get to 60mph.
Hybrids improve on this in a few ways. First, they turn the engine off when it's not being used. Less waste, more milage, especially in town. Second, they use the braking to recapture energy for the batteries. And Third, they use an electric motor to assist/replace the engine acceleration. That means that you can run a very efficient but very week engine, and still be able to hit 60 in under 20 seconds (12.7 for the Prius). The Prius, running on it's electric motor develops 295ft/lbs of torque up to 1200rpms. That's more off the line grunt power then most cars on the road, and better then most muscle cars. Most performance engines can beat 295ft/lbs, but they do it at slightly higher rpms, which means the new Prius should have some very impressive trap times and 0-25 performance.
-Rick
Re:Where does the energy come from? (Score:3, Informative)
Is the total gain in efficiency of the engine, due to the balanced combustable mix of hydrogen and oxygen added, enough for whatever reason -- from the additional energy during combustion to slowing of the remaining cumbustion by water recreated in the burning, anything -- to make up for the loss in the generation of the electricity and splitting of the water?
Seems unlikely, but possible, since the internal combustion engine is so inefficient as is.