Hydrogen Generating Module to Help Your Car?

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."

That's nice, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's the profit for the oil magnates?

Re:Simple question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh.. guess you didn't ever take high school chemistry, no? If you read the article, you'll see that the unit is driven by the vehicle's battery/electrical system.

Maybe a quick study on electrolysis would help you understand the simple mechanics here.

Re:That's nice, but

[Rei]

It's all going to try and assassinate inventors of fuel-efficient vehicles, to lobby congress to invade other nations, and to rob from the poor and give to the rich. Didn't you know? Aren't you up on the latest conspiracy theories?

Re:Simple question:

[hungrygrue]

And a study of physics will help you understand that more energy is consumed splitting the water than is returned by the combustion of the hydrogen. Try this some time, start your car and let it idle for a little bit just to get a stable warm idle rpm - now turn on your headlights and listen carefully to the engine or watch the tach if you have one. The engine will bog down slightly from the increased resistance from the alternator which was previously spinning freely. Introducing any kind of electrical strain will have the same effect - the engine has to work harder to turn the alternator.

Re:Pricey!

[Palal]

For a transit bus or a heavy truck this is nothing! Transit buses typically cost anywhere from $0.5-2 million and trucks are also similar in their price. Diesel locomotives are pretty darn expensive too, so a $7,500 gadget is not as expensive as it seems.

Re:Oil Companies

[Pharmboy]

Ok, that IS funny. But seriously, they would like this product much more than other alternatives, like solar, electric or biodiesel (my personal favorite)

According to TFA, the main advantage of this system is it makes much less polution. The fuel savings looks around 10%-20% realistically. This is very good but is about the same as global fuel need growth. It means people will have a reason to still use gas instead of alternate technology, so the move to full hydrogen might be slower since this would take some of the urgency out of it.

Very interesting (slightly fishy...) and worth more investigation. Don't look for it soon, it seems the different companies making similar stuff are more interested in margin % than in producing millions of them.

Let the ripping apart of bogus claims commence!

[sbaker]

Car runs on water...yeah...how many times have we heard that before.

Let the shredding of ridiculous claims commence!

1) 80 million miles of testing.

That's 500 man-years of driving at 55mph for 8 hours a day. The article says he employs 15 people and he's been in the business for 11 years. If we believe this claim at all, we know he hasn't been doing the testing in a scientifically controlled manner. At best, we have to assume his customers are doing it. But if the savings are only around 10%, how do you distinguish variations in driving style from actual fuel savings. There are plenty of ways to get a 10% fuel saving from a typical car by limiting it's accelleration ability for example. If he glued a half inch wooden block underneath the gas pedal he could probably get a 10% saving from most people's driving habits.

2) Montreal Gazette drove the test car on cruise at 63mph and saw a 10% fuel saving.

Well, that's really unsuprising. A carefully set up vehicle with properly inflated tyres and driven at the optimal speed on a single highway run can easily out-do the manufacturers milage rating because the test conditions for highway milage ratings from the EPA (or the Canadian equivelent) are less optimal than that.

3) "The tailpipe was not hot" "...proves that hot polluting emissions are not coming out of the tailpipe"

Hmmm - everything that goes into the engine (air, fuel) has to come out again - and it has to come out of the tailpipe. Even if what comes out is non-polluting, it *does* have to come out again. Removing the pollutants from the exhaust would make little if any difference to the temperature of the exhaust gasses. This proves *NOTHING*.

4) He's selling this unit himself.

This is a HUGE give-away. If this thing was real and had worked solidly over millions of hours of testing - the car manufacturers would be all over this development. He could walk into Ford or GM and pick up a cheque for a billion dollars tomorrow if this worked.

5) The amount of hydrogen his system could produce must be microscopic.

The amount of water that's in that little box lasts 80 hours. He talks about his company doing development work to shink the weight of the box down from 20lbs. If the box was mostly one huge water tank then you'd have to deduce that the only way to shink it noticably would be to reduce the size of it would be to shrink the amount of water it holds - but doing that wouldn't require significant development effort. It would be a trivial matter of telling people to refill it more often. So we have to assume that most of the 20lb box ISN'T water. Let's be generous and guess that half of it is a 1 gallon (10lb) water tank.

So just how much water is consumed over 80 hours of driving? 80 hours of driving would consume - what - 200 gallons of gasoline? So one gallon of water - when electrolized in to hydrogen - drastically improves the fuel efficiency of 200 gallons of gasoline?! Mmmm'K.

6) How come the hydrogen fuel cell developers aren't making a killing by injecting hydrogen into conventional gasoline engines? The amount of hydrogen in even a modest fuel cell would provide that tiny amount of hydrogen to the engine and last for maybe a year! Much more practical than this gizmo I think.

Electrolysis driven by a car battery...sheesh!

7) There are a LOT of unverifiable 'facts' in this paper.

Google this 'Gene Stowe' guy - who'se plastic version exploded with enough force to fling plastic disks 200 to 300 feet into the air...which we're told were then sighted as UFO's. No sign of him anywhere.

Oh - come *ON* - if you throw a plastic disk 200 to 300 feet into the air, it comes back down about 20 seconds later. How the heck could anyone ever imagine they'd seen a UFO? Furthermore, if they had a 'lot' of UFO sightings, that means that these things exploded an awful lot. How come the guy continued testing them after they exploded? Why isn't this story all over the Internet?

Bogus.

Re:It's a fake

[IWorkForMorons]

I've seen the tech behind this on Discovery before, but not in this form. It's true that adding hydrogen to the combustion cycle will burn the gas more efficently, leading to less pollution going out the tailpipe because it's all burned in the chamber. Don't know if it would reach 100% efficency, but it'll get pretty damn close. The only problem with the Discovery story was that they were using an actual tank of hydrogen, which can be dangerous.

Pollution comes from the fact that only about a third of the fuel that goes into the combustion chamber is actually burned. The rest is spit out as exhaust. And that's in a properly tuned and maintained car, which many cars are not. Really it's closer to about 25%, leaving 75% go out the tailpipe as hydrocarbons and other lovely stuff that we get to breathe in. Think about that...for every 4 liters of gas you buy, only 1 liter actually moves you forward. This means you have to buy more gas. And then you wonder why the oil companies don't want this kind of tech to come out.

Re:Simple question:

[Rei]

This can't be the most efficient way to increase efficiency. 30% engine efficiency, 90% alternator efficiency, 80% electrolysis efficiency -> ~20% hydrogen production efficiency. You're then using that hydrogen to burn residual gasoline (again at 30% efficiency), in addition to getting (30%?) of the hydrogen's energy back, so 0.2*0.3+0.2*0.3=0.12, so you'd need to get more than 8 times more energy's worth of gasoline burned than you inject energy's worth of hydrogen.

Then, you have to refill it with water every 80 hours. Surely there's a liquid catalyst that you could buy, or (less dense) compressed hydrogen made by a more efficient process, that would increase efficiency that wouldn't take some convoluted electrolysis process.

From a chemistry standpoint, what would the hydrogen be doing to increase efficiency? I suppose it would increase the temperature of combustion, but wouldn't it take such a significant percentage hydrogen to make a difference in the percentage of fuel that is combusted that you're outpacing the amount of uncombusted fuel left in the exhaust? It just doesn't seem like it would be effective.

Once again, /. needs a "snake oil" category

[ChiralSoftware]

This type of story should go into a category for snake oil, novelties and pseudo-science. Geez, people have been promoting 200mpg carburators since the dawn of the automobile.

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mobile search [mwtj.com]

Re:Simple question:

[EnderWigginsXenocide]

Lets see

"We're marketing a 20-pound unit for $7,500."

So, why don't we take $7500 per vehicle, and invest in other measures to get fuel effeciency at a lower cost. More composits to save weight. Active polution mitigation systems (carbon sinks.) R&D into h2/fuel cell vehicles.

There's better ways to spend $7500 pre vehicle if you want to make them more green.

Take that $7500 per vehicle and but a s**tload of trees and go replant deforested tracts that one always hears about.

Don't get me started.

Re:Oil Companies

[MBCook]

Pollution from cars is one thing I've wondered about. Sure there are millions of cars and they do produce a lot of pollution. But doesn't a normal lawnmower produce like 30x the pollution of a late model car? If so, why not make a better lawn mower? There are millions of those cutting yards in homes, baseball and football fields, parks, medians on the highway, etc. Seems that it would be much easier to cut the pollution of the lawnmower in half than it would be to reduce the same amount of pollution from cars.

Either way, an interesting product. Id' like to see it on the market, but it seems like one of those things we hear about and "wow, that's great" and we never hear about it again (either because it's a scam, isn't worth the money for the little benefit, or whatever).

Re:I dunno

[alienw]

Exactly. The maximum possible thermodynamic (Carnot) efficiency for a car engine cycle is in the 30% range. This does not depend much on engine design or anything else for that matter, just the combustion temperature and the dead state (air) temperature. This is very basic physics.

Combustion efficiency in a properly working car engine should be very close to ideal under normal driving conditions. Furthermore, CO2 is one of the products of an ideal combustion process. Unless you aren't using gasoline for fuel and/or don't have a catalytic converter, you will emit the same amount of CO2 per gallon of gas used. Finally, if you have 5.5% CO2 in your exhaust, you're not burning anything. That's close to the atmospheric value.

This is simply a scam. People have been trying to create perpetual motion machines for thousands of years. What's sad is that this makes it to Slashdot in this day and age.

Re:Simple question:

[Romancer]

Damn, you guys have never plugged anything into your cars have you?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The article states that they have simply found a way to introduce an additive to the system. Not a perpetual energy machine or a super mysticaly shaped piece of metal to harness the rays of the egyptian gods powers. It's the same concept of todays hydrogen fuel cells that we all accept work by harnessing hydrogens easy molecular structure and it's easy seperation and combination charactoristics. By adding hydrogen to gas it will explode better. Simple as that. You add hydrogen and you get power. The machine is special because it makes hydrogen on the spot by using extra electricity that we have on the go and usually use to power portable tvs and watch shows that complain about gas prices.

Weirdest Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I was reading all these comments and had a really weird idea: Instead of insulting the people who are trying to make cars more efficent, try to be quiet or maybe think of ideas to make cars more efficent.

Re:FTA:

[a11]

and you're not a bitch. you're what a bitch disposes in the toiled after a hearty winter chili. so it sits all day long in your driveway. well, most people don't use cars to sit there idling all day long, but then again, they're not dump phallic symbols such as you. ON AVERAGE, 50mph is about the right number. I go 74mph on the expressway, I average about 15mph in traffic - I'd say over the life of my car, this guy is in the ballpark. the parent DOES NOT assume all engine use is during driving. do you know how do calculate an average?

it seems you don't, so in my opinion, there is a high chance that you haven't hit 2nd grade yet. If that is the case, I do apologize for writing harsh things to a kid. If you are indeed 9 years old, like you seem, ignore the post, and please stay off of Slashdot. this site will fuck with your fragile little mind. instead, your time would be better spent playing with daddy in a dark closet.

Re:high school chem class?

[Jeremi]

It certainly won't get much play from petroleum companies. I can just see them actively lining up to help sell you a hybrid vehicle that gets over 100 mpg in the USA.

This just in: cars are not sold by petroleum companies. Cars are sold by automobile companies. And yes, car companies would line up to sell you a hybrid vehicle that gets over 100mpg in the USA, if they could figure out a profitable way to do it.

Where is the F/OSS spirit? Guess it goes away when there are billions of dollars to be made?

What are you talking about? Just because a story appears on Slashdot, you think the people featured in that story have anything to do with open source? You realize that the third "S" in "OSS" stands for "software", right? And that this device is not software?

Re:I stand corrected.

[turbotalon]

You are right, the alternator does always spin at the same speed as the engine. When extra load is added to the system, however, the voltage regulator senses a drop in voltage. It then allows more current flow to the field coils in the alternator, since the armature (sp?) is now spinning the same speed, but in a stronger magnetic field, addional rotational engery is converted to electrical energy. This coversion of rotational to electrical energy is seen by the engine as 'drag'.

Re:Simple question:

[Dolphinzilla]

You made his point !

The point was that ANY additional load on the engine burns more fuel - there is no "extra" electricity just because the alternator is rotating. If there is no electrical load (current draw) on the alternator then there is no parasitic HP required from the engine (well actually a small amount due to friction in the alternator). As soon as you put ANY load on the alternator it WILL require more fuel for the engine - if you pulled off the belt from your alternator the engine would use less fuel. This is basic thermodynamics (and auto mechanics for that matter)

Re:Simple question:

[Nogami_Saeko]

Sorry, I have a hybrid - my engine doesn't idle, or waste gas - the only excess energy being produced is when the car is using the regenerative braking system.

Assuming this guy's invention produces even a 15% gain (which I'm profoundly skeptical of given a lack of comprehensive 3rd-party, scientific proof), simply having a gas engine which shuts off when the car is stopped will save more fuel than this gadget will ever manage.

N.

Re:Simple question:

[ishmaelflood]

That 35% (note) number in the article is the first error I noticed. He contrasts the thermodynamic efficiency of an engine, which he claims is a (highish) 35% with 97% of the fuel being burned using this gizmo. Those are not measuring the same thing. Almost all of the fuel in a modern car is burnt, the problem is that the resulting heat is not (and Car not) be turned 100% into work, practically.

Re:Simple question:

[Technician]

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.


Everybody brags up the regen braking. That's only a small part of what makes a hybrid work. I have a power monitor on my car that shows the regenerated KWH on a graph. The more regenerative braking I do, the worse effeciency I get. I drive to use as little regenerative braking as possible. Getting a couple KWH going down a hill into town is nice, but jackrabbit start and stops to get high regeneration numbers is very hard on gas milage.

Now to substantiate the above claim. If I roll up to a stop sign without using the brakes by using the wind resistance and tire resistance, I've traveled a long way slowing down and not burning gas. I do burn gas taking off again. Point well taken, but if I roar up to the stopsign and hit the brakes, I burn gas plowing air up to the stop sign, and then lose about half the regenerative power in the process of generating it and storing it. Anybody who does robotics knows start,stop robot driving is hard on the battery even with regenerative braking. The motor gets hot from high current. A gradual acceleration and deceleration is much easier on battery life. The same is true for a hybrid. This provides little regenerative braking recovery.

A hybrid saves gas mostly by getting by with a much smaller gas engine. The performance is replaced by the battery electric end. As such my 1.5 Liter Prius has nearly the same get up and go as my retired Ford Mustang with the 2.3 Liter engine. The electric motors/CV Transmission and battery is about the same weight as the larger engine and transmission it replaced. Now the engine shuts off going down hills, rolling up to stoplights, and stays off until traffic proceeds again. On the freeway the hybrid gets better milage because of the smaller engine. In town it does even better because it doesn't plow as much air at slower speeds, has regenerative braking, and doesn't burn gas idling at the light. Most cars have a lower EPA rating for in town driving. The Prius has a higher rating for in town driving.

This system adds energy to water to get hydrogen and oxygen, and then figures burning the hydrogen with oxygen to get water will net them a gain.

I read the article. That's not what I got from the article. They put in Hydrogen and Oxygen in with the gasoline/air mix. They clain it makes the gasoline burn cleaner and completely so they get a little more power from burning the gasoline and throw less Carbonmonoxide and other unburned hydrocarbons (greenhouse gasses per article) out the tailpipe for the catalytic converter to deal with. I would guess the free hydrogen and oxygen helps getting the reaction going much like putting gasoline on a pile of wood to get it burning quickly. In a combustion chamber you have a limited amount of time to burn the contents. anything unburned gets tossed out. I think this is what the system is after. It is trying to leave little leftover for the catalytic converter to use to make a warm tailpipe. If you could properly completely burn gas inside the engine, then there would not be unburned gasses to make the catalytic converter nice and warm. It's probably where they got the cold tailpipe statement near the end of the article.

They don't have the catalytic converter functioning due to a lack of unburned hydrocarbons to fuel it. (assumption on my part) This is why the tailpipe may be running cooler.