Quote:
Originally Posted by Greyg
One of our techs here at work just ordered a "water for gas" kit. After I finished laughing at him and let him explain his thinking behind it and what he is going to try it made a some sense, but I'm still sceptical. He said he did his research on the different kits, and with a big enough hydrogen genrator and a big enough alternator (for the power to split the water to get the hydrogen) he says "if it can be done I'm going to do it".
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Feel free to run whatever experiments you want, and be sure to report back here. However, FWIW hydrogen injection has been discussed a lot in this forum, just search for HHO for discussion of that topic. Bottom line:
1) It's well known that if the hydrogen was "free" (as in didn't take power from the engine to produce it from water), that you would gain some fuel economy from doing so (if for no other reason than the fact that hydrogen is a burnable fuel)!
2) BUT the laws of physics state that you will always be BEHIND in the energy equation, when you are using energy to make the hydrogen (vs say getting it in tanks of hydrogen gas you fill up from some other source). i.e. the laws of physics require that the energy used to make the hydrogen fuel (in the car, from the water) will ALWAYS BE GREATER than the energy you get from burning it.
2a) So if it was just a matter of "generating your fuel from water" (as some claim) than you will ALWAYS LOSE, as it take more fuel to generate the hydrogen than you get back from later burning it in the engine!
2b) This also means that simply having a big beefy alternator won't (by itself) lead to a "win", as the more electrical power you generate in the car (i.e. the bigger alternator you use to generate the large amounts of electricity you are using), the more fuel you use/waste due to greater drag of the alternator on the engine! This would seem to indicate that hydrogen generation would always be a fuel economy loss (not gain), but see below:
3) However some designs for hydrogen generation apparently use (engine)"waste heat" (energy you might not otherwise use from the engine, that you are making anyway) to do some (or all) of the effort of generating the hydrogen (vs doing all the work via electricity generated by the alternator). In theory using "free energy" (electricity in the car isn't "free", as you have to increase fuel use to generate it, but the "waste heat" may be "free" as you might otherwise just dissipate it via the radiator). So if your hydrogen generator makes use of heat that would otherwise be thrown away, in theory it might improve fuel economy (by using a source of energy that was otherwise being wasted in the car, i.e. the heat from the engine, and using it to make useful hydrogen fuel).
4) And there has been some discussion/theory that some levels of hydrogen can combine with normal car gasoline synergistically, and burn better than the sum of the burn properties from both the gas and the hydrogen alone. If this is the case (and the jury appears to still be out about this possibility), then (in theory at least) using the "right amount" of hydrogen may be able to give a fuel economy boost (to the gasoline) beyond the energy cost of producing the hydrogen in the first place.
NOTE: Points 3 and 4 in theory could be combined. i.e. if there is a special ratio of gas to hydrogen that really does burn synergistically, than (at least in theory) you could use that burn ratio while also using "waste energy" source of power (at least in part) to make the hydrogen in the first place.
However, since point 2 is clearly valid (i.e. you spend more energy making the hydrogen from water, than you get back by burning it), the only possible way that this could be a "win" is if (and only if) points 3 and/or 4 are not only valid, but actually larger factors than the loss of energy mentioned in point 2. And the jury still seems to be out as to if that is the case.
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