Inject hydrogen into your intake = double the mileage

[Dean]

Mythbusters, where are you???

[MikeK]

Some other companies selling the same technology:

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005...enenhance.html
http://www.pureenergysystems.com/store/Hydrogen-Boost/
http://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/hydro...ators-cars.htm
http://www.poweredwithwater.com/index.html
http://www.savefuel.ca/hydrogen/
http://www.chechfi.ca/

Some of these sites look dodgy as hell, others look legit. The last site claims they have over 100 installed on tractor-trailers with over 6 million miles of data now.

[sperry]

From Mike's last link:

http://www.chechfi.ca/pdfs/hydrogen_injection.pdf

Now we're getting somewhere... finally something that makes a little sense. This I might actually believe. But the system they're describing would require a properly metered hydrogen injection system, not a mason's jar with two electrodes and a plastic tube.

And what else I'm curious about... if it takes such a small amount of hydrogen, why not just have a small carbon/kevlar pressure tank of the stuff with a regulator controlled by the injector duty cycle that bleeds the tank off into the intake? It would be smaller, lighter, probably safer in a wreck than the car battery is, not sap power for electrolysis, cheaper to produce, and more reliable than these goofy on-demand systems. And if you didn't want to have to fill them up from a gas supplier, you could still have the option of running a home electrolysis unit off the grid power in your house which is much more efficient that running a gas or diesel motor to do it on the fly.

Anyway, I'm at least seeing someone make an attempt at a real explanation at how this could work, but I'm still not convinced that it's just not a more sophisticated version of the same scam. If hydrogen really makes as much a difference as they claim it does, why isn't this on production cars? How much did Toyota spend to design the Prius to bump from 30 mpg to 45 mpg? Didn't they know they could have gotten 55 mpg just by boiling some water into the intake?

[Dean]

Gosh, it speeds up the flame front and promotes more complete combustion? Imagine that... See Post #14...

[Kunikos]

You couldn't pay me to drive around with a tank of hydrogen on my Hinden-car.

[100_Percent_Juice]

This kit looks like it was made with parts from the clearance rack at Kragen. How can you charge so much without some hard evidence that it works.
http://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/hydro...ators-cars.htm
This one looks a little bit more professional but just seems like one more thing to worry about. I am just so tired of people tricking you into doing something.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/11/hydrogenenhance.html

[MattR]

Why not, then your car could be all...

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Dean

Gosh, it speeds up the flame front and promotes more complete combustion? Imagine that... See Post #14...

Sure, you said that... but the place selling it does not. They said it runs off "extra" electricity from the alternator. Clearly the place selling the thing doesn't know how it works and can't even prove that it does. It's still a scammer device that merely makes your on-board trip computer read a higher mpg and is likely to cause problems in the long run.

As far as the flame front theory... IMO there's no chemistry that's making hydrogen a benefit... perhaps there's a physical effect that makes it work, but I haven't seen anything that's not a dumbed down explanation like the grass fire analogy in that PDF. So while there's one place putting out at least a plausible explanation and admitting that the power for electrolysis is basically a 100% loss, they're still not providing access to independent research that explains the process. So it's either a much better scam than the other places, or it's just that untested. Either way, I wouldn't want it in my car.

Put it like this:

The Subaru SVX uses an intake resonance system called IRIS in order to improve the intake efficiency at certain RPMs thus allowing the motor to make more power/torque without having to go to forced induction. The system probably cost Subaru a bunch of R&D time and money to develop and ensure that it was reliable over the life of the motor, which is one reason why the SVX cost over $30,000 in 1992, yet only makes a modest improvement over a normal intake track.

The Turbonator is an aftermarket device that's supposed to do a similar job by swirling the air in the intake thus allowing it to fill more air into the cylinders as well as mix the fuel better for more efficient burn. It's supposed to work on every car out there and make relatively huge gains for simple $10 device.

You tell me which one is the scam.

Now look at the difference between the HFI system that only claims a 10% gain out of what looks like an expensive system specifically designed for large diesel engines vs. the mason's jar crap that purports 80%+ better fuel efficiency on any vehicle running off 1 liter of water every 3000-4000 miles. It's a scam.

[Dean]

So, we agree. The original site's claims are likely exaggerated if not outright lies. Your formulas did not address possible combustion process enhancements that Hydrogen might actually have.

Great.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Dean

So, we agree. The original site's claims are likely exaggerated if not outright lies. Your formulas did not address possible combustion process enhancements that Hydrogen might actually have.

Great.

And burning hydrogen still can't produce more power that the power used to generate it by electrolysis. Or do you still dispute basic conservation of energy?

Also, my post #6 came before your post #14... don't act like I was saying the formulas for hydrogen combustion/electrolysis were intended to cover side effects. I acknowledged the possibility of more efficient gas/diesel burn, but I didn't (and still don't) understand how that is supposed to work.

What I'm wondering is when you're going to build your own system and get 40+ mpg on your STi.

[Dean]

Originally Posted by sperry

And burning hydrogen still can't produce more power that the power used to generate it by electrolysis. Or do you still dispute basic conservation of energy?

Also, my post #6 came before your post #14... don't act like I was saying the formulas for hydrogen combustion/electrolysis were intended to cover side effects. I acknowledged the possibility of more efficient gas/diesel burn, but I didn't (and still don't) understand how that is supposed to work.

What I'm wondering is when you're going to build your own system and get 40+ mpg on your STi.

Your very first post which I chided contained your formulas and then said "Therefore, you will never produce any net power to help push the car." Turns out it may do just that.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Dean

Your very first post which I chided contained your formulas and then said "Therefore, you will never produce any net power to help push the car." Turns out it may do just that.

I stand by my statement. The energy produced from burning hydrogen cannot add to the power output of a motor if that motor is also powering the electrolysis producing the hydrogen. That's what the formulas describe, and that's a fundamentally true statement.

If there's a side effect of the hydrogen injection that gains efficiency for the gas/diesel combustion, there may certainly be an overall gain, which I stated in post #6 before you mentioned it in #14. But that's unrelated to the issue of energy conservation which you were attempting to dispute by mentioning turbos and regenerative braking.

[SteveM]

OK, it is probably a Bad Idea to get into the middle of a Scott and Dean argument, but I had an idea when I read the post above about using the built-in mileage meter.

Here's my theory:
The built in mileage meter is computed from vehicle speed and injector duty cycle. Now injector duty cycle is calculated from among other things, feedback from the oxygen sensor. I think what the hydrogen does is combine with some of the available oxygen in the cylinder and by doing this, the oxygen sensor gives a too-rich signal. The ECU compensates by leaning out the mixture. From this the engine computer calculates a better mileage.

In addition, the hydrogen is burning in the cylinder and creating heat. This does contribute to the power of the engine and may produce more power. Now, if the system was like Scott says, and there is just a little bottle of H2 from some other source, I would say the vehicle probably does get better mileage. So these claims I believe.

Now for the smoke and mirrors:

All these guys claim there is "extra" power being generated by the alternator -- this is not true it will only produce as much power as is being demanded. What there is with the alternator is extra capacity -- the ability to produce extra energy, and that is where fallacy with these systems lie. They are deliberately confusing the concept of power generation capacity with actual demanded power.

These systems use power generated by the alternator to produce the H2 (or Brown's gas or whatever the fuck they want to call it.) If you draw more electrical power from the alternator, it requires more mechanical power to drive. The problem with this is that the alternator is not 100% efficient at this conversion. and some of the mechanical power required to drive it is lost as heat. This is wasted energy, or an increase in entropy if you are a Physics geek. (Whatever you do to increase entropy, you don't get back.) Wasted energy as heat has to come from somewhere -- and where does energy come from in an engine? -- fuel.

So even though your engine is getting better specific power output, you are demanding more power from it by running the alternator harder.


Was that long enough?


C/N: the things actually lean out mixtures, but take more power from the alternator, thus decreasing actual mileage.