Water for fuel?

Maintenance/Repairs
81

put simply, i read almost every post that comes up. sometimes i have valid input, and answer, sometimes i have NO valid input and don’t answer.

for this post to reach four pages of 80 replies is crazy.

not ONE response by anyone is providing you (or anyone else) “proof”.

no response is even coming close to being unbiased, and competent to analyze this subject.

this post is a waste of time (for all concerned) in regards to auto repair and maintenance.

and you keep it going by adding nonsensical responses like, “great response and great argument! i agree.”

the response is illogical and the ‘evidence of proof’ is opinion. how is this finding proof? it isn’t!

as was earlier stated. find a more appropriate forum, where resident experts (not science teachers who have not been in a lab finding new discoveries for 20 years) congregate, pick THEIR brains. THEN post the info back here.

who knows you may be able to change a skeptic (or two) opinion of this topic. but until you find REAL evidence…

what you are trying to do is sort of like going into a Christian church with a Kuran, and telling the congregation to change religion, Huh?

82

Well, for starters this didn’t begin as a thread for “proof”. The original question, appearing at the top of every page of this thread, states

“What do you think of the “water for fuel” advertisements that are popping up?”

What people “think” would be their opinions, and that is what the original poster asked for.

As for “proof” I suppose that it’s just my opinion to follow the Laws of Thermodynamics and Conservation of Energy. Perhaps these are too biased, having existed for many decades and being used to prove, disprove, and calculate many things in science. These clearly do not count as “proof” for you.

Furthermore, the person who commented “great response” was the original thread starter. It would seem to me that this is exactly what he was looking for when he started this thread. And yet you refer to this as a waste of time for all involved.

Your final remark about comapring this to religion makes it seem that we are holding onto a belief that this doesn’t work as an unfounded, faith-based ideal. “Proof” doesn’t mean that someone in independent labs has to test every one of these contraptions individually. The “proof” is in the theory behind them, which has been disproven time and again. But, please, bring back some proof that satisfies you and change my “religion”.

83

Laws of Thermodynamics and Conservation of Energy. Perhaps these are too biased, having existed for many decades and being used to prove,

The Laws of Thermodynamics have existed for BILLIONS of YEARS…We just knew about them for only the past 10 or so decades.

It’s NOT up to US to PROVE anything. We have opinions and it’s now up to the OP to PROVE us wrong. Based on the Laws of Physics this device CAN’T work…Is that an opinion…YES IT IS…But it’s a well educated guess based on GOOD Scientific evidence. I’ve yet to see ONE BIT of scientific evidence that this device has a snowball chance in h*ll of working. This is like Cold Fusion. There are people who think it exists…there there is 0 evidence that it can work. Many people jumped on the bandwagon of JUNK SCIENCE…and they won’t jump off.

84

actually the real question posted by the OP is: “does it work?”

all the previous wording in the post is supporting that question.

the responses have all been opinion, such as : scam, crap, doesn’t work, etc etc etc. these replies have been met with derision and scorn by the OP. (like the opinion asked for was not really what was expected in response)

THAT is why i replied the way I did.

BTW, i am not questioning (or really caring how the responses support the issue) any of the responses, just dereks insistence that someone else does the analysis, so he doesn’t have to. over three or four threads the OP has commented on, several of his responses state, he says he’s too lazy to look this up himself. sort of puts a new light on the subject doesn’t it?

85

Okay, yes, I understand you (cappy208) and several others apparently believe this is a scam and shouldn’t even be discussed, for some reason. Again, I invite everyone to go back and read the entire thread and decide for themselves which people use derision in their responses.
-JLeather for one seems to understand my intent… I just wanted to start a discussion on this topic (see top of page for OP- original post) and hoped to find people willing to take this seriously. I don’t understand why some people think this was such a terrible thing to do. I enjoy the free discussion of ideas and research. I assumed others do, too.

  • I don’t understand why someone who thinks this entire thread is a waste of time even bothers to read it and respond to it. If it’s such a waste of time, wouldn’t it just peter out on it’s own?
86

Ok. Here is my feeling on the whole thing. I am an engineer so I’ll try to approach it scientifically. Normally I am more skeptical than most people about crazy technologies promising benefits that no one has discovered yet. Generally this violates laws of economics (basically that if someone can make money off of something then they are probably doing it already) You are right sderekh; energy can not be generated from nowhere. The electricity DOES have to come from the car, without that, the H20 could not be separated by electrolysis. HOWEVER, the issue here is that all cars have alternators already, and you are already expending an extra amount of fuel per mile to turn that alternator, REGARDLESS of if you use that energy or not. The alternator has a certain inherent limit in power generation, based on its size and design. (more powerful alternators generally take more energy to turn with the belt, and therefore more fuel, so energy IS being conserved here; no energy out of thin air) The alternator provides the energy to power your radio, recharge your battery, etc, when you need it. So, in summary. it IS possible to break up the water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen with electricity that is already being generated by your car’s alternator which is already using extra fuel to turn it, whether you use it or not. I have not yet done or seen any calculations on the amount of hydrogen gas/fuel generated per unit energy, so I do not know if this is even worth it. Does anyone have any numerical data to this effect? Thank you.

87

This site does a pretty good job of describing how much energy it would take to produce hydrogen: “http://mb-soft.com/public2/hydrogen.html”

88

cappy208,
Did you happen to listen to the Car Talk radio show today (5-17-08)? About 50 minutes into the show Tanis and her husband called in and asked about the possibility of installing a system on their vehicle to produce hydrogen by electroylsis and introducing that hydrogen into the intake manifold to improve fuel economy. This is virtually identical to the question I asked. Tom and Ray took them seriously and didn’t forsee any great loss in fuel economy by using the electricity already produced by the alternator. They did suggest there may be problems with the sensors on the vehicle and suggested that they may need to be removed or disabled to prevent them from causing the cars computer to introduce more fuel… working against the desired increase in fuel economy. They also suggested an older car be used for tests and suggested they report back with the results. I suspect we will hear more on this topic from the Car Talk radio show.

89

Who else heard the Car Talk radio show today (5-17-08)? How did you like the way they dealt with the topic (at the top of each page)?

90

I did the web site for a neighbor/friend/distributor (who also makes great homemade beer) of one of these HHO generating products at www.tnhybrids.com.

I’m a ‘show me’ kinda guy, if you claim that you can get energy from a vacuum, then build one and show me, don’t point me to a discussion about it or a grainy video alleging that there is a conspiracy to prevent people from talking about it.

Its part of being a good scientist, a good scientist doesn’t claim that something is impossible, he or she hedges and says ‘according to our current understanding …’. After all, before the discovery of radiation there was a ‘conservation of mass’ theory. That leaves all doors open but doesn’t commit you to being a nut job.

Being a data kinda guy I asked him to perform a test, drive his car on the same route twice, once with the device turned on and with it turned off. He had a different device that plugs into the on-board computer to give real time mileage, and he recorded it at one minute intervals in both cases and he got about 20% improvement with it turned on. The spreadsheet is on the web site.

Was this a double blind test under controlled circumstances? No. I’d like to see a test with several different vehicles on a closed track where the driver did not know whether it was on or off, etc. I remain skeptical. Its possible that when he drove with it turned on that he subconciously eased off on the accelerator. It was not a gold standard test. However, it didn’t shoot it down.

I’m very familiar with the conservation of energy argument. You can’t recover more than the energy it takes to break apart the water. I stand by this and believe it to be true. You get energy from gasoline. The engine turns the generator, which powers the device. You reduce the amount of energy going to the drive train by the amount that the device uses to generate hydrogen. That is all basic physics.

To argue that you can get more energy out than you put in is to say that 1 + 1 = 3. This is called ‘over-unity’, and they are not making an over-unity case. The argument being made is not that 1 + 1 = 3. The argument being made is that gasoline combustion in a piston does not capture all of the chemical energy available in the gasoline, and that adding an oxidizer (pure oxygen) and a very volatile fuel (hydrogen gas) will improve the efficiency of combustion by more than the cost of creating the hydrogen, so there is energy to spare for the process.

Again, I’m not totally sold. That is the case being made, however, and as a good scientist I acknowledge that they are not claiming that the energy comes from aligning the gasoline molecules or some such. Its a claim which isn’t ridiculous, its just not been proven in rigorous conditions to be experimentally true.

I will say that trying to run a car completely on hydrogen generated from the power of the engine IS a perpetual motion machine, and I have no interest in that conversation.

With my skeptic hat on, one of the many things that I do not know is just how efficient gasoline burns in an engine and how much ‘room’ there is to spare. If it turns out that the amount of unclaimed chemical energy from unburned gasoline is less than that required to break up the hydrogen then game over, in my view, on paper at least.

In my heart I don’t think that there is room for any new ‘cold fusion’ type phenomenon here; engines have been studied for over 150 years and that they are pretty cut and dried in terms of their capabililties.

J

91

MustangJoe:
It sounds like you’re saying that the alternator is already producing the energy, so why not capture it for use with the hydrogen converter, to help improve gas mileage.

The problem with that assumption is that the alternator is not already producing the energy. The load on an alternator (ie the amount of engine power it takes to spin it) is directly related to the amount of electricity the alternator is producing. If you’re now going to be demanding more of the alternator for the hydrogen conversion process, you’ll increase your engine load. (As a simple experiment, remember in the old non-computer-controlled cars when the car’s idle would drop quite noticeably after turning on the heater fan, headlamps, brake lights, and wipers?)

However, as with hybrids and regenerative braking, any extra load you apply to the alternator when you’re braking or slowing down would be “free” energy.

92
93

Did you hear today’s (5-17-08) Car Talk radio show? They took a call from someone who posed virtually the same question I did (see top of page for original post).

94

Curiously, for SOME engines, under SOME conditions, this may have some scientific validity. Yes, I am a physicist, and no I’m not advocating violation of the laws of thermodynamics. The tiny amount of HHO that is introduced into the combustion chamber is (ideally) perfectly mixed with the intake air, so when the spark goes off it generates a flash front that fills the combustion chamber extremely quickly compared to the normal fuel flash front. This flash front may improve the overall combustion of the fuel; at any rate in some engines the combustion appears to occur much more quickly (the engines sound noticeably different). It does NOT provide any appreciable force by itself; it merely promotes better combustion of the regular fuel. If the engine is designed such that it gets more force from a more rapid combustion of the fuel, or if the engine is otherwise running poorly such that there is normally a significant amount of unburned fuel in the exhaust, then this could help. It is unlikely to help at all RPM’s and loads however. Other techniques have been promoted for quite some time to accomplish the same thing, such as capacitive-load spark plugs. If I remember correctly the capacitive-load plugs actually do worse al low RPM, because the fuel ignites too quickly (before the piston reaches TDC). For all I know the same might happen here.

95

This isn’t completely correct. A standard (Otto cycle) engine uses fuel enrichment to achieve torque above appx. 70-80% of maximum. This is fuel added beyond the stoichiometric ratio. The purpose is to make sure that every last O2 molecule is burned. So under these limited conditions, a properly-running modern engine will still produce waste unburned fuel. At any rate, under these conditions introducing HHO won’t change the combustion one whit. One other thing. By adding HHO (which is what these devices do)you don’t end up with unused oxygen. You simply end up with a tiny bit of water vapor. It doesn’t change the fuel stoichiometry at all.

96

Your theory about increasing the speed of the flame front is wrong. Do you realize what really happens if one could make a hotter spark, ignite the fuel/air faster, or cause the flame front to propogate itself much faster?

It appears that you think this will lead to more complete combustion, increased power, and improved fuel economy. It does not work that way.
What will happen is this faster flame front will more than likely cause pre-ignition and this in turn is going to cause decreased power, lowered fuel economy, and possibly a very serious hit to your bank account when the engine becomes trashed due to allowing this problem to continue.

You should do some reading about octane ratings, etc. and you’ll find that higher octane gasoline is designed to burn slower than lower octane.

As far as those bogus capacitive discharge plugs that is pure bunk also. Do some in-depth reading about how an ignition coil and spark plug actually works along with spending some time with an oscilloscope and it would probably become clear.
If you really want a “hotter spark” then simply widen the plug gap or leave the plug wire slightly loose on the spark plug.
(Kind of tough on secondary ignition components, but who cares if mileage is vastly improved, huh?)

97

No, but what Aquatune is claiming, is that the water once injected into the cylinder, breaks down into it’s constituent parts, releasing hydrogen bubbles, which is a totally bogus assertion.

98

I have spent plenty of time in front of a 'scope, thank you.

You are confusing a few things. The reason that higher-octane fuel burns more slowly is so that the compression ratio can be raised without the fuel pre-igniting. That has no relevance here. The HHO doesn’t induce pre-ignition and the compression ratio is unchanged. All the HHO can possibly accomplish is to combust the fuel more quickly, after the spark fires (by definition pre-ignition occurs before the spark fires). All other things being equal, the best efficiency is achieved by maximizing the integral(F.dr) throughout the power stroke. Fuel that is burned too late in the power stroke (or even worse, at BDC or on the exhaust stroke) does nothing to improve efficiency. However, all is not equal. Research (including by our organization) has shown that higher spark-deposition energy can lead to increased NOx production (do a search on the KIVA CFD code; I think some of these results may be public-domain). Though I haven’t modeled this particular problem I wouldn’t be surprised if someone has, and at any rate I would expect similar results here. Note I didn’t advocate using HHO, I merely noted it may have some scientific validity under certain conditions, looking at efficiency only.

You are also confusing some things with the loose spark wire argument, but that’s a whole new topic not worth discussing here.

99

Improving the combustion is really a side issue, if in the process of injecting these added gasses, and producing them, requires more energy than the supposed improvement itself. Your net energy gain is still zero or less. Does a man carrying three bowling pins weigh less if he begins to juggle them? No, because it takes added force to throw one of them, and there is the added weight of catching one. Then you must consider the additional energy expended to juggle them. It would simply be more efficient in the end just to carry them. Even more efficient not to carry them at all. To add a water electrolisis system, water, storage and injection system, and the power to operate it, it would take more energy to operate than you would get out of it. You can’t get more out of something than you put into it. As mentioned earlier. 1+1 can’t equal 3, and because you never have 100% efficiency 1+1 won’t even equal 2 when it comes to your car’s efficiency.
If for just one moment, we pretend that you could improve the efficiency of your car with this electrolisis method, then you would in theory be able to run an additional alternator and produce even more hydrogen and oxygen improving your cars system by even more. You could continue this until you no longer needed the gas in your tank, but could strictly run the car off of pure hydrogen and oxygen which produced it’s own electricity to run itself. A perpetual motion machine - your car would be. This can’t happen. Most people would now see the fallacy of this concept. Right?

100

[b]More pressing is the problem of where to get the hydrogen and how to get it to the vehicle. While hydrogen is abundant, it’s almost always bound up in minerals, hydrocarbons, or water. The cheapest way to obtain hydrogen gas is by extracting it from natural gas. But if one of the goals of moving to hydrogen cars is to get away from fossil fuels, then taking hydrogen from natural gas is self-defeating.

An alternative is taking electricity from a nonpolluting source like solar, wind, or hydro power and using it to split water into its hydrogen and oxygen components. The problem here is that it takes more electricity to make the hydrogen than the hydrogen can generate in a fuel cell. Even if hydrogen fuel is relatively expensive, it could be the best alternative for making pollution-free vehicles.

Another problem is that hydrogen gas carries very little energy per cubic foot. So automakers are developing different ways of storing sufficient amounts of it in a car.[/b]

this is cut and pasted from consumer reports. it doesn’t get much more reliable than that. (or honest)