Dear Stonebreaker,
You wrote: "The energy required to electrolyze one mole of water is 237 kilojoules. So 11.78 moles requires 2791 kilojoules of energy - call it 2800 kilojoules. That's 2800 kJ per minute. To figure out the wattage, divide by 60 to get 46.7 kJ per second, which works out to 46,700 watts. Which, at 14.4 volts, is 3200 amps."
If the base of the calculations is correct, you are right. I know you took the figures of energy required to electrolyze one mole of water as 237 kilojoules from a physics page, however, I still have a question that may reverse your conclusions:
That figure (237 kilojoules) may be essential to a particular electrolysis device, not a standard. From my personal practical experience, performing electrolysis with two different devices yields different results.
If I am right, anyone will get completely different performances depending on how efficient is the device you use. Then the 237 kilojoules figure on which is based our previous reasoning may be just a particular case, read "wrong".
Can you tell me why you took the 237 kilojoules of that page of physics as a standard?
For example, for my 2.8 liters engine, my first electrolizer device used 25 to 30 Amps producing little HHO gas, while the second used 15 to 20 Amps producing a lot of HHO gas. The second is about
5 times more efficient than the first. Anyway, both are very far from 3200 Amps.
For this, I suspect 237 kilojoules is not an efficient performance for electrolysis: I cannot imagine a wire able to cope with 3200 Amps!
Old Beaver
Quote:
Originally Posted by stonebreaker
I've got an idea. Get rid of the diesel altogether. If burning hydrogen with oxygen to get water returns more energy than it costs to separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen, then there's no reason to involve diesel at all. Just set up a big ol' HHO generator and fill the gas tank with water.
Even assuming a 5% concentration of H2 did everything claimed for mileage and emissions:
A duromax diesel displaces 6.6 liters. Even neglecting the turbo charger's boost, that's 5.28 cubic meters of air per minute at 1600 rpm. At a 5% mix as suggested in the above emissions test, that's .264 cubic meters, or 264 liters, of hydrogen per minute used in the test as a "catalyst". A mole of hydrogen is 22.4 liters at STP. So we're talking about 11.78 moles of H2 per minute.
The energy required to electrolyze one mole of water is 237 kilojoules. So 11.78 moles requires 2791 kilojoules of energy - call it 2800 kilojoules. That's 2800 kJ per minute. To figure out the wattage, divide by 60 to get 46.7 kJ per second, which works out to 46,700 watts. Which, at 14.4 volts, is 3200 amps.
The alternator on the duramax trucks is 145 amps. Even dumping 100% of the alternator's output into the HHO generator, you could only produce less than 1/20th of the required 5% H2. Plus you'd run your battery down in 15 or 20 miles.
Incidentally, 46,700 watts is equivalent to 63 horsepower. Never mind whether your alternator could make that wattage, your fan belt couldn't deliver the power in the first place!
So it doesn't matter if HHO works or not. Your car doesn't have the ability to make enough hydrogen anyway.
Incidentally, hydrogen isn't made commercially by electrolyzing water. (It's too expensive.) Commercial operations create H2 by injecting superheated steam into natural gas. The reaction is CH4 + 2(H2O) -> CO2 + 4(H2). the H2 is compressed and bottled and the CO2 is sequestered underground.
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