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Chaz you seem to comprehend the obvious: that you can not take power from an engine, drive an alternator, use the electric power to electrolize water to make H2 and O2, run the engine on that to make shaft power and come out ahead. There are too many efficiency losses along the way, the largest being the thermodynamic efficiency of the engine itself.
It seems as though you are fixating on that truth so intensely, that your mind can not grasp the bigger picture. That is not all that is happening. An automotive service tech. looks for a temperature rise across a catalytic converter as a sign that it is operating correctly. How do you think that temperature rise is possible? Its possible because even in a modern fuel injected engine there are unburned hydrocarbons and partial products of combustion like carbon monoxide that are oxidized in the cat. That is the opportunity for these devices to work. If you switch to an earlier more primitive system like a carb, the opportunity for these schemes to work increase. If you switch to a direct injected SI engine like we are starting to see, the opportunity is likely much reduced.
I did not say this scheme worked. All I said was that it might, and that before trashing it into the cesspool of rotting unicorn carcasses somebody ought to get some objectively measured data.
Please leave the intuitive thought process to women, no one can explain that anyway. For a little exercise in objective, and counterintuitive thought, check out "Wired" magazine Mar 2011 page 128 for an article called "Faster" Its about a guy who thought he could make a wind driven machine that could travel down wind faster than the wind. Of course we all know you can't sail downwind faster than the wind going downwind, so while everybody set around and accused this guy of harboring unicorns, he built a machine and proved it was possible.
For another exercise in counterintuitive thought, try reading HOT ROD magazine's September 2010 article on Smokey Yunick's hot-air engine as they called it. When he did it, they said it could not be, and it is still working. This really ought to get this group going because Smokey had some stuff that nobody on this site has. I am not saying it would be easy, but when you open your mind great things can happen. I remember people poo pooing Smokey's work when he was doing it. There were others too. If you heat gasoline to a great enough heat, it can go through some of the pre-combustion reactions, then the usual rules we all had pounded into us in Internal Combustion engines class about lean limit A/F ratios go away. But, if you want to cling to your comfy unicorn blanket, I can understand.
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