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Old 07-01-2008, 11:02 PM   #120 (permalink)
john_bud
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Formula413 View Post
I'm still pretty new to this forum but I know better than to make comments like that, certainly not in my first post.

Good post from a factual standpoint.
If a plumber was reading posts about the use of new innovative cellulose piping, it would get his goat. When I read rational people posting things that are equal to that, it's like fingernails on a chalk board. SCREEEEEE!

Failure to pipe up (even on a first post) is evidence of acquiescence. Remember silence is acquiescence in the face of the law. It does not take courage to keep quiet and let wrongs continue. I hope you and others would pipe up and stop people from sending money to the deposed king of Sudan in exchange for a $100,000 check. Buying these scam gizmo's and expecting them to give 20-50% mileage increase is certainly in the same league.

It is also odd to me that a group tackling head on a challenging issue of fuel conservation and cost is not more skeptical of wild non-scientific claims. Especially ones that claim to get "environmental energy" or "Zero Point Energy" and use it to replace the energy in petroleum. Yes, those claims are in the "science" of the water car web sites. Many here post how they have tweaked and twiddled a 1/10th here and a 1/10th there and after months of hard work, logical deduction and keen observation have gotten improvements from 10% to nearly double mpg's. (hats off to them). The thought that 0.0001 pound of hydrogen per mile is able to replace 0.1 pound of petroleum is however accepted at face value and even supported.

The combustion efficiency of modern engines is nearly 100%. That is they burn the fuel down to CO2 and H2O with very little CO or unburnt hydrocarbons escaping out the tail pipe. There just isn't much to be had there. Since about 1995, catalytic converters have been decorative for all purposes once the engine is warmed up. Cold start, there is a lot of unburnt still, but after that 5-10 minutes, you can saw off the cat and the polution out the back is at worst marginally impacted. (But please leave the cat! You need it for start ups!) The efficiency of converting hot gasses to linear motion is however stinky. 25-30% for gasoline powered cars and 35-40% for diesel powered. But, the HHO electrolyzers don't affect that at all.

There are technologies that do. Google up "6 stroke engine" where after the exhaust stroke, an extra compression stroke and water to steam powered stroke are added. Yes, a second injector is used to squirt in computer controlled amounts of water that turns to steam from the residual heat in the combustion chamber. Initial gains in fuel economy in the 20-40% range have been reported.

Think about a hybrid using the exhaust heat to power a steam engine to turn a generator. 2/3 of the fuel energy is waste heat, why not use a steam engine to recapture it and charge the batteries? It's plenty hot enough.
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