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Originally Posted by metro094
The idea with hydrogen injection isn't fuel replacement. Its that it is supposed to work as a catalyst to make the fuel burn much better, faster, more completely while its in the chamber.
You can add platinum particles to your fuel and get it to burn much more completely, reducing emissions and increasing power. Problem is that platinum is terribly expensive. Hence the platinum plate in your converter - much cheaper than an ongoing gas additive.
You don't see anyone trying to calculate fuel replacement ratios for NO2, do you?
I hear people say that 99% of the fuel is being burned in your engine, so there's no room for improvement, but I don't think that 99% is burning at the right time and place in the engine to all be applied as force against the piston, so there should be room for improvement to the actual combustion event itself.
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As far as adding platinum particles to the fuel it doesn't burn much more completely or reduce emissions much. If you look on page 14 of this epa report on a platinum system you will see that fuel economy only improves about 1 to 2 percent. This is well within the margin of error of the test.
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/consumer/devices/pb92104413.pdf
As far as burning fuel at the right time during the cycle it is true that some improvements can be made here. If you look at the efficiency of an ideal Otto cycle and an ideal Diesel cycle of the same compression ratio the diesel cycle will be more efficient. Changing an existing gas engine to work like a diesel isn't practical though.
As far as improving combustion to better approximate an ideal Otto cycle there are problems with building an engine out of real materials. Instantaneous combustion not only delivers a hefty blow to engine components, it also sends shock waves through the combustion chamber scrubbing the hot gases against the walls and transferring heat to them.
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I haven't seen any credible proof yet that the hyrdogen injection works, but the possiblilty certainly is there. I have watched while a guy ran an engine on straight water. The problem is that it won't start that way, and it won't operate under load. It just keeps it from stalling.
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The possibility of this thing working is slim and none. Running an engine off straight water that is split by electrolysis that is powered off of the engine violates the 1st law of thermal dynamics. It would be a perpetual motion machine. If it ran at all it would be off residual fuel in the fuel system.
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The argument of "if it worked, they'd be doing it" doesn't hold either. Most of what is being done is due to the narrowmindednes and inflexibility of the EPA, not for the purpose of saving fuel. All of our engines come with preset f/a mixture settings that minimize emissions, and the minimimal emission mixture is not the same as the highest fuel economy mixture before overheat.
I think we could all get about an instant 10% improvement in mileage just by reprogramming our computers or by altering O2 sensor output. We would just increase our emissions.
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If this worked at all it would be mandated by the EPA to reduce emissions.