Quote:
Originally Posted by Nerys
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SO I an going to run it off of batteries. a 40 amp generator will run for 2 hours off a 165amp deep cycle battery run to 50% DOD.
thats more than enough for my 90minute commute. I get to work plug it in and its recharged by the time I leave. Some say well now your paying for electricity. Well its going to cost me MAYBE a DIME in electricity to recharge it. Woopee :-) How much gas can I get for a dime even with $2.04 a gallon gas. Not much. If it saves me even 4-5mpg it will MORE than pay for itself hundreds of times over.
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Let's see if this is plausible. 40 amps at 12 volts is 480 watts, about one third the power of a hair dryer. Now, let's assume that we can do the electrolysis and the oxidation of the hydrogen at 100% efficiency, that is, that all 480 joules of energy from the generator each second can be converted to heat in the cylinders.
I'll assume he's getting an average speed of 35 m.p.h. over a tank full and that his 24 m.p.g. is over a tank full. A gallon will thus take him 24 miles in 2,469 seconds. To achieve 29 m.p.g, a gallon plus the "HHO" input (it pains me to type that) would take him 29 miles in 2,983 seconds. To simplify, without loss of generality, we can say that the HHO would take him 4 miles in 514 seconds. I'll assume 25% efficiency in converting liquid fuel to motion. I don't know what percentage of ethanol is in his fuel, so I'll assume pure ethanol since it makes the calculation more favorable for the possibility of achieving the hoped-for increase.
A gallon of ethanol, when oxidized, releases about 80,180,000 joules of thermal energy. Of that, 25% or 20,045,000 joules are available to overcome resisting force (i.e., move the car). Thus, to go four miles takes (4/24) * 20,045,000 joules, or 3,340,833 joules. We're doing this in 514 seconds. As shown above, the maximum energy available in 514 seconds from the work done by the battery in electrolyzing the water, even assuming both the electrolysis and the oxidation could be done with 100% efficiency, is 514*480 or 246,720 joules. Then, the engine can only use this at 25% efficiency, so 61,680 joules are available to turn the wheels. This is about 1.8% of the energy needed to accomplish the desired increase.
Sorry.