[theunchosen]

Over the course of this discussion I seem to have mixed two topics up. One a man powered a car on hydrogen from a cylinder. a second man supplemented his car by adding hydrogen directly to the intake(think like a dry shot of nitrous) along with regular air and gasoline. outcome of 2 was his engine ran a touch lean because it was expecting the H2 gas to be air containing some O2. . .but there was alot more O2 in it than expected.

You are dead straight. The guy had a truck and the entire back was covered with PVs and he only saw low improvements. He then used them on his house(original intent).

The only. . I guess advantage you could call this system is a go-between poor mans hybrid. It gives you a little boost during the day like a hybrid does all the time, but its not really cheap. I mean if you can get solar panels free then yes it is(I watch for unattended solar fountains and highway signs, just kidding).

The other problems are most cars don't have any good surface area for this. Your roof and trunk are usually the only good places to put pv(hood can get too close to thermal max once you stop moving and shut it off). That said slapping them on the roof of your box truck or minivan will at least annihilate the parisitic drag of the AC and power steering and otherelectric functions. If you still have juice you now know what to do with it.

A while back I posited the idea of using the exhaust heat to run small Stirling engines and have both of them generate electricity and then just use electric motors(gets the immediate efficiency of ICE combined with the max efficiency of SE as a two stage system(more efficient than one phase between the same two resevoirs)).

Needless to say there are too many conversions mentioned above that misplace energy. My considerations have somewhat abandoned SEs for the time being, but this one is still lurking out there.

The problem with the water for fuel is you are taking fuel converting it to useful work and converting it to fuel and then useful work. Energy cannot be created or destroyed but it frequently goes places you don't want it to(friction and under your window sills). converting always loses energy when mechanical work is involved and thats exactly what they saw when they turned the unit on. the alternator seeing a large draw and inefficiently converting work to electricity and then inefficiently covnerting water to H2-O2 and then inefficently burning air,H2-O2 and Iso-Octanyl.

Using an SE downstream from the engine along the exhaust you have a 400 degree temperature difference and the possibility of work, without being parisitic to the engine(It will cause slightly more backpressure on the engine as the air cools and decelerates to density increases but thats pretty negligible). If you draw 3 HP out of the SE, convert H20 to H2-O2 and then burn it your engine is getting 2 HP "free." Not really free, but its energy that you had previously decided was worthless.

Problem currently faced is no one manufactures an SE of this size. SES builds pretty huge 25 KW SEs that run on a 650 degree difference and there are toys. Nowhere in between.