Diesel Power Magazine Disappointment.

[theunchosen]

Originally Posted by jason.thompson

theunchosen,

I see your perspective and in it your right. Now let me unload some hydrogen propaganda.

The idea of getting your electricity from a source outside the engines crankshaft might help open up hydrogen generators. Considering today's engines produce just as much waste heat as they do work at the wheels.

First of all we need to get on the same page.

Most vehicles have only 25% thermal efficiency. Side note: I don't understand why people use MPG as a way to measure efficiency. You are making more work for yourself. Also I want to pick on ecomodder's mission statement. You guys are not concerned with power? Power is what does work. Fuel efficiency is a result not a goal.

So the unchosen, your example works if our engines were 100% thermal efficient. It is not so simple. Take today's diesel engines which have particulate matter filters. The engine dumps fuel to burn out the ash. A cleaner burning engine requires less fuel dumps. A gasoline engine uses fuel to cool combustion. So why not substitute water+methanol or steam? But I think for gas 3-way-cats to work they need rich 14.7 to 1 fuel mixtures. So leaning them out which you can do with hydrogen might make them not work?

I'm not saying go out and buy anything. It's kind of like this pretend on-board hydrogen generators are a rare species of ants. These ants secrete a liquid which cures cancer. Here I am on my hands and knees with a magnifying glass carefully working to not squish anything which might be under a leaf or twig. Here you are running around screaming at the top of your lungs looking towards the sky and truly believing cancer curing ants couldn't possibly exist.

Thats not really at all what I am doing. What I am telling you is just that. . .running hydrogen as fuel gets the exact same efficiencies as running gasoline. It doesn't change.

Its very easy to test whether the hydrogen does something. Put a hydrogen gas tank in your car and feed the line in after the throttle body near the intake manifold.

In that situation the hydrogen as far as the rest of the car is concerned is free. The result is minimal FE increase flowing enough hydrogen to maintain a pilot light(Good luck getting that out of any electrolysis system you can buy for less than 1 grand). If you twist the valve more and let it run pretty wide open FE changes alot.

Thats because you're dumping in sub 0F coolant and a ton of extra fuel.

Moral of all hydrogen testing is unless you've got a compressor that can handle slowly compressing the hydrogen to avoid detonation and you can do it for free(solar or whatever) running hydrogen in your car is pointless.

The only place anyone has encountered any FE improvement for fuel cost is in ultra-lean gassers running hyper 35:1 AFR. In that case it improved FE because it encouraged the flame front to travel faster as it hit the H2 pocket avoiding the flame dying out in the chamber(encountering pockets of 140:1 AFR when the chamber is running too lean the AFR is not homogenous by any means).

Once again unless you have "free" electricity that the engine is not using in any way shape or form using one of these generators is a waste of your fuel.

[jason.thompson]

Alright sorry for saying you were an ant smasher. Clearly you are not since we are still talking, calmly. There are so many of those types around it makes me nervous to chat openly.

Ok now that we are on the same page lets get on the same text. What studies have you been looking at that prove small amounts of hydrogen injected into the combustion chamber don't increase efficiency?

Do you believe hydrogen does not reduce emissions?

Gasoline engines always run homogenous unless they are direct injection right?

Diesels are heterogeneous meaning they burn fuel in a diffusion flame (like a candle) except when they are running Low Temperature Combustion right?

A guy told me this. Hydrogen acts as a sledgehammer and smashes the fuel apart giving the flame more surface area to bight. Since diesel fuel only burns on the edges of the mist and drops don't burn at all it seems to me diesel engines would be able to benefit from hydrogen.

Sandia National Laboratories has a machine where they can actually look inside the cylinder when ignition and all the things that follows takes place. If the flame is blue or whiite that means hot. Red and yellow =cold and incomplete. I don't know this for sure I just built a lot of campfires.

Have you ever seen a hydrogen flame in person? That is what made me believe.

[theunchosen]

It was a published PR report from Honda so I'm hesitant to buy it as science(the hydrogen lean burn in their GDI test-bed).

The problem with hydrogen as a fuel for your engine and specifically DI engines, is it sucks up the same amount of O2 that Diesel or iso-octanyl does. The downside is its got alot less energy of combustion. So you burn 28 grams of air with 2 grams of fuel and you get 2x the combustion energy of your fuel. If instead you burn 1 gram fuel and about 6 grams of hydrogen you get about the same amount of power, but you had to burn 6 grams of hydrogen opposed to 1 gram of fuel.

Obviously there are advantages to strictly hydrogen engines because it burns cleaner(by itself) than most other compounds and its get a better fuel-air ratio(less air to burn hydrogen), but it takes alot more hydrogen to equal the kick of gasoline or diesel.

I have a 97 Del Sol and a 93. Both have CAI and new intake manifolds. Both have a secondary port that allows for gauges or whatever to be installed into the manifold. Instead I just piped H2 into that vent. Nothing noticeable with a laptop running diagnostic and watching the fuel consumption. Cranked the H2 up alot, AIT dropped from slightly above ambient air temps(68, AIT was 80) to much colder(50), and O2 began howling that the engine was running very rich. Threw CEL, alternated to ignoring MAP and following O2, ran lean, power drop non noticeable fuel consumption drop.

You burn alot more H2 in 28 grams of o2 than you do with fuel, but it produces alot less power. ECU decided to run somewhere leaner, power dropped noticeably and engine went into fast idle to maintain battery charge and warm engine, fuel consumption dropped but just barely.

You can susbstitue H2 for fuel . .. but. . . H2 tanks don't hold much fuel, they are heavier than gasoline and much more dangerous. A large large canister will hold about 112 CF of H2 or enough to run your car at very low load for half an hour. It weighs easily 60-70 lbs. For an equivalent 30 minutes I need 1 gallon almost 7 lbs. If you could haul hydrogen in a liquid state it might be more competive, but it has to be chilled and then you are using fuel to maintain cold fuel. . .Think space shuttle 80% or something ridiculous like that of the fuel is used to lift the fuel you need to get you from atmo to orbit.

[jason.thompson]

Interesting. I need to have more 1st hand experience with this stuff. My only test came from me buying an overpriced underengineered unit and then strapping it on my Jeep (not diesel yet). It has a stripped interior, no air conditioning and lexan windows except the windshield. It now weighs 3360 pounds. Anyways the unit's glue gave way and it started leaking a brown (toxic? I think you need to bring the used water to a hazardous waste site) liquid. I sawed the thing in half so I could see what was going on in there.

My other truck is a 1987 Ford F-250 diesel. I think it will be easier to experiment on this truck since it is all mechanical (fuel injection and transmission). I finally got it running well almost.

This company sells spark ignited hydrogen engines.

This company sells Cryogenic Natural Gas Storage Delivery.

CNG is CH4 pretty much hydrogen. Its easy to make a diesel CNG hybrid. Hopefully its easy to make a Diesel Hydrogen hybrid.

I wonder what the difference is between burning diesel/cng and diesel/hydrogen?

Having hydrogen stored as water is so tempting. The holy grail.

[jason.thompson]

On-Board Hydrogen Generator in Baltic States

[ConnClark]

Originally Posted by jason.thompson

On-Board Hydrogen Generator in Baltic States

This is just a regurgitated scam.

(15A x 24V) = 360 Watts

all for just 4 liters of hydrogen and oxygen gas a minute.

You would get a better return using that electricity to drive an electric motor to assist the engine.

[Big Dave]

As pointed out by others, the problem is not burning hydrogen in a ICE. That has been proven since the 1920s. Hydrogen-fueled ICEs make power as efficiently as those using other fuels.

The problem is the amount of energy required to generate the hydrogen from water.

A couple of other unsolved problems. It rapidly diffuses through everything so there is always leakage loss. A 3000 psi metal hydride tank will bubble when soaped. Hydrogen will even sneak through U-238.

Hydrogen embrittles everything it touches.