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Old 01-26-2010, 11:56 PM   #11 (permalink)
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Christ -



Yay! Michio Kaku Rocks!

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I'm still deciding if I like him or not. He seems like a TV personality moreso than a physicist, sometimes. Then again, I seem more like a cyber-based engineer than human, at times. I guess face value just isn't valuable enough, in this case. I reserve judgment.

In the mean time, what I've been learning about CNT's is quite remarkable, no matter who happens to be teaching it.

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Last edited by Christ; 01-26-2010 at 11:58 PM.. Reason: Physics, not General Science.
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Old 01-27-2010, 12:26 AM   #12 (permalink)
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Christ -

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I'm still deciding if I like him or not. He seems like a TV personality moreso than a physicist, sometimes. Then again, I seem more like a cyber-based engineer than human, at times. I guess face value just isn't valuable enough, in this case. I reserve judgment.

In the mean time, what I've been learning about CNT's is quite remarkable, no matter who happens to be teaching it.
Yes, he can be a squeeky-voice Carl Sagan type at times, but he's good at getting the word out. The rest is up to you. My goodness, I didn't know (Ed Teller was his mentor?!?!?!)

The regenerative breaking -> energy storage seems like a mild-hybrid option for any car. Have we discussed a regenerative brake system on another thread, i.e. one that isn't OEM from a hybrid? Who has Ecomodded one?

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Old 01-27-2010, 12:55 AM   #13 (permalink)
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A couple of points here. First, brakes may be able to absorb hundreds of horsepower in a panic stop, but usually one does not brake quite so drastically. With the normal (MIMA-controlled) regenerative braking on my Insight, I'm able to keep downhill speeds in a reasonable range on a 6-7% downgrade without touching the normal brakes, at least until the IMA battery is fully charged. And I frequently descend 4500 vertical feet of such grades.

Second, it would seem inefficent to use the regen to charge a battery to later produce hydrogen by electrolysis. I don't think electrolysis is rate-limited (though I'm not a chemist). So you might have a reaction vessel of water supplied by a high-pressure pump. Braking electricity electrolyzes the water into H2 and O2 under pressure (the vessel should be separated into H2 and O2 compartments), and a bleeder valve slowly releases them into your intake on demand.

You know, this might actually work. At the very least, it's consistent with conservation of energy :-)
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Old 01-27-2010, 02:26 AM   #14 (permalink)
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Capacitors

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Would this be a situation where ultracapacitors could be used to *temporarily* store the energy? It could be used in the HHO design or to supplement the alternator, but without(?) the weight penalty.

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Capacitors have fine charge rates, but so do ni-cad batteries and several other schemes. They still get heavy if you want to store a mountainside's worth of energy. Weight can be saved by using a generator with a limited duty cycle or extra cooling. That is less efficient at handling power, but a better compromise overall.
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Old 01-27-2010, 02:55 AM   #15 (permalink)
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Capacitors have fine charge rates, but so do ni-cad batteries and several other schemes. They still get heavy if you want to store a mountainside's worth of energy. Weight can be saved by using a generator with a limited duty cycle or extra cooling. That is less efficient at handling power, but a better compromise overall.
Ok. I thought there was a weight savings in the ultracaps, but it isn't there.

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Old 01-27-2010, 03:11 AM   #16 (permalink)
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Darin had a good idea for a forum for all the things that get talked about but no one ever does... The regen alternator should probably be #1

(OK. Just found some who have but I'd hardly call it braking)

This idea has many issues to overcome and the losses are large. If you use an alternator you won't get much breaking at all 100A at 14.5 volts is pretty low 1450 watts. In the Prius, a light breaking event pushes 6000 watts into the batteries. Max regen is 18000 watts! And you would need more than a couple of batteries to take that kind of current never mind the generator. Alternators are 50% efficient at best then there's the losses to produce the hohoh. It would be better and much less lossy to just use the energy to run the overall electrical load.

Sorry but physics is a tough mistress.

I'm not one to be a naysayer, generally as I have done some whacky stuff to gain marginal results but it seems like there is a lot of low hanging fruit to grab before this idea was worth trying. Plus the numbers don't look good.
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Old 01-27-2010, 06:15 AM   #17 (permalink)
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Off to the testing bench I go...

I need to see just how long it takes to run down my deep cycle battery.
Then- how quickly (how many brakes) the switching in and out alternator would recharge a half full battery.

I know its not a hugely efficient process as shown by my initial kJ figures. But it stays within the conservation laws and would essentially be a free booster additive.

If you run out of juice because you haven't been braking enough, no bother the diesel will keep burning. You could even manually switch in your braking alternator to charge off the diesel. I know this would temporarily reduce your MPG but the benefits of a full battery + a little braking after would then slightly outweigh this.

I read a great post on my 4x4 members forum that I'm on. I will see if I can find it, but he suggests that the 'missing energy' in the conservation loop is the unburnt fuel coming out the exhaust. Adding HHO enables that fuel to be burnt. That is the missing energy link that makes this work.

I will keep you all posted.
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Old 01-27-2010, 11:41 AM   #18 (permalink)
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Quote:
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...he suggests that the 'missing energy' in the conservation loop is the unburnt fuel coming out the exhaust.
He maybe ought to look at the output of a smog test. To pass, a post-1994 gasoline engine has to have unburned hydrocarbons below 50-100 parts per million, CO 1.0-1.5%. A well-tuned engine will emit much less, say 2-20 ppm HC and 0.0-0.2% CO. In other words, there just ain't no unburned fuel in the exhaust.
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Old 01-27-2010, 01:08 PM   #19 (permalink)
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The PPM counts don't tell you much about volume or mass unless you have something to compare it to... namely the number of millions of parts coming out of the exhaust.

If you're running out 100ppm of HC, and you're pushing 1 billion particles per minute total, you're still pushing out 100,000 parts HC every minute.

I haven't done any math there, but the concept remains the same regardless of the numbers. Without context, the PPM counts are meaningless when determining mass of each exhaust component.


I suppose I should qualify that statement at this point by saying that I find it highly unlikely that there is enough unburnt fuel matter in the exhaust stream to actually do what people have claimed here.
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Old 01-27-2010, 11:56 PM   #20 (permalink)
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The PPM counts don't tell you much about volume or mass unless you have something to compare it to... namely the number of millions of parts coming out of the exhaust.
It's obvious that you're not thinking about what "parts per million" really mean. It's the same as percent, except per million rather than per hundred. So you've got burned air:fuel mixture (14.7:1, roughly) coming out the exhaust, and so many parts per million of that are unburned fuel. So if your engine is moderately well tuned and emitting 20 ppm HC, then for every liter of fuel burned, you have (20 * 15.7 / 1000000) liters of unburned fuel, or about 0.3 milliliters. So burning that completely would increase your mpg by 0.03%. (Plus a bit for burning the CO to CO2, but still not enough to even be measurable outside the lab.)

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