Hydrogen Generator Experiment

[ttoyoda]

I suppose it is possible that it's presence inside the dash could add some heat, although I would think it would be well insulated to avoid this.

A Mazda speed 3 I ride in sometimes has a dash that gets warm. Insulation costs Mazda money. They don't pay for the gas, though.

[crsauls]

Originally Posted by ttoyoda

I hope so. Another gas-robber in newer cars is the heater core that is hot all the time. So not only is gas wasted heating up the dashboard, even more gas is wasted when you have to run the AC to offset the heater core. I know there are vents and flaps to control the airflow, but the dash still heats up. All this just so you can have "automatic climate control".

I think there is a flaw in this. The heater is using energy that has already been converted to heat and is being dissipated by the cooling system. Whether it is dispersed by the engine radiator or heater radiator makes no difference. Using the air-conditioner to compensate for the heat in the cabin is another matter, that is definitely an added burden. What is need is a system to convert the wasted heat energy back into kinetic energy to propel the vehicle. Imagine if the heat generated by the catalytic converter could be put to work. Ever since I put a sparkplug in the exhaust of my Yamaha 80 I have wondered about the possibilities of running 2 or 4 cylinders on a V8 with reoxygenated exhaust gasses.

[ebacherville]

The old (1980s generation) Mercedies Benz 300d's have a climate control that you set the temp and there is a little pump inline to the heater core , it regulates what if any flow goes to the heater core.. kind of cool idea also..

you set 80 on the heater and it only allows full flow till the cabin gets up to 80 then it slows down the flow.. to regulate the temperature in the cabin.. its more of a off on thing like in a house thermostat.

[garys_1k]

Originally Posted by Formula413

As far as I know the heater core is just a second radiator that operates in parallel with the main radiator, except that it does not have a thermostat regulating coolant flow through it, hence there is always coolant flow present. In my Escort the feed line is in the thermostat housing before the thermostat, and the return line goes to the water pump. So I don't see any reason you couldn't just put a valve on the input hose and shut it off.

I guess I see the above as exactly the reason you can NOT shut off the heater core flow, but instead bypass the core if you don't want heat in the pass. compartment. Shutting that flow off means your engine has zero coolant flow until (and if, a big IF with no flow to it) the thermostat opens. I could imagine some pretty nasty local overheating in the heads, especially by the exhaust ports, with zero flow.

Originally Posted by Formula413

As far as air conditioning goes, I don't know if the heater core is really a huge obstacle to cooling the car, it should be isolated from the vent system by louvres when the temperature knob is all the way to cool. I suppose it is possible that it's presence inside the dash could add some heat, although I would think it would be well insulated to avoid this.

Mine seems to. After a hot soak the vent air coming out, with the temp. control set to full cold (no A/C) is much warmer than the outside air. Some of that heat could be from the ducts, heated from sun on the hood, but I suspect most of it originates from that hot core warming up the whole works.

[crsauls]

Now that you mention it, even with the temp control set all the way cold, the fresh air coming thru the vents is always warmer than the outside air. Even when the outside air is 105 F.

[Formula413]

Originally Posted by garys_1k

I guess I see the above as exactly the reason you can NOT shut off the heater core flow, but instead bypass the core if you don't want heat in the pass. compartment. Shutting that flow off means your engine has zero coolant flow until (and if, a big IF with no flow to it) the thermostat opens. I could imagine some pretty nasty local overheating in the heads, especially by the exhaust ports, with zero flow.

Actually, that got me thinking, so I had to go out and look. Sure enough, the lines through the heater core are the only thing allowing coolant circulation until the thermostat opens. I guess I was imagining some other hose that served this function, but if there was such a hose, there would be nothing to force coolant to go through the heater core and get it hot. I don't have my engineering degree yet. So the proper way to do this would be to put a diverter valve into the heater core feed line and run one outlet to the core and one to a tee in the heater return line. But then we are just back to the question of: Will this actually have any benefit, since this is just wasted heat anyways? The only possible benefit might be cooler vent air, as speculated below...

Originally Posted by garys_1k

After a hot soak the vent air coming out, with the temp. control set to full cold (no A/C) is much warmer than the outside air. Some of that heat could be from the ducts, heated from sun on the hood, but I suspect most of it originates from that hot core warming up the whole works.

I have noticed this too, sometimes I will run my A/C briefly to help cool this air down and then switch back to normal vent mode. I don't, however, know for sure where that heat is coming from.

[john_bud]

Hello,

Stumbled on the site and this topic.

First I would like to say that I am a chemical engineer and a car nut. As such, I am the natural predator of bogus automobile technobabble.
As sold, 99.99999% of all the HHO generators sold are pure ripoff. Straight scam. Taking your money.

The scammers are aided and abetted by people (several here) that want there to be a magic fix and self blind or ignore logic, chemistry, physics and quantum mechanics.

One person posted that the refining process "adds energy" and "unless cars run on crude he was right". Sorry, but that's showing a level of chemistry understanding below a 4th graders. Not good. Crude oil is refined to separate it into distinct chemical constituents by boiling points. Lower boiling point fractions condense out at the top (physical top) of the tower and are called "light". Asphalt is from the sludge at the bottom and it heavy. Sweet crude has low sulfur content. So when you read about sweet light crude from Saudi, you should understand it will fraction out more light products like gasoline. Heavy crude from California is used to make asphalt and no gasoline. There is no energy added. In fact, energy is REMOVED because some is burned to boil it so that it can condense and be separated. The process is the same as alcohol distillation. You don't hear about energy being added to whiskey, do you?

Sorry, but the posting that sparked this was just so ignorant I could not stand it.



Now on to electrolysis.

First - you all have heard of Carl Sagan? One thing he said is that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs". Think about it. You do this naturally. I drive a Diesel pickup truck. If I said that I get 22 mpg on the freeway at 65 mph - you'd go "yeah sure no problem". In fact, I get between 21.5 and 22.5 at those speeds. If I was to say that I get 220 mpg in that same diesel engine powered truck - you'd instantly call BS on it. Right? I sure would. Why? It's an extraordinary claim so you naturally want to see some extraordinary proof. Typically, as hypermilers you will want to see more detailed proof because you have attempted to get to that mileage and know it's not a simple thing to get 10x better mpg's. Right?

When you read about this HHO scam on the web, think about the extraordinary claim of 20-50% better mpg's and think what extraordinary proofs should be presented and you will see there are none. I'd like to see independant dynomometer runs with fuel consumption, torque, HP and full tail pipe gas evaluation. I'd want to see results from 10-20 cars driven 10,000 miles each by 5 different drivers each with the system remotely turned on/off so the drivers didn't know and adjust driving style. Wouldn't you want to see that? After all we all know driving style impacts economy!

Here's where it gets sticky. You know there are fuel cell's powered by hydrogen. You can generate hydrogen by electrolysis at home and refuel your fuel cell. There is a presentation on the DOE web site evaluating this technology. The exact power requirements are 6300 watts for 8 hours to get enough hydrogen for a 70 mile round trip. That's 50 kWhr. The cars that use hydrogen fuel cells are very small and very light and usually very aero - right? It can only take more to power a normal full sized car or truck. In fact, my truck probably needs 4x the energy to run that same 70 miles. Sound about right? I bring that up as HHO scammers claim a 25% mpg improvement to my truck.

But let's say you wanted to generate that hydrogen while driving with no storage. Picture 70 miles an hour so you only have 1 hour to make it and it requires 50,400 watts of energy. Divide by the voltage to get the amps and that's 4200 amps. Typical ammeter generates 40 to 100 amps. Small cars are in the 40-50 amp range. So you would need to strap on 80-100 alternators to get the amps to do the electrolysis. Wow! at about 15 pounds per alternator, that's about the weight of a geo metro! (I know, I'
m exaggerating!)

There are some claims and links to prove hydrogen does help. It does, but at a concentration of about 10-15% in the air stream. These units are under 1% enrichment. Uh, the lower explosive limit is 4%. Any bells ringing out the BS song yet? There are also some posts that the flame propagation speed of hydrogen is faster than gasoline. WRONG! Hydrogen flame rate is about 1/70th of gasoline's. That's from the standard engineering handbooks. Look it up yourself and see.

What it does do is allows a far leaner fuel to air ratio to be ignited. The explosive limits of gasoline and air are such that it is VERY hard to ignite when over 20:1 air:fuel ratio. But, if you add enough hydrogen (10% --15% is better!), you can lean out the air/fuel ratio to 25:1 or 30:1 and still have it ignite.

But, you guys are called "eco" modders, right? Lean mixtures burn hotter and will produce much much much much more NOx's. That's the prime component in smog, brown haze and acid rain. You would put out more smog from a geo metro than 20 peterbuilts - Yuk! That's not "eco" in my book! At those lean mixtures, it also would burn hot enough to melt your pistons and that's typically a bad thing.


Sorry to be so long and wordy!
jb

[Formula413]

Originally Posted by john_bud

Sorry, but that's showing a level of chemistry understanding below a 4th graders.

Sorry, but the posting that sparked this was just so ignorant I could not stand it.

I'm still pretty new to this forum but I know better than to make comments like that, certainly not in my first post.

Good post from a factual standpoint.

[ttoyoda]

Whether it is dispersed by the engine radiator or heater radiator makes no difference. Using the air-conditioner to compensate for the heat in the cabin is another matter, that is definitely an added burden.

I agree fully. I only meant that it was a problem with the use of AC.

[john_bud]

Originally Posted by Formula413

I'm still pretty new to this forum but I know better than to make comments like that, certainly not in my first post.

Good post from a factual standpoint.

If a plumber was reading posts about the use of new innovative cellulose piping, it would get his goat. When I read rational people posting things that are equal to that, it's like fingernails on a chalk board. SCREEEEEE!

Failure to pipe up (even on a first post) is evidence of acquiescence. Remember silence is acquiescence in the face of the law. It does not take courage to keep quiet and let wrongs continue. I hope you and others would pipe up and stop people from sending money to the deposed king of Sudan in exchange for a $100,000 check. Buying these scam gizmo's and expecting them to give 20-50% mileage increase is certainly in the same league.

It is also odd to me that a group tackling head on a challenging issue of fuel conservation and cost is not more skeptical of wild non-scientific claims. Especially ones that claim to get "environmental energy" or "Zero Point Energy" and use it to replace the energy in petroleum. Yes, those claims are in the "science" of the water car web sites. Many here post how they have tweaked and twiddled a 1/10th here and a 1/10th there and after months of hard work, logical deduction and keen observation have gotten improvements from 10% to nearly double mpg's. (hats off to them). The thought that 0.0001 pound of hydrogen per mile is able to replace 0.1 pound of petroleum is however accepted at face value and even supported.

The combustion efficiency of modern engines is nearly 100%. That is they burn the fuel down to CO2 and H2O with very little CO or unburnt hydrocarbons escaping out the tail pipe. There just isn't much to be had there. Since about 1995, catalytic converters have been decorative for all purposes once the engine is warmed up. Cold start, there is a lot of unburnt still, but after that 5-10 minutes, you can saw off the cat and the polution out the back is at worst marginally impacted. (But please leave the cat! You need it for start ups!) The efficiency of converting hot gasses to linear motion is however stinky. 25-30% for gasoline powered cars and 35-40% for diesel powered. But, the HHO electrolyzers don't affect that at all.

There are technologies that do. Google up "6 stroke engine" where after the exhaust stroke, an extra compression stroke and water to steam powered stroke are added. Yes, a second injector is used to squirt in computer controlled amounts of water that turns to steam from the residual heat in the combustion chamber. Initial gains in fuel economy in the 20-40% range have been reported.

Think about a hybrid using the exhaust heat to power a steam engine to turn a generator. 2/3 of the fuel energy is waste heat, why not use a steam engine to recapture it and charge the batteries? It's plenty hot enough.