Hydrogen Generator Experiment

[Christ]

Ok, I guess I should read then... LOL.

In that case, it's over 3,000 Gallons of unstored Hydrogen to equal the BTU content of a gallon of industrial gasoline, at a comparison of 126,000/40 = 3,150.

[Nerys]

How are we coming up with the amount of BTU's in this fuel? while I have no doubt your figures are accurate are they applicable.

I WATCHED a car run on a stream of mildly compressed (low psi think helium tank) hydrogen gas via a tube shoved into the carburetor on national television.

There is no way in hell they were shoving the QUANTITY of hydrogen you seem to say it would require to do this??? There is no way in hell that tank was holding even a FRACTION of 3000 uncompressed gallons. if your math is right they would have had to empty that WHOLE TANK in 5 seconds or so to run that car for 5 seconds. they ran it longer than that and did NOT use very much gas or pressure to do so. a few gallons of gas AT MOST.

ie the math your displaying is in contradiction to what has been observed. One of them has to be off. big time.

How are these BTU numbers being generated? is the BTU's in gasoline the MOLECULAR energy potential of gasoline IE 100% matter conversion to energy or just the amount of energy we actually manage to get out of it for useful work?

and 15cents a KW ? where the hell do you live Hawaii? (seriously thats REALLY high) even our COMMERCIAL PROPERTY only pays 13.6 cents a kilowatt. we pay a lot less at home. (that 13.6cents is FULL BILL divided by kw's used ie including all generation transport etc.. fees)

[pgfpro]

Originally Posted by Nerys

How are we coming up with the amount of BTU's in this fuel? while I have no doubt your figures are accurate are they applicable.

I WATCHED a car run on a stream of mildly compressed (low psi think helium tank) hydrogen gas via a tube shoved into the carburetor on national television.

There is no way in hell they were shoving the QUANTITY of hydrogen you seem to say it would require to do this??? There is no way in hell that tank was holding even a FRACTION of 3000 uncompressed gallons. if your math is right they would have had to empty that WHOLE TANK in 5 seconds or so to run that car for 5 seconds. they ran it longer than that and did NOT use very much gas or pressure to do so. a few gallons of gas AT MOST.

ie the math your displaying is in contradiction to what has been observed. One of them has to be off. big time.

How are these BTU numbers being generated? is the BTU's in gasoline the MOLECULAR energy potential of gasoline IE 100% matter conversion to energy or just the amount of energy we actually manage to get out of it for useful work?

and 15cents a KW ? where the hell do you live Hawaii? (seriously thats REALLY high) even our COMMERCIAL PROPERTY only pays 13.6 cents a kilowatt. we pay a lot less at home. (that 13.6cents is FULL BILL divided by kw's used ie including all generation transport etc.. fees)

My BTU data comes from the "Golf Research and Development Company" and the CONVERT TOTAL FUELS USED AND MILEAGE TO MPGe
spreadsheet from the Progressive Automotive X prize calculator.

The car you watch run was it on MythBusters? If so that was a K tank with around 1 lb of liquid hydrogen.

It takes very little fuel to run any engine at a idle. My car uses around 0.08 lbs/min of gasoline at idle.

My KW is 13 cents(I just check on line to see what were paying). The 15 cents was just used as an example. But even at 13 cents you can still see that its a losing proposition.

[Nerys]

So one pound of hydrogen. They injected at VERY LOW pressure what 10-15 seconds worth (yes mythbusters) barely a teeny tiny microscopic fraction of the whole 1 pound. what would you guess? 1 or 2 gallons of uncompressed hydrogen at most and I think even THAT is quite a bit high.

now that car ran 100% on that little bit of hydrogen gas.

Now I am treading into unfamiliar territory here but I had always been under the impression that Gas consumption is DIRECTLY proportional to RPM.

an engine at 1000 rpm will use HALF the fuel of the same engine at 2000 RPM ??

I can go 47 miles on 1 gallon of gas in 47 minutes. Gasoline is roughly 6 pounds per gallon (it varies quite a bit I just discovered) which means I use .127 pounds of fuel per minute AT 60 MPH.

what we really need to know is the RATE at which the gas was coming out of that cylinder. I would bet next weeks pay check it was VERY VERY LOW (Jamie is not stupid I don't think he is going to open the flood gates and blow his face off :-)

The numbers posted would imply that his tank COULD NOT EXPEL the hydrogen fast enough to run that car. not only did it at LOW volume but he "revved" it a few times and it ran just fine. (yes My first reaction was WOH wait what the hell YOU JUST RAN A REGULAR GASOLINE ENGINE ON HYDROGEN GAS can we go BACK to that please :-)

this tells me by "gut check" that it takes a LOT LESS hydrogen to run a can than the numbers posted a few posts ago seem to indicate. which means this BTU to BTU comparison is not applicable. Clearly since observed results fly in the face of them.

and they were using a car that probably got 15 mpg not 47.

"But even at 13 cents you can still see that its a losing proposition."

well not quite. This is only true if the numbers posted are correct. I could be totally off on this but the observed actual events (ie mythbusters car) seem to say those numbers are impossible and way way too high.

Even at full tilt how long would it take to empty that tank if they opened the valve all the way up?

one of the first flaws I noted is gasoline is a LIQUID while Hydrogen is a GAS

this means no BTU are consumes converting from liquid to gas which MUST happen for the gasoline to combust and provide power. this step is completely skipped with hydrogen since its already a gas.

[pgfpro]

EDIT Fixed my bad

Now I am treading into unfamiliar territory here but I had always been under the impression that Gas consumption is DIRECTLY proportional to RPM.

You have one aspect of it.
1) engine size
2) rpm
3) manifold pressure in KPA
4) elevation pressure
5) atmospheric pressure
6) intake temperature
7) VE
8) A/F ratio
9) BSFC

I have the formula for this if you don't believe me.

All these factors will give the amount of time the injectors need to be open (Pulse Width) on an EFI engine.

Also I made a mistake, my car only uses .0335 lbs/min of gasoline at idle or 0.0006lbs/second.

Back to the question it only took a very small amount to run Jamies engine. So would propane.

The main thing I'm going to hold my ground on is every fuel has to be measured in BTU's. It takes x amount of BTU's to make x amount of HP. Hydrogen doesn't have a better quality of BTU's

I have tuned propane,ethanol, methanol, nitro,E85,E70,E100. They all have different weights per volume and different BTU content per weight.
But one thing they all share is it takes the same amount of BTU's to produce the same amount of HP or energy.

1 lb of Hydrogen has less BTU's then 1 gallon of gasoline. The problem is that 1 lb of Hydrogen needs a 9" by 56" 47lb heavy tank 2 close to 3000psi to store it in to keep it from phase changing.

A pound of Hydrogen contains around 61,000 BTU of latent energy in it, which seems like a lot! For comparison, a pound of regular gasoline only contains around 20,500 BTU or a 123,000 BTU a gallon in it! Sounds good!
However, a pound of gaseous Hydrogen is HUGE! At standard atmospheric pressure and temperature, it takes up around 190 cubic feet of space. In contrast, that pound of gasoline only takes up about 1/45 of a cubic foot. Hydrogen gas takes up around 9,000 times the space that the same weight of gasoline does!

[Christ]

Pennsylvania's average price is 9.88 C/KWh.

The BTU content of any fuel is the maximum amount of potential work energy it has to be released, converted to any other form. For instance, if you light a fire, and 30% of that fire is light energy, and the other 70% is heat energy, assuming you're burning 100% of the potential fuel value, the light plus the heat energy values should equal the BTU value of the fuel you're burning.

40 BTU/g for hydrogen is derived by using the gallon volume of uncompressed hydrogen gas (in gaseous form) as you would get it from a generator.

126,000 BTU/g is the fuel value for average industrial gasoline, I believe without regard to additives.

Hydrogen can be compressed because it is a gas. When compressed, it will become liquid. As it expands again, it goes back to being a gas. Liquid hydrogen has a much higher BTU content per gallon volume.

The BTU value of the fuel is only important if you consider the H2 a replacement for the equivalent amount of gasoline, as far as I can tell, but there is a point to be made. If you're depending on the hydrogen solely for combustion enhancement, there needs to be a HUGE amount of enhancement going on to get a gain from it, due to the energy cost to derive it.

[pgfpro]

Originally Posted by Christ

Pennsylvania's average price is 9.88 C/KWh.

The BTU content of any fuel is the maximum amount of potential work energy it has to be released, converted to any other form. For instance, if you light a fire, and 30% of that fire is light energy, and the other 70% is heat energy, assuming you're burning 100% of the potential fuel value, the light plus the heat energy values should equal the BTU value of the fuel you're burning.

40 BTU/g for hydrogen is derived by using the gallon volume of uncompressed hydrogen gas (in gaseous form) as you would get it from a generator.

126,000 BTU/g is the fuel value for average industrial gasoline, I believe without regard to additives.

Hydrogen can be compressed because it is a gas. When compressed, it will become liquid. As it expands again, it goes back to being a gas. Liquid hydrogen has a much higher BTU content per gallon volume.

The BTU value of the fuel is only important if you consider the H2 a replacement for the equivalent amount of gasoline, as far as I can tell, but there is a point to be made. If you're depending on the hydrogen solely for combustion enhancement, there needs to be a HUGE amount of enhancement going on to get a gain from it, due to the energy cost to derive it.

Man I'm getting ripped off. My average is 12.86 C/KWh and we get ours from hydroelectric power???

[Christ]

I'm not sure where the majority of ours comes from, but most of PA is co-op. The residents cap the prices based on economical concerns, and the utilities pay back the consumer excess income profits as dividends. The Co-Op is technically non-profit.

[Nerys]

No hydrogen does NOT become liquid when compressed. NO there was NO liquid hydrogen in that tank on mythbusters. That tank would be UNABLE to sustain the pressures needed nor the temperatures needed to hold LIQUID hydrogen. Trust me there were NO liquid drops coming out of that tank because there was NO LIQUID in that tank.

you would need to drop the temps down to 20 kelvin (MORE THAN 400'f NEGATIVE) to get liquid hydrogen. it is VERY VERY difficult and expensive to make liquid hydrogen and EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to keep it liquid without tons of power and specialized equipment.

that tank ONLY contained mildly compressed hydrogen gas.

your nitrous system is a bad example. it was OXIDIZER not FUEL. our vehicles use a LOT more oxidizer than they do FUEL. just stick your hand over your air intake to see how much. what is it 14 to 1 or something like that?

Liquid hydrogen is what? around 70grams a liter. there are 453 grams in a pound.

those tanks hold a hell of a lot more than 6.4 liters IE as a liquid it would hold a whole lot more than a pound of hydrogen.

its JUST gas. no liquid.

[Nerys]

is that 9.88 power or DELIVERED ? ie we are paying less than 9c a kwhr in jersey but when you add the FEES taxes deliver charges generatiin charges all that crap the REAL COST the ONLY meaningful cost (ie what you have to PAY out of pocket) for us was 13.6 cents a kw. so your 12.86 is probably your ACTUAL cost not "just" the cost of the E (at a guess)