Hydrogen cells increase gas millage

I saw this on the news tonight.

"We've developed a hydrogen fuel assist cell, it actually tricks the computer in the car and it turns reduces the fuel supply to the engine. It has no mechanical or moving parts, and you run it off of about 60% gasoline and 40% hydrogen," said Baldree.

WALB

This is very near to me. I wonder if it works as claimed.

Interesting, but I found the details a bit lacking.

The video they showed with the story showed the device. To me , it looked like a PVC pipe with wires attached to it. The inside, looked to me like a small metal plate in the bottom. Very simple design. They didn't tell what the solution was that was mixed with the water. What do you want to bet that it's something like salt water? Everybody thinks that when you run current through salt water that you get H gas and O gas. You do get a much faster reaction, but it's H gas and Cl gas.

I imagine that while you could burn hydrogen in an engine, there may be adverse side effects.

As an analogy, you can burn anything in a fireplace... but some logs cause creosote buildup and cause more problems. There are also issues of heating.

With the engines, I wonder how high concentrations of hydrogen affect the lubrication in the cylinders and if a different temperature of combustion changes piston ring gaps and engine wear. The use of alternative fuels is not new... a program during WWII used wood gassifiers to fuel gasoline engines. So, it is not out of the question.

I know that welding with hydrogen causes porosity in metal welds, which is an issue for weld strengths and brittleness. So large amounts of hot hydrogen in the pistons might not be a good thing.

But even more to the point: If you have ever experimented with electrolysis cells, it takes a long time to generate hydrogen. At STP, I can only produce a few cc of hydrogen with 60mA in a minute. So, I assume that this would be powered by the alternator, which would put more load on the engine. So, where is the efficiency supposedly coming from?

reply to post by MBF

"We've developed a hydrogen fuel assist cell, it actually tricks the computer in the car and it turns reduces the fuel supply to the engine. It has no mechanical or moving parts, and you run it off of about 60% gasoline and 40% hydrogen," said Baldree.

WALB

There are a lot of problems with the claims made by these electrolysis systems (there are a lot of them out there). This claim seems to be pretty outrageous. I doubt the system can produce 1 liter of H per hour which is about what it would take to give you the 60/40 mix. I used 60mpg at 60mph to make the calcs easy. If you don't do that well you're going to need to produce even more hydrogen. Using the source's numbers you'd need about twice that much production. Any ideas on if this is a reasonable production rate for a 12v system.

I also wonder if burning that much hydrogen might cause overheating problems.

[edit on 11-8-2008 by Phage]

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by MBF

 

I doubt the system can produce 1 liter of H per hour which is about what it would take to give you the 60/40 mix... Any ideas on if this is a reasonable production rate for a 12v system.

I also wonder if burning that much hydrogen might cause overheating problems.

[edit on 11-8-2008 by Phage]

That would be 1L of what.. liquid hydrogen? You will burn through 1L of H2 at STP very quickly (quick estimate... a 100cc cylinder volume at 10% H2 will burn 1L in about 100 cycles).

Hydrogen gas production is based on current, not voltage. The potential across a cell is a bit more than 1.2V. So, across the car battery, you might get 10-12 cells running in parallel. And the faster you generate, the more is wasted as heat.

I just went and built a hydrolysis cell to test my estimates (with huge overpotential... I ran it at 55V). I ran it for 4 min at 125mA and produced just over 4mL of gas (H2 + O2). That means that about 2.7mL of H2 was produced total. To scale it, at 1A you can produce about 5.4mL/min of H2 gas. That is 5.4% of the 100cc cylinder volume.

So, from my quick test and estimates, a 12-cell/1A electrolysis device could sustain 1 cylinder combustion cycle every 10 seconds in one cylinder. Assuming that the engine is running at 1200rpm (4-cycle engine) and a 4 cylinder engine, then that is 1200 cylinder-fills/minute, or 20 cylinder-fills/second total. That would require a 200A electrolysis cell. And how much fuel savings do you get when you have to add a 200A draw on your alternator?

I remain unimpressed.

I wish there was a video link to the piece they ran on TV so you could see what it was. I would like to know what the "solution" is that they make for the device. A man informed me that he called the inventor. He claimed he had 5 patents for the invention, but would not give the patent numbers and claimed that he was trying to steal his invention. I don't think the device that I saw could use a large amount of amperage from what I saw.

The people that they interviewed said they were happy with the results and even claimed as much as doubled millage. I guess time will tell.

reply to post by TheRedneck


the additive is baking soda it a catlyst for the help of the electrolisis. it helps release the hydrogen from the oxygen. it not 100% efficient it would be equal to a hibrid.
check out these site:
www.water4gas.com,www.hydrogengarage.com

[edit on 11-8-2008 by crawgator406]

reply to post by crawgator406
baking soda = sodium bicarbonate = NaHCO3, a salt of sodium and hydrogen.

In solution it would electrolyze to give off hydrogen at the cathode, and a combination of oxygen and carbon dioxide at the anode. Being a salt, it would make electrolysis easier in larger quantities (as would any salt), but the energy used in the electrolysis would be the same as the energy received from the burning hydrogen, allowing for 100% efficiency. The average internal combustion engine is said to operate at about 20% efficiency. So there is still the problem of where is the new energy coming from?

I checked out the two sites. Both are advertisements for this wonderful electrolysis device. I could build one (and have in the past, actually) right now. But it will not produce enough hydrogen unless the current supplied is literally astronomical.

Another scam...

TheRedneck

There are a lot of these devices on the market but they are not all created equal. This outfit is making a hydrogen booster unit that is not just some PVC pipe with wires sticking out. It uses an electrolyte containing Boron 11 + hydrogen to create a fusion reaction to achieve a very efficient electrolysis. Aqua-Nova

These also boost the fuel economy on ICEs as the ones in this article you mention. I see a lot of these on the market now. I think the time has come for car and truck engines to be at least partly run on water to increase their fuel efficiency.

[edit on 8/12/2008 by UFOTECH]

The guy said the mixture "tricks" the engine to run leaner than normal.

I will tell you a story, and make of it what you will. I took a two week trip one time. I was in an almost brand new car (less than 20,000 miles on it, all mine).
I was getting 31 mpg, when I ran about 65 mph. I traipsed from NY to FL in two weeks time. One long stretch, late at night, I was running about 80-85 for about 3 hours straight. When I stopped to fill up, I checked my mileage to find out how much less I was getting. Imagine my surprise when I got 31 mpg!

I don't care where or how I drove that car, I ALWAYS got 31 mpg. In the city? 31 mpg. In standstill traffic, 31 mpg. Up and down mountains? 31 mpg. Running like a scalded dog on the freeway? 31 mpg. BTW, I wasn't some kind of casual driver either. I put 60,000 miles on that car (1/2 freeway, 1/2 city) in under 2 years.

The only thing I could think of was that the car's computer kept it using a constant amount of gas, no matter what. I'd love to have seen what it could have gotten if they had maximized the mileage in that thing.

The only way to get the system to trick the car to run leaner is to trick the oxygen sensor because hydrogen runs at a lower oxygen mix ratio than gasoline or diesel. The article is not complete in its details I can tell that from simple mechanics.

I really had no idea what form "1 liter of hydrogen" would be in or if my guesstimate made any sense at all. It just didn't seem possible that a 40/60 ratio would be attainable.

Thanks for putting the effort into it. I was hoping for someone to come up with some realistic figures to compare to my hunch. I have neither the chemistry background nor a workshop to have arrived at real numbers. It just didn't seem to click. So it turns out the claim isn't even in the ballpark (without a "special formula").

If something so relatively inexpensive could produce such a dramatic increase in fuel efficiency it seems Detroit would be all over it. Just slap a hundred bucks worth of hardware in an SUV and get a 50%+ increase in mileage? Don't you think something like that would help sales a bit?

"I'm a regular person like everyone else. I'm not a scam artists, if it didn't work I wouldn't sell it,"

And it really, really works! But wait! There's more! ...
Gotta love it.

[edit on 12-8-2008 by Phage]

Originally posted by UFOTECH
There are a lot of these devices on the market but they are not all created equal. This outfit is making a hydrogen booster unit that is not just some PVC pipe with wires sticking out. It uses an electrolyte containing Boron 11 + hydrogen to create a fusion reaction to achieve a very efficient electrolysis. Aqua-Nova
[edit on 8/12/2008 by UFOTECH]

At first, I thought you were making a dry joke... but you are serious aren't you? Where is the proton accelerator? You need 500keV protons for that reaction. Or is that what the awesome and mysterious PWM DC 15 A power supply is for?

I am sure the electrolyte is a mixture of Boron 11, snake oil, bananas fried in butter, and love

reply to post by ScienceDada


There have been low energy nuclear reactions recorded in many instances that seem to happen at far too low of an energy input level thus the name LENR.

Read some of the papers on this site linked below for references on how this works.

LENR-CANR.org

It is just too much for a thread on ATS to explain.

If you only have time to read one paper this one should be that paper.
UNIFYING THEORY OF LOW-ENERGY NUCLEAR REACTION AND TRANSMUTATION PROCESSES IN DEUTERATED/HYDROGENATED METALS, ACOUSTIC CAVITATION, GLOW DISCHARGE, AND DEUTERON BEAM EXPERIMENTS

If you read the above paper the one reference that is given that is an important read is number 29. T. Mizuno and Y. Toriyabe, “Anomalous Energy Generation during Conventional Electrolysis”

[edit on 8/12/2008 by UFOTECH]

Originally posted by UFOTECH
There are a lot of these devices on the market but they are not all created equal. This outfit is making a hydrogen booster unit that is not just some PVC pipe with wires sticking out. It uses an electrolyte containing Boron 11 + hydrogen to create a fusion reaction to achieve a very efficient electrolysis.

The video that they showed on TV was of a short PVC pipe, maybe 6"-8" long X 3"-4" in diameter. You could see briefly inside what looked like a small metal plate 1"-1.5" square with a couple of wires hanging out. Myself, I didn't see how it could do much if anything. I feel that there had to be more that they didn't show. Basically what was shown was a piece of pipe with a couple of wires and a flexible tube hanging out.

What I wonder is, what about all the PURE oxygen being made? I would assume that if you add more oxygen to an engine, the less gas you need to make the same power. Earths atmosphere is about 78%nitrogen and 21%oxygen, could you get the mileage they claim with even a realistic boost in oxygen content?

These boosters work by adding hydrogen to the cylinder which has a faster ignition speed than gas or diesel which with the added oxygen increases the flame spread and provides a more complete combustion of the hydrocarbon fuel.

This allows the engine's fuel air mix to be adjusted much leaner without losing power. This is what improves the economy of the engine the boosters are used on.

This is the basics of how it works but the important part of the unit is the efficiency of the operation of the gas production. The more efficient the better it works, the smaller the unit can be and also the leaner the fuel mixture can be adjusted. The best units have a pulsed DC signal which is set up to create a cavitation in the unit.

In the best executions of the technology the booster unit has a coating built up on the electrodes of a hydrogen dense layer. When the cavitation is set up in this hydride layer it modifies the wave function of the nuclei in the atoms in that layer which causes intersecting points which compresses the coulomb barrier making low energy nuclear reactions possible within the hydride layer. These infrequent but very energetic reactions add their energy directly to the electrolyte which increases the efficiency of gas production in the booster cell.

Originally posted by UFOTECH
There have been low energy nuclear reactions recorded in many instances that seem to happen at far too low of an energy input level thus the name LENR... It is just too much for a thread on ATS to explain.

Ok... so I read the papers. It still doesn't explain where you get kT = 500keV protons. The Purdue paper is dealing with plasmas or beam bombardment of deuterated metals. It can even work with an alpha emitter, I suppose. It is also well known that true "cold fusion" (i.e., with muons) is well known and characterized.

The other paper is basically cold fusion or some mysterious new energy source, no? Even at Purdue, Taleyarkhan is being censured for his recent "work" on bubble fusion.

I am sorry to have to rain on this parade, but it is junk science if it can't be replicated.

Originally posted by UFOTECH
In the best executions of the technology the booster unit has a coating built up on the electrodes of a hydrogen dense layer. When the cavitation is set up in this hydride layer it modifies the wave function of the nuclei in the atoms in that layer which causes intersecting points which compresses the coulomb barrier making low energy nuclear reactions possible within the hydride layer. These infrequent but very energetic reactions add their energy directly to the electrolyte which increases the efficiency of gas production in the booster cell.

So, the claim is cold fusion in a can. Great. Sounds like a Nobel prize is going to these guys then. I will believe it when I see it