hydrogen generator pro's & con's....

I've been reading up on Hydrogen generator's for automotive applications. This is the type that is supposed to be used as a supplement to gasoline. Now, logically, i can see where generating a Hydrogen & Oxygen mixture from water through electrolysis and feeding it into the intake might just be beneficial on several levels. First, the extra oxygen would aid in more complete combustion. Second, the added hydrogen, which burns much faster then gasoline would probably give a noticeable power gain. And third, since the only by-product from hydrogen/oxygen combustion is water, it would probably keep the combustion chambers clear of most carbon build up that, as you know, leads to that nasty pre-ignition problem so prevalent in MG's. The only real problem i can think of would be the extra heat generated from the hotter fuel mixture, and the weight of the unit itself. Any and all insight's any of you might have on this topic would be welcome. Cheers!

http://www.preignitioncc.com/wjessee/

I saw an add for these guys in the popular mechanics a couple months ago and thought it was interesting. They have a 1000$ kit for exactly what you said. Supplementing a gas burning engine with hydrogen and oxygen gas. I still wonder what it would be like to convert an MG to fuel injection with this kit. Makes me wonder about rust too...

Adam

I am waltzing along with this one too David. Not spending too much time at present as I have been "burned" by several "miracles" in my past lives, but If I can come up with some verifiable third party testimonial folks I'll post them on the board.

Jack

If you like perpetual motion machines you should like this idea. You are taking an element from a lower energy state to a higher energy state and that requires an input of energy. You will NEVER get all of that energy back. You get some by burning it but you are always losing.

To electrolyze enough hydrogen to feel while driving would require a tremendous amount of electricity. If you want to burn hydrogen in your car I would suggest getting compressed hydrogen and using a pressure carb as a supplemental boost to your gasoline carb. You will need some way to lean out the gasoline so there is excess oxygen for the hydrogen to bond.

I built a hydrogen powered mini for my college 10 years ago. Fun, but really not practical in the least.

I think it's been tried.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(season_4)#The_Great_Gas_Conspiracy

Aside from all of the energy used to generate hydrogen, I'm not at all sure that it has a higher energy density than gasoline. Just because something burns fast doesn't mean that there is a lot of energy (or heat). I'd have to do the thermodynamic calculations (if I still remember how :) ) but my gut tells me that gas has more energy than hydrogen.

Of course if you want to fuse the hydrogen, that's a different story! :)

P.S. Fast burning sounds like pinging to me.

David, It looks like maybe this guy was on to something.

http://keelynet.com/energy/cornish.htm

A forgotten patent??

Tom T

ingoldsb Wrote:

Hydrogen oxide (water) has a heat of formation of -285kj/mol (negative because heat is coming out of the reaction, good for our purposes). Compare to Ethanol -235kj/mol or pure Octane -249.5 kj/mol. You get way more energy out of Hydrogen. Storing hydrogen, because of its low density, is a problem. However the spongy lithium tanks seem to have answered that one.
Hydrogen fuel really is the future for automobiles, probably fuel cell/electric, possibly combustion. It is a very good way of storing energy. However Tyler is on the money. You have to make it (reduction), before you can burn it (oxidation). When you store energy up, the storage process itself uses up energy so you never get back all of it when you tap that store. You're doing very well if you get back 60% of what you put in. Entropy, disorder, increases, the universe expands, people grow old. Oil, petrol, all those high energy hydrocarbons, have already been made for us by ancient photosyntheses. Oil is the product of solar energy, very old biofuel. Essentially, we just had to suck it out of the ground and clean it up. Energy for free.
Fusion is the long term solution, huge amounts of energy to use and generate hydrogen for cars etc. Our governments should be throwing money at that one, however it's going to take about 100yrs to get it going and thats not going to win the next election. We need to learn how to build super magnetic fields (super conductors etc) to contain the process. Solar farms, Genetically engineered Hydrogen producing bacteria etc can extract usable energy from the sun. Wind generators, wave generators, Hydroelectric etc can abstract energy from the planet and store it as hydrogen, but they are expensive to build, and anyway, all of these are driven by heat from the sun. Which is of course, fusion energy.

Hmm, I think I had better get off my soap box now!

bottom line

wishful thinking.

And I always thought water was di-hydrogen monoxide.

Okay guys, you have convinced me, but I still wonder about those slick looking (expensive?) "hydrogen generators" that someone is making and selling for home/business/yada, yada use. If they don't work why hasn't the appropriate agency shut them down or a mob of unhappy customers brought suit against them? Serious question here, not intended to incite riot.

Jack

Good point Derek, there is also dihydrogen dioxide (peroxide) It would not do to get the two mixed up. My point was that water is a waste gas.
The Hydrogen generators work just fine , it's only that it costs more to make the Hydrogen that way than it does to just go buy some. You could certainly get some solar panels and hook a hydrogen generator to that. That would work out well, just very slow and not much hydrogen for the expense of the solar cells.
Actually refineries produce so much Hydrogen as a by product of catalytic cracking that they can't get rid of it fast enough. They use some of it to power the place, the rest they burn. Every refinery r you will ever drive past has got a flare running all the time burning off the Hydrogen, and some methane. A huge waste.
We could potentially turn crude into 100% Hydrogen production. Run all cars on hydrogen. Chemically trap the carbon residue at the refinery and reduce carbon emissions enormously. Once again, it would cost any government who tried this the next election.

twigworker Wrote:

The relatively low storage density of hydrogen using currently available methods (e.g. in the form of metal hydrides) and the slow replenishment time will preclude the widespread use of hydrogen directly in internal combustion vehicles. Perhaps with advanced fuel cells...

If you wish to generate & use hydrogen in commercial quantities as a motor fuel, I would look at a process something like this.

Take the heat from a high temperature gas cooled nuclear reactor and produce hydrogen from water. More efficient than conventional electrolysis.

Use the waste heat from this process to drive kerogen from oil shale (tar sands etc.)

Run the hot H2 and the hot kerogen into a catalytic hydrogenation unit to produce synthetic crude oil.

Run the hot crude into a traditional cracking plant - again using degraded heat from the above processes to produce various petroleum distillates.

Use the waste heat from all of the above to generate low pressure steam for the generation of electricity to run all of the above.

Something like the modular pebble bed reactor developed by Germany and South Africa should do the trick.

Ken

what would it take to make an MG airframe get 100MPG ,, we are at nearly a 1/3 of the way there with what .. 1950's technology ?? i am getting 29-30 on my jitney

a lightened body , a very small modern power plant ,gears, highspeed flywheel energy storage , superconducting motors.. lots of gears some innovation , what would it do.. these have a pretty low drag don't they..


http://www.xprize.org/x-prizes/automotive-x-prize

X PRIZE is an international competition designed to inspire a new generation of viable, super fuel-efficient vehicles. The independent and technology-neutral competition is open to teams from around the world that can design, build and bring to market 100 MPGe (miles per gallon energy equivalent) vehicles that people want to buy, and that meet market needs for price, size, capability, safety and performance.

We aren't talking about running the vehicle solely on Brown's gas, were talking about supplementing the gasoline with it. Eric, the introduction of water into the combustion chamber will remove the carbon built up in the combustion chamber. It's an old mechanics trick, spraying water into a running engine to de-carbonize the chambers. If you've ever pulled a head that had blown the gasket (so coolant had sept in) you've seen how nicely cleaned that one chamber is.
The real problem is generating enough hydrogen without having your alternator working overtime. By some estimates it would take several hundred amps (7 or 800) of 12 volt DC to generate enough gas to run a car solely on HHO. To supplement the gasoline only you might be able to do it with a 100 amp alternator but it wouldn't be efficient because of the increased drag.
There have been many claims by folks who have developed generators that appear to defy conventional wisdom. None have been substantiated, though some have gotten quite a bit of play from NASA, the DOD and other government agencies. Some use multiple stainless steel plates and modulate frequency generators. Some use tuning fork like anodes and pulsed harmonics. Others use submerged "grinder wheel" cathodes with welding wire anodes. I've even seen one that circulates exhaust gas's through the generator cell in an attempt to generate more HHO then the laws of physics will provide.

I agree with Sherman. I too, believe hydrogen (from water) is going to be the fuel of the future. But, I fear that the entrenched "Powers that be" are using, and will continue to use all the vast resources at their disposal, to prevent any fuel source not under their control, from happening.
Theres an old joke that goes:"When will Solar power become mainstream? When Exxon owns it.

David Abbott Wrote:

The old mechanics trick, I'm interested. And a little suspicious,
But anyway, how do you introduce water into the system?
If you have a siphon just prior to the main pump water is going to go around the rail and back to the main tank where it will settle out when the petrol cools. It will then roll around in the bottom of the tank until sucked up by the pump and it it doesn't block the filter will be delivered to the piston as a 100% dose, which would be terminal I think.

ooops!

Ignore

The gas that is generated through electrolysis is not pure Hydrogen . It's HHO, which has a lot of oxygen in it. The proven by-product is water. There is a company which manufactures a cutting torch that is fueled with HHO generated through electrolysis. The torch burns hot enough to vaporize tungsten steel yet the tip remains cool to the touch. When they held the flame parallel to a plate of stainless standing on edge, it showed the water from combustion running down the stainless....Heres a link to the video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8213300731531400327&q=hydrogen+torch+water&total=90&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=5

Its fascinating and thought provoking.

Peter, on an older non FI car, you would just trickle water into the carb while the car was running. On an MG you can use a spray bottle. On an FI car, you can get a glass of water, pull a intake vacuum line and stick the hose in it while the cars running....not to much at a time, mind you...you can do some real damage if you make that mistake...But it cleans the combustion chambers real "purdy".

David - I think you will find that water is always a product of combustion when your fuel is hydrogen based. It is why you get water vapor out of the exhaust when you first start the car in the morning. It disappears as the engine and exhaust heat up - it is still there, it just doesn't condense: 2H + O2 = 2H2O

Hold a cold steel plate behind the exhaust - and you'll get water!

The tip of the cutting torch stays cool because the gas is not actually burning at the tip - it has to combine with oxygen before it combusts - so the flame actually stands off the tip by a fraction of an inch. You can demonstrate the effect with a candle - if you blow out a candle, then immediately re-light it, you do not need to touch the flame to the wick - the candle will re-light when the flame is about 1/4" above!

Limey, then wouldn't you agree that the more HHO introduced into the Gasoline mixture, the more water there will be in the exhaust vapor upon combustion. HHO gas only by product is water. The HHO/Gasoline mixture would burn hotter as well. A hotter burn is a more complete burn. The more complete the burn... the cleaner the combustion chamber, IMHO...

David: I think you are getting your physics and chemistry mixed up. Burn temp, and completion of burn are not the same thing. Also burn temp and energy are not the same thing. Much of this is about thermodynamic efficiency - and an internal combustion engine is a lousy example of thermodynamic efficiency.

In an "ideal" engine, you convert all the heat energy (which is what the fuel produces) to work. This means the exhaust gasses are COLD, and there is no heat transfer to the coolant (you should not need coolant)! Obviously this is not what we have. Adding water to the intake fuel, in theory, would actually reduce the available power - you need energy to convert the water to superheated steam - and that energy is not available to move the piston. In practice, I believe the water slightly improves the "volumetric" efficiency, in that water vapor takes more space than the water and the heat transfer to the water is more efficient!

Note this has nothing to do with "completeness" of combustion - which is more to do with timing, combustion environment, exhaust scavenging, and stoichiometric ratios than water vapor. Also "clean" combustion has little to do with carbon build up. Yep, the old "leaded" gas did cause combustion deposits, but new gasolines really do not. Like I said before, most of the carbon build up in our MG engines is due to oil burn.

The final thing you have to look at is "energy density". The reason gasoline is so popular is because it has great energy density - you get lots of power from a gallon. None of the gasses that I know of have a similar advantage - that is you get a much lower MPG from a gallon of hydrogen than you do from a gallon of gas! Again this varies, depending on how you store it. But finding a place for a 15 gallon container of liquified hydrogen is pretty hard to do!

Eric is on top of it but I would add that one of the large (there are several) hurdles in burning gaseous hydrogen in an internal combustion engine is the fact that the very low density of hydrogen displace the the air in the intake so that you have less total power. At full throttle and a perfect cylinder fill with a stoich mix of hydrogen and air your engine will produce about 40%to 60% of the power it would with gasoline. Plus it will be higher in nitrous oxides due to the higher heat of combustion.

I hate to be a wet blanket on the hydrogen as a fuel topic since it really is the best fuel in most respects, but there are huge hurdles to overcome before it can be considered useful.

Tyler, do you think it will be possible to, in the future, generate (from some type of electrolysis) enough HHO gas from an electrolyte to run a small engine efficiently on HHO alone?

David, thermodynamically speaking, no. It takes more energy to separate the H2 from the O than you will get back by recombining them by burning. If H2 were just floating around and we could collect it somehow then that would be one thing but it is never not attached to another element or molecule, usually carbon. It is the separating process that makes this energy deficient.

Now, if we could run nuclear power plants that, during off times, generated H2 by electrolysis that would produce a relatively clean source of H2. Solar would of course be cleaner but the expense and area required boggle the mind. Then if somebody comes up with a way to store H2 in a reasonable density we would be set.

The energy density of H2 is so low that one of those large compressed air bottles, the ones about 5 feet high and 12 inches diameter, are the equivalent of 1/8th of a gallon of gasoline at 3000psi. Hopefully I am remembering these numbers properly, it has been several years...

Someday we may overcome these engineering challenges but they are not insignificant.

Hydrogen is NOT the fuel of the future.

You would need a 50 gallon tank to have an acceptable range.

And "It takes more energy to separate the H2 from the O than you will get back by recombining them by burning."

Electric cars are the future, with batteries and super-capacitors. There will also be a lot more diesels, running on all sorts of biofuels.

Super-capacitors can already store enough energy for well over 100 miles, and with sufficient amperage, can be recharged in less than 5 minutes. They are also compact, light, and don't wear out the way batteries do. Electric motors are much more efficient than any type of combustion engine. It makes much more sense to put the electric charge directly into a car than it does to convert it to hydrogen first, and supercaps have much better storage density.

Problems with the in-car hydrogen generators are that they put a higher torque load on your alternator than you will get back, and the CFM output of those generators compared to the CFM of air intake is almost negligeable.

They certainly are fast enough if they can be judged by the X1, a $100,000 electric car designed by Ian Wright that blew away a Ferrari 360 Spider and a Porsche Carrera GT in drag races, and whose 0-to-60 acceleration time is second only to the Bugatti Veyron. which hits 60 mph half a second faster .........and goes for $1.25 million.

Hydrogen "would" be the ideal fuel, if for no other reason then its the most abundant element in the universe. I believe Thomas Edison was going to send IRON plates to homes, like they delivered ICE, and the iron would be used with water to make hydrogen to power & heat a house. But Edison saw the future of power as "Solar"....I've often wanted to to use the 'ol "starting a fire with a magnifying glass" approach on a much larger scale....Set up a 5' diameter magnifying (convex) lens and set it to focus on, say, a boiler....Write a program that would constantly move the lens to retain focus on the boiler which would be running an Ac/dc power generator or whatever. Be great here in So. Cal.

David, they use a setup like that in several places. The one I have experience with is an external combustion engine called a Stirling cycle that uses concentrated sun for heat during the day and burns methane from a landfil at night. Pretty cool to see in operation!

http://www.clean-air.org/sundish.htm

I agree that some form of electric drive is the way to go - even diesel/electric hybrids are more efficient than straight gasoline engines. The BIG advantage to electric drive motors is that they have torque all the way from zero rpm, and they don't (typically) need much of a transmission.

Actually, "wheel" motors are the best answer - that way you get AWD without a differential - if one wheel spins, the other three are not affected. This technique has been used on haul trucks in big mines. They are true diesel/electric, that is all the diesel engine does is drive a generator. They have independent wheel motors, and for climbing out the mine fully loaded, they use an overhead wire and "pantograph" to pick up extra power (like some trains).

Now if somebody would kindly invent a room temperature superconductor.....

Tyler, I'm familiar with the Stirling engine. I used to have a small working model. You'd just heat up the end and it would start to spin...I do love the gigantic magnifying glass concept. The only problem was mapping the device to follow the sun across the sky, but here in the computer age that problem should be rectifiable....Now, where to find a 5' wide convex lens.... Or remember a product called "Bangsite"? It was powdered calcium carbide used in toy cannons. The Bangsite cannons had a water chamber by the breach that you would put a pinch of bangsite into then introduce a spark...They were louder then hell. I wonder how the explosive gas from Calcium carbonate in water would fair as a gasoline supplement?

David - the gas you are getting is acetylene:

CaC2 + 2 H2O �¨ C2H2 + Ca(OH)2

"Carbide" lamps were commonly used by miners (non gassy mines) and may still be used by folks who explore caves! It was also used for early auto headlights!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big-Bang_Cannon

room temp superconductors .. a possibility , that and the paint on solar electric cells both could be society changing innovations
then there is the hypothetical hydrogen power vehicle that uses liquid hydrogen , one could use the liquid hydrogen to cool the conductors , that would introduce a whole new spectrum to auto mechanics , Cyrogenics and possibly make vehicular crashes a truly *chilling * experience..