water 4 gas anyone look in to this.

[stuartshomepc]

Well, I'll chime in again with a useful post this time...


So how does that all mesh with using it on a vehicle...

The hypothesis is that a car's alternator is constantly producing power that is not being used by anything. By pumping that power to an electrolytic cell it can be used to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen which is then fed into your intake and burned by the engine.

The place where the hypothesis falls apart is the "unused power" being produced by the alternator. Anyone familiar with power generation knows that when you put a load across a generator the motor driving the generator has to work harder to spin the generator at the same speed. This is just as true of a car's alternator. Every test I've seen shows the electrolytic cell pulling in excess of 20 amps of power. That power has to come from somewhere and it's going to come from somewhere.

Finally a nice logical explanation. Most of theses "Inventors" don't tell you that the electricity is not free. Some people think that just because the alternator is spinning it has all sorts of "Excess" energy. What it has is excess unused "capacity" but once you put a load on it the thing works at about 60% efficiency of the rotating energy that went into it. And that the car's engine that is spinning it is only about 33% efficient in turning fuel into work (the rest goes out as heat the the cooling system, friction and exhaust heat). So to get 1kw of electricity out of the alternator you need about 4kw worth of fuel.

I once got into a parallel discussion with a guy by telling him that on a front wheel drive car that the back wheels were just spinning so we should just hook up electric generators to them to make a hybrid. Heck, the energy is free right? They are just going around... let's harness that. He thought that it was a brilliant idea until I tried to explain to him that the motors would cause resistance/drag that the front wheels would need to overcome to pull the car against the extra load, but he didn't get it.

Maybe I just missed it and should have put a generator on top of the car, powered via a propeller. That would not put extra load on the wheels I think that I need to send this idea to the Red Green cable TV show. (if you have not seen the Red Green show, you are missing good humor and lots of project with duct tape!).

Yes, you can generate Hydrogen from water. But you need a lot of Hydrogen to run that engine, which takes a lot of electricity do the electrolysis to make the Hydrogen. Maybe if we put a nuclear power plant next to a lake and just lay the wires in the lake, with a funnel over the lake we can make the Hydrogen and get it for free!

 

[Searchman]

I regards to Water 4 Gas. Yes it is possible to generate Browns Gas ( oxy hydrogen ) using electricity and water. Now the difficult part of the equation is getting the gas to run in newer engines, due to all of the electronic sensors that monitor fuel intake into the engine. I have experimented with it in engines that do not have all of the fuel monitoring devices and it does run and burns very clean. There are devices that they say will allow you to tweak the electronic fuel monitoring in a newer engine. They may work, but it takes a lot of experimenting to get just the right combination. Do your research before jumping into this one.

 

[Jackpine Madman]

I actually checked into this, and the system increases mileage by about 25-30%. It's a cheap rig; you can make your own for $1-200. The essential "secret" of the system is that you use your car's alternator power to electrolyze water into hydrogen & oxygen & feed the gas back into the intake manifold. Yes, I do understand the laws of thermodynamics. Obviously, it takes more energy to split the water than you're going to get by burning the gases back into water. However, the H2 works as a sort of catalyst, breaking apart the long hydrocarbon chains of the fuel molecules so that they burn more efficiently & you get more of the available energy instead of blowing it out of the tailpipe. There are some complications involving tricking the car's O2 sensor to keep it from trying to push more fuel in, etc. However, the system works. I attended a workshop put on by a retired auto engineer. He showed us a couple he had built for his own vehicles showed us how to build our own. He's a green energy advocate, and wasn't trying to sell us anything. He also showed us his fuel and mileage records since he installed the devices about a year ago.

Laugh if you want.

 

[Soundguy]

Ahh.. the free lunch!

soundguy

 

[Travelover]

Laugh if you want.

 

[Redneck in training]

All joking aside....I read the same web site- the concept is based on electrolosis. When a current is passed throug a liquid, it breaks it down into its molecules.

So the science is correct, however- as mentioned previously it is an issue of efficiency. The system decribed is made out of a "mason Jar". The rate of conversion can be increased based on current applied, however the volume of hydrogen and oxygen supplied are nominal. So a quart size jar might be good for a SMALL 2 cycle lawn mower.

You might make a more efficient system by using Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) as opposed to water (H20). Place a 55 gallon poly drum in the trunk as you liquid container.....and there you go efficiency-

The thought that mixing in oxygen and/or hydrogen to improve fuel economy might also be achieved by metering in pure oxygen at the intake manifold, but again, not efficient or practical.

I don't do well with math...but I am curious what the volume conversion is from a measued volume of liquid H20 into the gasseous volume when electrolosys is done. Any ideas?

Electrolyzing 1 lb of pure water you get 1/9th lb Hydrogen and 8/9th lb of oxygen. The problem is that that pure water is not conductive. Therefore you have to add some substance that makes water an electrolyte but otherwise doesn't get chemically involved in the electrolysis. Most popular is potassium. Once you have those two gases the most efficient device for converting it back to mechanical energy is a fuel cell coupled with an electric motor.
Since gases are compressible, volume or pressure aren't good measure for energy content. Mass is the best because it is independent of volume, pressure and temperature. That is why propane is sold by pounds.

 

[Bill_C]

I actually checked into this, and the system increases mileage by about 25-30%. It's a cheap rig; you can make your own for $1-200. The essential "secret" of the system is that you use your car's alternator power to electrolyze water into hydrogen & oxygen & feed the gas back into the intake manifold. Yes, I do understand the laws of thermodynamics. Obviously, it takes more energy to split the water than you're going to get by burning the gases back into water. However, the H2 works as a sort of catalyst, breaking apart the long hydrocarbon chains of the fuel molecules so that they burn more efficiently & you get more of the available energy instead of blowing it out of the tailpipe. There are some complications involving tricking the car's O2 sensor to keep it from trying to push more fuel in, etc. However, the system works. I attended a workshop put on by a retired auto engineer. He showed us a couple he had built for his own vehicles showed us how to build our own. He's a green energy advocate, and wasn't trying to sell us anything. He also showed us his fuel and mileage records since he installed the devices about a year ago.

Laugh if you want.

Sorry but this is not true. Hydrogen doesn't act as a catalyst. Under certain conditions (idling), a 5% hydrogen mixture can allow the engine to be leaned way out, but under load the engine can't run this lean and the hydrogen does nothing.

What about a supposed "mileage increase" when people add these gizmos? They also do other things, like drive slower, add air to their tires, coast longer to red lights, etc. The EPA has tested dozens of milage devices. They don't work.

 

[Redneck in training]

Finally a nice logical explanation. Most of theses "Inventors" don't tell you that the electricity is not free. Some people think that just because the alternator is spinning it has all sorts of "Excess" energy. What it has is excess unused "capacity" but once you put a load on it the thing works at about 60% efficiency of the rotating energy that went into it. And that the car's engine that is spinning it is only about 33% efficient in turning fuel into work (the rest goes out as heat the the cooling system, friction and exhaust heat). So to get 1kw of electricity out of the alternator you need about 4kw worth of fuel.

I once got into a parallel discussion with a guy by telling him that on a front wheel drive car that the back wheels were just spinning so we should just hook up electric generators to them to make a hybrid. Heck, the energy is free right? They are just going around... let's harness that. He thought that it was a brilliant idea until I tried to explain to him that the motors would cause resistance/drag that the front wheels would need to overcome to pull the car against the extra load, but he didn't get it.

Maybe I just missed it and should have put a generator on top of the car, powered via a propeller. That would not put extra load on the wheels I think that I need to send this idea to the Red Green cable TV show. (if you have not seen the Red Green show, you are missing good humor and lots of project with duct tape!).

Yes, you can generate Hydrogen from water. But you need a lot of Hydrogen to run that engine, which takes a lot of electricity do the electrolysis to make the Hydrogen. Maybe if we put a nuclear power plant next to a lake and just lay the wires in the lake, with a funnel over the lake we can make the Hydrogen and get it for free!

There is an exception. When you drive downhill you can use the energy of the car to generate electricity and store it as hydrogen for later. Needles to say that the generator would have to be big enough that it will use all the energy otherwise disipated by breaks. Unless you live in Rockies it will make only small difference in total energy use.

 

[EddieWalker]

I actually checked into this, and the system increases mileage by about 25-30%.

The reason we know this isn't true and doesn't work is not one single after market company is trying to make billions of dollars selling it. The second something like this does in fact work, it will be all over the news and everybody will be selling it. This isn't some sort of secret that nobody knows about, and I'd guess that there are millions of dollars being spent every year trying to figure out how to invent something that will improve fuel economy by the manufacturers and the after market industry. The person or business the does come up with something that actually works will make a ridiculous amount of money.

It's like those diet pills and other things that are sold on TV that claim to do all sort of wonderful things. The second one comes out that actually does what they claim they will, you will know it because it will be all over the news. Remember Viagra? When it came out and was proven to work, the company made and is still making a ton of money over it.

Eddie

 

[Redneck in training]

Do you ever watch dirty jobs on the discovery channel?

There was a guy they called the poo-pot maker, he made peat pots out of cow poo and heated his house with it also. Mike ask him when you heat you house your basically burning cow farts.

I liked it when mike rowe told the man that he was a genius, because
of the different things he was using the poo for.

And the man said he was no genius, because a genius would never
be working in cow sh** all day.

I know a guy who used to heat his horse stables with horse manure. Horses are not good digesters so the poo contains lot of biomass that can burn. Also horse manure is dryer and doesn't plugg the feeder in the furnace. The furnace was fully automatic (worked like gas furnace controller by a thermostat). The hopper of the furnace got loaded only about once a week.