water hybrid???

[oldgeezer]

There is a lot of hype going around about building a "water hybrid" that supposedly will work on gas or diesel & will increase your fuel mpg or hpg by large %s. There are several internet sites selling instructions or kits to build your own & some businesses are springing up that will do it for you. A Little Rock TV station had one installed on a 1999 Ford pickup & reported that it increased mileage from 13 mpg to 19 mpg. The system workes by extracting the hydrogen from water & combining it with the oil based fues (gas, diesel, or lpg) in your (car, truck, tractor, etc). No one seems to know for sure how it effects warantees. Has anyone tried to build one of these conversions on anything? If so, with what results? Has any damage occured? Fuel prices are going to drive us to desperate measures. Gasoline here is $3.79, on road diesel, $4,79, off road diesel, $4.29. There are several sites promoting this technology. Just "Google" for "water hybrids" & they will show up. If you have tried any of these, please report in.

 

[D80]

I started to build one last weekend and hope to finish it up this Sunday. I am using the directions from the following web site.

http://www.smacksboosters.110mb.com/

I guy that I work with built one and has been running it for about three months on his Wrangler. He says he is getting about 35 mpg.

If I get it working on my car this weekend I will post some pictures and report back if it works and what my new milage is. I currently get 35-40 mpg, according to how I drive and if I am on the highway or the back country roads.

 

[Tig]

Very cool, thanks for posting. Looks like a good mod for a carbureted vehicle. When it come to modern fuel injected vehicles it gets complicated fast as you have to dummy up an oxygen sensor.

 

[john_bud]

I started to build one last weekend and hope to finish it up this Sunday. I am using the directions from the following web site.

http://www.smacksboosters.110mb.com/

I guy that I work with built one and has been running it for about three months on his Wrangler. He says he is getting about 35 mpg.

If I get it working on my car this weekend I will post some pictures and report back if it works and what my new milage is. I currently get 35-40 mpg, according to how I drive and if I am on the highway or the back country roads.

I have a double X bad view of this "technology" being both from Missouri (Show Me!) and a chemical engineer. My background allows me to calculate that it is total huey. Probably good for accelerated plant growth, but not much else. Still, if you do finish up and install this gizmo, please post back with your fuel use. (Gotta keep an open mind after all) If you are like me, you have a record of every drop of fuel that passes thru the vehicle and will be able to show a 10,20,30,40 or more % drop in fuel consumption over an extended period of time. That's 20 or more fill ups, by the way.


If anyone has installed one of these devices and has a long historical record of fuel consumption pre and post - please post it. Would love to see it. Actually, I would love to be wrong about this and would rush out and build one myself, but I doubt that will occur. (sadly)

jb

 

[Tig]

Seems that there is potential for gains by leaning out the fuel mixture via faking out the O2 sensor. The higher combusion temperatures could be tamed by water vapour in the fuel mixture. Way way back I read about water vapour devices being used in WW2.
I'm very interested in the O2 sensor tuning. Seems that that is the key key to getting things right.

 

[SkyPup]

I installed one but was forced to remove it because the fuel tank kept overflowing all the time creating a real mess. It worked so well and was so efficient the engine was actually creating more fuel instead of using fuel.....

 

[mahlers]

Interesting - please post results when you get them! This is similar to an area that I did research on in grad school, and there is some potential to it. I have my doubts about this particular application because it relies on the vehicle's electrical system to electrolyze the water into hydrogen and oxygen. Creating enough amps to do that takes energy, and that energy comes from the engine - which in my opinion would get pretty close to negating any gains.

What I found in my research was that if you run your engine in an ultra-lean condition, and then inject water directly into the cylinder at just the right time, the water will not only eliminate pinging and decrease NOx, it will increase the thermal efficiency of the engine and improve power/mileage.

The reason for this is normally wasted combustion heat is used to instantly vaporize the water, and water expands to thousands of times its original volume when vaporized. That water vapor increases pressure within the cylinder which, in turn, creates additional torque/power.

I unfortunately bailed out of my PhD before finishing the research, and as I got deeper into it I realized how hard it was to really get this to work reliably and for the mass market. With modern controls and direct-injection technology, though, it might have a shot - and I'm sure there are car manufacturers funding the same research that we were doing fifteen years ago.

 

[john_bud]

Interesting - please post results when you get them! This is similar to an area that I did research on in grad school, and there is some potential to it. I have my doubts about this particular application because it relies on the vehicle's electrical system to electrolyze the water into hydrogen and oxygen. Creating enough amps to do that takes energy, and that energy comes from the engine - which in my opinion would get pretty close to negating any gains.

What I found in my research was that if you run your engine in an ultra-lean condition, and then inject water directly into the cylinder at just the right time, the water will not only eliminate pinging and decrease NOx, it will increase the thermal efficiency of the engine and improve power/mileage.

The reason for this is normally wasted combustion heat is used to instantly vaporize the water, and water expands to thousands of times its original volume when vaporized. That water vapor increases pressure within the cylinder which, in turn, creates additional torque/power.

I unfortunately bailed out of my PhD before finishing the research, and as I got deeper into it I realized how hard it was to really get this to work reliably and for the mass market. With modern controls and direct-injection technology, though, it might have a shot - and I'm sure there are car manufacturers funding the same research that we were doing fifteen years ago.

You're correct! The engergy to break the H2's away from the O's is about 3-6x larger than the energy released when they recombine. (best case!!) So, you are 15-30% efficient if all the recombination energy is converted to power out of the alternator. It isn't. The ICE (internal combustion engine) is about 15-30% efficient at converting thermal energy into rotational energy. So you are now down to between 2.25% and 10% efficient. So it takes between 10X and 44X the energy to create the gas as the gas produces in the engine. Couple that with no method of matching the creation of the H2 and O2 with the engine demands and you realize that at best, you can only be adding enough extra fuel and oxygen to suppliment idling. Think about it, the gas is being generated continuously and at a constant rate. It is not being stored anywhere. It is all going to the engine. As this suplimentation is not controlled or throttled, if it were really doing something, the idle rpm would increase. This would be an uncontrolled increase in rpm as the gas generation is not controlled. Nobody sees that. Why? (Hint: because it's BOGUS!)


Now, your research is valid. Operation in an ultra lean (20:1-30:1 AFR at a guess) creates a very hot combustion. That is more efficient than lower temps at burning the fuel. The extra heat can be used to expand a liquid to a gas and increase combustion chamber pressure, reduce the heat, reduce the polutants and make the engine "happy". Multiple bursts of the liquid (water) at the right times in the 4 cycle process can also keep it from being a ping monster too. You won't see this as a mass market solution as the users are barely able to find the hole for the key to start a car now. No way are they to be trusted to keep the water tank full too! Empty water tank would allow the engine to melt, ping to death and spew pollution.


Still, if anyone can post detailed fuel usage before the addition of this gizmo and again after, I would love to see it !

 

[RoMo]

Last week, a local TV station carried an article on this. A older gentleman, I think 74 years old. He had an older honda that he installed this on and claimed to almost double his millage. The one thing that was mentioned in the report, which hasn't been brought up here, was he had, or used I think, baking soda. This is way over my head, but thought I would throw this in the mix.

Rob

 

[ihookem]

When it comes to fuel mileage i've tried almost everything. The closest thing I have tried was putting a gallon jug of water under the hood, stuck a small hose from the bottom of the jug of water into the vacume hose that went into the carburator. My car actually burned the water with no ill affects. It never got better fuel mileage so I quit. I even made a loop to make the hose blow air into the jug on the bottom, then another hose on top hoping it would suck enough water vapors to increase compression and help my car to burn leaner and not ping when I advanced the timing to the max. Nothing really helped though. The best thing is to get a high pressure injector system for gas motors like diesel injectors. I don't know why they don't do that, it should help mpg. Later , ihookem.