Why converting water won't increase your MPG

97stscaddy said:
You guys aren't taking into account the fact that Hydrogen and Oxygen are both more volatile fuels than gasoline. Meaning you will get MORE energy from burning those two than you would get from burning the same amount of gasoline.
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Oxygen is not a fuel, it is an oxidizer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxidizer

The other thing you are not taking into account is the density of hydrogen. Since these "systems" being discussed in this thread are not compressing hydrogen at all there is only a minuscule/negligible amount of the gas entering the system. Barely more than is avaialbe in the ambient air.

To put it another way, in order to get hydrogen to the same energy density as gasoline you have to compress it: A gallon of gasoline is around 6 pounds, and has 126,000 Btus of energy in it. A gallon of hydrogen (gas) only contains around 40 Btus in it. Quite a difference! Instead of a two cubic foot gasoline tank (15 gallons) in your car, you would need a tank more than 3,000 times bigger, over 6,000 cubic feet, for the equivalent Hydrogen! That's a little more than TWO standard semi trailers (8'wide x 8'high x 45' long or 2900 cubic feet each). Pretty big gas tank!

Well, that is obviously not going to happen! So, the many ongoing explorations into using Hydrogen as a fuel always involve carrying HIGHLY COMPRESSED Hydrogen in very thick, heavy tanks. If you have ever seen the kinds of tanks used for the Oxygen for a worker's oxyacetylene cutting torch, that's the kind. Such tanks can hold Hydrogen at around 100 times atmospheric pressure, or 1500 PSI, an extremely high pressure (or even higher) (We will later mention even higher pressure hydrogen tanks at 3000 PSI).

Well, at 100 times atmospheric pressure, the Ideal Gas Law tells us that the Hydrogen would now only take up 2900/100 or 29 cubic feet. That works out to around 60 of those (fairly large) high pressure storage tanks (to match the effective capacity of the 15 gallon gasoline tank.). Each tank is very massive to withstand the very high pressure, and each weighs nearly 100 pounds empty. (And around 1/4 pound more when filled with Hydrogen!) So the normal American car which presently weighs around 2800 pounds would have around an extra 6,000 pounds added, so the vehicle would now weigh more than three times as much as current cars! (This tremendously affects acceleration, handling and other performance, and it would be like that car pulling a huge 6,000 pound trailer behind it.

Source: http://mb-soft.com/public2/hydrogen.html
 
Justin00LS said:
Too bad that is not the case;)
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I was referring to the fact that the engine is always turning the alternator pulley weather you are pulling 1 amp or 20 amps. The point is that there is wasted energy there that wasn't taken into account in previous posts. Of course, I also mentioned that it doesn't really matter anyway. Because there is simply no decent way to utilize this wasted energy to create thrust. And coming up with a method as long and convoluted as HHO certainly won't do it. Just get a bottle of Nitrous. That way the process of creating the volotile combustible is already done for you. And we all know how much adding NOS into the mix improves mileage :)
 
rainjacks, this is just not true. The alternator makes exactly as much power as is consumed by the car's electrical system (including battery charging) and no more.
Also, it is important to understand that the more power that is drawn from the alternator, the harder it is for the engine to turn it. Also, note that the alternator is not 100% efficient.

For example, if you draw 50 watts of electrical power from the alternator, then the car engine must provide about 70 watts of mechanical power to the alternator pulley. If you want 100 watts out instead, then the engine will have to provide 140 watts of mechanical power to the alternator.

There is no magic free power here. To get power out, you must put power in.
 
Justin00LS said:
That's a pretty good read kelleyo, thanks!
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Thanks. I recommed a book called the "Hydrogen Economy". Every premise is wonderful but in the end the realization is that getting the hydrogen is the problem. It takes more fossil energy to get the hydrogen out of water (steam reclamation or electrolysis) then if you just burned the fossil energy to begin with. We will need lots of nuclear plants to make it more economical. Hopefully fusion reaction will be the ultimate answer.

Think of hydrogen as nothing more than an energy store or battery. It is much cleaner to put hydrogen into a fuel cell or burn it directly than to store electricity with chemical batteries (nasty toxic chemicals and heavy metals).

I wish more money were spent here (fusion/hydrogen/nuke) than on stupid things like Ethanol which is nothing more than another farm subsidy that the lobbyists at ADM have gotten out of congress with clever marketing...
 
joegr said:
rainjacks, this is just not true. The alternator makes exactly as much power as is consumed by the car's electrical system (including battery charging) and no more.
Also, it is important to understand that the more power that is drawn from the alternator, the harder it is for the engine to turn it. Also, note that the alternator is not 100% efficient.

For example, if you draw 50 watts of electrical power from the alternator, then the car engine must provide about 70 watts of mechanical power to the alternator pulley. If you want 100 watts out instead, then the engine will have to provide 140 watts of mechanical power to the alternator.

There is no magic free power here. To get power out, you must put power in.
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Apparently my understanding of automotive alternators is off. My bad. I had assumed that an alternator worked similar to a standard alternator with a built-in voltage regulator. But, if I understand you correctly, then when I install a high power sound system and am sitting with my engine idling the engine will rev higher when I turn up the volume? If not where is that extra power coming from?

I understand the alternator isn't 100% efficient that wasn't the point. I have no problem claiming newbie on this. My background is in engineering not autos. What I was trying to express is that the car has the capacity to put out more electrical energy than it typically does under a standard load without working harder. It is at all points wasting some energy turning the alternator. You can simply waste less by pulling more power. Still under the rated load of the alternator. My understanding was that the alternator always produced slightly more power than was needed and the voltage regulator was there to get down to the correct voltage for the current load. So, using that logic, keep the alternator spinning at the same speed and let the voltage regulator allow more output. Instead of diving into the difference between amps and volts, current and load, take a look at what I'm trying to convey here.

Which is simply that it is irrelevant because the hydrogen system doesn't work.
joegr said:
There is no magic free power here. To get power out, you must put power in
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That is exactly what I was trying to say in my first post. I will say no more on this. Sorry for any distraction to the thread.:rolleyes:
 
I guess I am not making this clear.
When you draw more power from the alternator, your engine will not rev up, but it will work harder and consume more fuel because the alternator is putting more mechanical load on the engine.

If you were spinning the alternator by hand, it would get harder to turn as you added more electrical load to it. There's no "free" electrical power available in any way.

Do you have any working DC motors laying around? They also work as generators. Grab one and turn its shaft, making note of how easy it turns. Now twist the two power wires that go to it together. Now turn the motor shaft. It is now much harder to turn, because there is now a much bigger electrical load on it.

Is there anyone on here that can explain this better?
 
rainjacks said:
What I was trying to express is that the car has the capacity to put out more electrical energy than it typically does under a standard load without working harder.
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My point is that this is simply and completely incorrect. If you pull more electrical power out of the alternator, more mechanical power has to go in. The more mechanical power doesn't mean the engine has to run faster, it means that the engine has to supply more torque to turn the alternator. More torque out of the engine means more fuel into the engine. Every watt you pull out of the alternator, will cause more fuel to be burned (although just a little). It's not free.

If it worked like you claim, I wouldn't have burned so much gas in my generator at home after the hurricane. It would run many hours on a tank of gas if I turned my air-conditioner off. With the air-conditioner on, not so many hours. And, yes the generator always ran at exactly the same speed, 3600 RPM.
 
ILLS said:
You don't have to fool the system if you know how to tune it... I don't know why those guys are actually building that "optimizer box". Everything you need to fool with is in the tune itself if you felt so inclined to try to do so. I say why reinvent the wheel?
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IN most this is true but as in older fords where they cannot except the tune you have to work around it. and trust me where i live if you were to tell half of these guys trying this stuff that all they need is a computer tune they would draw a blank. COMPUTER WHAT???
 
Good thing you're still in school...

Do some more reading. http://www.panaceauniversity.org/

The small systems you are talking about installing won't yield much more than making a profit for the builders. But, there are systems that are getting closer to using only the water. The problem is volume. The 1 liter engines are close to running water alone.

http://www.celsias.com/article/japanese-company-unveils-water-powered-car/

The bigger engines need more gas than the smaller modules can produce. But there are vehicles running on water alone. It can be done. It's not creating energy, it's breaking the liquid back into a gas and using it instead.
 
so i've read this whole thread... now is my degree in the mail or do i have to go pick it up? lol
 
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