Anyone hear of this or have personal experience?? Today in my Professional Applications class we were doing projects on Alternative fuels and one group presented this: http://www.watertogas.com/ . He said his car (which wasn't driven today which makes me skeptical) is using this application.

Just curious of the thoughts. If it is indeed true, then I'd apply it to my Jeep and the Crossfire would become "collectorized".


Justin

 

What exactly are the claims here.

 

The website advertises 3 differing kits, anywhere betwee 3-5mpg and 15-25 mpg. Depending on which one you get.

 

Ick.

My thoughts are that this stuff is a scam.

I don't have enough time to explain why physics and chemistry do not allow this to work.

 

I'll take your word for it then after seeing your other posts. Good 'nuff for me.

 

Why are we only shown drawings of the process. I didn't see pictures of any existing hardware.

Did I miss something?

Sonoros, you said it. As always a trusted source.

Some folks still believe a perpetual motion machine is practical. Had a heated conversation with a guy who swears the Oil Cartels have an existing machine, proven, hidden somewhere in Kawait.


roadster with a stick

 

Snake oil. If this were the real deal, car manufacturers would be buying them faster than they can make them in order to meet fuel economy demands.

 

This technology has been around for a long time. The twist they put on it is the electrolysis portion. You may see a small gain in mpg like .1 mpg. Search the net and ebay and you will see similar products. If it worked as good as they claim you'd see a commercial for them on every channell twenty times a day. BTW you can make your own version for about twenty bucks. They even give you the schematics.

 

I automatically thought snake oil too. But if you search there is very little negative said about the device, and only by people that have not tried it. Recently several TV stations have set out to prove it snake oil, by installing it in one of their cars, but were not able to do so, so far. More reports to come.

Kind of makes sense to me.... a very little extra H2 and O2 in the intake. Kind of like a micro NOS. I'm thinking a few percent (1-2) increase in mpg, not the 25 - 50 % some claim.

 

Well, here's the basic question to answer first:

Why is this crap? Here's a discussion:

Where does that hydrogen and oxygen gas come from?

From electrolysis.

How do you perform electrolysis of water?

By using electricity.

How much electricity is required?

The electrical equivalent of the Gibbs Free Energy of the liquid. In this case, H20 creates 1 mol H2 and 0.5 mol O2 for each 231kJ energy at 1 atm.

Where does this electricity come from?

From the battery.

Where does the energy in the battery come from?

From the alternator.

Where does the energy in the alternator come from?

From the engine burning fuel.

How efficient is the alternator?

About 60% max. That means that for every 10 units of mechanical energy entered into the alternator, only 6 are converted to electricity.

The electricity which powers the electrolysis, right?

Yes.

So how much energy comes from burning the hydrogen and oxygen you get from electrolysis?

231kJ/mol at 1atm, the same as it took to create it the gas.

That's good. That means that the engine will make more power, right?

Yes, in addition to the 5400 kJ/mol that the gasoline provides.

Well, that's good right?

No. Because the engine is ideally 37% efficient.

What does that mean?

It means that for every 231kJ extra energy you put into the engine, you only get 85 kJ of mechanical energy back. And that's if you have a perfect engine.

85kJ!? Well, how much mechanical energy did it take to make the 231kJ energy from the water?

Well, remember that 60% efficient alternator? That means it took 369.6kJ of mechanical energy to make your engine put out 85kJ more power.

So what you're saying is that this water thing uses more electricity than it makes?

Yes. In an ideal engine, it would basically rob your engine of 80% of the power you put into it.

I don't understand what that means in terms of horsepower.

OK. Let's look at it this way. Let's say that you make a modest income and have bought a bright shiny sports car that puts out 200 horsepower.

Great.

Let's say that your alternator uses up 1hp to electrolyze water.

OK then how much do I get back from burning the hydrogen/oxygen gas?

Assuming perfect combustion, you would get 0.2hp back.

Screw this, I'm saving up my money for a $4000 turbo kit.

 

And I think the general consensus is (drum roll): snake oil.
So let's see, you're essentially creating H2O2 & then mixing it with your standard everyday household gasoline.
Below is a small excerpt from Wikipedia on 'Brown's gas':
The energy required to generate the oxyhydrogen always exceeds the energy released by combusting it. (See Electrolysis of water:Efficiency).
Once again, the 1st & 2nd laws of Thermodynamics come into play & pretty much silence the swindler.

 

Honda R&D is developing a Home Hydrogen manufactuering station, for future owners of their Fuel cell cars. I think thier goal is for the machine to produce 4 lbs. of fuel in 8-10 hrs.

only problem is the range is limited to less than an EV car, so it's not even close to the effieciency of a NickleMetal or Lithium batteries

 

Let me see if i got this right.

According to Sonoros, electricity generation from an alternator is 60% efficient. The energy to my house would then lose some value because generation of oxyhydrogen is always less than what I put into it. Then we put it thru a 37% efficient Honda IC engine after a 10 hour charge that will just barely get me to work and back.
If I got this right, there is a smoke stack somewhere belching out a lot more energy than I need to get to work in my Crossfire by a factor of about 5 to 1.
Since hydropower is fairly well expoited in most of America and solar won't work at night that leaves wind power and Nuclear as non carbon power sources. I'm guessing coal, natural gas and oil burning will make up the difference.

So how does that help the environment or our current dependency on foreign oil?

roadster with a stick.

 

This car has it built in.

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/07/24/r...to-the-gallon/

 

The Brown's Gas crap is, for lack of a better word, retarded. I hate the name "Brown's Gas". It sounds like "Brown Note".

Anyways.

Apparently, there is a field of research called hydrogen injection, which is supposed to allow engines to idle at superlean mixtures. But right now it's experimental. The idea is that a small amount of hydrogen in a running engine allows the engine to save fuel in non-load modes.

But nothing about on a engine while running...yet. And no Brown Gas.

We'll see.