Godless Commie

iTrader: (2)

Those are gas canisters on the ground:


Even stray dogs are gassed... Demonstrators tend to them amidst the chaos.


This is how it all started:

triple88a

iTrader: (2)

You are not trying to replace the gasoline, you're using the hydrogen as a supplement to help increase the laminar flame speed. Better made devices than the video i posted produce upwards of 2 liters a minute. Sure in comparison to air engines consume that is little however keep in mind the engines dont consume cubic feet of gasoline per minute either. Gasoline has a ratio per air requirement. Hydrogen does not.

Matter of fact the way you control the throttle on a pure hydrogen vehicle is with the hydrogen. Simply if you want more throttle you increase the hydrogen going in the engine, if u want less you decrease it, there is no lean burn.

You're absolutely correct here however there is one flaw in your logic. You're thinking we use up 100% of the btus the gasoline carries. We do not. That's why the internal combustion engine is 25% efficient at best. 25% or so of the total btus are used up to give power, the rest are out the tail pipe and as heat through the radiator.

The HHO hybrid is not out there to change the laws of physics. Real numbers of power usage of an hho cell? About 15 amps per liter of HHO for a 14v system (car).

Remember where i said we're not trying to change the laws of physics? Well we're not. You are using the hho cell as a supplement only to increase the efficiency of the gasoline. So with the hho added to it that 25% increases even though u're using more power to drive the hho cell. The end result is an overall increase in efficiency.

This looks pretty cool though.

2ndGearRubber

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Short version:





Long version:
Again, it's all about units of measure and orders of magnitude.

A typical passenger car requires about 25 HP to cruise at a steady-state 65 MPH on level ground given typical sea-level atmospheric density.

A common formula for determining CFM of air from wheel HP is ~2.2 CFM/HP. So this hypothetical engine is breathing about 55 CFM of air. (Estimates here vary wildly, but even if I'm off by 50%, this is close enough for reasons that will become obvious in a moment.)

2 liters per minute of HHO is 0.07 CFM. And since HHO is (by definition) two units of H2 per one unit of O2, it is exactly 2/3 hydrogen by mass, so the actual H2 production from your "better made" generator is 0.047 CFM. (I'm hand-waving over the discrepancy in atomic mass between the two- their densities at STP are such that it really doesn't matter. If you perform the separation in a double-column apparatus, you will see that it does in fact work out to almost exactly a 2:1 volume ratio.)

In other words, your "better" HHO generator is able to supply H2 to the engine at a rate of approximately 0.00085% H2 relative to air.

Read that again: 0.00085%.

(This actually isn't all that much more than the amount of free H2 which is naturally present in ordinary air. )





We can compare it to gasoline as well, but we can't do so in volumetric terms, we have to do so in terms of MASS, which is where you tripped over your own logic above: liquids and gasses have wildly different densities.

At standard temperature and pressure, hydrogen has a density of 0.09 grams per liter. So your "better" generator, which is making 1.3 liters / minute of H2 (2 liters of HHO * 2/3) is producing 0.12 grams of H2 per minute.

Assuming the usual baselines (0.5 BSFC, perfect stoich, etc), a typical gasoline engine will burn 12.5 lbs/hr of gasoline to make the 25 HP it needs to cruise at a steady 65 MPH. That's 5,670 grams per hour, or 94.5 grams per minute.

Compare that to your hypothetical 0.12 grams/min of H2, and you are contributing H2 to the process at a ratio of 0.0012% of fuel flow.

Again: 0.0012%.



Can you start to see the problem here? Even if adding H2 to the combustion process did have the potential to confer some magical properties as you describe below (we'll get to that in a minute), can you appreciate from the example above how the relative masses of H2 as compared to air and fuel are so massively disproportionate that it cannot possibly have any practical effect whatsoever? And I'm using your hypothetical "2 liter/min" unit, not the one that can actually fit under the hood of a car.

I mean, we're talking about several orders of magnitude here. That's like trying to spike the punch bowl at a party by adding vodka to it with an eye-dropper.








How is this relevant to the discussion? The same is also true of diesel engines as well as jet aircraft engines.



No, I wasn't.

I understand the fundamental tenet of your argument: that adding 0.001% H2 by mass to the fuel somehow magically enhances the efficiency of the engine. I simply point out that this argument is false and ill-informed.



Prove it.

I'm serious. If this were a courtroom, I'd be saying "Objection, facts not in evidence" right now. You are basing your entire argument on the premise that we accept as true something which has absolutely no basis whatsoever in either theory (eg: a chemical formula explaining why this would be so) or practice (eg: an example of such a system subjected to rigorous testing in a controlled environment.)

Of course, the absence of proof is not proof of falsehood. For that, I will turn to a rather more pragmatic observation: If HHO systems such as this have the potential to return even a 0.01% improvement in anything at all (power, economy, etc), then tell me:

• Which Formula 1 teams are using it?
• Which NASCAR teams are using it?
• Which WRC and Baja 1000 teams are using it?
• Which commercial fleet operators are using it?
• Which University SAE teams are using it?

Those last two in particular merit thought.


Consider a company like UPS, FedEx or USPS, which operate tens of thousands of small delivery trucks powered by gasoline engines which run highly inefficient start-stop drive cycles for 8-10 hours per day, every single day. A company like this would assassinate the Pope in exchange for even a 1% improvement in fuel economy, much less whatever outlandish claims the HHO crowd are making.


And then the Universities... Hell, forget about trade secrets, cost or practicality; university-level MEs routinely participate in competitions such as the Shell eco-marathon, in which they are building and driving gasoline-powered vehicles whose fuel economy is measured in THOUSANDS OF MPG. I'm not making that **** up, dude. See for yourself:

On-track awards - Shell Global 2012 Americas Eco Marathon
3,587 MPG Hypermiling Vehicle Wins 1st Place at the 2013 Shell Eco-Marathon! | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building


Are these vehicles practical daily-drivers? Of course not; they are purpose-built from scratch to accomplish only one goal: achieve the greatest possible efficiency (miles per gallon) from the combustion of gasoline in an automobile engine.

If there were even the smallest advantage to be gained from electrolytic separation of water to improve the efficiency of a gasoline engine, trust me, these folks would be doing it.

But they're not.

Not a single pro race team, OEM, fleet operator or ivory-tower university ME department is using HHO to improve the performance of their vehicles.

Why? Simple: they know something that you don't.





Relevance?

TorqueZombie

iTrader: (6)

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Haha. I'm a meme now.

(That smiley counts as a picture.)

Full_Tilt_Boogie

iTrader: (1)

Im going to hook a motor to a generator and Ill never have to pay my light bill again.

Impuls

iTrader: (1)

They use diesel though? At lease all around here they do.



They are also the ones that did the research and implemented the planned right hand turn only routing. Taking in account all the waiting the trucks do at left hand turns they calculated it's chapped to have everything planned it to make mostly all right hand turns. So yes.. I can see them assassinate the pope to acquire some amazing MPG money saving technology.

triple88a

iTrader: (2)

A 2 liter/min unit is a rather small unit actually. About the size of a water filter.



It has been proven.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

It's funny, because it was only just this morning that Ihad a chance to observe this first hand. The UPS guy pulled up to the office this morning just as I was getting out of my car, so I walked over to his truck to sign for the morning delivery. As I did, I noticed the label "UNLEADED GASOLINE ONLY" next to the fuel filler. I would expect some variance here.

I think you're right about FedEx, though. My recollection (just from the noise it makes) is that our local FedEx guy drives a diesel.

The standard USPS truck is a Grumman LLV, which uses a gasoline-powered GM inline-4 engine. The early ones had the 2.5l TBI "Tech IV" Iron Duke, and the later units are fitted with the 2.2l "122" engine. The postal service owns around 140,000 of these.



In general, the observation stands.


Exactly. These companies are absolutely fanatical about saving fuel.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Great, show me the proof.




Real proof, with math and science.

viperormiata

iTrader: (24)

****

triple88a

iTrader: (2)

Check out the HHO forums. Few years ago i was looking into this there was a thread about someone running some small engine on a bench in his garage to do the test. Showed results. Not much but in ran few minutes longer with the HHO generator hooked up.

Of course this is only as credible as how much you believe the person posting it.


Saw this... sadly it was a lie :/

SKMetalworks

iTrader: (7)

Need moar bmw. I picked up this gem last week

Godless Commie

iTrader: (2)

RT is Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister.

Scrappy Jack

iTrader: (2)

Both UPS and USPS have a mixed fleet, including vehicles running on natural gas.

golftdibrad

preface: I am a mechanical PE and did FSAE and eco marathon work

lets back this up to a second. These guys are trying to replicate Smokey Yunick's fiero.

From a design standpoint, if you increase the delta t between the hot side and the ultimate heat sink in any heat engine, you increase its net efficiency.

So, to the engineer in me this:


looks alot like this without the ICE part


Actually making an engine like Smokey's work is the hard part due to materials, peak cylinder pressures, knock control, etc. I wish I had the time and money to take another stab at it with modern tech because I KNOW a re-generator increases thermal efficiency. In other words, the hot vapor engine's magic had nothing to do with hot vapor.

Doppelgänger

iTrader: (12)

I'm going to throw a useless, thin wooden dowel into the iron wheel that is the discussion of improving economy on vehicles-

Out of my observations, one of the biggest ways to save fuel is the auto start/stop feature that a lot of manufacturers have started using. This a great idea as so much fuel is wasted sitting still. IIRC Porsche (and maybe others) use the ECU to time when to stop the engine at a specific point in which there is compressed air/fuel just waiting for a spark to get it going again. This and the electric start assist that uses an electric motor to get the vehicle from a stop up to a few miles per hour before starting the ICE to resume acceleration (though I'm not sure if the engine is started by the starter and a start up cycle like when you first crank up a car or if the engine is started by the moving driveline like as in roll starting a car). Though I'm sure they've looked long and hard into way to retrofit these systems into existing vehicles. I'd like to see MS or Hydra work on this as well (the start/top thing).

...not with adding a small electrical device that pulls hydrogen out of the air and whisps it into the intake of an engine to displace gasoline.
The question I ask triple88 is- Is the 2L/min volume you are saying, is that a compresses liquid state volume? I am far from any kind of engineer, but my thought process is that if you are going to make a statement on a idea of displacing/replacing a liquid energy with vapor energy and use a volume measurement, that the volume measurement will be of the same type. So what I see you are saying is that you can take your hydrogen output and bottle it into a 2L bottle in liquid state every minute? That is a LOT of hydrogen...not to mention the energy required to compress it into a liquid form. Also, if such an idea worked (like Joe said), why would you not see it use in other applications with even other types of gas energy? i.e. slowly 'injecting" natural gas or propane into the intake stream of an engine? Surely if it worked, an efficient compressed fuel would be decompressed into a gas state and be allowed to be added to the intake to reduce the amount of gasoline/diesel needed to make power. I think I'm making sense...I have yet to have my coffee.....

Personally, I think you'd be better off adding wind turbines to your car to charge a battery that would allow you to get a car moving from a stop using an electric motor


related picture for picture thread..

triple88a

iTrader: (2)

Nope at ambient temp or very close to it at ambient pressure.

Full_Tilt_Boogie

iTrader: (1)

I dont see what there is to argue about triple88a, It takes electricity to make the hydrogen, and that electricity is going to have to come from somewhere.
I dont see how some small gain in *insert weird pseudo science here* is going to make up for an added load on the alternator.

I remember when I was in highschool, I researched the idea of running a car on pure hydrogen (I dont think fuel cells existed, or were well known at this time). After looking into the energy density of hydrogen, how it has to be stored, and how it is consumed in a regular IC engine, I concluded that it was a retarded idea. The volume required for any real distance of a typical large, Americana automobile was ridiculous, even at SCUBA tank pressures (>3000 psi).


I cant wait for batteries to get better. The electric drivetrain is so simple that I cant help but love it.