• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

"As tested on Mythbusters."

For the true skeptic, you can see for yourself that an ICE will run on gas vapor. Just take an old engine (the kind that still has a carb, disconnect the fuel line, run it until the carb is empty, (it won't run no more), then put a rag soaked in gas on the air intake, and crank it up.

It really is strange.














And probably off topic.
 
As for running your car off of water, that can be done as well. It just can't be done the way these shysters are trying to get people to do it. It is impossible to get something for nothing.




















Unless you count solar energy, tides, rain, or other stuff like that.
 
robinson said:
For the true skeptic, you can see for yourself that an ICE will run on gas vapor. Just take an old engine (the kind that still has a carb, disconnect the fuel line, run it until the carb is empty, (it won't run no more), then put a rag soaked in gas on the air intake, and crank it up.

It really is strange.
Click to expand...

Not really strange. Things only burn in the gas phase, so all engines run of petrol vapour. The only thing is that it is much easier to store and pump liquids, so we use that instead. Vapourising it before burning instead of relying on natural evaporation will be more efficient, but it is still exactly the same process.
 
robinson said:
For the true skeptic, you can see for yourself that an ICE will run on gas vapor. Just take an old engine (the kind that still has a carb, disconnect the fuel line, run it until the carb is empty, (it won't run no more), then put a rag soaked in gas on the air intake, and crank it up.

It really is strange.
Click to expand...


You can run a normal automobile ICE on hydrogen. There are some long term issues, though. The gasoline in the engine cycle provides some degree of lubrication to the engine. Depending on how the engine is designed, this could be a problem if you replace the gasoline with 100% hydrogen. You may need to change the lubrication system or the kind of oil you use.

Also, you may find the need to adjust the car's electronics as they are likely to be very confused about what is going on based on the fuel and exhaust sensors.

Running on a combination of hydrogen and gasoline, however, is comparatively easy for most engines and requires very little modification while saving a lot of gasoline, by using 50% or more hydrogen.











And probably off topic.[/QUOTE]
 
DRBUZZ0 said:
Running on a combination of hydrogen and gasoline, however, is comparatively easy for most engines and requires very little modification while saving a lot of gasoline, by using 50% or more hydrogen.
Click to expand...

I wondered why they (Mythbusters) didn't try the hydrogen boost as it is designed to work, as an additive to the fuel stream. They hooked it up to the air intake and tried to run the engine on just the hydrogen/oxygen output from it. It would be cool to see them try a hydrogen boost hooking it up the way the instructions state, and doing the other modifications.
 
steve s said:
AFAIK, there was only one episode where they tested such a device. The electrolysis was only able to produce tiny amounts of hydrogen. Not nearly enough to power the car.

It takes energy to separate the two, but you can get energy back by recombining them in a fuel cell. Or you could just burn the hydrogen as-is. The Mythbusters showed that you could run an engine just by putting hydrogen (from a tank) into the carburator. But the device they were testing couldn't produce enough hydrogen to run the car.
Click to expand...
But the hydrogen powered zeppelin worked so well!

Yuri
 

Attachments

  • ages.jpg
    ages.jpg
    3.3 KB · Views: 190
There was a long thread about various claims of using some form of hydrogen to improve gas mileage awhile ago:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56705&page=5

A small summary:

Various claims over the years have been made that special forms of hydrogen have been created that can improve car mileage and make welders with new and useful properties. The gases which are a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen have been given various names including Rhodes gas, Brown's gas and Aquygen™. There is no accepted science that these gases are anything other than a stoichiometric mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. Stoichiometric mixtures of hydrogen and oxygen are apparently very dangerous and most of these devices electrolyze water on the fly to prevent having to store the gas.

The welders that use these gases don't seem to have any value in mainstream welding applications because they don't produce enough heat to be useful even though the flame burns very hot. There may have been a legitimate welder that uses a stoichiometric mixture of hydrogen and oxygen for use in welding small parts like in the jewelery industry. The device was referred to in one of Randi's old columns as a Henes Water Welder.

The claim that adding small amounts of hydrogen to the fuel mixture improves fuel economy and reduces emissions is not new and does appear to have some scientific basis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_Fuel_Injection
There are several companies selling or investigating products that take advantage of this idea. I didn't find adequate documentation to determine that any of these products were of value.

Some of the claims for these devices get pretty close to suggesting that the device can derive energy from water. These claims are of course complete crap.
 
First of all, you never want hydrogen gas and oxygen together... not in a tank, not in the hose... keep them apart until you need to combine them for the purposes of burning or running a fuel cell... which separates them by a membrane anyway.


I have, however, always thought that a system for adding hydrogen to an ICE can be a good way of bridging the gap and extending the capabilities of current vehicles.

it has been done, but it does not involve making the hydrogen in the vehicle. The hydrogen would be produced from electricity, which, presumably you could generate with solar cells or wind energy do assure you have a clean energy source.

It's pretty simple:

You have a regular car which runs on gasoline, but also have a hydrogen tank onboard, possibly a metal-hydrate storage cell, as those are more compact, although currently somewhat expensive and not mainstream.

When you are home you hook your car up to tanks in your garage, which provide the hydrogen, presumably having been accumulated from a hydrogen generator that's run on a clean energy source.

When you drive to work or the store, the car starts off on gasoline. When the hydrate tank warms up (to release the h2 gas) the engine starts to take in hydrogen. It runs on anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 hydrogen to gasoline in terms of energy from fuel. The gasoline assures the engine remains happy and lubricated and that the valves and injectors are happy.

You end up using a real lot less gasoline and the car produces less emissions. Going on a long trip? No problem. If you can't get there on a single H2 tank or if you do more driving in a day than your H2 production rate will allow, you can run the car on 100% gasoline.

Since you can get gasoline anywhere, you car can fill up at any station, but it won't get the gas millage you would if most of the power was coming from hydrogen.

You can convert your existing car too with minimal modifications.

Unfortionately, I don't believe anyone makes a complete bolt-in kit. However, a few inventive types have rigged such a system up.
 
DRBUZZO,
Except for the nuance of having a car run on either hydrogen or gasoline at the same time, what you described in your post is just the routine hydrogen economy fantasies.

Scientific American ran an article that was very skeptical of the likelihood of it happening any time soon if at all.

There are many problems. Hydrogen has got great energy/mass storage efficiency and really crappy energy/volume storage efficiency. So people think of ideas like the hydrates you mention. I don't recall numbers but with this idea you have to deal with even more energy loss than the energy that was lost by compressing the hydrogen and as I recall it didn't lead to that much higher storage efficiency. Hydrogen is also tricky to store. It leaks out of containers that are perfectly fine for storing other gases. It also can be very dangerous in a fire because it is transparent when it is burning.

There is also the laws of physics which seem to allow for a much greater recovery of the energy available by combing hydrogen and oxygen in fuel cells than in internal combustion engines. So you might find that it is just a whole lot simpler, cheaper and better to use the hydrogen in fuel cells in an electric car than to use the hydrogen as fuel for a car with an ICE.

But there in lies the rub. Where is the cheap source of hydrogen to come from? Nuclear power plants? Wind? Solar? OK, but maybe it's just a whole lot more efficient to not use the electricity from those devices to make hydrogen. Maybe, it's just simpler and better to use the electricity from those devices to charge car batteries, especially if progress continues to be made on rechargeable lithium ion batteries for cars.

Scientific American had an article a few months ago that claimed that the US could reduce its dependence on oil by 70% by converting to plug in hybrids. I think that is the low hanging fruit for reducing CO2 emissions, improving fuel economy, and reducing dependence on foreign oil. According to the Scientific American article the US could completely eliminate oil imports if it transitioned to plug in hybrids.
 
Hey! I read that article. It was awesome and changed my whole concept of hydrogen, making me do a lot more research.

No... I doubt hydrogen would ever be a real cornorstone of the econemey. But if you want to make your car use less gas and you happen to live some place sunny/windy...

This is a decent way of doing it on an individual baisis.
 
Get the straight scoop on utilizing "brown's gas" to improve fuel mileage at Hydrogen-boost.

It's all documented and Fran pulls no punches. By itself, the gas does little. However, with the right components added a significant increase can be accomplished.

If it is bunk, I'd like to know how Fran was able to get 100 mpg in the mileage contest he entered with his 1996 Saturn.

I use a very similar setup on my Durango. It is a hybrid of several sources, but much came from Hydrogen-boost. The vehicle now achieves 27 mpg highway. Not bad.
 
David Rodale,
Do you have the ability to turn hydrogen injection on and off?

If so, have you done any careful comparison tests between your mileage with and without hydrogen injection?

I didn't quite understand what you meant by:
By itself, the gas does little. However, with the right components added a significant increase can be accomplished.
Click to expand...

Some of the companies selling hydrogen boost include a booklet that lists other mileage improving ideas. It seems like most of the reported mileage improvements are coming from these ideas which I suspect are pretty well known such as over inflating tires and driving very slow.

The fact that these sites don't list the mileage improvement coming from the hydrogen injection by itself seemed suspicious to me. The fact that none of these sites linked to test reports done by independent agencies to EPA protocols seemed very suspicious to me.
 
Interesting point. I did some reading. The entire page is worth a read.

50% increase in mileage has been more than proven in North Carolina

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/supercarbs/messages/5084 , Switzerland

http://www.hydrogen-boost.com/Letter of acknowledgment ICEC.htm and

www.hydrogen-boost.com/november2001.html, and at the Tour de Sol mileage competition in Saratoga http://www.bestrateofclimb.com/montecarlo-results.htm. If you want personal proof and are willing to document it with television news cameras, I will drive my car out to your office and we can let you drive the car in a city driving route for however many miles you want with the Hydrogen Boost system shut off, and then ride with me while we drive the same route with me driving and the Hydrogen Boost system turned on, and you can let the TV news cameras document the results. In fact if you read the article about the Tour de Sol mileage competition in the Saratogian on May 14, 2005 you will see that the newspaper reporter was riding in my car during the competition
Click to expand...
http://www.hydrogen-boost.com/June 2005.html.

I will drive my car out to your office and we can let you drive the car in a city driving route for however many miles you want with the Hydrogen Boost system shut off, and then ride with me while we drive the same route with me driving and the Hydrogen Boost system turned on, and you can let the TV news cameras document the results.

I wonder if winning the Million Dollar Challenge would be proof?
 
Last edited:
From the same page:
The EPA like most “independent testing” agencies, will not test the complete Hydrogen Boost system as a complete system. Like others they will want to evaluate the hydrogen generator alone or the fuel heater alone. They would not even allow the electronic control circuit because they would consider that “interfering with the emission control system of the vehicle” because it leans out the fuel ratio.
Click to expand...

Can anyone validate this?
 
robinson said:
Interesting point. I did some reading. The entire page is worth a read.

http://www.hydrogen-boost.com/June 2005.html.

I will drive my car out to your office and we can let you drive the car in a city driving route for however many miles you want with the Hydrogen Boost system shut off, and then ride with me while we drive the same route with me driving and the Hydrogen Boost system turned on, and you can let the TV news cameras document the results.

I wonder if winning the Million Dollar Challenge would be proof?
Click to expand...

Notice that the proposed test has two different drivers. Differing driving habits can make a huge difference in mileage.

The EPA tests by specifying the standard driving loop in terms that try to eliminate driver-to-driver variation. You don't need the EPA's approval to use their methodology.
NOx emissions will generally be higher if the engine is running too lean.

In the description of the Tour de Sol competition, I can't help but notice the similarities between his behavior and a magician; in essence: "I want you to be absolutely positive that there's no way I can get gasoline in through the filler tube of this tank".

How come these guys never go to a NASCAR team and offer their technology? Getting by with even one less fuel stop would be an advantage. The publicity of being on a winning team's car (after it, inevitably, is discovered by the other teams), especially if it's banned as an unfair advantage, would be huge.
 
Over a year ago. Adam and Jamie would have gotten back to T'ai Chi by now.

Had he told them, of course.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom