Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Technology => Topic started by: Larry on 08/05/2008 08:52:55
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Larry asked the Naked Scientists:
Please explain the possibility of a Water Fuel Cell.
The atomic make up of water makes the molecule perfect for a fuel source. The water molecule is composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. When the water molecule is separated into its component atoms (H and O) and oxidized as fuel, the resulting energy is two and one half times more powerful than gasoline. The by-product of the combustion is water vapour. Making water as a fuel, powerful and pollution free!
The problem has always been how to separate water economically. Traditional methods of separating the bond of the water molecule have resulted in failure. To power a car by these methods would not move the car very far. The car?s electrical system could not recharge from the process quickly enough. The result would be a quickly drained battery. For many years Stanley Meyer researched this problem and found a way around it!
Is this true and possible?
What do you think?
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This question gets asked very regularly. Water is an OXIDE not a fuel. You need at least as much energy from somewhere to separate the H and O atoms (to Reduce it). There are legions of the Pro Hydrogen brigade. I have the idea that most of them think Hydrogen is available for nothing!
The basic equation is
Energy you get out
= Energy you put in minus energy you lose in the process.
Your battery would get you a few yards down the road and would best be used to work an electric motor, directly.
Using solar energy, on a huge scale 'for free', it would be possible to obtain your Hydrogen. All you have to do is store it economically and then use a fuel cell in your car.
But that's not the question you asked, is it?
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So, I take it that Hydrogen Fuel Kits on Ebay and sites like runyourcaronwater.com are scams?I ask you this because a friend is ready to buy a conversion guide, which I am sure is a mistake, but she won't take my word for it.
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You've got it.
Get your friend to read all the threads on this forum and others about the topic.
Caveat emptor or
"A fool and his money are soon parted." Dunno who said this but it's true.
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All you need to do is look to those who have been doing this for some time. www.oupower.com is packed full of those who actually experiment with using water as a fuel. I'm currently in the middle of constructing a test cell (or two) using stainless steel wire as electrodes (similar to but not exactly the same as water4gas). Read some INDEPENDANT reviews. If you can make or buy a cell that produces 1.2-2.0 liters/minute, at a current draw of less than 20 amps (more than that may be more than what your alternator can handle), then you should see a mileage increase of about 30%. For me, that'd be going from 36 mpg (in my '98 toyota corolla) to 46.8 (36*.30=10.8 10.4+36=46.8).
The way it works...consider this. God (Yes, GOD) gave us trees. We commonly chop them down (I have nothing against this) to make firewood... to burn in a fire. That's a material, wood, being converted into thermal energy through the simple ignition by a match or lighter.
Now, wrap you minds around this one... Water, like wood, is a material. Water, like wood is made of different atams that can be broken up by chemical reactions. And water, like wood can be converted into thermal energy. To say that it would take more energy to produce the hydrogen than would be taken out of the hydrogen for kenetic energy is like saying it takes more energy to light a match than you can possibly get out of the wood. You might as well just freeze.
The energy from the battery goes to the cell, where the water is split into HHO. This travels via tubing directly into your air intake, which combines with the normal incoming air to go into your combustion chambers. there, it meets up with the gassoline (unless this is a 100% water fueled car (which is theoretically possible, and has been claimed to have been done before, but is extremely rare) in which case you need to contact me) and is ignited in combination with the gas, to provide the energy needed to send the cylinder down to move the engine to send your car shuttling down the roadway. NOTE, some of the water is acutally CONSUMED. This is not perpetual motion or energy from nowhere. The energy is from the water.
The battery is in no way your energy sorce for this. If that were the case you might as well link an electric motor directly to your drivetrain (which can also increase fuel economy (Toyota Prius)). The battery energy goes in to spliting the water, not runing the car. Therefore the water is not the median by which battery energy is transfered to the engine, but rather the battery is the trigger to extract the water energy to be transfered to the engine.
Do the research, get the facts straight, don't buy in to a scam (there are plenty out there), and contribute to the movement by experimenting.
P.S. I've been working on water fuel research for about four years. I've done several experiments. I know what I'm talking about, email me if you have any questions: dan dude 102 AT gmail.com (no spaces, AT = @)
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"Water is an OXIDE not a fuel"
True, but...
Wikipedia states that
"The simplest and best systematic name of water is hydrogen oxide. This is analogous to related compounds such as hydrogen peroxide, hydrogen sulfide, and deuterium oxide (heavy water)."
Hydrogen peroxide is also an oxide, but is flamable and can be used as a fuel. There are plenty of other oxides which can be used as fuel.
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The best way i've heard of to generate hydrogen on the fly is by adding water to an aluminium-gallium alloy. The aluminium is then converted to aluminium oxide and must be recycled back to aluminium for re-use, but the gallium is just a catalyst and is not used in the reaction.
Here's an article on it: http://www.physorg.com/news98556080.html
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This is all to do with energy states. Basically you can't get owt from nowt, to use an old Yorkshire saying. To say this means... "To say that it would take more energy to produce the hydrogen than would be taken out of the hydrogen for kenetic energy is like saying it takes more energy to light a match than you can possibly get out of the wood" is a misleading straw man argument. The point is here that you put a small amount of energy in to trigger a reaction in order to release energy from the oxidation of the phosphorus. This is going a little bit up an energy barrier then skating down the other side. The temperature then ignites the wood in a similar way. All the energy you get back has had to be put in there at some time in the past in refining the pure phosphorus and making the potassium chlorate (oxygen source) that usually accompanies it. The wood has taken years of sunlight and photosynthesis to fix carbon from the atmosphere - by burning it we are just getting some of that energy back. Any understanding of thermodynamics would show that you never can get it all back either, and certainly never get more back than has been put in.
The same arguments hold for water which is at a lower energy state than free hydrogen and oxygen. When you burn hydrogen in oxygen you get water plus energy (heat). Any reversal of this will involve putting energy back in. There are complications, which can be used to obfusticate the arguments, to do with the exchange between the atomic and molecular states, but the fundamental energy argument holds nonetheless. This is modern alchemy, not physics or chemistry.
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Hydrogen peroxide is also an oxide, but is flamable and can be used as a fuel.
It isn't a fuel - it's an oxidising agent because it contains readily available Oxygen. It doesn't burn in air - it produces burning when added to a fuel of some sort.
Get yer facts straight, boyo!
Water needs energy PUT INTO IT in order to separate the H and the O. If you do that using Electrical energy and then burn the H in the O again, you may just as well use the Electrical Energy to drive an electric motor.
If you separate the two in a static system and then you use the two in a mobile application then there may be some advantage ("Hydrogen powered cars" etc) but it is just plain daft to carry round a battery in a vehicle and then use it to produce your H and O. Another energy transfer involves yet more inefficiency.
Do some basic reading round of the fundamentals and get some understanding before you waste your time and money on experiments / investments.
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http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Hydrogen_Peroxide_as_Fuel
The last time I threw a match on some Hydrogen Peroxide, it burned.
So you can't get energy out of a raw material? Like gasoline, wood, hydrogen peroxide, gun powder, nitrus OXIDE, or water? Gasoline wouldn't work, because you'd have to drill the oil out of the earth, then refine it, not to mention all of the energy it would take to travel to get the gasoline to the stations. Everything else presents the same issue, to much work to prepare.
Water has everything present needed for a fuel, only it's held in a bundle called a molecule. This covalently bonded goodness will not burn unless seperated into hho.
Imagine with me if gassoline had the same property. You had to run about 2 volts of electricity at about 20 amps to get sufficient energy from it. After that, the energy could be fully harnessed. The electical energy put in in no way limits the ammount of energy that gassoline can deliver. It simply acts as a conditioner.
This is called ACTIVATION ENERGY.
The only way any of you are truely going to prove anything is by contribution, not theorization. I admit that modern science heavily relies on laws, and that if any of these laws is difinitively broken experimentation is useless. But, I don't see any laws, not even any thermodynamic laws, being broken here.
Go ahead, prove me wrong. Experiment using the scientific method, and see that you can not possibly get more energy from hho than what is used from the battery in electrolysis.
I have already gone through with this, and proven the opposite. Experimentation, done correctly, doesn't lie.
This is modern alchemy, not physics or chemistry.
Call it what you'd like. We water fuelers like to use save money, the environment, and money. You can call us enconomy commuters, tight wads, dutch, or even paradoxes. After all, we're burning water
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People trying to turn base metals into gold thought they were on to a winner too. We now know better.
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dan dan...
Whilst I acknowledge it's theoretically possible that we've got thermodynamics all wrong and you can indeed get something for nothing in energy/entropy terms (and if you're going to bring god into it as above of course it could all be down to miracles or, alternatively, pixies), the thermodynamic "law" that you can't get energy for nothing is pretty well tested, and that's what you're talking about here. I'll break it down incase that helps:
1) All water molecules are equivalent. Two hydrogens, one oxygen.
2) Breaking the bonds between the hydrogens and the oxygen requires energy (and makes H2 gas and O2 gas, but that's immaterial to my argument).
3) The energy to break the bonds must come from somewhere, in a car that's got to be the car battery.
4) The maximum theoretical energy available to be released in re-forming the water from whatever it's been split into (whether that's H2 and O2 or this mythical HHO stuff) is equal to the energy which was used to split the water in the first place, since you're just doing the reverse reaction.
5) In practice, since no process is 100% efficient, there will have been some energy lost in converting from H2O to whatever and some more will be lost in converting from whatever back into water.
6) Thus, hydrogen may be a fuel but water just ain't.
7) Anyone who tells you different is one of 3 things (a) a fool, (b) a charlatan or (c) the genius who's found a way around the conservation of energy.
If it were (c) they could quite simply set up a demonstration of this remarkable principle in a sealed box somewhere and leave it running indefinitely, since the water is supposedly going from water, back to water, it will never run out of fuel. After not very long the scientific (and indeed the political) community would prostrate themselves at this person's feet and beg for the secret to save the world from global warming and provide unlimited free energy for all.
My money's on (a) or (b).
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dan dan
So you can't get energy out of a raw material?
Did I say that?
"Raw Material" is a meaningless term.
Can you burn Glass, Granite, Ash? No, because it requires more energy to get them to combine with oxygen (when even possible) than the combination produces. (Combustion is a process which produces heat when a fuel combines with Oxygen, remember?)
When you 'set fire' to the peroxide, what chemical reaction did you think took place? The match could have burned much more fiercely than in air because the concentration of Oxygen was higher. What else was there around to combine with the Oxygen released from the H2O2? Possibly the container or stuff on the surface you used. This is why H2O2 can be hazardous -but it doesn't combust.
Give the Chemists a bit of credit; they sorted all this out 200 years ago.
btw, I just spotted this:
covalently bonded goodness
Give me strength - whatever is THAT?
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covalently bonded goodness
Give me strength - whatever is THAT?
Word choice is crutial in this business.
From here on out my words are mainly repeditive.
4) The maximum theoretical energy available to be released in re-forming the water from whatever it's been split into (whether that's H2 and O2 or this mythical HHO stuff) is equal to the energy which was used to split the water in the first place, since you're just doing the reverse reaction.
this is where you're mistaken.
If it were the reverse reaction a cell in which fire, atmaspheric air, and gassoline were acting togather to somehow split water. This is not the case. Instead:
NOTE, some of the water is acutally CONSUMED. This is not perpetual motion or energy from nowhere. The energy is from the water.
SO the reaction isn't water to gas to water, but rather water to gas to ENERGY + Water, where there is less water to compinsate for the energy. This happends almost any time in a combustion reaction. you don't gain back as much matter because some of it is lost to heat, sound, and light energy.
Can you burn Glass, Granite, Ash? No, because it requires more energy to get them to combine with oxygen (when even possible) than the combination produces.
Glass contains Silica (SiO2), soda (anything with Na), and lime (CaO). None of those eliments are perticularly combustible.
Granite contains quartz (composed mainly of silica (SiO2)), orthoclase (KAlSi3O8) or microcline (KAlSi3O8), and mica [KAl2(AlSi3O10)(OH)2]. A few mentionably combustible eliments found there, but it's a bit of a stretch.
Ash can contain any number of things, none of which will be worth seperating, because the item has already been combusted.
However, water contains a simple H2O. It can be easily seperated to form HHO (not H2 and O2, but also not chemically HHO, that's simply a name coined for something called 'Browns Gas'), then combusted to give off thermal energy and combine PART of that HHO back into water. Not a perfect system (there are also sound and light energy losses), but everybody knows perfection is hard to achieve. The energy provided for propulsion comes from the HHO itself, not the battery.
When I was 10, I was a pyromaniac. I spilled some hydrogen peroxide on the cement, threw light a match, and threw it on the peroxide. If I'm not mistaken, it lite on fire. If I'm correct anything that lights on fire can be used as a fuel. But I'm willing to say that I was wrong about this one. I was 10 some time ago. Besides, its totally unrelated.
Just like we use gasoline for fuel, HHO can be used as fuel. Once it is burned it turns into H2O. The fact that it is so easy to get HHO from water, and the fact that some of the water is returned gets some people confused when they consider the whole thing.
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"Water is an OXIDE not a fuel"
True, but...
Hydrogen peroxide is also an oxide, but is flamable and can be used as a fuel. There are plenty of other oxides which can be used as fuel.
When I was 10, I was a pyromaniac. I spilled some hydrogen peroxide on the cement, threw light a match, and threw it on the peroxide. If I'm not mistaken, it lite on fire. If I'm correct anything that lights on fire can be used as a fuel. But I'm willing to say that I was wrong about this one. I was 10 some time ago. Besides, its totally unrelated.
Totally unrelated? If your argument was that there are plenty of oxides that can be used for fuel, then lighting H2O2 is totally related, if it happened.
The thing that I haven't seen mentioned yet is that Oxides are the product of combustion reactions, the ash, if you will. This is why they are not fuels. The combustion reaction is oxidation of a fuel. Most of the people on this site know this from basic chemistry, and probably assume everyone else does too.
Spent or Oxidized Hydrogen(water) is recyclable into usable fuel, but the cost is more than the net return. It's about like pushing the car to the top of a hill, so you can roll down, then pushing it up again.
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dan dan, I just spotted this:
covalently bonded goodness
Give me strength - whatever is THAT?
I'm not sure, but it sounds like a TV ad "for the delicious covalently bonded goodness of Dihydrogen Monoxide. Pour yourself a glass today!"
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dan dan
You may not realise it but you are, effectively, rejecting the whole of modern Chemistry by what you are implying in your statements.
Perhaps you would let us know which bits you are prepared to accept then we could establish where it is that Science has all started to go wrong.
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dan dan
Water is the ash of burnt hydrogen, and as you point out...
Ash can contain any number of things, none of which will be worth seperating, [sic] because the item has already been combusted.
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sophiecentaur said:
rejecting the whole of modern Chemistry
... and most of physics...
That was what I meant about being either a genius or... something else.
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This really isn't that hard. I'm not rejecting any modern chemistry laws (I recieved the highest grade in HS chem. (A+), if that helps), nor any theories, nor common scence.
Houndreds of people are using the system that I'm trying to explain to you. So, just to be sure we both know why this insainly simple ideah works, let's set up a little proof.
STATEMENT REASON
1) Water contains Hydrogen and Oxygen. Assumed
2) Water is polorized (H positive, O negitive) Electronegativity difference in Oxygen
3) Electrolysis and other
(way more efficient methods) can seperate 2H2O(l) → 2H2(g) + O2(g)
water into H and O.
4) Once seperated, Hydrogen, as we know, becomes Hydrogen reacts with oxygen to
extremely explosive, and can be used as a fuel. form water + energy
5) That extra energy, comming from the SPENT water, Experimentation and results
can provide energy to your car.
6) That hydrogen wastes less fuel and makes a much Hydrogen, mixed with gasoline burns
more efficient burn, resulting in an increase in much better than just gasoline.
MPGs
7) NO energy is gained from anywhere, the system in 2nd law of thermodynamics. Energy can
your car is simply made more efficient neither be created or destroyed.
(normal efficiency runs at about 30%).
Water is the ash of burnt hydrogen, and as you point out...
Ash can contain any number of things, none of which will be worth seperating, [sic] because the item has already been combusted.
ASH: "to apply heat to a material until the material has been reduced to a mineral residue." [SEMATECH]
Residue: "any undesirable material that remains on a substrate after any process step." [ASTM F127-84 and SEMI P3-90]
http://www.chemicool.com/definition/ash.html
Water is neither a substrate, nor an undesirable material, and therefore not a residue. Since it's not a residue, it's also not an ash.
The thing that I haven't seen mentioned yet is that Oxides are the product of combustion reactions, the ash, if you will. This is why they are not fuels. The combustion reaction is oxidation of a fuel. Most of the people on this site know this from basic chemistry, and probably assume everyone else does too.
We're not throwing a match on water and watching it explode (although, it seems, under certain sircumstances, water can explode: http://www.powerlabs.org/waterarc.htm). Yes, water is an OXIDE, but hydrogen isn't. And if you don't think hydrogen can be used as a fuel then you need to go tell the world that they're all wrong.
Quote from: sophiecentaur on 17/07/2008 18:25:59
dan dan, I just spotted this:
Quote
covalently bonded goodness
Give me strength - whatever is THAT?
I'm not sure, but it sounds like a TV ad "for the delicious covalently bonded goodness of Dihydrogen Monoxide. Pour yourself a glass today!"
They get away with selling delicious covalently bonded goodness for upwords of $2 for 20oz. They'd probably be doubling profits if they marketed it as "delicious covalently bonded goodness of Dihydrogen Monoxide"
from FlashBang http://oupower.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=20426#20426
"...the reality is that even if it takes more energy to seperate water than it produces... that does not change the fact that its presence causes a more complete burn of the fossil fuel.
If they need convincing that a more complete burn results in better MPG, refer them to this months issue of Popular Mechanics where they go through some elaborate engine mods to do just that burn more of the fuel in the chamber than the current systems allow."
Also, this tech. is hitting the industry
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9960833-54.html
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Frankly, I'm alright with you calling me a genius.
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I will try to explain what these guys with the electrolyzers are attempting to do. They are not trying to run their cars or trucks on the hydrogen. They are using the HHO gas as an accelerant. The vapor that comes off the small droplets of gasoline burns at about 4,000 feet per second. Hydrogen in air burns at about 38,000 feet per second. When you do the math, you will see that an engine running at 2000 rpm does not have enough time to completely burn the fuel (the power stroke is only one of the four strokes per rpm). The thought is if you can catch all the fuel on fire at once, rather than waiting for the flame to make its way down from the spark plug and through the gas, you will get a more efficient burn. I hope this sheds some light on what these guys are trying to do.
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That's the nearest thing to sense I've read on this thread. If it works, then it can only be a matter of time before we can buy one for all our cars.
I'd still love to know what "spent water" is, though.
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Isn't it called 'spent water' because traditionally, it costs a penny to deal with?
Sorry - couldn't help taking the p.
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That's the nearest thing to sense I've read on this thread. If it works, then it can only be a matter of time before we can buy one for all our cars.
I'd still love to know what "spent water" is, though.
The origin was my reference to water as spent/oxidized hydrogen. Our "genius" is apparently able to transcend the laws of language, as well as physics and chemistry.
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Back to Lavoisier then?
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I will try to explain what these guys with the electrolyzers are attempting to do. They are not trying to run their cars or trucks on the hydrogen. They are using the HHO gas as an accelerant. The vapor that comes off the small droplets of gasoline burns at about 4,000 feet per second. Hydrogen in air burns at about 38,000 feet per second. When you do the math, you will see that an engine running at 2000 rpm does not have enough time to completely burn the fuel (the power stroke is only one of the four strokes per rpm). The thought is if you can catch all the fuel on fire at once, rather than waiting for the flame to make its way down from the spark plug and through the gas, you will get a more efficient burn. I hope this sheds some light on what these guys are trying to do.
I wish this were the case, but nearly every HHO device that I've seen(there are thousands for sale on ebay right now) comes with the (false)promise that you can use them to run your car on 100% hydrogen, and kick the petroleum habit. Your explanation would probably get less argument(and sell more kits) than their ads.
I have been watching the "acetone dopers", lately. They say that from 1 to 3 ounces of acetone per 10 gallons of gasoline(the exact amount depends on the car you drive) improves vaporization and combustion and thus increases mileage. It has also been said to lower hydrocarbon outputs, because of the complete burn.
There are skeptics on this one too, but in this case it is the NON-scientists. Keep in mind that they're not peddling a conversion kit or "magic formula". The only thing it may require is adjusting your car to run "lean". There are sites with a lot of information on the subject, including at least one database listing results by make and model.
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Back to Lavoisier then?
Yes! Fillerup with 10 gallons of PHLOGISTON!
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I wish this were the case, but nearly every HHO device that I've seen(there are thousands for sale on ebay right now) comes with the (false)promise that you can use them to run your car on 100% hydrogen, and kick the petroleum habit. Your explanation would probably get less argument(and sell more kits) than their ads.
I have been watching the "acetone dopers", lately. They say that from 1 to 3 ounces of acetone per 10 gallons of gasoline(the exact amount depends on the car you drive) improves vaporization and combustion and thus increases mileage. It has also been said to lower hydrocarbon outputs, because of the complete burn.
There are skeptics on this one too, but in this case it is the NON-scientists. Keep in mind that they're not peddling a conversion kit or "magic formula". The only thing it may require is adjusting your car to run "lean". There are sites with a lot of information on the subject, including at least one database listing results by make and model.
I will have to agree with you about the junk on e-bay and other store fronts on the web. I have seen things that are down right lethal on flashy web sites making wild claims. There are always those who will try to take advantage of other people's ignorance. This, of course, gives everyone working on this a bad name. There are a couple of forums out there trying to get this to work and disclosing what they find, and even there, there are some who make questionable claims or have questionable testing practices. They are at least trying.
I tried the acetone thing a couple of years ago. I gave each quanity a couple of tank fulls to verify a change. I went to the same station and used the same pump at roughly the same time of day for fuel fill ups. I tried this on a 2002 Chevy Venture and a 2005 VW Jetta diesel. I saw no change in mileage.
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I will try to explain what these guys with the electrolyzers are attempting to do. They are not trying to run their cars or trucks on the hydrogen. They are using the HHO gas as an accelerant. The vapor that comes off the small droplets of gasoline burns at about 4,000 feet per second. Hydrogen in air burns at about 38,000 feet per second. When you do the math, you will see that an engine running at 2000 rpm does not have enough time to completely burn the fuel (the power stroke is only one of the four strokes per rpm). The thought is if you can catch all the fuel on fire at once, rather than waiting for the flame to make its way down from the spark plug and through the gas, you will get a more efficient burn. I hope this sheds some light on what these guys are trying to do.
Seemed like a good place to start, and this guy seems to explain the theory as well as anyone I've seen.
Ok, a bit of history. I'm a 21 year ASE Master auto tech with an L1 advanced drivability certification. I own a repair shop in NE Georgia. Lately I have been bombarded by people wanting to know if this works, to the point where I started to do research on it. I've seen mason jars with wire , I've seen acrylic cells that look like car batteries, and most lately I saw a cylinder made of PVC pipe that has stainless electrodes in it. This seems to be the most durable and easiest to install design so far. Better yet, the guy who made it has installed it on his car, a 2000 Dodge Durango 4wd with a 5.9L V-8. He claims it went from 13mpg to 22mpg. I'm a bit of a sceptic myself, so I plugged in a scan tool to the car and checked out some parameters. This is what I found.
With the cell disconnected I found the injector on time to be about 6msec. The oxygen sensor was running in the middle of the scale, cycling normally. A few quick stabs on the throttle to load up the exhaust showed a peak oxygen sensor voltage of 1.00 volt, which means it is capable of reading a full rich condition. Short term fuel trim numbers were normal, floating around zero plus or minus a couple of percent. Long term fuel trims were unusually negative.
With the cell turned on and running at normal temperature (130F by my infrared thermometer), Oxygen sensor readings were running about normal, long term fuel trims were unusually negative, short term fuel trims were hovering about 33% negative, and injector on time was running at just a touch over 4msec.
All indications are that this engine really was running on about 50% less gasoline, which is consistant with what he was reporting in gas mileage. I had him build me a cell and installed it on a 1993 Dodge Minivan yesterday for testing. If it works, I'll have some real numbers to report along with more technical data than the "Run Your Car on Water" sites provide. If it doesn't, none of my customers will spend any money on this and the guy who built the cell (a 65 year old cabinet maker and long time area resident) will be well known for his efforts to defruad people. And I should know within about a week.
Here is what I can tell you so far. Installation was easy, it took about 1 1/2 hours. I ran a relay and fuse for the cell, triggering it off the fuel pump to make sure the cell would only be active when the engine was running. The gas is plumbed in to the manifold thru a single manifold vacuum line (there are other more complex setups, but I wanted to start basic). The cell is running on alternator voltage, running between 12.6 and 14.7 volts, typicly right at 13.7. After the cell warms up, (about 130 degrees F) it is drawing 12.3 amps. I mixed 1 tablespoon of baking soda in to one gallon of distilled water so I would have a consistant "fuel" source for testing purposes. The cell holds 16 ounces full.
From driving it so far, I can tell you that there are no adverse drivability symptoms, if anything the car seems to have a bit better throttle response. Knowing I would be installing this system for testing, I checked the mileage last week, travelling 165 miles on 7.5 gallons of gas. Ok, it was 7.48 gallons to be precise, but I won't be driving the van in a lab. That came out to 22 mpg. I'll drive it for a week to get a couple hundred miles on it before I recalculate, and see how much water it uses. If it works we'll get in to doing some tuning. Finally, this question will be answered once and for all. Honestly, I hope it does work. I service several fleets of vehicles who would love to see this kind of savings, and I could make a couple of bucks installing them. If I was able to save people that kind of money I have no doubt my client list would grow rather quickly. If it doesn't work, at least none of them will get suckered, and I'm out some time and a few dollars in supplies. Either way, I'll win. People who ask me about it are either going to save money at the pump or on the internet.
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Please keep us posted. There are many of us who have been waiting for someone to either prove or disprove this, and who isn't just selling do-it-yourself e-books.
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I'm glad you're experimenting. We truely need more people out there ready to stick their neck out there to get some true numbers.
I deffinitally used the 'spent water' thing the wrong way. Sorry, my bad. I was thinking off a theory that I had read about somewhere that the way 100% water cars work is by consuming h2o and gaining energy for motion off of that.
There are those who claim 100% water fuel, but there isn't enough evidence to prove whether or not their claims are true. (Stanly Meyer, Daniel Dangle... ect). Personally, I don't think it's at all impossible to run a car completly off of water, but right now I don't have the expertice, nor the capital to start working on something like that, so I'll stick to the little leagues.
A 50% increase is up there. There's claims of 100% increase (doubling millage), which isn't impossible, but is hard to believe. The water4gas system doesn't fully rely on just a water fuel cell (booster), but also impliments a fuel additive, and a fuel heater (somehow attached to the fuel line, so that the fuel is hot before it hits the cylinder (eccpecially helpful before the engine is warmed up) making a cleaner, more efficient burn). I think they may also encourage an increase in tire preasure, which is going to evintually give those cars a bad case of the rollovers and send insurance prices higher.
In my current tank of gas, I put about 2 and 1/2 oz of acetone in before fill up. I know this sounds corky, and I was forcing myself not to allow any dreamy super-effects to occure due to the speculation that they might occur, but I couldn't help but notice a better responce time (eccpecially when flooring it :) and a total elimination of the slight dinging sound that had found it's way into my car a number of months ago. I havn't finished the tank of gas yet (I'm about 1/4 done) but from a guestimation stand poin I'm getting about 40mpg when I should be getting about 36mpg (the way I drive can send the mpg anywhere from 34 (driving like a maniack) to 40 (driving like a grandma). This tank of gas I'm deliberately driving at about 36mpg to see if I can get about a 10% increase (as reported by others) resulting in 40mpg.
I also just purchased a set of Halo spark plugs, which claim a range of mpg increase, depinding of the vehicle. I expect about a 10% increase, kicking my total mpg to around 44mpg (an increase of 22% from the base of 36mpg).
With the water fuel cell, or booster, I only expect about another 10% increase, although this could be more or less (hopefully more). That would bring the efficiency up to around 48mpg (rivaling that of a toyota prius). and there are still other devices to be added, if they sound like a good investment (e.g. the fuel heater and scangauge).
I think it's fair to say that any good DIYer can increase their mpgs by at least 30% for under $200. It's all about making the system more efficient.
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Come on people!!! This is garbage!
Sorry to rant - especially to those of you who are unfamiliar with the laws of thermodynamics, but none of this makes sense!
Unless the people on this site are willing to throw centuries of empirical wisdom out the window then concepts such as 'water fuel cells' MUST be immediately debunked and discussed no further.
Just to clarify once & for all (yeah, that's going to stop it!):
1. water CAN be split into Hydrogen & Oxygen by several means, which ALL require energy from an external source.
2. H & O can be reacted together in a mirror image of above process, which will 'return' the energy used in the first place. But, most importantly, the energy returned will be in a less ordered form, meaning it will be impossible to utilise said energy 100% - in a useful form like mechanical work.
These statements conform to the first & second laws of thermodynamics.
I implore all those here new to the thermodynamic laws to, please, just read up on them a little. This might be a good place to start:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A467714
For those others of you still wanting to discuss 'water fuel cells' or other 'new theories', please can we at least stay in the realms of reason. Just as I would never be arrogant enough to claim that there remain no fundamental concepts of science still to be discovered, I respectively take affront at what seems a constant desire by some individuals to take the odd piece of circumstantial evidence from some bloke in a shed as a reason to dismiss the laws that underpin our modern technological & scientific world as wrong.
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which equation
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erickejah: 'which equation', what?
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In my country there is a professor going around saying that he is able to use a certain frequency to break the H-O bond. The frequency generator is powered by the car battery. It breaks a H-O bond which causes a chain reaction that causes more bonds to be broken. Something like a chain reaction for U-235. Thus very little energy is required to break H-O bonds.
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I think some of the myths about running cars on water stem's from the early years of motor vehicles when only very low octane petrol was available and engines had expansion ratios (commonly called compression ratios) of about 4 to 1.
Equipment was available to inject water with the fuel enabling a higher expansion ratio to be used without pre ignition raising the output of the engine.
pressent day fuels have an octane rating of between 90 and 100 and this system would serve little purpose
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Is it possible to use a certain frequency to break the H-O bond?
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Can we buy HHO and put into our car?
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Here is an idea...
Use dam power or solar power, or some other form of natural energy to produce an amount of fuel from water. Then use that as starting fuel to operate a motor, that will send more electricity into a hydrolisis.
Maybe the thing to do is not to try to seperate the molecules within the cars, but rather to put them in the car like we do with gasoline.
Critique please.
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OIND:
I think the reason not to do that (assuming the "fuel" you're suggesting be generated is hydrogen from electrolysis of water) is that petrol is actually much less reactive than hydrogen, and burns in oxygen under conditions where hydrogen would explode. Since the sudden release of energy over a very short time period which occurs in an explosion will tend to damage the engine, it's not such a good idea.
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Umm... well there is (potentially) a way to run your car, well mabey not a car but an electrical generator of of water, I havnt ever heard of somone trying it, because I dought somone has, its dangerous but all it really takes is hydrogen as a fuel, which as we said can be taken from water. Now im not suggesting we burn the hydrogen and turn it back into water, no that as has been stated would give less energy back than it took to make the hydrogen, no what you do to get enormous amounts of energy is to take the hydrogen molecules, and somehow (i believe this is done with lots of pressure) bond the hydrogen protons together to form another element, it's nuclear fusion, what makes the sun shine, it could yield unheard of amounts of energy and I'm sure we could run a car on the energy created by it, unfortunately this is completely impractical because eventually we would just run out of hydrogen like any other fuel could and this would be something nature dose not re create, now ironically enough someone used the term "modern alchemy" earlier, well if you combined enough protons to make the element gold you would be successfully doing what the alchemists of ancient times tried so hard to accomplish. But again, this would be a dangerous and irresponsible thing to attempt and rather than make your car move, it would probably make it explode
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I think nuclear fusion is far too dangerous for us to be playing with in our own cars, especially when a collision occurs. I'd like to not be inside a miniature sun, ever.
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In my country there is a professor going around saying that he is able to use a certain frequency to break the H-O bond. The frequency generator is powered by the car battery. It breaks a H-O bond which causes a chain reaction that causes more bonds to be broken. Something like a chain reaction for U-235. Thus very little energy is required to break H-O bonds.
Either he's not a real Professor or you didn't understand what he's saying.
Yes, of course, an appropriate frequency of electromagnetic wave can break the bonds.
The problem is, as ever, that the energy returned by the bonds re-forming cannot be more than the energy which was put in. There will always be significant losses in any such system so it's a non-starter, I'm afraid.
There is not the slightest doubt, where water is concerned, that this idea is not viable. Keep your money.
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I had a discussion with a "almost" relative a few months ago about this water for fuel idea. I could not get far since the discussion had to be in French (which I cannot speak well enough) or English (which he cannot speak well enough). In any case, he had a friend who claimed to have had success with this. I found my "relative" a website that explained this nonsense well. http://www.aardvark.co.nz/hho.shtml. This guy offers 1 million dollar for the first one to demonstrate 25% of fuel savings. He says, not one person has even applied.
The process may result in some real fuel savings because your engine's fuel sensors are tricked into running the engine leaner. Leaner than it is good for the engine. Of course running leaner saves gas, but what is the point if you destroy you engine in the process? AND it is not using the water as an energy source either.
Karsten
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... no what you do to get enormous amounts of energy is to take the hydrogen molecules, and somehow (i believe this is done with lots of pressure) bond the hydrogen protons together to form another element, it's nuclear fusion, ...
Yeah, SOMEHOW. I think several industrialized nations have supported some of their best engineers and physicists who have been working on this for several decades with billions of dollars spent and a few seconds of working fusion in all those years. Don't worry about it working for your car. It has not worked much at all at any scale and no matter how much money was available. Don't hope very hard that it will help us with our energy needs in the foreseeable future.
Karsten
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With regards to HHO debate, I have recently fitted an HHO unit to a fleet operater's vehicle.
This vehicle was tested at an independent accredited emission testing station and driven by the operator for 1900km at which time it was retested at the same test station, the results are:
NOx reduced 74.12%
CO2 reduced 15.43%
Now this is the one I want to know why PM-LLSP increased 120.6%
Opacity Av(%)reduced 97.89%
Opacity Max(%) reduced 93.26%
Power dropped 1.41%
Torque dropped 4.98%
Fuel economy increased by 34.08%
These are not my figures they are all independent. So something seems to be working.
g/km
NOX 0.456 reduced to 0.118
C02 447.9 reduced to 378.8
PM-LLSP(mg/--) 0.403 increased to 0.889
Opacity Av(%) 2.707 decreased to 0.057
Opacity Max(%) 9.758 reduced to 0.658
Power 99.437kW reduced to 98.0389
Torque 298.453 Nm@Rear Wheels reduced to 283.599 Nm
The Vehicle is a 6cyl V6 3.6L fuel injected petrol engine(91 octane).
The emission test was a DT80 done by a local government test station.
Given that the opacity is so much clearer the PM figure seems off.
That's why I believe it could be water vapour the test is picking up.
Does anyone else have a theory on the PM increase?
In any respect the figures seem to be pretty good to me.
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Why do propositions that are the wrongest take the mostest words to propose? [:)] [:)]
Water is the ash you get when you burn H and O, as several have already stated.
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Here's an article on it: http://www.physorg.com/news98556080.html
[:o]"Most people don't realize how energy intensive aluminum is," Woodall said. "For every pound of aluminum you get more than two kilowatt hours of energy in the form of hydrogen combustion and more than two kilowatt hours of heat from the reaction of aluminum with water. [:o]
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And how much energy do you think an Aluminium Refinery uses to get the Aluminium out of the ore?
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who said anything about aluminium?
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I am very curious how both experiments went, any updates yet?
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"Water is an OXIDE not a fuel"
True, but The origin was my reference to water as spent/oxidized hydrogen.
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Hi, my english language is bad, sorry I´m in Portugal. In my company I have 20 cars with HHO reactors instaled and we save more tham 30% in fuel monthly and our cars need less revisions in the workshop. We have CO=zero in all cars diesel or gasoline engines, more power, and more torque.
We use all products of the Hidrogenpower manufacturer to save fuel in our cars and to heat our company and to weld and cut. To heat we save 75% in fuel and to weld and cut we save about 60/70%, you can see wath we use here: Advertising link deleted. Mod
I know that people and I know that company export that products to Universitys in USA and Canada, now they are equipping a company of 300 autobus of passengers.
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Scientists Find New Way to Produce Hydrogen (http://www.physorg.com/news151856915.html) - January 22nd, 2009
The team found that the aluminum clusters react differently when exposed to water, depending on the sizes of the clusters and their unique geometric structures. Three of the aluminum clusters produced hydrogen from water at room temperature. "The ability to produce hydrogen at room temperature is significant because it means that we did not use any heat or energy to trigger the reaction," said Khanna. "Traditional techniques for splitting water to produce hydrogen generally require a lot of energy at the time the hydrogen is generated. But our method allows us to produce hydrogen without supplying heat, connecting to a battery, or adding electricity. Once the aluminum clusters are synthesized, they can generate hydrogen on demand without the need to store it."
Khanna hopes that the team's findings will pave the way toward investigating how the aluminum clusters can be recycled for continual usage and how the conditions for the release of hydrogen can be controlled. "It looks as though we might be able to come up with ways to remove the hydroxyl group (OH-) that remains attached to the aluminum clusters after they generate hydrogen so that we can reuse the aluminum clusters again and again," he said.
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Water is not a fuel or a power source. It is a battery.
A battery is simply stored potential energy. When you apply an electrical charge to water, it seperates (blah blah blah, already covered in every other post here) and becomes potential energy. That potential is released when the hydrogen explosively oxidizes. The amount of energy released though is not any more than the energy that was put into it to separate the atoms. It just is released at a different rate so it appears to be more.
One of the reasons that a 100% water fueled car is not currently feasible is because you cannot perform electrolysis on the water fast enough to make that much fuel. Hydrogen grabs a hold of oxygen much more readily than it lets go. We have effective means to break these bonds with electricity but it is a relatively slow process compared to how fast they readily go back together.
So the statement made earlier is that the power is coming from the water itself being consumed into energy. This is incorrect. The energy released in the destruction of an atom would be phenomenal and you would likely blow the head off your engine if you were capable of releasing the energy from the water atoms. Releasing the energy from the atom is what they did at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. In the case of water for fuel it is really just electrical energy.
“Electrical energy?!?! It blows up! There is no lightning!, it is NOT electrical energy!”
There I got that out of the way for you.
What it comes down to are electrons. Hydrogen and Oxygen are held together by bonds where the electron from one atom is shared with another atom because there is room for the electron in both atoms. Now if you apply an electrical charge to the water (What is electricity but a controlled flow of electrons) electrons flood in between the atoms and fill in those holes in the electron field and thus the bond is broken because there is no longer room to share electrons. But the potential is now there for them to join back together in a state of oxidation. (Read: Potential = battery).
Now we can all agree that when burning the hydrogen that what is happening is it is being oxidized. When this occurs, the Hydrogen is joining into another bond with the oxygen by sharing electrons again. The explosiveness in which hydrogen is able to reconnect this bond is where the physical energy comes from, but it is still an electrical reaction. And the electrical energy being used at that time is equal (less than) to the energy that was put in to separate the water molecules in the first place.
So: Water running a car is a modified battery.
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Scientists Find New Way to Produce Hydrogen (http://www.physorg.com/news151856915.html) - January 22nd, 2009
The team found that the aluminum clusters react differently when exposed to water, depending on the sizes of the clusters and their unique geometric structures. Three of the aluminum clusters produced hydrogen from water at room temperature. "The ability to produce hydrogen at room temperature is significant because it means that we did not use any heat or energy to trigger the reaction," said Khanna. "Traditional techniques for splitting water to produce hydrogen generally require a lot of energy at the time the hydrogen is generated. But our method allows us to produce hydrogen without supplying heat, connecting to a battery, or adding electricity. Once the aluminum clusters are synthesized, they can generate hydrogen on demand without the need to store it."
Khanna hopes that the team's findings will pave the way toward investigating how the aluminum clusters can be recycled for continual usage and how the conditions for the release of hydrogen can be controlled. "It looks as though we might be able to come up with ways to remove the hydroxyl group (OH-) that remains attached to the aluminum clusters after they generate hydrogen so that we can reuse the aluminum clusters again and again," he said.
Oops, energy was used to create the aluminum clusters to begin with, then they degrade and have to be recycled. That is more energy going in. It is not free enrgy, the energy is just being added in a different part of the process.
It is easy not to consider all aspects of a situation.
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[::)] [:(] When I was at school in the 1950's there was a section in my science book dealing with adding water through the carburetor of a car engine to increase economy.The text did not definitely state the cause but said that it may be due to the water breaking down under the combustion conditions and becoming a fuel.I have only come across one person who has succeded with this. He had a large container of water on the bonnet of a fairly heavy 6 cylinder car which he was using to make deliveries of large trailer loads of firewood. The water dripped into the air intake and he was getting a fuel economy about 30% better than would normally be expected.
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[::)] [:(] When I was at school in the 1950's there was a section in my science book dealing with adding water through the carburetor of a car engine to increase economy.The text did not definitely state the cause but said that it may be due to the water breaking down under the combustion conditions and becoming a fuel.I have only come across one person who has succeded with this. He had a large container of water on the bonnet of a fairly heavy 6 cylinder car which he was using to make deliveries of large trailer loads of firewood. The water dripped into the air intake and he was getting a fuel economy about 30% better than would normally be expected.
The process of adding small amounts of water to the combustion chamber is called 'Water Injection' It has _nothing_ to do with water breaking down and being burned. It is a well known process that, amongst other things cools the chamber and improves the process of smooth combustion.
Here is a brief quote from wikipedia on the subject of Water Injection:
In internal combustion engines, water injection, also known as anti-detonant injection, is a method for cooling the combustion chambers of engines by adding water to the cylinder or incoming fuel-air mixture, allowing for greater compression ratios and largely eliminating the problem of engine knocking (detonation). This effectively increases the octane rating of the fuel, meaning that performance gains can be obtained when used in conjunction with a supercharger or turbocharger, altered spark ignition timing, and other modifications.
the entire article can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_injection_(engines)
Hope this is slightly enlightening.
diogenesNY
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[:D] [:D]Thanks mate, that is always what I thought it might be. would higher octane fuel lower the effect?
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This is rather amusing. All the die hard "scientists" here who throw around the Laws of Thermodynamics but don't seem to really understand what they are saying. I spent over 20 years living and breathing those laws in power plants.
According to some here, no fuel would work in a car because it would take more energy to create the fuel than it releases. But we have gasoline. The energy stored just needs to be released. ... don't scream yet ...
How about a nuclear power plant? We just give it a bit of a push and it is off and releasing huge amounts of energy.
So the same is true for water. In other fuels we don't see everything behind it to bring it to a power plant, with water you do. What is baffling the heck out of some of you is the end product is water thus you are thinking "perpetual motion". Nobody I know of has said that at all. There will be a price in water to pay.
Then the next negative argument is that it takes the same energy to break the bonds as you get out of burning it. BUT you are forgetting the other part of this. The gasoline. Like a match or a spark, it is a little thing that gets the energy released from the gasoline.
It is touched upon here that what the HHO is doing is helping with a more powerful explosion AND a more efficient explosion. More of the gasoline is ignited. What you need to look at is how much more energy is released from the gasoline due to the insertion of HHO. Is this extra energy enough to overcome the net loss of the water cycle? If yes, then the overall efficiency of the engine will go up and your gas mileage will go down. Of course you will be using water but it is far cheaper than gasoline.
I haven't seen any numbers showing what the gain in energy released from the gasoline is.
Of course one of the scams out there is the adjusting of the O2 sensor readings. That is an old trick that leans out the fuel and causes gas mileage to go up. Has nothing to do with what you are doing to the rest of the engine. But if you are running water or other additives, you may have to mess with it.
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you guys are funny!!!
As I see it there are still a couple of problems with using water derived H2 for an accelerant. 1) water introduces rust in iron blocks. 2) has anyone determined what and if there are more deadly toxins that can be made if H2 is introduced (just like H2O isn't flameable but H2O2 is NASTY) 3.) Have you EVER had to work on an engine block which had a water leak?? the oil is emulsified and not a very good lube anymore. I'm sure that H2 is a possibility, but is it wise???
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In Edwardian times injection of water along with the fuel was popular as very low octain fuel was all that was available and the injection of water enabled a higher expansion ratio (compression ratio) to be used without detonation.
There is little or nothing to be gained with modern fuel and engines.
On further reading I see that Diogenes NY has already covered this point very well
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[::)] [:(] When I was at school in the 1950's there was a section in my science book dealing with adding water through the carburetor of a car engine to increase economy.The text did not definitely state the cause but said that it may be due to the water breaking down under the combustion conditions and becoming a fuel.I have only come across one person who has succeded with this. He had a large container of water on the bonnet of a fairly heavy 6 cylinder car which he was using to make deliveries of large trailer loads of firewood. The water dripped into the air intake and he was getting a fuel economy about 30% better than would normally be expected.
I have heard that slowly adding water to a carburator of a running engine will aid in removing carbon deposits from inside the engine, which would go out the exhaust in a black smoke. It may be possible that this would result in the more efficient operation of the motor rather than the water being part of the combustion process.
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I have heard that slowly adding water to a carburator of a running engine will aid in removing carbon deposits from inside the engine, which would go out the exhaust in a black smoke. It may be possible that this would result in the more efficient operation of the motor rather than the water being part of the combustion process.
Neither case is inherently a good reason to add water to the intake.
Water won;t play part of the combustion process, at least in any advantageous way (efficiency-wise).
Neither will it do much to clean carbon from all but the dirtiest or badly running carburetted engine for anything but the shortest of application (ie. maybe once in a while on an old non-injection engine).
Water (often in combination with Methanol) is injected into performance engines and this is a proven technology. There is much available info on using this approach, particularly for high boost turbocharged engines, on the net. And, in theory there the possibility to increase an engine's thermal efficiency along similar lines.