Run your car on water?

[Portland_Jon]

Another scam pushing unsuspecting users to sites selling plans that are freely available online.

Jon

[Rosendula]

Another scam pushing unsuspecting users to sites selling plans that are freely available online.

Jon

Thanks Jon. I've put a post on the 'reporting spam' board so that the mods can deal with it as they see fit

[Portland_Jon]

No problem. I have done a lot of research into this subject and may build a HHO system sometime but for now I will just keep reading about it. I don't like the idea of messing about with H2 and being a smoker especially after being on life support a couple of weeks ago after surgery. I kinda value life a little more now.

Jon

[The Riff-Raff Element]

How is this supposed to work exactly? Call me thick, but the only way I can think of getting hydrogen from water is via electroysis, but the energy losses (heat, etc) in doing this mean that the amount of energy produced by burning the hydrogen in an engine would be a little less than the energy required to manufacture it. In other words, if one were using a petrol engine as a source of power to make hydrogen for buring in the same engine, total fuel consumption would go up, not down.

I know that it is possible to increase the power output of an engine using water intection to allow for increases in compression ratio, but you still need to put in more fuel to get the extra power.

The sites I've found on 'tinternet (this one for example: http://www.spiritofmaat.com/archive/wat ... 20car2.htm) seem to lack a basic understanding of the laws of thermodynamics and respirational biology (air being breathable with only 7% oxygen in it).

Could it all be complete b*****ks perhaps?

[Portland_Jon]

That's the problem as I see it too. The drag on the alternator due to the extra current would make the engine work harder and negate the extra efficiency of the Hydrogen and Oxygen. Also when these two gasses are burned they create water, what is that going to do to an engine and exhaust system over a period of time?

I think that the best way to produce it would be to use free energy such as wind power to produce the gas an then somehow fill a tank in the car with it. These websites claim that there are new technologies enabling efficient production but they are selling nothing new, it is still the same old electrolysis and the laws of physics/chemistry do not change. There is talk of using bacteria to produce Hydrogen but that is a long way off for mainstream use. Engines can be made to run on most volatile gasses, just look at Propane forklift trucks. Why not make methane from manure and use that as it would work just as well?

Jon

[The Riff-Raff Element]

There are few bacteria that are promising producers of hydrogen, though getting them to do it well will require some genetic modifications

Using some form of photosynthesis to split water (plants do it all the time, though the end result isn't hydorgen) could also work, though it might be better to aim for an easier product like ethanol or methanol or even methane for which well-studied metabolic pathways exist. The problem is really one of scale: arranging a system that is small enough for convenient installation - perhaps even domestically - while generating enough fuel to be worthwhile is a trick.

Planes that used water boost for takeoff or for dog fighting did indeed suffer from increased rates of corrosion. This was solved by alloying, but in any case the objective was never to improve fuel economy, rather to increase the power that could be got from an engine by being able to force more fuel into it, not less.

Certainly people have run cars off methane produced from crap digesters (there is a proper name for them, but I can't rememer what it is) and near to where I live there is a project to use duck poo for making gas for home heating (Link)that is up and away. Making best use of nature's bounty, as it were, though the downside is that the feedstock comes for the most part from factory farming.