Why Brown Gas, HHO, On-board Hydrogen Generators, CAN NOT WORK...LONG
Why Brown Gas, HHO, On-board Hydrogen Generators, What ever they call it,
It CAN NOT WORK.
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HOAX ALERT:
Popular Mechanics
Two More 'Gas Savers', Synthetic Oil, Greasing Universal Joints:
Mike Allen's Weekly Online Auto Clinic
Q: Have you ever heard of HHO gas and its ability to significantly boost your MPG? The system is based on producing HHO gas from water by using electrolysis, the water is supplied by a container under your hood. The electricity is provided by the vehicle's battery. I have seen many postings of improved fuel efficiently ranging from 15% - 50%. If this is true, why doesn't the automotive industry provide this already? The system could be homemade and materials should be under $100, it would pay for itself in a month or two.
A: I'll label it a hoax right here.
The whole principle ignores the 2nd law of thermodynamics.In short: there can never be enough energy gained from burning the HHO to provide enough electricity to disassociate the water. Otherwise, it's perpetual motion.
Mileage increases? Voodoo.[
www.popularmechanics.com]
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SCAM ALERT:
[
www.gazettetimes.com]
OSU engineer: Hydrogen system in autos a scam
By Steve Lathrop
For the Gazette-Times
The hydrogen gas systems being used by several mid-valley drivers cannot deliver any kind of efficiency, says Bob Paasch, the Boeing professor of mechanical design at Oregon State University.
“The process is a scam,” he said. “It’s wishful thinking. If it were true, every power company and auto company in the world would be using it.”
Paasch said the systems — which use water and baking soda to create hydrogen via an electrical charge from the battery and alternator — violate the second law of thermodynamics and can’t work.
“People who buy into this are wasting their money,” he said.
Paasch has conducted tests on a similar device in the past and found it did not live up to any of the claims made by the inventor, who said it would deliver 50 percent more horsepower and double the gas mileage.
The systems being used are electrolysis, according to Paasch. Hydrogen and water can be burned through this process but more energy is required to drive the cell than can be extracted from it.
Ray Warren of Millersburg and Elden Huntling of Lebanon have the systems installed in their respective gas- and diesel-powered trucks and say they have seen a significant increase in gas mileage.
“These types of systems have been proven to be frauds,” Paasch said. “It’s impossible for the process to produce more energy than it consumes.”
Nonetheless, Huntling and Warren stand by their mileage claims. Warren admitted his mileage dropped significantly after several fill-ups but says he expected it and that a simple adjustment to his computer will correct the problem.
“I stand by the system,” he said.
Huntling has seen no decreases. “All I can say is that I’ve increased the mileage on my diesel truck by 64 percent,” he said. “It runs off excess power from the alternator.”
Paasch says this can’t be.
“The alternator doesn’t produce excess power. The alternator requires more mechanical energy than the hydrogen process can produce.”
Paasch also says the system is potentially unsafe.
“You have a highly flammable gas and the possibility of electric sparks in an enclosed space,” he said. “It’s a very dangerous situation.”
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MORE:
[
www.popularmechanics.com]
The Truth About Water-Powered Cars: Mechanic's Diary
By Mike Allen
Published on: July 3, 2008
It's one thing for a car to run on air, but do the latest claims of hydrogen-turned-oxygen-turned-electricity propulsion hold water—or feed in to the hysteria of the gas crunch? In his biweekly online column, PM's senior automotive editor focuses his chemistry prowess on the case of miracle water fuel, then builds an HHO car himself.
From a startup snagging headlines to DIYers posting plans, water-powered cars have been all over the Web recently—not to mention stuffing my email inbox.
Yes, you can run your car on water. All it takes is to build a “water-burning hybrid” is the installation of a simple, often home-made electrolysis cell under the hood of your vehicle. The key is to take electricity from the car’s electrical system to electrolyze water into a gaseous mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, often referred to as Brown’s Gas or HHO or oxyhydrogen. Typically, the mixture is in a ratio of 2:1 hydrogen atoms to oxygen atoms. This is then immediately piped into the intake manifold to replace some of the expensive gasoline you’ve been paying through the nose for these last couple of months. These simple “kits” will increase your fuel economy and decrease your bills and dependence on foreign petroleum by anywhere from 15 to 300 percent.
There’s even a Japanese company, Genepax, showing off a prototype that runs on nothing but water. On June 13 Reuters published a report on the prototype, complete with a now much-blogged-about video even showing an innocuous gray box in the Genepax vehicle'strunk supplying all the power to drive the car. All you have to do is add an occasional bottle of Evian (or tea, or whatever aqueous fluid is handy), then drive all over without ever needing gasoline.
So what do I think about all of this? Why haven’t I tested and written about this stuff? It’s certain to Change the World As We Know It ... right?
Rubbish.
The only real definitive claim Genepax makes on its Web site is that its process is going to save the world from global warming. (A request for comment was not returned at press time.) Their Water Energy System (WES) appears to be nothing more than a fuel cell converting the hydrogen and oxygen back into electricity, which is used to run to a motor that drives the wheels. Fuel cell technology is well-understood and pretty efficient at changing hydrogen and oxygen into electricity and water, which is where we came in, right? Except the hydrogen came from water in the first place—something doesn’t add up here.
Here’s the deal, people: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
There is energy in water. Chemically, it’s locked up in the atomic bonds between the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. When the hydrogen and oxygen combine, whether it’s in a fuel cell, internal combustion engine running on hydrogen, or a jury-rigged pickup truck with an electrolysis cell in the bed, there’s energy left over in the form of heat or electrons. That’s converted to mechanical energy by the pistons and crankshaft or electrical motors to move the vehicle.
Problem: It takes exactly the same amount of energy to pry those hydrogen and oxygen atoms apart inside the electrolysis cell as you get back when they recombine inside the fuel cell. The laws of thermodynamics haven’t changed, in spite of any hype you read on some blog or news aggregator. Subtract the losses to heat in the engine and alternator and electrolysis cell, and you’re losing energy, not gaining it—period.
But enough about Genepax, which is sort of tangential to my main thesis here, and on to a more common topic in my mail que: HHO as a means of extending the fuel economy of conventional IC engines.
HHO enthusiasts—from hypermilers to Average Joes desperate to save at the pump—suggest that hydrogen changes the way gasoline burns in the combustion chamber, making it burn more efficiently or faster. Okay, there have been a couple of engineering papers that suggest a trace of hydrogen can change the combustion characteristics of ultra-lean-burning stratified-charge engines. Properly managed H2 enrichment seems to increase the burn rate of the hydrocarbons in the cylinder, extracting more energy. However, these studies only suggest increases in fuel economy by a few percentage points and don’t apply unless the engine is running far too lean for decent emissions. That’s a long way from the outrageous claims of as much as 300-percent improvements in economy that I see on the Internet and in my mailbox.
There’s no reason to believe that even more modest increases claimed by some of the ads could be achieved by a conventional, computer-controlled automobile engine running under closed-loop driving—that is, the computer’s ability to sample the oxygen output of the engine’s exhaust in real time and slew the fuel/air ratio for big mpg and small emissions. The combustion chamber events are far different in the type of ultra-lean-burn engines where hydrogen enrichment has been seen to help. Ultra-lean means there’s a lot of extra oxygen around for the hydrogen to have something to react with—far more than the very modest amount we’re sucking in from the typical homebrew hydrogen generator made from a Mason jar. And remember, these studies deal with hydrogen enrichment under closely-controlled lab conditions, not spraying an uncontrolled amount of hydrogen-oxygen mixture into your air cleaner.
I’m building a water-electrolyzer car—right now. The electrolysis cell assembly is on my workbench and ready to install, so stay tuned for the test results soon. If it works, then you can believe the hype.
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Electrolysis of water is the decomposition of water (H2O) into oxygen (O2) and hydrogen gas (H2) due to an electric current being passed through the water. This electrolytic process is used in some industrial applications when hydrogen is needed.
Efficiency
Water electrolysis does not convert 100% of the electrical energy into the chemical energy of hydrogen. The process requires more extreme potentials than what would be expected based on the cell's total reversible reduction potentials. This excess potential accounts for various forms of overpotential by which the extra energy is eventually lost as heat. For a well designed cell the largest overpotential is the reaction overpotential for the four electron oxidation of water to oxygen at the anode. An effective electrocatalyst to facilitate this reaction has not been developed. Platinum alloys are the default state of the art for this oxidation. The reverse reaction, the reduction of oxygen to water, is responsible for the greatest loss of efficiency in fuel cells. Developing a cheap effective electrocatalyst for this reaction would be a great advance.
The simpler two electron reaction to produce hydrogen at the cathode can be electrocatalyzed with almost no reaction overpotential by platinum or in theory a hydrogenase enzyme. If other, less effective, materials are used for the cathode then another large overpotential must be paid.
The energy efficiency of water electrolysis varies widely with the numbers cited below on the optimistic side. Some report 50–70%[2], while the theoretical maximum efficiency of the electrolysis of water is between 80–94%.[3] These values refer only to the efficiency of converting electrical energy into hydrogen's chemical energy. The energy lost in generating the electricity is not included. For instance, when considering a power plant that converts the heat of nuclear reactions into hydrogen via electrolysis, the total efficiency may be closer to 30–45%.[4]
[en.wikipedia.org]
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Popular Mechanics:
[
www.popularmechanics.com]
"THE MORAL OF THE STORY
We've tested nowhere near all of the fuel-saver gadgets on the market, and I'm sure purveyors of others will be waiting in our lobby soon. But not one of the items we tested worked. At all. There's no ignoring the laws of physics, people. Your vehicle already burns over 99 percent of the fuel you pay for. Less than 1 percent is squandered as partially burned hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide before the exhaust hits the catalytic converter for the last laundering. Even if one of these miracle gadgets could make the combustion process 100 percent complete, the improvement in mileage resulting would be 1 percent. Any device that claims quantum-level increases needs to be examined with considerable skepticism.
We say caveat emptor (let the buyer beware). But there are plenty of people out there who say: "There's one born every minute." Prediction: Within a few weeks after the appearance of this article, there will be gas-saving gadgets on the market that tout themselves as "Featured in Popular Mechanics." Someone will buy them. Probably not you."
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Basic Junior High science:
The Conservation of Energy.
"Energy can neither be created nor destroyed"
All energy conversions processes involve Losses (heat, friction etc.)
Convert the stored energy in fossil fuel to usable mechanical energy with your engine >50% efficient
Convert mechanical energy to electrical energy with the engines alternator. >90% efficient
Convert electrical energy into chemical energy...Produce Hydrogen. > 50% efficient
Convert chemical energy to mechanical energy through thermal expansion. ??? efficient
This process is terribly inefficient, no way it can boost MPG's
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Hydrogen is not magic, it is just a way to make clean energy portable,
so the energy can be used when needed w/out pollution.
But it takes energy to free Hydrogen from water, propane, coal
or where ever you get it from.
It takes MORE energy to free the Hydrogen then the than the Hydrogen contains.
This is the reason that Iceland is working on producing lots of Hydrogen from all the
geothermal energy they have, and are not using, because it is hard to
power a car or truck from geothermal (or solar, or wind etc.,)
without some way of transporting the energy until it is needed.
GE is working on more energy efficient methods to produce Hydrogen.
That does not mean that spraying Hydrogen into your engine will produce
magical results.
Modern engines are highly efficient, Achieving 98%+ combustion efficiency.
Adding a little Hydrogen can not increase combustion efficiency beyond 100%.
That is not possible.
So the best you could even hope for is a very small bump in MPG's (1-2%)
The most energy loss is from heat, which Hydrogen might even increase.
Most of the rest of a trucks inefficiencies are in the load and drive train.
Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source.
Energy is required to separate it from other compounds.
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Once produced, hydrogen stores energy until it is delivered in a usable form, such as hydrogen gas delivered into a fuel cell.
Hydrogen can be produced using diverse, domestic resources including fossil fuels, nuclear energy, biomass, and other renewable energy technologies. The environmental impact and energy efficiency of hydrogen depends greatly on how it is produced.
The following are some ways to produce hydrogen. Many are in the early stages of development
Natural gas reforming—"synthesis gas" is created by reacting natural gas with high-temperature steam or by partial oxidation, then the synthesis gas is reacted with water to produce hydrogen
Renewable electrolysis—an electric current generated by renewable energy technologies, such as wind or solar, splits water into hydrogen and oxygen
Gasification—Coal or biomass is converted into gaseous components and then into synthesis gas, which is reacted with steam to produce hydrogen
Renewable liquid reforming—renewable liquid fuels such as ethanol are reacted with high-temperature steam to produce hydrogen near the point of end-use
Nuclear high-temperature electrolysis—heat from a nuclear reactor is used to improve the efficiency of water electrolysis to produce hydrogen
High-temperature thermochemical water-splitting—high temperatures generated by solar concentrators or nuclear reactors drive chemical reactions that split water to produce hydrogen
Photobiological—microbes such as green algae consume water in the presence of sunlight, producing hydrogen as a byproduct
Photoelectrochemical—photoelectrochemical systems produce hydrogen from water using special semiconductors and energy from sunlight
Natural gas reforming using steam accounts for about 95% of the approximately 9 million tons of hydrogen produced in the United States annually. This level of hydrogen production could fuel more than 34 million cars. The major hydrogen-producing states are California, Louisiana, and Texas. Almost all of the hydrogen produced in the United States is used for refining petroleum, treating metals, producing fertilizer, and processing foods.
The primary challenge for hydrogen production is reducing the cost of production technologies to make the resulting hydrogen cost competitive with conventional transportation fuels.
eere.energy.gov
