Alternatives to Gas

[Tower]

Okay CP!

I have a car and I am willing to put it on the line.

I stumbled upon this website http://www.gas4free.com/

Who wants to do a test with me?

Look at the km/l before and after?

[Dan02]

i'm confused, all i see is a godaddy parked page.

[wooohooo]

I heard somewhere that water in the engine is deadly... might want to research this a little more.

By diluting gasoline with water, aren't you essentially doing the opposite and cause no spark to be made? This sounds way too sketchy man...

[jammies]

Originally Posted by Dan02

i'm confused, all i see is a godaddy parked page.

Tower is going to run his car on 404:not found searches. I think he might be on to something for once - it's an inexhaustible supply of photons RIGHT INTO YOUR FUEL TANK!

[Tower]

Sorry guys. If the link didn't work. It works for me.

http://www.gas4free.com/

[Tower]

Originally Posted by wooohooo

I heard somewhere that water in the engine is deadly... might want to research this a little more.

By diluting gasoline with water, aren't you essentially doing the opposite and cause no spark to be made? This sounds way too sketchy man...

It's not putting water directly in the gas. Electricity releases the hydrogen into the engine. I know what the website looks like. Infomercial. But the Shamwow works.

If it does anyone here will be comfortable using alternative sources like this. I'm doing, but wouldn't mind a few fellow testers with me.

[Tower]

Originally Posted by jammies

Tower is going to run his car on 404:not found searches. I think he might be on to something for once - it's an inexhaustible supply of photons RIGHT INTO YOUR FUEL TANK!

I'm on to a lot of things... I just talk about them waaaaaaay before I should.

[BlackArcher101]

You do realize the amount of energy it takes for electrolysis is far far greater than what you will get out of it. Factor that in with the power source being your battery which you cars has to charge, and you are even worse off. What they also show won't produce enough volume of Hydrogen to even make a difference.

Wait a second... HHO gas? This process seperates Hydrogen and Oxygen from the water... then it puts both gases into the intake? Sigh.

This right here seals the deal for me... "The system uses vacuum pressure to send more HHO gas as your engine's RPM rises." The amount the engine gets will only be as fast as the electrolysis produces, which is VERY minimal in this case (not enough to make a difference). An engine sucks a lot of air, and I'd be surprised if the amount of H2 and O you get from this process is more than 0.005% of the volume being required by the engine. Everything on this website makes no sense at all. Rule of thumb: If a website for new technology has to try so hard to get you to believe it... it's probably not believable from the beginning.

This reminds me of the guys who thought a leaf blower or a squirrel cage fan hooked up to your intake would boost performance.

[Tower]

Originally Posted by BlackArcher101

You do realize the amount of energy it takes for electrolysis is far far greater than what you will get out of it. Factor that in with the power source being your battery which you cars has to charge, and you are even worse off. What they also show won't produce enough volume of Hydrogen to even make a difference.

Wait a second... HHO gas? This process seperates Hydrogen and Oxygen from the water... then it puts both gases into the intake? Sigh.

This right here seals the deal for me... "The system uses vacuum pressure to send more HHO gas as your engine's RPM rises." The amount the engine gets will only be as fast as the electrolysis produces, which is VERY minimal in this case (not enough to make a difference). An engine sucks a lot of air, and I'd be surprised if the amount of H2 and O you get from this process is more than 0.005% of the volume being required by the engine. Everything on this website makes no sense at all. Rule of thumb: If a website for new technology has to try so hard to get you to believe it... it's probably not believable from the beginning.

This reminds me of the guys who thought a leaf blower or a squirrel cage fan hooked up to your intake would boost performance.

Well, I'm still willing to try it. Just want others to test it with me through my car and dollar. Didn't think it would be this tough to get people to check it out... I guess time is money. (Not slagging people here with that comment)

Not gospel but

http://www.auto-facts.org/water4gas-scam.html

[kirant]

Originally Posted by BlackArcher101

You do realize the amount of energy it takes for electrolysis is far far greater than what you will get out of it. Factor that in with the power source being your battery which you cars has to charge, and you are even worse off. What they also show won't produce enough volume of Hydrogen to even make a difference.

If this is implying what I think the discussion is (AKA a Hydrogen powered car that uses Water for hydrogen), then BlackArcher is right on all counts. Your car must obey the Laws of Thermodynamics...unless your car is just that awesome.

The first three websites from a quick Google search provide a nice clear answer:
http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid...gen+from+water

[BlackArcher101]

I admit... I'm fascinated by something I saw on youtube when watching the other vids about the water4gas. I stumbled across gasification of wood, or the creation of 'wood gas'. I actually didn't know about it, but now it makes sense what they did in the early days with this "new" technology.

A turbine run off gasified wood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-8BX...eature=related

There's also a guy that but a large rig like this in the back of his truck and it's fueling it... heavy... but works. Driving on burning wood only. Ok... time to stop watching vids, need sleep.

[photon]

The question is where does the extra energy to improve the gas mileage come from?

It can't come from the hydrogen... to split water and get hydrogen requires energy, lets say 1 unit of energy.

First, If you burn that hydrogen, you will get less than 1 unit of energy back. This is easily testable and has been done so; it's a fundamental aspect of our universe.

Second, the act of splitting is inefficient. Let's be optimistic and say that 75% of the electricity being used generates hydrogen. That means that we've already lost 25% of the energy we're drawing from the engine. So not only is this not gaining us anything, right off the bat we're at a net loss.

Finally, the energy to split the water has to come from somewhere. It comes from the alternator, which produces electricity from the engine's rotation. The alternator is very inefficient as well. And drawing electricity from the alternator increases the load it puts on the engine, so more gas is burned.

The end result is that to generate 1 unit of energy in the engine from burning hydrogen, you have to burn much more than 1 unit of energy's worth of gas.

People have tried these things.. the problem is there are too many variables in an anecdotal test. Was it colder the next day? Was there a wind? Most people who put fuel efficiency devices on their car actually drive differently, which can have a HUGE impact on how much gas you use.

It's very easy.. put an engine on a dynamo, have this on it, and do the measurements. Proponents who sell these things have never done that, and never will though, because they know that in a controlled environment they won't get a positive result. So they rely on anecdotal evidence, they can filter out the people who have no gain, and focus on the people who report a gain (for any number of reasons, none of which have anything to do with their device).

This is the problem when one doesn't have any critical thinking skills; they get taken in by anything.

[Moose]

This is somewhat related to what I had originally started my masters research on a little over a year ago. A company that was developing hydrogen injection systems for large diesel/natural gas engines wanted computer simulation work done on the effects of different levels of added hydrogen.

Using computational fluid dynamic software and complex combustion models, I ran a series of simulations to see the effect of hydrogen addition on the autoignition of natural gas (ignition without a sparkplug). The idea is that hydrogen radicals are very diffusive, and can cause the flame front to move faster throughout the unburnt mixture with, potentially, less pollutants formed. The thought was that autoignition would occur earlier and more predictably, and the production of soot could be substantially reduced.

I didn't look at pollutant formation, since the autoignition phenomenon is complex enough for one thesis. My results showed that even with up to 20% hydrogen added to natural gas (thats a huge percentage), the effects on autoignition time and location were minimal.

I wouldn't buy any of these hydrogen addition performance claims. I imagine that if the addition of hydrogen does have any impact, it'll be on the very complicated processes of soot formation, but that's a bit out of my area.

Edit to add: Since soot isn't a concern within gasoline spark-ignition engines I would be surprised if any, even small, gains would be had from injecting hydrogen in these types of engines.

[SeeGeeWhy]

Interesting study Moose.

I'm not sure the hydrogen would have enough residence time with the fuel to impact the cetane number of the fuel.

The hydrogen would likely combust before the main fuel. I'd be willing to bet that you'd get knocking and a bunch of unburned fuel if you actually ran your tests and watched the outputs.

I was sort of under the impression that higher hydrogen content improves the octane number, not the cetane number... and that the cetane number is what one has to key on when predicting autocombustion.

Any clarification would be excellent!

As for hydrogen, it will have its utility.

You could create and move fresh water to a water short area via electrolysis and pipeline transportation of the produced hydorgen. On the other end, you'd combust the hydrogen to create fresh water and re-capture some of the electricity that was input into the process. I've got a project that I am working on in the back of my mind to this end...

I don't see a hell of a lot of utility for hydrogen when it comes to transportation. Its energy denisty is too low and the investment in infrastructure to make this happen is a significant barrier.

ESPECIALLY when you consider how close we seem to be on manufactured oil (i.e. biomass fuels). What's the economic incentive for hydrogen when you have a renewing supply of oil? None. (not saying that renewing supplies of light oil are right around the corner, either...)

[photon]

Originally Posted by Moose

I wouldn't buy any of these hydrogen addition performance claims. I imagine that if the addition of hydrogen does have any impact, it'll be on the very complicated processes of soot formation, but that's a bit out of my area.

I have read some things where hydrogen injected into diesel engines had a measurable benefit, though I can't remember where as this was quite a while ago, I'll see if I can dig it up. Maybe related to this.

[photon]

Originally Posted by SeeGeeWhy

You could create and move fresh water to a water short area via electrolysis and pipeline transportation of the produced hydorgen. On the other end, you'd combust the hydrogen to create fresh water and re-capture some of the electricity that was input into the process. I've got a project that I am working on in the back of my mind to this end...

Lol that's awesome, though the inefficiencies make me cringe, my instinct tells me that it would take more energy to do that than simply transporting the water out there, but I don't know the kind of energy it takes to move something through a pipeline.

[SeeGeeWhy]

Originally Posted by photon

Lol that's awesome, though the inefficiencies make me cringe, my instinct tells me that it would take more energy to do that than simply transporting the water out there, but I don't know the kind of energy it takes to move something through a pipeline.

Bernoulli's equation... its all about pressure differential. You need to overcome the friction losses, as well as any sort of elevation change that exists between the inlet and the delivery point.

Hydrogen gas would likely be compressed to a high pressure (potentially even to the state of being liquified) and then put into the line. The issue with hydrogen at high pressures is that it tends to cause steel to fail at a faster rate, so the material selection of the pipeline would be important.

I agree that the application is pretty specific... I'm thinking that it would be a coastal application. The process would use tide driven turbines to generate the electricity required to hydrolise highly saline water. The hydrogen, oxygen, salt and excess electricity (if any) would be the outputs. Hydrogen would likely go to pipeline/tank, oxygen to tank, salt to truck/waste, electricity to process/grid.

The hydrogen could then be used as a means to support an important yet somewhat remote population centre... you'd be getting water and electricity utility out there with a single pipeline, all being driven by tidal power.

Its kinda fun to think about, but you're right. I haven't put the pen to paper to look at how the energy is being distributed. The reality is that you're probably better off using the tidal power to run a desalinization plant and then pipelining the water directly to the remote site.

I am purely dreaming about applications of 'renewables'... I think its important to do this until humanity can settle on an energy mix that works.

[photon]

Neat. You could put a superconducting cable in the middle of the liquid hydrogen pipeline too and get lossless transmission of electricity too!

[SeeGeeWhy]

Originally Posted by photon

Neat. You could put a superconducting cable in the middle of the liquid hydrogen pipeline too and get lossless transmission of electricity too!

Serious? Is that because the temperature is so low?

That's a fantastic idea!

The amount of energy you could save on transmission losses would make this project completely economic. The hydrogen would be an insulator, and not consumed. AMAZING idea.

My mind is racing!

[You Need a Thneed]

a liquid hydrogen pipeline would be ridiculously expensive, that's all I know. And even if it was built, I imagine there could be lots of other issues popping up. Liquid Hydrogen apparently leaks out of its containers a lot, so you'd be pumping hydrogen into the soil around the pipe.