I am not sure but this contraption appears to be not a lot more then an electrolysis device. That is fine, but will it yield hydrogen gas at an economical price? If it will then why are electric companys not generating power this way?
C'mon Ray; you're messing with us. Right? I got the link in an email from a friend. The friend is a sweet, great person. As soon as I saw the hackneyed "free energy from water" theme, I stopped reading. How many times do you have to read about something which defies known laws of physics, politics, human nature, etc.?
If you read my post I stated that it appeared to me to be an electrolysis device. I also ask if it would work .... that is would it produce hydrogen at a reasonable price.
There is nothing stupid about that. I am not asking about free energy, just reasonably priced energy as an alternative to the escalating cost of petroleum.
I do not know it the contraption would do that or not.
Electrolysis inherently creates more waste heat energy than the value of the energy stored in the H2 produced. It will take new laws of physics to change this. Or an undiscovered loophole. That is not what is going on here.
I still can't post safely (on this site), so this is my last post until my browser is updated again and I can test it again.
Why do you waste your time posting such crap, when you know, as I'm sure you do, that it is crap? Hell, I think modern hybrid automobiles, currently on the road are both technically and economiically stupid. The Europeans have it right with diesels as the next step.
I have a friend who drives a Prius. He gets no less then 40 mpg and usually gets over 50. By todays standards that is pretty good.
Why do you claim that diesel is better? They do get greater gas milage then most cars on the road but I think not better then the hybrids, certainly not a Prius. Also, I notice that diesel fuel has lately been more expensive then gasoline. That seems a bit backwards to me. Is not diesel a less refined product and should be somewhat cheaper?
The only marginally-positive reason I know about is that they make "Greenies" feel superior to other drivers, and good about themselves. They certainly don't make good economic or technical (reliability) sense!!!!! They kinda remind me of the now defunct "Concorde" SST, i.e. "flashy", but technically-doomed. I knew early on that the sonic-boom problem was a show stopper. Jimmy Carter ticked the aircraft industry and the general public off when he killed the US SST, but if nothing else he's a good engineer and saved us all a big bunch of money
When the Prius and Honda first came out as publicly-available cars, I studied both rather thorougly, both technically and economically (that's what engineers love to do!) I also looked showroom samples over at two local dealerships.
Addendum to first section: The Honda offering is called the "Insight". It's a toy, not an over-the-road automobile! The steel on the hood is so weak that when I closed it in the showroom, it buckled inward about the size of a shallow, commercial "diner platter". I popped it back out with little effort, and with no apparent damage. There's a point at which a vehicle can be made too light to boost fuel-efficiency! The buying public seems to agree with me. You see way more "Priuses" on the road than "Insights". Count for yourself.
The Prius was at least a highly-efficient Corolla-equivalent when first introduced. I didn't test-drive either one. What for, to see if it worked and to try to feel the IC engine turn off and on? Big deal! The Toyota salesman ran the Prius for me just to show off the fact that it shut itself down when the battery was fully charged. Again, big deal!
My economy calculations said that gasoline would have to go to $5.00/gallon before the average driver (10,000 miles per year) would save enough to pay for just the interest on his car loan. And back then, gas was about $2.00/gallon. Also, in order to sell the two cars initially, both manufacturers had to underwrite them to the tune of $2000-3000 a piece! Now the customer pays most if not all of that cost-differential. You can check that too! So a buyer, starts off in the hole! You really have to be "in love" to do that.
The other big problem is overall drive-train reliability. (Toyota has already had its first major Prius recall for that; a control-system problem that resulted in the IC engine not turning on when required, if memory serves.)
Insted of JUST the typically reliable Toyota IC engine, now there's an IC engine, a main electric drive-motor, a very expensive battery, and a much more complex electrical/electronic control system. I hear that replacing either the electric motor or the battery costs about $5000 (EACH). To compensate for that risk, both manufacturers must offer very generous warranty programs; another disincentive!
Engineering-wise, every time you add another key-component to a system, its overall reliability MUST decrease, and repair costs MUST increase! The reliability thing goes like this:
1. Typical IC engine-only system-reliability = .99%
2. Prius drive-train system (with 4 major elements):
Reliability= .99 x .99 x .99 x .99
= .96%
Diesels are typically 20% to 30% more fuel-efficient than gasoline engines, and far-more reliable than gasoline engines. A typical automotive diesel engine goes 250,000 miles before ir requires any major service. No wonder half the cars sold in Europe are diesels, and nearly 100% of the taxis.
I believe the reason that diesel fuel is so expensive (but, don't know for sure) is that it carries a high truck tax. I think cost varies a lot from state to state because of that, but it's effect on cost-per-mile is small. Do the math; a few cents more per gallon for 30% higher milage, plus minimal repair costs.
Hey Dave, That is a pretty good analysis of the hybrid cars. I have very casually wondered about them and had figured out that the extra cost of the car would pay for a lot of miles before a breakeven point was achieved.
On my recent trip to Ireland I noticed that diesel fuel was more expensive there too even though there are more diesel cars on the road. It seems odd to me that it should be more expensive.
I had always been under the impression that a diesel engine could somehow generate more power then a gasoline engine thus making sit more useful to the trucking and train industries but perhaps I am wrong. One question, then, is: why are diesel engines not more popular?
Another thing about diesel that I never understood is that smoke and other emissions are more tolerated. It seems to me that they are just as noxious as gasoline emissions.
for hybrid cars is reduced emissions. It only uses the IC engine when needed and the battery chrages quickly. Which is the reason that the city mpg is greater than the highway. On the highway the IC engine comes on longer. Besides gas the cars can be charged from house current. I still haven't seen any solar chargers for them.
Ray: Diesels are a more simple design than gas e.g. no ignition systems except to start. They will run on just about any fluid that burns. There's a fellow that runs his diesel on old cooking oil that has been filtered. They also run longer between tune ups and can run continuously. As long as they have fuel and air they run (timing is mechanical).
I thought that the reason for good city gas mileage in the hybrids is because of regerative braking.
As for burning cooking oil, that is cool if you own a restaurant. There was some guy in NJ a couple of years ago who claimed to have a process that could take all kinds of matter such as slaugherhouse waste and turn it into diesel fuel at a fairly reasonable cost through some cooking and pressure process. As I recall one barrel of diesel fuel would supply enough power to create about 10 barrels of fuel from organic waste. I have not heard about this lately but i believe there were some others around the country with similar processes.
Diesel - yep, great stuff. The engines can be a lot simpler, and once running they can keep going without electrical power. In this day and age, though, you find diesel engines with electronic fuel injection and other... 'improvements'... to allow easier control via the computer in the car/truck. They're not as bulletproof as they used to be.
Yes, just about every road hauler you'll find is diesel, but in my opinion that boils down to a few reasons including tradition (or technological inertia, call it what you want), torque, and efficiency at idle. Take two trucks, one gas powered and one diesel powered, and run them for a day at 60mph and you won't find a great deal of difference efficiency-wise. Yes, diesel has a bit more power per litre, but it tends to cost a bit more, too, in many areas. At idle, though, diesel wins hands-down. Important for taxi cabs and other vehicles that might sit in slow traffic, etc. and very important for a lot of industrial engines. As far as the torque thing goes, diesel is better at low speeds, that's just how it is due to the high compression, etc. Diesel tends to be noisey, and people complain about the smell of the fuel and exhaust.
Bio-diesel. Lovely. This is still my favourite bio-diesel link:
<http://www.veggievan.org/>; Some early diesel engines ran on seed oil directly.
Hybrids. Expensive? Yep. However, calculating in the cost of the new vehicle isn't necessarily fair. If you're buying a new car *anyway*, then you're going to have to deal with that aspect of it regardless of whether you're buying a hybrid or not. The difference between buying a car and a hybrid car isn't nearly as big as the difference between buying a hybrid and keeping your old car. They're still expensive, but not that much more.
I totally agree about the reduced reliability, especially when they're still getting hybrids figured out. They still make lemon gas cars and they've been making them for well over 100 years!
I love the idea of a hybrid insofar as it can have a small IC engine to provide the average load, plus a bit extra, and the battery provides extra power on demand for acceleration, hills, etc. This way a small engine can do the job that normally would require a large one. The way the current hybrids are made, though, with the IC engine feeding the wheels seems strange. I'd be inclined to build a super-efficient engine designed to run at one particular speed (torque peak, presumably) to charge the batteries, and have the wheels run solely by the electric motor(s). Basically an electric car with an on-board generator.
So I love the idea, except for the battery. Big batteries worry me. Heavy, expensive, prone to dying without regular maintenance... You need it, but I don't like it. I guess I can't have everything....
Some good thoughts on diesel & hybrids. I hope you keep posting.
A few years a go there was a guy who had 100 chickens and ran his car off of chicken droppings. That is sort of cool but I hope none of my neighbors go that way.
Surely there must be some mechanism that will eventually facilitate cheaper vehicle operation regarding fuel. Perhaps electric battery operated vehicles good for short range powered off of an extensive nuclear grid. Nuc power just has to come about if so called "energy independence" is ever to be achieved.
Thanks for the welcome. I meant to say something about diesels in Europe, based on discussions with a Dutchman that I had a few years back, but I ran into this paper and it says it far better:
On a recent trip to Ireland the coset of gasoline in the Irish Republic translated to about $6.00 per gallon. In Norther Ireland it is even worse, about $8.00 per gallon.
Nope, wasn't my fault afterall. I just checked in the preview, and the editor automatically inserts the semi-colon. What an irritant. Maybe if I leave off the "<>"....
Yep, that works. Well, I learned something new, today.... don't add the 'brackets' around links on this forum or it gets screwed up. Bizarre. Ah well. Enjoy the new and improved link. 8-)
charges the battery? The whole contraption uses a battery to supply the energy for the electrolysis. The energy for the battery has to come from somewhere.
The implication that I read is that the existing electrical system in whatever it is that you're modifying has a generator or alternator to charge your battery. The OPs suggestion to start with a lawnmower belies this implication, but the OP didn't write the contents of the link. Presumably, anyways.
So if you put this system on a car, for example, it would run off of the car battery, which would be charged by the alternator on the engine as per normal. It has been suggested that the energy required to crack the water would be more than the generator would produce, but the original content claims that the energy required is quite reasonable. To quote:
"In the BIG picture, your Free Energy is coming from the tap water, in an open system, as the latent energy in the water is enough to power the engine, and hence drive the alternator and whatever belt-driven accessories; AND the alternator is efficient enough to run the various electrical loads (10-20 amps), including the additional low current to run this vapour reaction. No extra batteries are required."
If they are correct (don't you just love starting sentences like that?) then this system should work like gangbusters. 8-)
There is some good info in there. One thing that is repeatably stressed is that all the electrolysis does is break apart the H20 into H2 and O. If you then use that to power an engine that just puts the H2 and O back together again, how can you gain energy? Something has to be consumed to produce power. If a litre of water goes in and a litre of water comes out the tailpipe then where is the power coming from? It is very, very possible that I am missing something here. I'm no expert, I'm just telling it as I see it.
The existing system where grid electricity or some other power source external to the vehicle is used to crack the water, and the hydrogen is burned in an engine back into water, then the hydrogen is being used kind of as a 'battery' to store the energy that was used to crack it in the first place. Some suggest that this is enough... that hydrogen is useful as it is simply because it avoids batteries, and batteries are inherantly inefficient. I don't like big batteries, so I like the sound of that argument. That's not to say that it's *correct*, though...
a liter of water goes in and a liter comes out so where the energy come from to charge the battery? The system is alway going to be less than unity. There's no excess power to charge the battery and power the vehicle.
Actually the water (if it is pure) electrolizes(is that a word?) into H2 and O2. The oxygen will combine to O2 just like in the atmosphere. The two Hs will combine to H2. With H and O you don't get any single atoms they immediately combine into two atom molecules.
> a liter of water goes in and a liter comes out so where the energy come from to > charge the battery?
I suppose if it was more efficient to crack the water than the reaction that puts it back together, then a net gain could be had, but that seems unlikely in the extreme.
> Actually the water (if it is pure) electrolizes(is that a word?) into H2 and O2. > The oxygen will combine to O2 just like in the atmosphere. The two Hs will
> combine to H2.
I suppose it was be 2H2 + O2, then. I glossed over a lot in that message; I was pretty much ignoring oxygen and treating it as immaterial - just 'air', there when you need it.
I think in the end we're in agreement that this idea seems awfully far-fetched. There may be a >unity device out there somewhere, but this isn't it.
I went back and looked at it some more. It makes hydrogen and oxygen gas from the water. Then the gases are drawn off and combined with air to run the engine. You shouldn't need the air. There's another catch the electrodes are stainless steel. In all probability the oxygen producing electrode (I think it is the anode, hence anodizing) will oxidize. it did when I did this as a kid. I seem to remember that carbon electrode worked the best. I didn't have access to platinum or palladium.
So, I too say that it is a joke and not remotely practical. I don't think this was meant to be >unity machine but it has to be in order to work.
I just watched an episode of Mythbusters. I'm not sure what the episode designation is, but it's the one with the "Exploding Pants".
Anyway, the point is that they actually built this device and put it on a car.
It wasn't just a device like this one, it was this actual device. At two points in the program you see the plans, and they were indistinguishable, by me, from the plans on the web site referenced in the original posting.
And... it doesn't work. However, they did it wrong, so maybe their 'busting' is not entirely of value. They actually capped off the entire carburetor with just the hydrogen feed to it. No air. Doesn't seem sensible to me, but they I'm not an expert. The system worked at first, and they claimed it must have been because of residual gasoline in the system, but I'm wondering if maybe it was because of residual air in the system. I would expect the system to work, albeit weakly, until the battery died.
It was still worth seeing... they also tested fuel magnets, adding acetone, and a '300mpg carburetor' and they all failed.
acetone do or supposed to do? When we ran Grand Nationals at the shootouts at Englishtown we used to stop into the MAB paint store and get some sort of solvent (either acetone or toluene don't remember which) to boost the octane. It's cheaper than buying CAM 4 racing fuel. Pull up and walk in and before you're at the counter the clerk has two gallons waiting for you.
It was out of left field for me, too, but the impression that I got from the show is that there is a myth that adding 2% acetone to gasoline makes it burn more completely. It didn't work. The result when tested on the show was slightly less fuel efficiency.
---Al