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Author Topic: Running your car on water  (Read 2648 times)

bigfella

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Running your car on water
« on: June 29, 2008, 12:39:31 am »

Hi All

Over the last couple of months I have become very interested in this process of running your car on water (with petrol prices so high I would even run my car on cats urine). Now I basically understand the process as this. You install a device in your car that electrically (using the car battery) converts H2O into HH and O (Browns Gas) now the Hydrogen component is sent via a tube to the cars injection system thus blend the hydrogen with the petrol and apparently saving on fuel by 40%(so the claims). Now for the life of me I can not see how this is not a winner and should be available as a kit at your local supermarket unless there are some sort of pitfalls that comes with it. One that comes to mind is Hydrogen is pretty volatile and could go BOOM another is that in the process of the Hydrogen going through the combustion system could that lead to a build up of water and could seize the engine. Has any Mayhemmer seen or even used a similar device???? What do you think?? Can this work??

Regards David
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Reade Models

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Re: Running your car on water
« Reply #1 on: June 29, 2008, 01:05:13 am »

Quote
Can this work

In short, no...

It is possible to separate hydrogen and oxygen out of water, but the power required to do so makes the technology so inefficient so as not to be worthwhile.  Any gizmo that purports to do this is probably sold by travelling snake oil salesmen and should be treated with a great deal of circumspection.




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Damien

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Re: Running your car on water
« Reply #2 on: June 29, 2008, 01:46:57 am »

I can't say yay or ney to  splitting water into HH O. However i have used water injection to good effect to gain horse power and fuel effiency in my Renault 10 race car with 1600cc EFI'd Supercharged engine, i had the water at 10lb boost pressure applied after boost reached 5lb to remove possibility of hydraulic lock.
This setup took standard R16 engine from 84hp to 160hp at the wheels. I built this car because I was told it couldn't be done once completed 3 others with my club had street cars modded the same way.
Both Renault F1 and Volvo racing had great success with water injection, until i understand rule chances were made to thwart them.
A google search for water injection will find plenty of info.
Damien.
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Umi_Ryuzuki

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Re: Running your car on water
« Reply #3 on: June 29, 2008, 01:53:41 am »

A hybrid version exists, but some of the chemicals and additives will seriously foul the spark plugs, and could
possibly damage the valves...

Reading through some of those sites, they dump Xylene and some other ingredient in your gas.
Which only increases the Octane. So in this area just use high octane gas.

The other "caustic" is added to the water to help facilitate the release of the Hydrogen and Oxygen.
The fluid and vapors are circulated past the electro plates and then back to the mix chamber.
The vapors are siphoned off and into the air intake.  I think this is where most of the "crud" comes from.

Heating the petrol by taping a metal tube to the radiator hose seems reasonable enough, but
"cracking" the gas by passing it through magnets is just horse hooie...

There are plenty of people attempting this... Just find one of their bulletin boards to see the
hoops they are jumping - "After buying a Kit" - to keep the systems working...

 :(

There are some good results.. the inventive minds find ways to make things better, but this is
not the "plug and play" technology to high fuel mileage.
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bigfella

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Re: Running your car on water
« Reply #4 on: June 29, 2008, 01:55:22 am »

I understand that to run a car solely on this method would not work. However using it as a supplement to your existing fuel surely must make some saving in petrol however small.

Regards David
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StarLocAdhesives/FiveStar

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Re: Running your car on water
« Reply #5 on: June 29, 2008, 02:05:24 am »

There are people running cars with help from water conversion to hydrogen/oxygen using fuel cells , everyone says it will be 100% someday , its just much much easier to use it to provide some fuel for the engine to add to the normaly fuel to increase mpg of the std fuel

http://watervan.co.uk/

you can run a car on water, with hydrogen fuel cell, but the car is electric not an engine, but still running on water, this is why they wont develop the fuel cells for ic engine cars, the electric ones are better

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjiXPUcpyt4

Theres also a toy rc power hydrogen fuel cell car you can buy, it was at nurnburg back in 2005

I use water injection on all my turbo cars, it has a pressure sensor and injects automaticaly under boost, most of the time i mix water nitromethane and methanol, the water cools the pistons, methanol cools and adds octane and the nitromethane generates oxygen for the extra fuel injected by my engines ecu, the water doesnt actualy produce power though, but does enable far greater power even with just water no extras but this is by allowing higher boost

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djrobbo

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Re: Running your car on water
« Reply #6 on: June 29, 2008, 05:28:41 pm »



     ER..!......NO WAY JOSE !!!!!!!    As mr reade quite rightly says..the system is probably being sold by a snake oil salesman.......Using twelve volts the amount of hydrogen the average fuel cell will deliver wouldn't make any difference............It has been tried and the car wouldnt even fire up or attempt to fire because the amount of hydrogen being produced was so small it was insignificant !

                Dammed good idea though if it ever becomes practical.........the only exhaust from burning hydrogen is water !

                  On a silly note.........if burning hydrogen produces water....why didn't the hindenberg extinguish itself ????? :D

                    I'll go and lie down now !!!
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polaris

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Re: Running your car on water
« Reply #7 on: June 29, 2008, 07:06:33 pm »


Dear All,

There is nothing new with water injection, it has been about for many years. As others have said, it can only work together with normal fuels, and kits are available from specialist suppliers - don't ask me where as I can't remember them! - must try and find out.

Magnetohydrodynamics is another matter, and has been around since extensive testing on fishing trawlers in the 1920's. In great brief, the process utilises a negative polarising magnetic field to align the fuel atoms. A very simple science that does work, and I use same on all my vehicles and earth moving machinery. Economies vary vehicle to vehicle as there is no set parameter of performance, so it can vary between 3% and 15% on fuel consumption, and give very surprising reductions of exhaust emissions. Interestingly when there is less saving on fuel, there is more efficiency on emissions... but this is not always the case. I am slightly dubious of some of the new MHD products around these days, but I bought a good amount some years ago with the idea that they would keep me going for fitting to vehicles and machinery for years! Could possibly 'spare' one or two if anybody fancied a try?

Regards, Bernard
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bigfella

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Re: Running your car on water
« Reply #8 on: June 29, 2008, 10:33:39 pm »

I know that you can not run a car (yet) on this process alone. I think that some might be missing what I was trying to say. It is not that you use this process to run your car 100% but in addition to your usual petrol. Adding hydrogen to the final combustion mix. Anything that can eek out the costly petrol would save money, I would even fart in my fuel tank if it meant that I could get better MPG {-) {-) {-)

Regards David
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Reade Models

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Re: Running your car on water
« Reply #9 on: June 29, 2008, 11:39:15 pm »


Hi bigfella

I think the basic principle is that whatever fuel you use, it has to be as efficient as possible? Even petrol is grossly inefficient in an internal combustion engine, but as nothing when compared with the amount of electricity that you would need to make any meaningful amount of hydrogen.

The electricity that the battery in your car produces doesn't come free.  The battery needs to be charged by the alternator, which is driven by the engine, which in turn is fuelled by petrol.  Each time the source of energy is converted i.e. from the volatile hydrocarbons in the petrol, to the rotary motion of the engine, through the gearbox to the wheels, there are losses at each stage, mainly through friction and thus waste heat.  Friction is why there is no such thing as perpetual motion.  The waste heat issues are currently being addressed by regenerative braking systems etc.

The very act of trying to produce hydrogen to power your car would make it less efficient than it currently is.

The amount of electrical energy that has to be put into water to produce hydrogen is, given current technology, simply too great to be of any meaningful benefit.  It is grossly inefficient.  Given time, and man's ingenuity, things will change, and as previous posters have indicated, one day we will all be driving hydrogen powered vehicles, but not yet awhile.

Regards, Malc



 
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dreadnought72

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Re: Running your car on water
« Reply #10 on: June 30, 2008, 10:12:23 am »

Given that the average efficiency of an I/C engine is around 20% (energy out compared to chemical energy in) there's plenty of room for improvement, but as others have said, squirting snake oil into the cylinders isn't the answer.

Look up "six stroke engine" for an idea of how - without mumbo-jumbo and non-science - petrol and water could be used to give us 40% more fuel efficiency.

Why do the engine manufacturers not take on board developments like these?

Andy
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polaris

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Re: Running your car on water
« Reply #11 on: June 30, 2008, 07:04:23 pm »


Dear Andy,

The answer is quite simple really... they are not bothered at the moment.

About nine years ago, some brilliant inventor came up with a process that quaranteed about a 30% fuel saving, and, thinking that the mfrs. would jump at the chance of using such proven technology, he offered to sell or licence the process to them. The result... no interest and nothing happened! However, the sting in the tail of this, is that as soon as this was found out, another party snapped it up for half a million!......... quess who, 'an Arab'!!! {-) I wonder why?! ::) This is not my imagination or 'a story': it was buried in the news for a while and then everything was forgotten about.

So, the long and the short of it is don't hold your breath for any 'super engines' or processes, because you won't get them until about 20 yrs. before oil will completely run out......

Regards, Bernard
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RipSlider

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Re: Running your car on water
« Reply #12 on: June 30, 2008, 09:08:54 pm »

Like others have said - this is a snake oil device.

seperating hydrogen and oxygen is takes more energy  (without a fission process ) than can be released by the combustion of two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom. This is becuase you have to over-come something called the Strong force - which - like it's name implies - is very strong indeed.

Think about it in this way: If there *was* a process - lets call it Process X - which allowed the hydrogen and oxygen to be split out AND used less energy than the hydrogen and oxygen could release - it would have generated a self sustaining reation millions of years ago, and we wouldn't today have lakes and seas.

You can use a fuel cell to generate electricity - by splitting the molucule you get a +ve ( the hydrogen ) and a -ve charge (the oxygen ) which - if you shove a dialectric between them - means you have a battery. However it's a bit of a lossy process. Everytime a +ve and a -VE ( ie the hydrogen and oxygen ) meet, there is an attempt to re-combine. This drains some of the energy out of your system. It'll be a long time yet before a water based fuel cell is as efficient - and this can also be read as "as good for the enviroment" - as having some decent batteries and charging them from the mains.


Fuel cells will never be very efficient. Just like a combustion engine has a theoretical upper limit ( about 35% efficiency I think? ) fuel cells also have one. In the case of a fuel cell it depends on what fuel is being used - but the best upper limits I've seen discussed are also around the 30% mark.

It is similar - but not the same - as biofuels. The principle is good. But someone forgot to factor in the refining costs, and also to remember that if you grow a biofuel crop on a field, something else can't grow in it's place. Net result is that biofuel will - at a minimum - cause big issues with world hunger ( especially if america does what it looks like it will, and swaps large amounts of wheat to maize - it's that wheat that's feeding much of africa at the moment - and in the worst case will actually make more carbon dioxide ( especially if brazil goes down the biofuels route )

To Polaris:

I wouldn't say that it is true that the oil companies aren't bothered about it.

First - have a look at Snopes.com about the story you posted ( can't get the link as it's down at the moment ) - real urban legend.

The oil companies are worried as hell about the oil/fuel cell/ carbon thing - it's a massive threat to them. In 2007 it was Shell that contributed the most money in research grants to universities accross the world for fuel cell research. IndiaOil is funding pretty much *all* of the fuel cell research happening in India at the moment as well. (Their researchers are actually getting more money - and also a significantly better salary - than a lot of researchers here in the UK. A friend of mine is about to go and work on one of their funded projects and he's moving back home to Mumbai as he can earn more money there than in the UK ! )

They aren't doing that for niceness though. One something is published and peer reviewed, it can't be patented. And if your a big oil company, the only thing that is worse than being left behind by the fuel cell wave is if a competitors funding makes a massive breakthrough. By making all of the research impossibel to patent, there is a good chance they would be able to get a rivials process thrown out when they attempted to patent their new break through. So the status quo is enforced. And if a little start up comes along - they can always buy it.

Steve
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polaris

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Re: Running your car on water
« Reply #13 on: July 01, 2008, 08:11:38 am »


Dear Steve,

Quick note before going out.

When I said mfrs. this meant vehicle mfrs. (not oil producers) - in reply to the prev. post.

Regards, Bernard
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