Hydrogen assist question for our resident experts

MonteQuest

I have a friend who says a guy he knows very well has added an electrolysis device to his car that runs off of the battery current to produce hydrogen which he adds to the fuel mixture.

He claims a 30% increase in MPG.

Now, the laws of physics tells us the hydrogen isn't the energy source for this gain.

But could the addition of hydrogen to the fuel mixture increase the efficiency of the gasoline combustion to produce the 30% gain? You know, through better atomization of the fuel or something?

Or is the electrolysis being powered by the stored battery energy. Thus, if he drives the car far enough while making hydrogen, the battery will go flat or the MPG will drop as the alternative pulls energy to keep the battery up?

Have I thought this though correctly?
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dinopello

I'm not an expert, just a normal dude.

Nitrous injection has been around for a while by racers. And, hydrogen injection could yield similar results.

If the electrolysis process doesn't draw current at a rate higher than the alternator resupplies it then the battery should not go dead.

I would say it is feasible that this might increase overall efficiency of some engines by some amount. It might depend on what kind of driving you do or the particulars of your engine.

MonteQuest

From your link:

MadScientist · Heavy Crude Joined: May 19, 2004 Posts: 418

i have some questions about this myself. I accepted the idea that hydrogen is a carrier and not an energy source. I realize the difficulties in retrofitting our infrastructure for hydrogen power vs gas/diesel.

However, the "on demand" electrolysis setup, which produces hydrogen via an oversized alternator as needed by your engine seems pretty solid. Whether you can run the engine solely on hydrogen or need some gas is questionable.

Im not arguing theres time to "save the world" with hydrogen. Im just curious to the downside, if any, of this system for personal/community use in the future.
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BigTex

There is a device that has been marketed for big trucks that produces a small amount of hydrogen which is mixed with the incoming air to produce 10-20% increases in mileage.

The same company makes a smaller unit for cars, I believe.

I've seen one and you just fill it with distilled water from time to time.

The large unit is about $12,000 and the small unit is about $3,000, IIRC.

I'm very surprised that this hasn't caught on more widely, since it seems like a practical real life application of hydrogen to make existing vehicles more efficient.

(I don't have a link, but if you Google you'll find it.)
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Kingcoal

I would think that you would need to adjust the air/fuel mixture unless you are injecting the oxygen also. It would be interesting to see if the engine passes emisions after the mod. The combustion chamber temperature might be increased which may raise the level of NO emissions.

IMO, a well designed, properally maintained internal combustion engine wouldn't gain anything from this. I could see a poorly designed and/or out of tune engine working better though. The laws of thermodynamics prohibit any net gain in energy from the hydrogen/oxygen part of the system. Spliting water into it's components and then burning it again will always produce a net loss of energy. You might get some extra gains from increased combustion chamber temperature, but that would raise the nitrogen oxide levels also.
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aflurry · Intermediate Crude Joined: Mar 28, 2005 Posts: 829

MonteQuest

dinos link seems to make the most sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fuel_injection
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A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
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SchroedingersCat · Intermediate Crude Joined: May 26, 2005 Posts: 527

Go to Google and search on HHO debunked. This is a pyramid scheme. There's a rather lengthy thread around here with some of the proponents.
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MonteQuest

WisJim

I would not be surprised if some hydrogen added to the intake of a vehicle might improve the running of the engine, but I would expect it to take changes in the timing, mixture, and who knows what else to get it to work well.

My son mentioned this to me when discussing hydrogen and various other supposed fuel mileage increasing techniques: no one has done any good repeatable testing of "HHO" that I have seen, and it would be fairly easy to use one of the easily available fuel mpg monitoring devices that plug into the car's OBD II port, such as a "Scangauge". Scangauge These devices give instantaneous mpg readouts, among lots of other info, and you could switch your hydrogen injection on and off while driving and immediately tell if your mileage improved or not. Some of the guys on some of the fuel efficiency car forums or lists spend a lot of time verifying mileage increases for vehicle improvements that they try, but the hydrogen guys don't seem to want to do this. Hopefully someone can point us to a site or other info that I missed.

SchroedingersCat · Intermediate Crude Joined: May 26, 2005 Posts: 527

dinopello

MonteQuest

SchroedingersCat · Intermediate Crude Joined: May 26, 2005 Posts: 527