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grannyrett (anonymous) says...

StarTrek-We have been screwed by big oil for years. That's why I am so interested in this hydrogen thing. Anything I can do to screw them a little would be worth it.

May 30, 2008 at 11:09 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

grannyrett (anonymous) says...

water4gas.com
run_a_car_on_water.com
Does anyone know anyone who is doing this? I know three people in Arizona who are doing this and have doubled their fuel mileage. I bought the e-book and may put it on my car this fall. Will study it as I travel around this summer. I am really interested in your opinions.

May 11, 2008 at 3:46 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

elk2 (anonymous) says...

I think Fred from Intergalactic Motors is doing hydrogen etc.

May 11, 2008 at 4:47 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

bubba (anonymous) says...

I would be interested in hearing how it works out for you. I saw one of your previous posts about this, and read into it a bit. My concerns and/or questions are:

Won't the water container freeze in winter?

Does the e-book have suggestions on adjusting the fuel/air mixture? Are fuel injections supposed to automatically account for the difference?

Do you have to adjust the timing? It seems like the hydrogen mixture would promote rapid flame travel and thus require a more retarded timing curve?

Does it say anything about exhaust systems rusting out from the added water in the exhaust? It seems like that would be an issue, especially on an around-town car.

May 12, 2008 at 9:05 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

grannyrett (anonymous) says...

bubba-I don't have the answers. The ones I have seen are simple set ups. They use a quart jar for the water and add baking soda to it. They use stainless steel rods that hook to the battery. This, as I understand it, separates the hydrogen from the oxygen. They had a hose going to the air intake and a hose going to the throttle body. These were guys just experimenting with it. I wanted to be a little more knowledgeable about it, so I got the book. Their results were amazing. They were getting more than double their gas mileage. I have been kinda busy, so I haven't been able to read the book, but thought I would bring it with me as I travel around this summer and try to get it figured out.

May 13, 2008 at 10:40 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

424now (anonymous) says...

I would like to see more on this. Time for some research.

Good questions bubba.

May 15, 2008 at 3:30 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

424now (anonymous) says...

Found this right away,

http://www.water-for-fuel-scam.com/in...

May 15, 2008 at 3:51 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

id04sp (anonymous) says...

Non-fuel-injected light aircraft engines have a throttle and mixture control. As you go up in altitude, and there's less oxygen, you have to manually adjust the mixture control to obtain maximum power. If you don't lean the engine as you climb, it runs "rich," and you waste gas, lose power, and limit how high you can go. The way you do it is to "lean" the mixture until the engine rpm drops and the engine starts to run rough, and then you "enrich" the mixture again until you get a 50 RPM drop below the maximum RPM obtained by leaning. This ensures that enough fuel is going into the engine for efficient combustion AND that some of it provides cooling as it absorbs heat from the cylinder, to prevent "knocking" (pre-ignition) and damage to piston heads (burning holes in them!).

If you have a manual transmission and a tach, you could do the very same thing with water injection to adjust the mixture manually. If you keep a steady throttle position, and add water, you should see the RPM increase to a maximum, and then decrease as you add more. Reducing the water mix back to the maximum RPM should give you the "best" mix for the given RPM and throttle setting. With a bit of fiddling, you can probably come up with a vacuum-driven water valve (vacuum source taken off the intake hose, after the air filter) that would automatically adjust the amount of water spraying into the intake, depending on the amount of air being sucked into the engine.

So, anybody else who wants to try this, please post your comments and results. I'm getting ready to take a long trip across the flat states in a 4-cyl compact pickup, and will try to get this kind of gizmo installed before I head out. I'm betting that the electronic fuel injection system (EFI) will automatically compensate to give the best fuel mixture. The worst that can happen is that I'd put in enough water to interfere with the combusion process, in which case I'd just stop the water injection system.

Let me know how it goes if you try it. I'll do the same.

Oh, the concept is not that novel. Injecting nitrous oxide into the intake system gives more power by adding extra oxygen to the cylinders. Anything you can do to get more gas expansion out of the combustion process will give more power. If you can get more power doing 45 or 55 or 65 or 70 by adding water, then it will take less gas to go the same speed. If you try this and try to drive at max RPM (5000+ ), you'll probably end up blowing the engine, but most engines run between 2000 and 3000 RPM at normal speeds, so there would be little danger of causing an over-pressure fault in the engine at normal highway speeds.

Think about it; has your engine ever died because you were driving in the rain?

May 16, 2008 at 7:32 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

grannyrett (anonymous) says...

That's the page I found too. That's why I got the e-book from run a car on water. They rated it best.

May 15, 2008 at 11:52 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

id04sp (anonymous) says...

I'm going to look into this. Got the perfect vehicle to try it out.

One thing to know going in is that aircraft engines used in WW-II had a "water injection" system that would dramatically increase the horsepower while the water held out. It was simple. The water becomes steam, expands to 256 times its volume, and increases the power obtained from the burning the fuel. It's like a combination steam engine and internal combustion engine that uses the same cylinders at the same time for both purposes. There were limitations on how long you could do this without "blowing" the engine, because obviously, adding more pressure to a cylinder already near its design limit would cause extra stress on cylinder walls, pistons, rods, and the crankshaft.

The AV-8B Sea Harrier vertical takeoff airplane used by the USMC also has a water injection system which increases the thrust of the engine to provide more power and longer hover time on less fuel.

I haven't tried it, but it's possible that simply injecting water mist into the intake manifold (after the air cleaner) would do the same job. Having additional water in the fuel system would not a problem that way, and water is produced when gasoline is burned anyway, which is why exhaust systems rust out if you don't drive them long enough to heat the pipes up enough to evaporate the water when you shut off the engine.

Having a system with water in it would be a problem for unsophisticated consumers (the average dumb-a$$ driving around talking on a cell phone) because of the danger of freezing, and having to keep the water tank full as well as the gas tank. That's why this wouldn't be suited to just anybody.

The basic physical facts are that a mist of properly vaporized gasoline, mixed with a portion of air to obtain the reqired amount of oxygen for efficient combustion, is easy to figure out. That's how carburetors used to work (crudely), and modern EFI systems work so efficiently. The amount of water vapor you can add to that mix to obtain additional power from producing steam without (literally) "damping" the combusion process is the key. It might be as simple as getting an old carburetor throttle body about the same diameter as the air intake hose (after the filter) and using that to add water mist to the air before it gets to the cylinders.

(continued)

May 16, 2008 at 6:59 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

id04sp (anonymous) says...

continued . . .

One caution. When gasoline expands in a venturi (a throttle body of a carburetor) it causes the temperature to drop. This can cause water in the intake air mixture to condense and form ice in the carburetor, which is why light airplanes have a "carb heat" knob that injects warm air into the intake system to prevent and/or remove ice when it occurs. Rough-running would be something to watch for while doing the water injection thing, and if it happens sometimes for no apparent reason, or the engine quits but then restarts in a few minutes (after the ice melts from engine heat), ice is the likely cause. Just shut off the water injection and go back to 100% gasoline.

Just did a bit of research, and a company called "Spearco" can hook you up with an electronically controlled water/water-methanol injection system for five Benjamins. If you got a 20% increase in mileage, it would pay for itself after 500 gallons of fuel at $4.00 per gallon.

May 16, 2008 at 8:19 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

424now (anonymous) says...

id,

Sometimes I completely agree with you. Excellent post. I will look a little deeper into the hydrogen systems.

May 16, 2008 at 6:50 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

grannyrett (anonymous) says...

I saw the water for fuel system for sale on e-bay. The water is not injected into the piston. The hydrogen is separated from the water and that in injected into the cylinders with the gas vapors. Hydrogen is a gas. The engine is set up to run on gas. It doesn't care what kind of gas. Because it is not under pressure it is not dangerous. The set up my friend has is so simple it is crazy. The book I got is way more complicated than the set ups I have seen. May have been a waste of money. It just may be a case of "keep it simple, stupid". I am not very mechanically inclined, but from what I have seen of these set-ups down here, I could do it myself.

May 16, 2008 at 11:03 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

id04sp (anonymous) says...

Granny,

Separating H20 into HHO is a big Ho Ho Ho. If it was that easy to produce free hydrgen gas (free meaning, in its moledcular form, not "free of cost,") people would be doing it on an industrial scale down next to the ocean and we'd be running the whole country on it already.

Try capturing some of that "gas" this thing puts out and light a match to it. It won't burn. Free H2 will burn in a (pardon the pun) flash.

This gizmo is adding water vapor to the fuel-air mix, and that's all. That's okay though, because you get the benefit either way.

The two easy ways to produce hydrogen gas are by (1) chemical reaction and (2) electricity (electrolysis). Drop a piece of zinc in hydrochloric acid, and H2 is produced. Run an electric current through water and H2 is produced. Either way, both are very expensive. Using electricity from the car battery puts an additional load on the alternator to charge it, and that burns more fuel. The laws of physics say you cannot get more power out than you put in, so unless the power to make the hydrogen is coming from a free source (solar cells on the car) it would be impossible to show a benefit. Cracking water into H2 and O2 onboard and then recombining them to burn in the cylinders would give you a net loss if you were using juice from the car's electrical system. If it could be done catalytically, they'd already be doing it commercially instead of producing the stuff from hydrocarbons using high temperatures (steam) or other similar methods.

Internal combusion engines waste about 2/3 of the heat they produce. Recapturing that wasted heat using water injection, or cooling the intake air to make it more dense and provide more oxygen to burn with the fuel is the benefit that everyone is seeing from these various schemes.

May 20, 2008 at 10:32 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

grannyrett (anonymous) says...

id04sp-However, these guys are getting at least 40 mpg and up to 70 mpg doing what they are doing. They use a rv celiniod between one of the rods and the hot side of the battery. The ground goes from the other rod to the neg. on the battery. A hose goes to the air intake and another hose goes to the throttle body. However it works, it works. I'm going to hook my car up to it this fall when I get back to Arizona. May find more about using it on the diesel this summer. Fuel costs are killing me.

May 20, 2008 at 6:57 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

grannyrett (anonymous) says...

My hubby-an Air Force guy- said that when the EC135 would take off from Mindenhall, England, they would use a water-alcohol mixture. After they took off, they shut it off and used JP4-high grade kerosene.

May 20, 2008 at 7:05 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

bubba (anonymous) says...

Grannyrett, I am not sure if the marketing claims of the people selling the book can be taken as complete evidence of the fuel efficiency gains.

ID is correct that the energy used to separate the H2 from the O is a losing proposition, as an internal combustion motor is a very inefficient machine, losing much of the energy produced from the explosion to heat, BUT I believe most cars' alternator produces more electricity than is required to operate the systems and keep the battery charged. The rest is lost, again, to heat for the most part. I would assume that the solenoid referenced above makes it so this system only performs it's electrolysis when the battery is fully charged, and shuts the electrolysis down under high electrical loads, making it so that the system is using the excess electricity generated to separate water, rather than just warm the battery. Of course, the amount of energy wasted by the electrical system would be recaptured through the combustion process, which is probably only 40% efficient due to the loss due to heat, which probably wouldn't be much- if the energy you recapture is measured in watts, and then you waste 60% of it heating up your engine block and then convert it to horsepower or torque, mathematically, I just don't see how the numbers could translate to anything other than a marginal improvement in mpg. Unfortunately, physics and numbers do not lie. Guys selling products do.

I'd probably figure out the excess juice my alternator puts out and break out the old physics text to do the conversions before I spend too much money on the system, it almost seems as though if something sounds too good to be true, it just might be.

May 21, 2008 at 11 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

bubba (anonymous) says...

you know, now that I think about this a bit more, it occurs to me that this is only running on the expansion of water vapor principal. At one point, I had a cold, and being too cheap to buy a humidifier, got a 'vaporizer' from the pharmacy, which was nothing more than two electrodes that stick into a pot of water. You had to add baking soda to get it started, but when you'd plug it in, water vapor would come out. It is the exact same principle as this thing, and I doubt walgreens would sell me something that released highly explosive hydrogen fuel into my bedroom...

May 21, 2008 at 11:03 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

stompk (anonymous) says...

Try this. I've done it.

Take a bowl of water, put a little baking soda in it.

Take two spoons, and make sure they are close together
but don't touch each other. Attach leads using little magnets
you can buy at ACE.

Positive on one spoon, neg on the other. 12v battery, or an old 12v transformer works good too.

What happens, it the electricity "jumps" from one spoon to the other, using the water as a path. The resistance in the water causes hydrogen to be released into little bubbles, that get trapped on the surface of the water.

Take a lighter, and light one of the bubbles. Don't do it in a glass bowl, the explosion, although small, can be enough to shatter glass just from a dime sized bubble. Best to use a grill lighter, with the long stem.

It's as easy as that. Now the gas has to be "scrubbed" a bit before using in you car, but yes, you can get around 40% more gas mileage.

May 23, 2008 at 7:24 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

bubba (anonymous) says...

Nobody is disputing that electrolysis can separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. This is a simple scientific fact. The claim of 40% increase in mileage does seem far fetched, though, as another scientific fact is that the amount of energy required to separate the H2 and the O from H2O is exactly equal to the amount of energy produced when burning it. An internal combustion motor is a horribly inefficient machine (as much as I love them, it's true). Every explosion (fire) produces a certain amount of energy, say 100, so the math is easy. It has been said that way more than 1/2 of that is wasted on heating up the engine block, which leaves you with 50 pushing down on the piston. There is friction on the cylinder wall, the mass of the crank to rotate, the mass of the other pistons connected to the crank, which have to be pushed up for an exhaust stroke, and pulled down for an intake stroke, and then up again for compression, not to mention the energy to compress the next charge, the rotating mass of the cams, the weigh of the chain or pushrods, the energy to compress the valve springs, etc, etc.... So really, the energy produced from that one explosion is reduced to maybe 10% of the energy produced on the rotating output shaft, which then drives the alternator and transmission, which both produce heat through friction, losing more energy, as do the tires on the road. The alternator, which uses maybe 10% of the energy as the transmission and wheels, is down to possibly reclaiming 1 unit of the energy that it caused to be produced in the first electrolysis. This 1% still has to fire the spark plugs, charge the battery, run the lights, and if there is enough left over, it will use some of its power to open the solenoid, causing your electrolysis machine to produce more fuel.

All of these numbers would be easy to look up and fill in some details to, simple scientific principles seem to indicate that this is unlikely to reach the claims of 40% increase.

I may still try it, as my truck is simple enough that I could 'undo' it pretty easily if it doesn't do anything, but the claim of 40% boost implies that the alternator on that vehicle is using several times more power than the vehicle is using to propel itself, in which case, getting a smaller alternator would probably improve efficiency even more.

May 24, 2008 at 7:08 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

grannyrett (anonymous) says...

Thank you stompk. I am so glad you tried this. I knew it was more than water vapor. The guys doing it are having amazing results. I sure wish we knew how to run our diesel truck with this.

May 23, 2008 at 10:37 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

stompk (anonymous) says...

Bubba, the secret is, use the coil! Actually, set up a seperate coil, that is timed with the engine, that way a powerful pulse is produced. Haven't perfected it yet, but 40% is being conservative.

Try it on a small engine first. There are some issues, like keeping the water container clean, and keeping the water from freezing, but I'm sure we could brainstorm to come up with solutions.

The hydrogen is EXTREMELY volatile, so proper instillation is a BIG MUST. I've been working on a different housings. Someone with a machine shop could make some cash off of these, if we could figure out the kinks.

Try it out, it's a blast, literally.

What has had me experimenting lately is woodgas. Basically, anything flammable, contains burnable trapped gas in it.

If you heat it, but don't allow oxygen, what happens is the gas is released, leaving the carbon attached to the log, or whatever.

So I built a device to test this. It's made out of 2" galv pipe.

One end cap, 6" nipple, other end reduced to 1/4" with 6" stub.

Basically a small chamber, with a gas release. And I stuck this in a fire, and after 20 minutes or so, you could light the end, and it stayed lit for a good half hour, just using a few twigs.

My though was, what if we used the heat from the exhaust, to make the woodgas?

Here's a great video showing this concept. The poor guy has a horrible stutter, but the thing he makes is pretty cool, and gets the point across.

Enjoy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgu9Bd...

By the way, the left over wood carbon make great garden fertilizer, just like a forest fire brings about new life.

May 24, 2008 at 7:47 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

stompk (anonymous) says...

granny, check this video out.

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

why hide it, right? Funny.

May 25, 2008 at 6:44 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

grannyrett (anonymous) says...

The hydrogen produced by this is NOT pressurized. Water is put into a plastic quart jar. There are two rods in it. One rod goes to a RV solenoid and then to the hot side of the battery. The other rod goes to the neg. side of the battery. There are two hoses coming out of the top of the jar. They do not extend into the jar. One goes to the air intake. The other goes into throttle body. Again, these hoses do not go into the water. You can find how this set up looks if you can find it on e-bay. I saw the ad trying to sell it, but left it at home. It is so simple, and don't try to make it any harder than what I have put here. If you put alcohol in the water, it may stop it from freezing. I don't know, it was just a suggestion someone gave me.

May 24, 2008 at 10:06 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

grannyrett (anonymous) says...

stompk--I thought I was onto something unknown. Thanks for showing me that this is so widespread. They say that necessity is the mother of invention. That's so true. People are so fed up with big oil. While this still uses gas, someday it won't. Better for the environment. Can you imagine what the change would be if everything that uses fuel were to be powered this way? It blows me away!

May 25, 2008 at 7:14 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

grannyrett (anonymous) says...

stompk-Use windshield washer fluid.

May 25, 2008 at 4:43 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

bubba (anonymous) says...

I hate to be the naysayer here, but a coil doesn't 'produce' energy, it stores energy produced by the motor and releases it in a short lived but very powerful burst. None of the experiments described above, nor the concept of running a car on hydrogen are new- I did all of them and watched a video on cars run on hydrogen in 8th grade science class, which was not very recent! The problem, unfortunately, remains that storing hydrogen fuel is inefficient, and producing it from water is, for now, very energy intensive.

Hydrogen powered internal combustion motors will always need a significant outside power source to produce the fuel, otherwise it is a perpetual motion machine, and given the inefficiencies discussed above, it would have to be a machine that produces close to 2x as much energy as it consumes.

Now what interests me are the new technologies being developed; such as 8 cylinder motors that use 4 cylinders to capture electricity from the work of the other four when not under heavy load (GM product, among others), and some hybrids now have a mechanism that converts the momentum of the car to electricity while breaking (honda uses this, maybe more). Couple these advances, and maybe a few more similarly clever ways to capture energy, put a solar panel on the roof, and then I would think we could begin to see some vehicles that generate enough fuel to only need gasoline on hard acceleration, or something along those lines. Of course, retrofitting that technology is not an option for the most part, but I think we will see some creative concepts combining existing technology in the not too far off future.

May 26, 2008 at 8:28 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

stompk (anonymous) says...

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

May 27, 2008 at 7:09 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

stompk (anonymous) says...

Even though the energy amount is the same, I would suggest the way it reacts with water is different.

Touch a 12volt source in a car, you don't get shocked.
Touch the wrong end of a coil, and OUCH!.

Why? I suggest because the higher voltage affect water
differently. So perhaps this has some reasoning to it.

Another important factor about using a coil, is timing. As
engine rpms increase, "powerful" pulses increase, increasing
the amount of fuel produced.

Possibly a chamber of water with spark plugs? There are still
issues. I don't know, it's fun, and I've seen video of the guy who ran his car on water alone. He's dead now.

May 27, 2008 at 7:04 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

logbuilder (anonymous) says...

check this out , way cooler
http://www.flixxy.com/zero-pollution-...

May 27, 2008 at 12:32 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

424now (anonymous) says...

Logbuilder,

Excelent link!

I want one ! Wow! That is a dream car! I pray these kinds of technology get advanced into the mainstream!

May 27, 2008 at 4:19 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

bubba (anonymous) says...

stompk, the impulse from the coil is indeed very strong, but it drains the battery quickly, too. The coil 'concentrates' the energy, but does not produce it, so the fuel it produces will only produce as much energy as it took to separate the water. And when that fuel is burned, much of it is wasted on all those things I said above.

Even if a perpetual motion machine was possible (which is debatable), I don't think it would involve an internal combustion motor, as those are very inefficient.

The air powered car is very interesting, although the story does downplay the amount of energy used to compress the air. It also goes as far as to state that these will eventually be perpetual motion machines, which is a pretty far fetched claim; again, for something to produce it's own fuel and enough energy to move down the road, it would have to be producing several times more energy than it is consuming, which is simply not possible.

May 27, 2008 at 10:31 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

stompk (anonymous) says...

the only way to truth, is to try it.

May 28, 2008 at 2:32 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

bubba (anonymous) says...

The power used, fuel produced, energy lost to heat and all other aspects of this can be calculated with very simple equations, so I would have to disagree with even the last statement...

If you figure out a way of separating water into hydrogen and oxygen that uses less energy than burning the resulting hydrogen and oxygen produces, your discovery will have more profound significance for mankind than Albert Einstein's work!

Call me a skeptic, but I'm not holding my breath.

May 28, 2008 at 5:31 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

424now (anonymous) says...

How about some discusion on electical resonance in these hho seperator units

May 29, 2008 at 10:58 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

StarTrek_Shakespeare (anonymous) says...

does hydrogen, when combusted, have a larger radius of impact than say... gasoline.... so isn't it a bit sketchy? i think our odds (based on supply) are better to drive around in hydrogenated oil cars and finally put our 'transfats' to some kind of use. or perhaps we should collectively admit that we are screwed.

May 29, 2008 at 9:20 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )