My Impossible mission

[apex1]

Originally Posted by pamarine

Not to hijack the thread, but what principles is he disproving?

all known. Or nearly all..............

[catalyst]

Originally Posted by rwatson

Ok - so you have disproved about 4 major Physics principles ???

I think not!

The amount of power used to re-charge the battery is more than the amount of energy the Hydrogen can produce. With the added weight of the extra gear, your fuel consumption would be more than it was before.

I not - I have a million dollar cheque to buy the rights to your system!

Well, you are entitled to your opinions. All I can say is that it worked on our van. If you search HHO generator on the web you will find many more people who have had success with this set up.
I am not a physicist by any means. We are not talking about replacing the diesel just supplementing some of it.
The HHO system is just another consumer on the boats existing electrical supply, but draws very little. The alternator is working all the time anyway so I don't see what the issue is.

Perhaps a qualified marine electrician could jump in here and explain things better.
If I am disproved I will stand corrected. I am not some hippy with tunnel vision who thinks that if we all just link arms and say ummmmmmm everything will be fine and we can solve the worlds resource problems by generating 'positive energy', man.
It is just that we were exited by the results we had and having read about the amount of truck drivers in the US using banks of these cells to great effect, you cannot help but surmise that there may be some future in it.

Regards
Bob

[portacruise]

Originally Posted by catalyst

Well, you are entitled to your opinions. All I can say is that it worked on our van. If you search HHO generator on the web you will find many more people who have had success with this set up.
I am not a physicist by any means. We are not talking about replacing the diesel just supplementing some of it.
The HHO system is just another consumer on the boats existing electrical supply, but draws very little. The alternator is working all the time anyway so I don't see what the issue is.

Perhaps a qualified marine electrician could jump in here and explain things better.
If I am disproved I will stand corrected. I am not some hippy with tunnel vision who thinks that if we all just link arms and say ummmmmmm everything will be fine and we can solve the worlds resource problems by generating 'positive energy', man.
It is just that we were exited by the results we had and having read about the amount of truck drivers in the US using banks of these cells to great effect, you cannot help but surmise that there may be some future in it.

Regards
Bob

Haven't seen anything in my chemical journals regarding HHO. Such a thing would be on the front cover, I would expect. But even some things that made the cover in the past like cold fusion and polywater turned out to be FALSE, poor research, by good scientists! The test is to replicate the results within the specified standard deviations under double blind, placebo corrected studies by independent labs that have no stake. Fifteen percent milage increase may not be statisticaly significant, depending on outside factors-wind, grade,driver,etc.

Anyway, that's what I learned from my college science teachers, FWIW.

Porta

[pamarine]

Originally Posted by apex1

all known. Or nearly all..............

such as?

I can't think of one law it violates.

[apex1]

Originally Posted by pamarine

such as?

I can't think of one law it violates.

No? Impressive. As a marine electrician you might know how to produce Hydrogen using the alternator as a power source? And that alternators consume fuel? (indirectly of course)
Now when I produce a gas, using fuel, then feed my engine with that gas to save fuel, does there ring a bell?

We had this topic here several times. And there is absolutely no way to save money or fuel using Hydrogen technology. Use the search function, you´ll get it!

Rgards
Richard

[pamarine]

If the btu/cu. ft. of the fuel/air mixture is increased for using the same quantity of fuel then you can very easily decrease fuel consumption.

It makes complete sense actually.

The debate may be is the increase energy added by the hydrogen is more than then increased energy used to create it. But but that has more to do with the design and construction of the Hydrogen generator than the theory of HHO.

The theory is sound, even if various implementations of it are not.

The whole idea behind HHO is not to run an internal combustion engine on water. It's to allow said engine to run extremely lean. The HHO is simply in the mix to make the leaner mixture combust properly.

The fuel savings obviously don't come from the HHO, but from the leaner fuel setting. The HHO is thus but one part of a system that increases efficiency. Make Sense?

[marshmat]

More HHO stuff.... lovely.

There have been proper lab tests done on this "technology" at several university and industry labs. Where improvements have been observed, this has been due to faster combustion: hydrogen has a very high laminar flame velocity, and a small amount of hydrogen is simply serving to spread the flame front more rapidly through the fuel/air mixture. (Faster combustion leads to higher Pmax, thus higher IMEP and BMEP for a given set of operating conditions- GM's original Vortec was a prime example of how faster combustion improves engine output. If you don't know those acronyms, you shouldn't be trying to redesign an engine.) Some people will lean the mix out a bit as well, which obviously cuts fuel use slightly (and reduces power), not always a good idea though.

No HHO or related device produces "free energy"- the energy needed to make the hydrogen is always, always more than you can recover by reacting it. Nothing goes on inside these devices that can't be predicted and explained by any second-year mechanical or chemical engineering student. And, not to put too fine a point on it, most of the material on the Web- and especially on youtube- about such devices is inaccurate at best, dangerous and possibly deadly at worst.

And I know for a fact that I can get at least a 15% mileage improvement out of any conventional gas or diesel car you put me in, with no modifications whatsoever to the vehicle or its systems. (Hint- go easy on the gas and learn when to shift.) I can do the same for just about any boat you put me in. (Hint- for a displacement hull, slow down; for a planing hull, experiment to find its optimal speed and stay there.)

Nuclear power.... ahh, dare we touch this topic?

It's worth noting, at the very least, that here in Ontario we recently had a (failed) bid process for the construction of a couple of new 1000-1200 MW nuclear fission power plants. Having learned from past mistakes in this field, the government put out a carefully structured tender package that required all "extra" costs, and all risks associated with design and construction, to be included in the quoted price. The result? $26B for 2400 MW. Rejected, of course, as this was more than double the expected budget- and, indeed, substantially more than it would cost to generate the same amount of power by putting the best available monocrystalline silicon solar panels on a quarter of a million house and store rooftops.

Cattle

There is a dairy farm on the fringes of my city that is in the process of installing a cogeneration system to anaerobically digest cattle manure, generate electricity and heat from the resulting gases, and reprocess the residue into a powerful fertilizer. Not feasible for a boat, of course, but they're expecting to make a decent chunk of money on it (and they have a few really sharp engineers running those numbers).

[apex1]

Thanks Matt!
You have it easier to explain than I have! Well done, once more.

Richard

[rwatson]

Originally Posted by pamarine

such as?

I can't think of one law it violates.

The first on I thought of was the law of conservation of energy

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Give_Examp...tion_of_energy

ie. Basically, energy cannot be created or destroyed - it has to come from somewhere, and it always balances out with the energy that is dissipated.

So in my kindergarten maths formulae

If Energy from Diesel Fuel is the only input, then directing part of that energy to charge a battery, which generates Hydrogen, which is burnt in the engine can never exceed the orginal amount of energy.

Now, of course, the efficiencies of extracting the energy come in to effect. If we could extract energy from Diesel fuel at an atomic level, we could probably power a whole city on one tank of fuel.

Spliting water to create Hydrogen is about 50-60% efficient
http://hydrogen-hybrid.com/technology.html

A Deisel engine has a possible efficiency of around 56%. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu...mo/diesel.html

If they are getting an increase in efficency by charging a battery (which is ~ 90% efficient therefore losing 10% )
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-e...fuel-cell4.htm

to generate hydrogen then burning it again in the engine - and still getting better mileage .... it boils down to the evidence that their Deisel engine is operating way below optimum efficiency - may need new injectors, bearings, whatever.

Method 1 - burn diesel = 56% efficiency, lose 44%

Method 2 - burn diesel (lose 44%), store remaining energy in a battery, (lose 10%), convert it Hydrogen - (lose ~ 40%), burn Hydrogen in the engine, (lose ~ 40%)

Easy comparison.

As stated elsewhere, these methods have been investigated for 100 years, and the converting of water to Hydrogen has been the subject of a thousand thesis .... and the inefficiencies are very well documented and proven.

Still, if they have fun experimenting .... good for them. Nothing like practical learning

[marshmat]

Now, of course, the efficiencies of extracting the energy come in to effect. If we could extract energy from Diesel fuel at an atomic level, we could probably power a whole city on one tank of fuel.

If only. For those who know a bit of special relativity, this will look familiar: If we could convert diesel fuel to energy at the subatomic level, one litre (0.85 kg) of diesel, converted to energy, would give us roughly 7.6E16 joules, ie. 2.1E7 megawatt-hours.
Or, to put it in a more intuitive form: The mass-energy content of a single litre of #2 diesel is enough to power the entire electrical grid of Peru for a whole year.

[doug lundy]

okay there is one perpetual motion machine sometimes offered, that I cant figure out why it wont work. Its also your answer. Is usually posed as an aircraft that is also lighter than air and compresses its gas bag, glides a thousand miles, then releases the gas again and climbs to altitude and then repeats the process. (towing a wind generator) It would work even better with a submarine.

You build a sub, flood the ballast tanks and glide toward the sea floor in a forward direction and then when youre nearing the bottom, you blow the ballast and rise to the surface, also gliding forward as you ascend with the dive planes. You tow a generator to collect power to run your compressor..more than enough power is collected..Then blow the tanks again, dive gliding forward and there you go. No limit to your self propelled range. No fuel needed. Underwater is best because by aircraft you have storms to deal with, jet streams and all sorts of weather. At sea youre less subject to the unpredictable.

Any other impossible questions, just ask. That one was easy.

[hoytedow]

A catamaran doesn't have A hull. It has Two hulls.

[pamarine]

Originally Posted by rwatson

The first on I thought of was the law of conservation of energy

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Give_Examp...tion_of_energy

ie. Basically, energy cannot be created or destroyed - it has to come from somewhere, and it always balances out with the energy that is dissipated.

So in my kindergarten maths formulae

If Energy from Diesel Fuel is the only input, then directing part of that energy to charge a battery, which generates Hydrogen, which is burnt in the engine can never exceed the orginal amount of energy.

Now, of course, the efficiencies of extracting the energy come in to effect. If we could extract energy from Diesel fuel at an atomic level, we could probably power a whole city on one tank of fuel.

Spliting water to create Hydrogen is about 50-60% efficient
http://hydrogen-hybrid.com/technology.html

A Deisel engine has a possible efficiency of around 56%. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu...mo/diesel.html

If they are getting an increase in efficency by charging a battery (which is ~ 90% efficient therefore losing 10% )
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-e...fuel-cell4.htm

to generate hydrogen then burning it again in the engine - and still getting better mileage .... it boils down to the evidence that their Deisel engine is operating way below optimum efficiency - may need new injectors, bearings, whatever.

Method 1 - burn diesel = 56% efficiency, lose 44%

Method 2 - burn diesel (lose 44%), store remaining energy in a battery, (lose 10%), convert it Hydrogen - (lose ~ 40%), burn Hydrogen in the engine, (lose ~ 40%)

Easy comparison.

As stated elsewhere, these methods have been investigated for 100 years, and the converting of water to Hydrogen has been the subject of a thousand thesis .... and the inefficiencies are very well documented and proven.

Still, if they have fun experimenting .... good for them. Nothing like practical learning

I guess we'll just agree to disagree.

I'm a mechanic, electrician, and hobbyist gearhead, and I've have seen coutless reports from reputable sources (Popular Mechanics for one) that HHO can be used as part of a system of modifications to improve the efficiency of internal combustion reciprocating engines.

I've also seen reports from reputable sources that HHO by itself does absolutely nothing.

Even Physicist in Sworn Testimony before the US Federal Trade Commission admit you can save enough gas to pay for a properly constructed HHO generator. In a gasoline powered auto getting 30 mpg before HHO it would take around 100,000 miles to break even. But the point is you would break even. Am I going to run out and build a generator or suggest everyone else should do so to stick it to big oil? Not a chance, but the fact that it is possible to increase fuel efficiency by using a device like an HHO generator tells me that this type of thinking should be delved into more.


But DIM isn't looking to augment fossil-fuel technologies, he is looking to replace them, so HHO isn't the answer regardless of whether or not it works.

[apex1]

Originally Posted by pamarine

Even Physicist in Sworn Testimony before the US Federal Trade Commission admit you can save enough gas to pay for a properly constructed HHO generator.

They may swear as much as they like, the statement is WRONG! It´just not possible to overcome the losses and gain a net profit! The opposite is true, love it or leave it!
But it would be childish to open this debate here again, use the search function, you´ll find enough to read for a whole weekend on this topic!

I am impressed and astonished btw. that we must discuss this snakeoil topic with a marine electrician?! I thought some basic knowledge about physics would be a prerequisite for that profession?

Originally Posted by doug lundy

You build a sub, flood the ballast tanks and glide toward the sea floor in a forward direction and then when youre nearing the bottom, you blow the ballast and rise to the surface, also gliding forward as you ascend with the dive planes. You tow a generator to collect power to run your compressor..more than enough power is collected..Then blow the tanks again, dive gliding forward and there you go. No limit to your self propelled range. No fuel needed. Underwater is best because by aircraft you have storms to deal with, jet streams and all sorts of weather. At sea youre less subject to the unpredictable.
Any other impossible questions, just ask. That one was easy.

I thought we are least subject to the unpredictable (to quote you) on the hard. But your impressive propulsion system destroyed my world view completely.

Well, do you already have plans for your future after finishing school?
May I recommend to focus on sport, something sophisticated, like wrestling! Anything else might be a bad choice, or you have to study in a severe manner during the remaining 8 years!!!

Regards
Richard

[apex1]

Originally Posted by marshmat

If only. For those who know a bit of special relativity, this will look familiar: If we could convert diesel fuel to energy at the subatomic level, one litre (0.85 kg) of diesel, converted to energy, would give us roughly 7.6E16 joules, ie. 2.1E7 megawatt-hours.
Or, to put it in a more intuitive form: The mass-energy content of a single litre of #2 diesel is enough to power the entire electrical grid of Peru for a whole year.

I guess that was wasted Matt! At least here..........
What is your opinion, is it worth to open a complete lunatic thread to get those scientists informed properly?

Regards
Richard