My Impossible mission

Show me some data. I don't place any belief on this statement without data. How much energy collected by generator vs. how much energy to compress how much gas vs. how much water displaced from ballast tanks, etc.

 

Here is how the math works from what I know of math (which according to you folks is nothing, along with physics)

Let's say someone spends $500 bucks on a HHO generator.

The energy equivalence for HHO to gasoline, as given by William P. Halperin, Ph.D (the John Evans Professor of Physics at Northwestern University and witness for the FTC against Dennis Lee), is 1L HHO=.011 tbsp of gasoline.

Now according to my math, that means that is would take 23,272.727 L of HHO to equal to energy contained in 1 gal of gas. That also means at .5L/min, it would take 775.76 hours to produce this much HHO.

Now let's take a theoretical car getting 30 mpg at 60 mph.

It would take that car 46,545.455 miles at 60 mph to have traveled for 775.76, using 1551.51 gal of gas.

That is the distance needed to produce essentially 1 gallon of gasoline.

So assuming 1 gal of gas costs $3, it would take 7.8 million miles to make back your $500.

This is of course requisite that the engine is leaned while on HHO so that gasoline consumption is equal to what it is without the HHO generator installed, if no leaning is done then there is no way to recover the money spent on the generator.

So, in theory it is possible to eventually break even with HHO augmentation. is it practical? Heck no. But from an academic perspective it is intriguing.

The savings from leaning far outweigh the savings from HHO. In fact, if we assume that it takes 1mpg reduction in Fuel economy to produce the HHO, the we lean to 31mpg, one would save the $500 in only 155,000 miles if they didn't install the HHO generator.

 

Some of the European carmakers have figured out how to lean an engine out as far as 40:1 safely, without snake oil and without the NOx problem that lean burning usually causes. If anyone's interested, look up something called a stratified-charge gasoline direct injection system.

When producing hydrogen on board, then burning it, you cannot- under any circumstances- recover more energy than you expended to get the hydrogen from water in the first place. Period. (Even in the best gasoline engines, with a high-efficiency alternator and a really good electrolysis cell, you'll be lucky to get 20% of your energy investment back when you burn the hydrogen in the engine.)

What you can do is to let the hydrogen's high flame velocity spread your flame front more rapidly after the spark plug fires, thus reducing total combustion time. With suitable timing adjustments, this can increase the peak cylinder pressure, thus increasing IMEP and BMEP, thus producing slightly more power for a given air flow rate, fuel flow rate, and RPM.

Some people will, apparently, then lean out the mixture to get the same or less power output as before, then claim the difference as "magical" fuel savings. Yet all that's happening is the combustion is now a bit faster- the same effect you get by adding turbulence to the in-cylinder flow, or having multiple spark plugs, etc. Only now, with "HHO" systems, you've added a bulky, complex and dangerous electrolysis cell, likely increased NOx emissions substantially, and your car is at risk of getting towed away by the cops because it appears to have a bomb in it (that actually happened to a guy in Toronto last month).

I will now return to attempting to power all of Peru by mass-energy conversion of a one-litre jug of diesel....

 

Chrysler had the "Lean Idle" engines in the late 70's. I am not sure how 40:1 would fire. In my experience 13:1 already starts melting sparkplugs.

 

It's quite a clever little trick, actually. A homogeneous 40:1 charge wouldn't work. So you make the charge heterogeneous when running at low loads- the intake stroke is air only (like a diesel), the gasoline is injected just before TDC (like a diesel)- but, being gasoline at gas-engine compression ratios, it doesn't self-ignite. You end up with a small volume, 14:1 charge surrounding the sparkplug, then a sharp change to pure air as you move towards the walls. The overall air/fuel ratio can be very lean, but within the actual stratified charge, it is stoichiometric. Essentially, your 3-litre engine with 200 cc combustion chambers is operating at low loads with, say, only 50 cc combustion chambers and 150 cc of inert air.

Of course, such an engine can change its injector timing to the start of the intake stroke, thus operating as a conventional gas engine, when more power is needed.

But we're getting off topic. What happened to the cattle, the geese, the harnessed ducks? Maybe we can lasso a couple of sharks, and steer by dangling a tuna ahead of them in the direction we want to go?

 

If you have enough money, like movie stars spending $28,000 on a little car, the cost of fuel is not important; the efficiency neither. I see the problem as people that want to be "green" despite the cost or pollution they cause. A good example is heating your house with a wood burning stove. Cost driven technology is not always good, but it is effective. Most of the "green" technology is not. Hybrids are complicated and expensive, solar powered ships are at the mercy of the weather. Probably cattle farts and harnessed ducks are not less sensible ideas.

 

Nobody said so mate!

Your calculations I cannot comment, even cannot understand. (what is a tbsp?) And I´m too lazy to recalculate in metric figures.
But no need for that effort anyway, because Matt already summed it up.
Of course, as a European, I am never talking petrol engines in marine applications, and when referring to "gas" I mean gas not petrol!
Now, apart from the fact that we never produce Hydrogene in a efficient way, the addition of it has not the same (partly positive) effect in a Diesel engine. That makes the idea even worse. Let alone the lack of sense adding a highly explosive gas to a yacht system.

Richard

 

erm, its a TaBleSPoonful, Richard. as opposed to a TeaSPoonful.

Cookery book measurements.

what a rich and varied world we live in...

 

Thank you! I cannot believe one does a scientific calculation with a measure like tablespoonful.......and 0,11 spoonful?
In cookbooks I have seen that, and I am quite familiar with it, but here? Never ever I would have thought that could be the same.

Pamarine, I start to have some serious doubts about your expertise.

Richard

 

tbsp was used in the official trial transcript which is why I used it here. I can only guess that it was used in the trial for effect. More folks here can visualize a tablespoon than an fluid oz or ml.

.011tbsp is equal to .0055 us fl. oz.

you can doubt my expertise all you want. doesn't reallyy affect me one bit.

 

Why are they calling this HHO is the question? Is it electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen and oxygen or water vapor injection? Both concepts are quite old as applied to IC and are resurrected from time to time.

Porta

 

They are talking about electrolysis specifically. But I'm wondering if there was a more efficient means of getting hydrogen into the intake manifold than electrolysis would it make such technology feasible.

NASA has been investigating Hydrogen Augmentation for Diesel engines for over 50 years. I have to believe it has merit even if it is only in a lab for the moment.

 

Would that be level or heaping?

 

50 years by NASA with what results? That sounds like a great way to waste taxpayer money.

 

With a negative Hoytedow. The energy balance is negative. So easy is colour TV.........