Electrolysis car add on

[GoingFastTurningLeft]

I was web surfing and came across this somehow, http://water4gas.com/2books.htm he's got some ridiculous claims, such as a 75% to 200% increase in MPG.

I find the design somewhat comical. It's a mason jar with electrodes and a few tubes. You'd think a professional would have higher quality illustrations than stolen pictures drawn on with MS paint and a fake time/date stamp

I found it an entertaining read, and I'm sure it's snake oil/placebo effect. What really stood out is it claims that this device draws "a small amount of current" of "1-3 amps" at i'm assuming a 13.8V nominal voltage. It also claims 1 quart of distilled water + a small amount of baking soda (his electrolyte) lasts a few months, because 1 quart water contains over 1000 quarts of "compressed" gas. I'm willing to bet that the water level is going down because the water is being heated by the engine compartment and evaporating!

What's really crazy is the fuel line hookup... he's saying you can T into the fuel line for "idle" use and into your air intake for "high rpm" use. Somewhere in his design he says its an "on-demand" system, not seeing how from skimming the illustrations! I would not want a GLASS JAR connected anywhere to my fuel line - if that jar breaks/doesn't have a good seal, you've got a gasoline leak in your engine compartment!!!

It does make more sense than running a car on pure water, but it still looks like one of those bogus "brown's gas" inventions. If it was possible, the auto industry would outfit every one of their gas guzzlers with these sort of contraptions, as the oil industry is the enemy of the automobile industry as of late.

BTW, lets not make this into another "air-powered car" discussion. I remember that one as being quite nasty.

[haklesup]

What they are doing is generating "Brown's Gas" a mixture of H and O just itching to explode. They inject this gas directly into the fuel or air-fuel mixture (pick your favorite method they are all suspect) to replace some of the gasoline otherwise needed to generate HP.

Now if you make the electricity to electrolyze the water off-board the car like grid or generator power then mix, of course one would expect a significant effect and reduction of gas needed. However if you generate that electricity in an alternator powered by the very same engine you are using to spin the alternator than all you need are the first two laws of thermodynamics to understand that should not be possible. This would require a greater than unity gain motor which is impossible.

I don't know, perhaps there is some chemistry involved if coupled with just the right engine control inputs where under the right driving conditions one might obtain greater mileage than if either fuel were used alone or whatever. it's a stretch and that's what they thrive on in their website.

I can imagine that a competent scientist could design an experiment that would be understandable and repeatable that would either demonstrate that this were possible or not. I would also expect a suitably educated physicist could do a theoretical proof taking account maximum efficiencies of each process in the calculations but neither seems evident as far as I have heard.

It may not be a dead end. Consider adding this to a hybrid gas-electric and capturing the electricity in generator mode but instead of delivering it back to the electric motor all the time, it might occasionally choose to deliver the power back via the combustion engine using a browns gas generator. Detailed theoretical analysis is deserved before one should spend a lot on hardware.

Its a shame this technology is being supported by such poor scientists (if I could even call them that) they approach the subject like a bunch of mechanics married to marketing majors raised on television ads. Is it me or is anyone else uncomfortable by a new technology that is characterized by amazing claims, touted mainly by customer testimonial and all proof is concealed in book you have to purchase. Any talk of running a car on water is completely hype. water is a go between the electricity which is the prime mover and the brown's gas which is what actually does the work.

There are other websites promoting this technology but also selling the technology hardware so they also don't say enough online to judge if it really does work.

Rest assured that if this technology does hold promise for making more efficient engines the car companies are looking into it. If it pans out we will eventually see something but the long silence (there is nothing new about browns gas) has me thinking it's a dead end. I don't have a conclusion but thats what it is.

[GoingFastTurningLeft]

Now if you make the electricity to electrolyze the water off-board the car like grid or generator power then mix, of course one would expect a significant effect and reduction of gas needed. However if you generate that electricity in an alternator powered by the very same engine you are using to spin the alternator than all you need are the first two laws of thermodynamics to understand that should not be possible. This would require a greater than unity gain motor which is impossible.

You can use the output of an engine to supplement it and increase the total power output, thus gaining an output greater than would be possible by itself. This is the principle behind forced induction: reclaim some output energy to create additional output. Superchargers are belt driven air pumps that force additional air into the engine, Turbochargers are exhaust gas driven turbines that force additional air in. You add additional fuel for the additional air and you result in an increase in power.

Using more system current does not result in reduced engine power as long as it does not interfere with the timing of the ignition system. The alternator does not become harder to turn if there's a higher current load.

You are correct in that you cannot get greater than unity gain out of a motor. But more accurately, you cannot get greater than unity gain out of an "energy producing system" - which consists of all components. Electric motors are very simple and have few components, but it is still a system. Gasoline engines are complex and have many components, and the entire system includes not only the engine itself, but the intake and exhaust tubing as well. Thus by reclaiming energy internally we are not breaking any laws of physics. We are using part of the output energy to allow us to use additional input energy - we are not getting any free lunches here.

[dyarker]

"The alternator does not become harder to turn if there's a higher current load."

Oh, really?????? It takes 1 horse power to turn the alternator for about 745W of load (not counting friction of belt and bearings, or resistance in the alternator).

[haklesup]

With the exception of reclamation of heat (the ultimate demise of energy), reclamation of chemical, elecrical or mechanical energy will always have a price in increased load or drag or heat loss.

Consider the efficiency loss of the conversion of mechanical to electrical to chemical to chemical (rotation via alternator to electrolysis and combustion).

This can be possible if the new system improved the efficeincies of any of these conversion steps particularly the combustion of gasoline mixed with browns gas vs gasoline only when subtracting the energy used by the engine to produce the gas.

The answers may be in his eBook, I just object to the pay me and I'll proove it approach to technology sales especially when claims seem exaggerated.

Ever hear the story of the "Emporer weras no clothes" Once duped, a customer has invested their reputation and will go along with the lies to save that reputation. In psychological terms its called Cognative Dissonance. The method is underhanded and a bit obvoius. They don't care if it works, they just want to sell an eBook which cost nothing more to produce. If this information were truly valuable, it would be flying off shelves as real books I could flip through at a store before deciding to buy.

I can't say it has no merit but I really doubt the claims of 60MPG etc unless other factors like a hypermiler's lifestyle were also applied.

dyarker is correct, generator torque is proportional to the amount of current delivered to a load. If you had a DC motor you would expect to need more current to turn a tighter gear for example, same thing here. This is also true of the A/C compressor when turned on (I had trouble understanding that as a youth). Even if you tried to build a windmill on top of the car to capture the wind flowing by for free it is not free, it cost drag. Like I said at the beginning everything cas a cost, all we can do is manipulate the part of the efficiency losses we have control over.

[GoingFastTurningLeft]

dyarker is correct, generator torque is proportional to the amount of current delivered to a load. If you had a DC motor you would expect to need more current to turn a tighter gear for example, same thing here. This is also true of the A/C compressor when turned on (I had trouble understanding that as a youth). Even if you tried to build a windmill on top of the car to capture the wind flowing by for free it is not free, it cost drag. Like I said at the beginning everything cas a cost, all we can do is manipulate the part of the efficiency losses we have control over.

Somehow I've never managed to hear that fact. Thanks. I had no idea that the electricity generated causes a generator to slow down.

[haklesup]

Not slow down in this case but require more force (torque) to turn it at the same speed. An engine running at a constant RPM will require more HP and thus more fuel to maintain that RPM. This is how a generator works and why it sounds like it is laboring when a load is turned on.

Try this, idle your car and observe the RPM gauge (if you have one) now operate some loads like the headlights, power windows, loud music etc and see if the RPM stays constant. (its indirect, one would do better to look at fuel flow while maintaining constant RPM but that is generally not available)

Under no load, the alternator only needs enough force to overcome the friction of the bearings and a small force from the field windings. As current output increases, the force between the field and core windings increases. Think of that force as the pump which pushes the electrons forward to the load. Or consider that the output current if flowing through the motor field coils (or no particular reason) would create a magnetic field proportional to that current. The engine has to supply equal reactionary force to turn the rotor.

[Robert Reed]

"Somehow I've never managed to hear that fact. Thanks. I had no idea that the electricity generated causes a generator to slow down."

Our local power company has a setup they display at various fairs in the area. One cranks (by hand) a generator with no load and a digital voltmeter attached to the output to reach 120 volts on the meter.Quite effortless until a load (a 200 watt incandescent bulb) is switched in, and then boy does it get hard to crank to maintain that 120 volts.