Truckers Choose Hydrogen Power 511
hipernoico writes to tell us Wired News is reporting that hundreds of semi trucks now on the roads are being partially powered by hydrogen. From the article: "These 18-wheelers make hydrogen as they go, eliminating the need for high-pressure, cryogenic storage tanks or hydrogen filling stations, which, by the way, don't yet exist. These truckers aren't just do-gooders. They like Canadian Hydrogen Energy's Hydrogen Fuel Injection, or HFI, system because it lets them save fuel, get more horsepower and, as a bonus, cause less pollution."
Additional supplement to the hydrogen? (Score:5, Funny)
In this house... (Score:5, Funny)
[HOMER]
In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
[/HOMER]
Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen? (Score:3, Informative)
Mind you, he was talking about methane, and methane is not the same thing as methanol.
Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen? (Score:5, Informative)
For "virtually all" read "Indy Cars"
F1 cars run on unleaded petrol.
Nascars run on 110 Octane gasolene
etc. etc.
Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Additional supplement to the hydrogen? (Score:3, Insightful)
What?? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What?? (Score:5, Insightful)
In either case the diesel is cutting into someones proffits and someone is eager to cut costs. Maybe the ends isn't a decrease in pollution, but it's a natural by product in using less fuel, which is a major goal for any semi-truck owner.
Re:What?? (Score:2)
Don't be too quick to dismiss bad stereotypical behaviour [niu.edu]. The Daily Show devoted an extended segment to the subject, so it must be true.
Re:What?? (Score:5, Funny)
But how can I take Smokey & The Bandit seriously if Burt Reynolds has to stop every now and then and go, "Gosh darn it, the H2/Oxygen ratio is all gummed up, I gotta recalibrate the electrolysis diffuser and recompile the firmware matrix!"(kicks tires). They're turning my redneck flicks into Star Trek! Nooooooo!!
Maybe a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Could our root problem be that we consider less pollution a bonus instead of a motivating factor?
Re:Maybe a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Although IMHO this is the only way to actually make people stop polluting - make it cheaper for them not to. Of course I'm sure the power that be would just tax polluters as they can make a LOAD of cash that way (oh wait...)
Re:Maybe a problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Maybe a problem (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Maybe a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the way it works in our capitilistic society, which fortunately produces enough wealth that we can still be pretty darn clean about these kinds of things, especially compared to even two or three decades ago.
Awsome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Awsome (Score:3, Insightful)
How does this help? (Score:2, Insightful)
R Given that diesel engines are not 100% efficient, and even assuming that water->hydrogen is. How is it this produces a net gain in energy? The burning hydrogen should only produce as much energy as is used to seperate the oxygen and hydrogen. Disconecting the alternator (which many cars do right now to increase fuel efficiency) shoul
Re:How does this help? (Score:4, Insightful)
Surely it's a No Brainer that putting the excess power back into the engine (electrolysis, hydrogen, blah blah) is Good Thing.
Re:How does this help? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, but the more current you draw, the more the alternator serves as a brake on the engine. You know all those "regenerative braking" hybrid systems? Same principle: they brake by dumping electricity from motors now running as generators back into the batteries.
Re:How does this help? (Score:2)
I'd think of it as distance 2nd cousing of the turbocharger and the nitrous injection, if you look at the common principles (though instead of burning more fuel per stroke, it burns cleaner fuel)
Re:How does this help? (Score:3, Informative)
Not necessarily. If you turned a generator and the poles weren't hooked up to any circuit, it's not moving any electrons through that circuit.
Take a motor sometime and turn it with the leads disconnected. Then short the leads and try to turn it.
Re:How does this help? (Score:2)
Re:How does this help? (Score:2)
Re:How does this help? (Score:2)
Re:How does this help? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How does this help? (Score:3, Informative)
It has been known for some time that increasing compression increases that efficiency. But it also
Re:How does this help? (Score:3, Interesting)
From the sounds of it
article: "Fuel efficiency and horsepower are improved because hydrogen burns faster and hotter than diesel, dramatically boosting combustion efficiency."
I read this as improving overall combustion efficiency. Although it's stretching their words alittle, what else could it be? The extra heat from the hydrogen must increase the efficiency of the diesel burning. It might be they spend %10 of the energy creating hydrogen (what is the efficien
Re:How does this help? (Score:5, Interesting)
My question, though, is why not just produce the hydrogen at a plant and enrich the diesel with it at the refinery?
Re:How does this help? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How does this help? (Score:3, Informative)
My question, though, is why not just produce the hydrogen at a plant and enrich the diesel with it at the refinery?
Maybe the hydrogen would evaporate out too fast? It'd certainly float to the top of the fuel pretty fast, so you'd have to mix it constantly. Maybe you could suspend it in something solid, but then you have a new particulate matter in the fuel stream, that also has to burn fast enough to make the hydrogen useable...
I suppose folks could carry tanks of hydrogen with them, that they inject in
Re:How does this help? (Score:4, Informative)
You're suggesting replacing a small, on-demand hydrogen generator with 1) a hydrogen plant, 2) distribution network, and 3) storage tanks.
The tanks alone could cost more than the electrolysis device.
Sometimes (most of the time) there is no such thing as economy of scale. Anything that 1) can be automated (most everything), 2) doesn't suffer from inherent physical limits (like Carnot efficiency), and 3) can be scaled down, should be made as small as possible.
Re:How does this help? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How does this help? (Score:3, Informative)
Glow plugs are only used very briefly during the initial seconds of a cold start. Diesel engines compress air in the cylinder. According to Boyle's law, the air get very hot. At the peak of compression, diesel fuel is injected into the cylinder. The superheated compressed air ignites the fuel. The only time the glow plug is needed is for those rare occasions in the first few moments when the piston, cylinder, air, and fuel are too
Re:How does this help? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How does this help? (Score:2)
You seem to be operating off the assumption that the alternator always takes the same amount of effort to turn, and that after it's done charging the batteries
Re:How does this help? (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't increase the efficiency unless you convert some energy which would *otherwise be wasted* into hydrogen.
No, not quite. You can increase the efficiency if you convert any energy that would otherwise be wasted in excess of the cost to generate the hydrogen + conversion inefficiencies. If the proposal was to use the generator to create hydrogen, and the hydrogen was being consumed as a primary fuel source, of course you'd come out behind due to conversion inefficiencies.
Instead, this case uses hyd
Not Alone (Score:5, Informative)
sounds familiar (Score:2)
Not Quite (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite. BMW has been researching and promoting hydrogen cars [bmwworld.com] for some time now. They installed a hydrogen refilling station in Munich in '99(IIRC) and more are on the way, some in the US. [businessweek.com] The interesting thing about the BMW hydrogen car is that it can burn either hydrogen or gasoline so you can burn hydrogen when its available but not be hampered by the current dearth of hydrogen stations. As for the source of the hydrogen, Electricity generated from solar power is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. [bmwworld.com]. The range on the 750H is only 400 km right now. The other trade-off of course is that there is still combustion so it's not as clean as fuel cell cars. Nonetheless, it's a start and not a bad way to transition us into a hydrogen economy.
Re:Not Quite (Score:2)
Hydrogen burns to water. What is less clean? Do nitrogen oxides get formed in the high temperatures or something?
I would expect it to be less efficient than fuel cells - the maximum efficiency of internal combustion engines isn't very good.
Re:Not Quite (Score:4, Informative)
I think the one thing I really like about the hydrogen combustion engine is that it still has the potential to sound like a small block V8. As much as fuel cell vehicles are cool from a tech and enviro perspective, there's just something about the sound of a combustion engine that I don't want to go away, no matter what. Imagine the black Mad Max Interceptor [aussiecoupes.com] running on hydrogen!
Does not compute (Score:2, Interesting)
Why does the cynic in me think it might be more energy-efficient to not load the alternator with a hydrogen generator in the first place?
Surely, if the alternator is not placing the additional load of the electrolysis equipment on the engine, the efficiency of the engine will go up?
Personally, if hydrogen does somehow improve things I'd suspect an even cleaner burn would result by injecting th
Re:Does not compute (Score:2)
Re:Does not compute (Score:5, Informative)
A very clever system, I hope whoever came up with it has a patent on it, I'm not a big fan of IP, but that sounds like a real invention.
Re:Does not compute (Score:2)
Re:Does not compute (Score:2, Informative)
I would assume similar results are to be found in a diesel engine.
http://science.slashdot.org/articl [slashdot.org]
Pretty sure it works (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but doubt hundreds of truckers are going to do that just to help out a company that involved in "psuedo science".
Sounds alot like the legendary Hydro-booster (Score:2, Informative)
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/20/0
Did nobody read up on this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Boo H2 ...'Termite guts can save the planet' (Score:4, Interesting)
Now that's what I'm talking 'bout
H2 is BS.
Causing less pollution is a bonus? (Score:3, Insightful)
They've had such technology for years! (Score:5, Funny)
not hydrogen power! (Score:5, Insightful)
The Effects Sound Similar to Water Injection (Score:4, Interesting)
Water injection (often mixed up to 50% with alcohol or methanol) has been used to improve the detonation resistance of combustion engines for many years. It was pioneered by WWII engineers looking to extract more power out of their engines during takeoff and landing, but now is typically only used by people modifying or racing their cars/trucks.
In your typical combustion engine, maximum power is very often limited by a phenomenom call detonation, also called ping or knock. What happens is that during the compression stroke, the air/fuel mixture overheats and spontaneously combusts which results in a huge spike in combustion chamber pressure. If it is bad enough, it can break pistons or damage rod/crank bearings leading to engine failure.
There are a number of ways to reduce the chance of detonation which primarily involve cooling temperatures in the combustion chamber. A very common way of doing this is to add extra fuel to the mixture, but obviously this is not efficient or clean.
By injecting a small mist of water into the air/fuel mixture, the presence of water will help cool the mixture and prevent detonation, letting you lean out the engine to where maximum power is produced as well as adding additional timing advance and/or add boost (if running a turbo or supercharger).
As a side effect, the water ends up "steam cleaning" your combustion chamber which keeps carbon deposits to a minimum and your engine running well.
However, water injection does nothing unless your power output is detonation limited. In fact, if you inject water with no other changes, power output will go down a small amount.
It sounds like hydrogen injection may improve power and combustion efficiency in all situations.
Since the amount of hydrogen generated can't be that large, I imagine that using hydrogen injection in addition to water injection for heavy engine loads would be a great combination.
Hmm, maybe I better patent that idea.
Effectively this is Enriching the Air... (Score:4, Insightful)
I would imagine that the additional Oxygen provides a large chunk of the benefits, rather than it just being attributed to the Hydrogen.
They've actually invented a way to use some handy prepackaged "air for burning" (distilled water) that is (relatively) efficient and simple to make by using electrolysis. Not too much of it, because there it can be too much of a good thing. Try running an engine off pure oxygen and see what you get. You'd still get explosions, but they'd likely be uncontained this time around. The amount of electricity to electrolyse a lot of water would be quite counter-productive anyway.
I would imagine you could get much of the same results if you could figure out a way to filter some of the Nitrogen out of the incoming air. Unfortunately, there's no good, cheap, efficient way to do that... yet....
Hype and hyperbole (Score:5, Interesting)
The process will take "from 0 to 9 months" depending on the type of vehicle, amount of build-up, the weather, the speeds driven, the idling time, start/stop driving, etc. Once the engine is cleaned you can see up to "40% increase in fuel efficiency".
We're talking about some insanely small amounts of hydrogen here.
The standard kit holds about 4 liters of water and will run for about 12,000KM. If 2/3 of the water is converted to H and captured for use, that means there's 2,261 liters of hydrogen extracted.
I randomly took a Volvo VE D12 395 engine for specs:
12.13L displacement and 1500RPM suggested cruise RPM, I'll guess 95Km/h is "cruise".
12,000KM / 95KM/H = 124.3 hours
Hydrogen is produced at 18 liters per hour
124.3 hours * 1500RPM = 11,187,000 revolutions
11,187,000 revolutions * 12.13L = 135,698,310 Liters of displaced air/fuel mixture
If my conversions and guesses are close, that means there's
I say scrap the entire thing. Don't hack in to your electrical system and don't carry around the extra weight of the machine and water. If you want to reduce operating costs, increase fuel efficiency and reduce pollution then BURN BIO-DIESEL!! Bio-Diesel has a net zero effect on atmospheric carbon, is low cost (about $.50us/gal to produce yourself), and is a tremendously powerful solvent that cleans engines of deposits like nobody's business.
Re:Hype and hyperbole (Score:3, Insightful)
I would like to see where you came up with this number, if truckers could produce their fuel at 1/4 the cost, I'm sure we would see bio-deisel everywhere.
Re:Hype and hyperbole (Score:4, Informative)
Diesel is essentially the same as the kerosene in your camp light, the fuel oil in your home heating unit, the jet fuel in the airplane you last rode in, and the solvent you might have cleaned your paint brushes in. And any one of them would light up just fine in a diesel or jet engine without modification, and it's hardly news that people do, from time to time, use alternate fuels in those engines when necessity arises.
One fuel people sometimes use in Diesel engines is vegetable oil. It works fine, and essentially that's what BioDiesel is. It's neither particularly rare, difficult, or even new to use it provided you can find it. Farmers, mostly, have been users in the past, and it was not unheard of in the 1930's for the tractor to be running on corn oil or whatever the farmer had lots of and couldn't sell, or at least couldn't sell at a price that allowed him to buy an equivalent amount of diesel fuel from hydrocarbons.
The question for BioDiesel is basically: do we have enough extra corn, cottonseed, canola, peanut, coconut, or [enter locally grown oilseed] to run our trucks and jet engines while still feeding ourselves, and de we eat enough fried chicken and french fries to use the waste oil to run all our trucks, buses, and airplanes. I tend to believe not, but I'm open to contrary evidence.
f you are swayed by celebrities, I can tell you that there is a restaurant that gives it's used french-fry oil to Darryl Hannah, who uses it in her diesel engined vehicle. Kind of a wild child, that one, but hippies do some things right, occasionally.
trucker behavior as idea market indicator (Score:5, Insightful)
My point is that if it's economically ripe, the truckers will be the first to use a new form of energy. If they ain't using it, it ain't ripe (unless it's an amphetamine). Moreover, "If you got it, a truck brought it."
How It Works (Score:4, Interesting)
On the downside, the alternator is now constantly loaded, which is an unusual situation and does require additional power.
Apparently the increase in overall combustion efficiency from the addition of H2 and O2 more than offsets the additional power requirement for the electrolysis. So in the end the engine is more efficient and saves money. Cleaner combustion should also lengthen engine lifespan.
It should be possible to do the same thing easily with most automobile engines. The only problem I see is ensuring that the alternator is not overloaded, which is primarily a function of the electrolysis electrode size.
This should also make automobiles easier to start, something useful in wintertime in high-altitude regions such as California where CARB gasoline is a requirement (and is a poor starting fuel).
Scam, or real? (Score:3, Informative)
People here are saying they have seen similar things sold on the internet (or to be announced) for insane amounts of money. I have seen these devices sold on Ebay - every time there is an "energy crunch", you see the number of auctions skyrocket. Most of these are for plans or sometimes actual devices - some knowledge of your car and engine, and some level of mechanical aptitude is required to install them.
At the same time, all of these things sound like a scam. I have heard all of the arguments, some make sense, some don't. So, instead of arguing about it, why don't we slashdotters construct our own, test it out, then see what is real? First off, start by googling hydro-boost [google.com]. One of the first few links will take you to this page [angelfire.com], which is a complete set of "plans" on how to build this kind of device from parts picked up at Home Depot (or the building supply place of your choice/location) and AutoZone or Checker (or whatever auto parts store is near you).
These devices are simple - they make what is known as Brown's Gas [google.com] - a HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE MIXTURE of hydrogen and oxygen gases (note that if you build a "hydro-boost" cell for your car, that you want to make sure all of the gas is going into your engine, and not building up in areas under the hood/bonnet - unless you want a "car that goes BOOM!" literally) - used industrially for welding (similar to an oxy-acetylene torch system) - in fact, from that google search link you will find many suppliers of industrial Brown's Gas welding systems.
I don't know if these systems are the equivalent of fuel-line magnets or if they really work. If you are willing, try it yourself. Also note that I am not sure how your local environmental testing spot will treat you if you leave that device hooked up under your hood for a smog/emmissions test. They would probably fail you outright for unlawful engine modifications. However, they probably wouldn't have a problem helping you test such a system if you are willing to pay the fees needed - to see if emmissions go down if nothing else (other measurements they may or may not be willing to help out on). Just don't go through there "on the sly" - they don't look kindly on loose hoses, never mind funky emmisions modifications they don't approve...
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:3, Interesting)
it should be performed similar to the way NO2 is used on sports cars with the trucker changing bottles when required and the injection controled by a new EMS it would work out signifigantly cheaper to buy and run and deliver more power and better milage
the truck isnt optimised to make hydrogen so having it do it instead is far less efficent than buying it made from natural gas by a gas company and means that benifits of using hydrogen as a
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:4, Informative)
Think of the hydrogen here as something a bit like a spark plug, though IIRC diesel engines have something a bit different from spark plugs. Spark plugs used stored power to initiate combustion, spending stored chemical energy in the battery to release more chemical energy fromm the fuel. The hydrogen here is using stored chemical energy to release more energy from the fuel than would normally be released. The chemical energy from the hydrogen doesn't power the vehicle, just like the chemical energy from the battery doesn't; it's the diesel fuel. The benefits are higher fuel effeciency.
You get the hydrogen for free basically, especially if the vehicle were equipped with more advanced ways to generate electricity like regenerative braking. This isn't in violation of thermodynamics or anything, it just squeezes a little more effeciency out of the system than you'd otherwise get.
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:5, Insightful)
Incomplete combustion occurs because too much fuel is present per mass of air in the cylinder.
Ever have a campfire? Although you had unlimited air supply, why did you have unburned logs at the conclusion of it? Answer: because the material that didn't burn didn't reach the heat needed to combust. If you took a blowtorch to those remaining logs, you may be able to get another fire going, as the particulate that didn't reach it's combustion point the first time is burned off. With enough unburned logs, you might be able to get more energy back than the blowtorch uses. Same principal here.
At least in my view this entire system is bunk and the person interviewed must have some financial interest in the promotion of this product.
Or maybe he just knows what he's talking about, and doesn't draw conclusions from a single faulty premise.
Diesel 101 (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, if they then richen the mixture again (and knowing truckies that's quite likely) then you are back where you started, but with more power.
I don't necessarily believe the hype, but the benefits of using hydrogen to improve effici
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:2, Informative)
Electrolysis powered by the alternator.
How do they start the vehicle moving down the road?
It's still a diesel-fueled vehicle. Adding hydrogen to the mix is supposed to improve milage somehow.
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:2)
Right. It is the details I'm having problems with.
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:2, Interesting)
Removing the hydrogen shouldn't make the engine any more difficult to start.
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:2)
I thought the combustion had to be modified for hydrogen. Unlike gasoline engines, diesel engines use extemely high compression.
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:2)
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:2)
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:2, Informative)
From the article, and from the CHEC HFI page, I'm assuming that what they're doing is allowing the fuel to burn more efficiently at points such as going uphill, flooring the gas, shifting and so on, which are generally weak points for diesel engines. The engines can't burn all the fuel fed, and as a result create the familiar
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:2)
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:5, Informative)
Umm, No...read your own quote: Electricity (from the alternator in the engine) is used to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen.
The fact that water weighs in at over 8lbs is fairly moot -- gasoline weighs in closely, so adding a tank that holds a few gallons of water is not a major addition to trucking weight. Additionally, FEWER emissions. All in all, a good idea, if it is all that it's cracked up to be.
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:2)
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:2)
Ok, so the hydrogen is extracted from water with the energy produced by burning diesel fuel.
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the trucks still run mainly on diesel augmented with hydrogen.
It's less polluting because the hydrogen boosts the performance of the engine over burning diesel alone, lowers particulates, and all that good stuff. So it does pollute less, by burning the fuel more efficiently.
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:5, Informative)
Diesel engines produce soot (dirty filthy polycyclic aromatic compounds) which represents wasted energy and this is merely a way to cut down on the inefficiency represented by the unextracted energy leaving the exhaust. The mechanism by which adding hydrogen to the air-fuel mixture actually accomplishes this involves some complicated physical chemistry beyond the scope of the article- which goes into a misleading nonsequitur about how trucks might use hydrogen-powered fuel cells someday.
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:2, Insightful)
The alternator is being driven regardless of whether you use some of the electricity to split water into hydrogen or not. This isn't a matter of getting something for nothing... it's a matter of not throwing away electricity that's already being generated by the alternator.
Re:Hydrogen Wells? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am so f sick and tired of gd SUV wanks and oil company astroturfers trotting this one out everytime someone mentions anything that sounds at all like it's going to challenge rotten dinosaur corpses as the fuel of choice.
RTFA numbnuts! The hydrogen is generated in the engine by the alternator. Despite the vast overhead of this electrolytic separation these guys are still saving 10 grand a year in fuel which easily pays for the simple bolt-on mod within a year or too. The source of the hydrogen is no more polluting than the engine it modifies because it is the engine it modifies.
Then I notice another equally brilliant mind observing the vast additional burden of 8 lb of water on an 80,000 lb truck. Grab a snatch of a clue as it goes over your head, Sparky. By my calcuations, the entire system, water and all weighs less than the fuel it saves every day.
For those who can't be bothered to RTFA and aren't completely offended, the system basically adds a small amount of hydrogen to the diesel. The effect is similar (though the mechanism may not be...IANACE) to adding a squirt of acetone to your gas tank.
Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst? (Score:3)
Yes, very helpful. Note that the test appears to have been made WITHOUT the alternator being loaded with the hydrogen extraction. When something sounds too good to be true, always look for what they skate around. In this case the report discusses where the manufacturer claims to obtain their hydrogen but by implication that means they didn't actually have one on hand, so they didn't have one connected to the electric
Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst? (Score:3, Informative)
So you'll save $64.84 every 1600 miles.
216 tank fulls and you've saved the original $14000 investment.
(Or around 285 fill ups since you fill up at quarter tanks.)
Let's say you're driving 2500 miles a week. That's 138 weeks driving to break even. 2 and a half years, last time I heard trucks last much longer than that so you're going to save money in the long term.
If you mean t
Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst? (Score:5, Insightful)
When something sounds too good to be true, always look for what they skate around.
Or, look for failures of logic and/or math. Using your numbers, and the numbers of a reply to your post: his truck drives 4500 miles a week, and he gets about 7mpg (1200 miles on 175 gallons). 4500/7=640 gallons consumed a week; 2.75/gallon=$1767 in fuel per week.
Your numbers assumed that this device might allow for a 10% in fuel savings--that'd be $176/week, or x4=$707/month, or very close to what the article estimated the savings were--$700/month. On a $14K device, you'd make it back in 20 months or so-although I also question the consequences of running a (10%?) hotter engine for those kinds of periods ie does it stress the cooling system, or wear the engine components faster?
The only ones suggesting that there is some magic in the hydrogen didn't RTFA. It was pretty clear to me, at least, that the extra power/fuel savings isn't from the hydrogen burn itself, but that the energy released by that burn allowed otherwise unburned (and therefore uncaptured) exhaust particulate to be consumed.
When you go to light a fire with a match, you get more energy in return than what it took to produce the match; you burn the kindling. Here we have kindling flowing out the tailpipe because it wasn't ignited--so the hydrogen is just a match. You naysayers are forgetting that ICE aren't 100% efficient already--so this process raises the efficiency of the primary fuel source, which apparently it can do in greater gains than it took to produce the hydrogen in the first place.
Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst? (Score:4, Interesting)
> used, but still causing the same amount of load on the engine.
Oh God, what are they teaching kids in school these days. No. The more electrical load on an alternator the more force is required to drive it.
When a high load device, such as a high torque motor, starts up a generator will noticably bog down for a moment and the engine will rev to compensate. Trust me on this, I'm in Southwest Louisiana, Rita taught us a thing or two about generators.
Same thing on a rig with one of these puppies. If it is going to generate non-trivial amounts of hydrogen it is going to require a non-trivial quantity of energy in the form of electrical current and an alternator driven by an internal combustion engine isn't very efficient. Most use simple shunt regulators for heaven's sake! That means the power you get from burning the hydrogen is a lot less than what went into seperating it from water. So unless it makes the diesel burn a LOT better it won't be paying its way.
It will make the engine run 'greener' though, which is what this is likely mostly about.
Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst? (Score:4, Interesting)
And since horsepower is torque (twisting power) expressed through time (work), greater horsepower requires more rpm, all other things equal. Which makes the above situation worse.
This works because compressing a gas (the air in the mixture) causes the temp to rise (First law of thermodynamics) but only near the top of the stroke. Adding hydrogen causes the mixture, apparently, to fire quicker (at a lower temperature) so it can burn more completely, producing more power (efficiency) and less polluting compounds and unburnt fuel.
So it is not exactly a catalyst in that it has no part to play in the *chemical* reaction process. But it helps manage a diesel's combustion, appartenly, in a way that otherwise could not be accomplished.
I'd like to see an organization like Anandtech do a piece about this....
Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst? (Score:5, Informative)
Through electrolysis, the Hydrogen Fuel Injection (HFI) kit generates hydrogen and oxygen, which are injected directly into the intake manifold. Published data show that hydrogen burns nearly one order of magnitude faster than petroleum fuels, thus approaching ideal thermodynamic cycle; and hydrogen has a shorter flame quench distance, allowing flames to travel closer to the cold zones, thus improving combustion. These hydrogen properties improve engine performance and emissions.
Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure it probably wouldn't make much sense for a regular car unless you drive a lot or really care about the environment, but fo
Re:What, is the Hydrogen a catalyst? (Score:3, Insightful)
That energy isn't going to waste. The greater the load, the harder it is to turn the alternator, so the more power it consumes from the engine.
But that's not how this gadget works. The hydrogen generated isn't really used to get more power directly, but to make the existing combustion of diesel more efficient. Which results in more power, and less incompl
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