Interesting car- makes hydrogen for better milage

[Cap'n Jack]

This is interesting-

The car runs on gasoline, uses some of the energy from the gas to make hydrogen which is injected into the cylinders for better milage.
http://www.ronnmotors.com/cms/

I first saw this in Product Design and Development.

If someone had asked me ahead of time, I woould have thought it wouldn't work. I would have said the losses would be too high to get useful energy. Since this guy got it working, I guess I would have been wrong. The magazine listed fuel economy as 40 MPG on a 450 HP engine.

 

[Geico266]

That is interesting! I wonder swhy they used a 450 HP engine. Most cars are way under that, and the benifits would be much more noticable, unless you need 200 HP to generate the hydrogen.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

That is interesting! I wonder swhy they used a 450 HP engine. Most cars are way under that, and the benifits would be much more noticable, unless you need 200 HP to generate the hydrogen.

The builder wanted a sports car. I guess if one can get 40 mpg from 450 HP, "most cars" car can do better.

 

[kyleb]

I'll be the first to go on record here questioning the claims. The makers claim that they use power from the car's electrical system to perform electrolysis on water to produce hydrogen to inject into the intake manifold.

No doubt that you can use surplus electrical energy to electrolize water into H2 + 02. The other indisputable issue is that electrolysis uses more energy than can be released from the hydrogen produced.

So, you burn gasoline at 30% efficiency to turn into electricity at something less than 100% efficiency, and then electrolize water at <100% efficiency to produce Hydrogen to burn at 30% efficiency.

You'd do much better just burning the gasoline you need to to produce the required amount of power.

 

[SCCutler]

+1 for Kyle.

TANSTAAFL.

 

[Teller1900]

+1 for Kyle.

TANSTAAFL.

TANSTAAFL?!? At what point does the abbreviation become more cumbersome than just writing out the sentence? Or should I say: AWPDTABMCTJWOTS?

 

[gprellwitz]

TANSTAAFL?!? At what point does the abbreviation become more cumbersome than just writing out the sentence? Or should I say: AWPDTABMCTJWOTS?

We had a coffee shop in my dorm at college named TANSTAAFL. At the U of Chicago, they indoctrinated us early!

 

[flyingcheesehead]

TANSTAAFL?!?

There Are No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

Shouldn't it be TINSTAAFL?

 

[Bob Noel]

There ain't....

 

[SCCutler]

...and yes, it *is* a double-negative.

Get over it.

 

[jtheune]

I'll be the first to go on record here questioning the claims. The makers claim that they use power from the car's electrical system to perform electrolysis on water to produce hydrogen to inject into the intake manifold.

No doubt that you can use surplus electrical energy to electrolize water into H2 + 02. The other indisputable issue is that electrolysis uses more energy than can be released from the hydrogen produced.

So, you burn gasoline at 30% efficiency to turn into electricity at something less than 100% efficiency, and then electrolize water at <100% efficiency to produce Hydrogen to burn at 30% efficiency.

You'd do much better just burning the gasoline you need to to produce the required amount of power.

I'm curious if the high mileage is due to time shifting the power requirements. If you create the hydrogen when you need less power and are running the engine at a more efficient power setting and then use the hydrogen when you need higher power, you could lower the fuel burn at high power settings. Just a thought.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

I'm curious if the high mileage is due to time shifting the power requirements. If you create the hydrogen when you need less power and are running the engine at a more efficient power setting and then use the hydrogen when you need higher power, you could lower the fuel burn at high power settings. Just a thought.

I agree with your hypothesis. I think the hybrid cars work this way too, except they store the electrical energy in batteries (another form of chemical energy) rather than hydrogen. Instead of hauling around batteries, this guy has a hydrogen tank that probably will last the length of time one keeps a car. Current batteries last a few years only before replacement is required.

 

[jtheune]

I agree with your hypothesis. I think the hybrid cars work this way too, except they store the electrical energy in batteries (another form of chemical energy) rather than hydrogen. Instead of hauling around batteries, this guy has a hydrogen tank that probably will last the length of time one keeps a car. Current batteries last a few years only before replacement is required.

Actually the battery placement at 2 years has been pretty much proven to be a OWT. The manufacturers are saying the battery packs are good for the life of the car and are warranty them for up to 8 years. I read a fairly technical article that explained it as a function of the battery controller being able to keep a optimal charge profile on the battery

 

[astanley]

I think there may be a middle line here.

If I run the electrical bus at a steady state, yet I draw down less than the maximum available to me, that "surplus" power could be used for something.

The corollary for this, though, would be making smarter, more efficient use of the electrical generation system, which (if Kyle's post above is right), would translate into larger fuel savings than the aforementioned process.

Cheers,

-Andrew

 

[mantakos]

I'm curious if the high mileage is due to time shifting the power requirements.

That's an interesting thought. When we're talking about "steady state" fuel mileage, e.g. droning along the highway, the usual rap on hybrids is that the availability of an electrical "boost" during those rare times when we want full power allows us to downsize the combustion engine to something smaller and more efficient.

This argument makes more sense when we're talking about a prius, with a 1.8L engine, than the 450hp twin-turbo Scorpion in this article.

I've seen suggestions that mixing in H2 into the regular fuel combustion process somehow improves efficiency, something about how H2 has different burn properties, that it somehow causes a more complete combustion. I don't really know the details. I wonder whether they're trying to make some kind of claim like this? This is more of a "squirting in a tiny bit of H2 makes the fuel combustion better" argument, and not really about using H2 as a primary source of power, and thus not about butting heads directly into the nonsensical perpetual motion machine idea of generating H2 for power.
-harry

 

[flyingcheesehead]

If I run the electrical bus at a steady state, yet I draw down less than the maximum available to me, that "surplus" power could be used for something.

You don't get something for nothing.

Your "steady state" is a voltage generally around 14V when the car is on. But you don't use volts - You use watts, and watts = volts * amps. Amps cause resistance in the alternator which robs power from your engine. There is no "surplus" of power.

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

That's an interesting thought. When we're talking about "steady state" fuel mileage, e.g. droning along the highway, the usual rap on hybrids is that the availability of an electrical "boost" during those rare times when we want full power allows us to downsize the combustion engine to something smaller and more efficient.

This argument makes more sense when we're talking about a prius, with a 1.8L engine, than the 450hp twin-turbo Scorpion in this article.

I've seen suggestions that mixing in H2 into the regular fuel combustion process somehow improves efficiency, something about how H2 has different burn properties, that it somehow causes a more complete combustion. I don't really know the details. I wonder whether they're trying to make some kind of claim like this? This is more of a "squirting in a tiny bit of H2 makes the fuel combustion better" argument, and not really about using H2 as a primary source of power, and thus not about butting heads directly into the nonsensical perpetual motion machine idea of generating H2 for power.
-harry

There are people looking into a lot of odd things like this that allow you do increase the comperssion ratio or get more power per given displacement (run higher boost - allowing downsizing the engine) - I don't recall the details about H2 injection at the moment though..

 

[astanley]

You don't get something for nothing.

Your "steady state" is a voltage generally around 14V when the car is on. But you don't use volts - You use watts, and watts = volts * amps. Amps cause resistance in the alternator which robs power from your engine. There is no "surplus" of power.

This is why I sucked at my electrical engineering class.

Sigh.

Cheers,

-Andrew

 

[Dan Thomas]

You don't get something for nothing.

Your "steady state" is a voltage generally around 14V when the car is on. But you don't use volts - You use watts, and watts = volts * amps. Amps cause resistance in the alternator which robs power from your engine. There is no "surplus" of power.

I once ran across a device at a science center that demonstrated this vividly. It was a stationary bicycle that drove a small generator that powered, via switches, several things like a small television, a radio, and some lights. With everything off, it was easy to pedal. As you switched on one thing after another, it became more and more difficult to work the thing and none of us could run everything at once. The meaning of electrical power became very clear and we all thereafter appreciated the ease with which we live with electricity.

The car's alternator is the same, and requires more and more torque to drive it as it is loaded up. The engine has to work harder to drive it and burns more fuel in doing so. Electrolysis of water is not terribly efficient and the electrical and mechanical losses will cost far more energy than the hydrogen will return. There is, however, some indication that small amounts of H2 do improve the burn somewhat, and I'd think that a compressed-hydrogen tank, filled at the service station, would be the better source IF the theory had sufficient merit and was proven to improve mileage. Producing H2 in large quantities would be far more efficient than aboard the vehicle.

But I think it's a scam. The people promoting this, as usual, stand to make money. I'm old enough to have seen many such gas-saving doodads, none of which are around today. They made more money than mileage. One acquires a certain cynicism after seeing so many ripoffs.

Dan

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

The car's alternator is the same, and requires more and more torque to drive it as it is loaded up. The engine has to work harder to drive it and burns more fuel in doing so. Electrolysis of water is not terribly efficient and the electrical and mechanical losses will cost far more energy than the hydrogen will return. There is, however, some indication that small amounts of H2 do improve the burn somewhat, and I'd think that a compressed-hydrogen tank, filled at the service station, would be the better source IF the theory had sufficient merit and was proven to improve mileage. Producing H2 in large quantities would be far more efficient than aboard the vehicle.

If you make significant engine modifications to take advantage of the H2 there may be some potential. H2 could help meet the California emission standards by reducing unburned HC from the cold start - assuming you re-program the fuel injection and care about the emisions generated on a particular test cycle. But - in this case...

But I think it's a scam. The people promoting this, as usual, stand to make money. I'm old enough to have seen many such gas-saving doodads, none of which are around today. They made more money than mileage. One acquires a certain cynicism after seeing so many ripoffs.

Dan

Bingo.

 

[Trapper John]

There is, however, some indication that small amounts of H2 do improve the burn somewhat...

Similar to using propane injection in a Diesel?


Trapper John

 

[JeffDG]

I would think that if you want more complete combustion, you'd want to up the O2 in the combustion chamber, not the H2. H2 will rob the octane of O2 that it needs for complete combustion.

Doping the cylinder with O2 is essentially the same as a turbo charge, essentially increasing the PO2, allowing more fuel to be burned.

All that said, it's probably a scam...unless the Laws of Thermodynamics were repealed without someone sending out a memo.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

I once ran across a device at a science center that demonstrated this vividly. It was a stationary bicycle that drove a small generator that powered, via switches, several things like a small television, a radio, and some lights. With everything off, it was easy to pedal. As you switched on one thing after another, it became more and more difficult to work the thing and none of us could run everything at once. The meaning of electrical power became very clear and we all thereafter appreciated the ease with which we live with electricity.

The car's alternator is the same, and requires more and more torque to drive it as it is loaded up. The engine has to work harder to drive it and burns more fuel in doing so.

Yup. I got the same demo about 5 years ago while touring the Rocky Reach Dam on the Columbia River in Washington. Their setup had a hand crank with 3 lights of increasing wattage that were automatically switched on as you cranked faster. When the third one, a 100-watt bulb, was switched on, it was like someone was putting the brakes on, it became almost impossible to turn the crank.

Incidentally, that's also how the regenerative braking works on a Prius - They're using your momentum to generate electricity to charge the batteries, and in doing so "put the brakes on" without pads hitting discs.

 

[dmccormack]

Yup. I got the same demo about 5 years ago while touring the Rocky Reach Dam on the Columbia River in Washington. Their setup had a hand crank with 3 lights of increasing wattage that were automatically switched on as you cranked faster. When the third one, a 100-watt bulb, was switched on, it was like someone was putting the brakes on, it became almost impossible to turn the crank.

You need to bicycle more...

;-)

Tour De France riders average 250 watts on 5 hour mountain stages.

 

[Dave Krall CFII]

The most promising "Hybrid" prototype I've read about lately uses braking power and excess gasoline engine power to highly compress air for later use in propulsion. The high compression air system is complicated but it eliminates the muss and fuss of chemical battery banks that have a short useful life.

 

[astanley]

You need to bicycle more...

;-)

Tour De France riders average 250 watts on 5 hour mountain stages.

Remember when Floyd Landis averaged 460 over the Alpe d'Huez to regain the lead? 4 hours of ball busting climbing at 460?!?!

I did a happy jaunt averaging 120 watts Sunday, 40 miles. My legs were not happy yesterday; and my quick loop this morning was a sore affair for the first 3 miles.

Cheers,

-Andrew

 

[Cap'n Jack]

That's an interesting thought. When we're talking about "steady state" fuel mileage, e.g. droning along the highway, the usual rap on hybrids is that the availability of an electrical "boost" during those rare times when we want full power allows us to downsize the combustion engine to something smaller and more efficient.

This argument makes more sense when we're talking about a prius, with a 1.8L engine, than the 450hp twin-turbo Scorpion in this article.

I've seen suggestions that mixing in H2 into the regular fuel combustion process somehow improves efficiency, something about how H2 has different burn properties, that it somehow causes a more complete combustion. I don't really know the details. I wonder whether they're trying to make some kind of claim like this? This is more of a "squirting in a tiny bit of H2 makes the fuel combustion better" argument, and not really about using H2 as a primary source of power, and thus not about butting heads directly into the nonsensical perpetual motion machine idea of generating H2 for power.
-harry

I don't know much about burning hydrogen along with other fuels. The magazine claimed he was seeing 120 octane equivelant with the combination of gasoline and hydrogen.

I'm certainly in no position to contradict the claim but it does sound almost too good to be true- and we all know about claims too good to be true. The magazine (see original post) should have better stories than Popular Science.

 

[kyleb]

The most promising "Hybrid" prototype I've read about lately uses braking power and excess gasoline engine power to highly compress air for later use in propulsion. The high compression air system is complicated but it eliminates the muss and fuss of chemical battery banks that have a short useful life.

Compressed air is a horribly inefficient medium to store energy. When you compress air, you create a lot of heat. Heat = wasted energy.

You're better off using regenerative braking to charge a battery. Put enough amps in the battery and the engine can turn off when the car is slow or stopped. In the meantime, the battery powers the heater, the A/C, the radio, etc. This is the method most hybrids use to greatly increase their city mileage.

On the highway, hybrids offer no advantage over a conventional car of similar hp, weight, and aerodynamics.

 

[dmccormack]

Remember when Floyd Landis averaged 460 over the Alpe d'Huez to regain the lead? 4 hours of ball busting climbing at 460?!?!

I did a happy jaunt averaging 120 watts Sunday, 40 miles. My legs were not happy yesterday; and my quick loop this morning was a sore affair for the first 3 miles.

Cheers,

-Andrew

Yes I do -- he was amazing.

I raced against him in Lancaster when he was with Green Mountain cyclery. We had no idea who he was -- he showed up to an early season crit on a mountain bike.

When he lapped the field we really wanted to know who that guy was?!

 

[Dan Thomas]

I don't know much about burning hydrogen along with other fuels. The magazine claimed he was seeing 120 octane equivelant with the combination of gasoline and hydrogen.

I'm certainly in no position to contradict the claim but it does sound almost too good to be true- and we all know about claims too good to be true. The magazine (see original post) should have better stories than Popular Science.

That "120-octane equivalent" claim just confirms that they're scamming the unwary. A higher octane rating, by itself, does not produce more power; it only allows higher compression ratios without detonation, and higher compression ratios only come with engine mods or in engines built that way to start with. It sounds like the old octane-booster snake oil some con artists sold years ago.

He'd have to do octane testing on his fuel to get that number, unless he made it up. guess which I suspect?

Dan

 

[Dave Krall CFII]

Compressed air is a horribly inefficient medium to store energy. When you compress air, you create a lot of heat. Heat = wasted energy.

You're better off using regenerative braking to charge a battery. Put enough amps in the battery and the engine can turn off when the car is slow or stopped. In the meantime, the battery powers the heater, the A/C, the radio, etc. This is the method most hybrids use to greatly increase their city mileage.

On the highway, hybrids offer no advantage over a conventional car of similar hp, weight, and aerodynamics.

Sure there's the heat of compression but the simplicity of the system over chemical and combustion system deserves further experimentation, especially for stop and go city driving and in hilly terrain.

 

[gismo]

This is interesting-

The car runs on gasoline, uses some of the energy from the gas to make hydrogen which is injected into the cylinders for better milage.
http://www.ronnmotors.com/cms/

I first saw this in Product Design and Development.

If someone had asked me ahead of time, I woould have thought it wouldn't work. I would have said the losses would be too high to get useful energy. Since this guy got it working, I guess I would have been wrong. The magazine listed fuel economy as 40 MPG on a 450 HP engine.

I wouldn't invest my life's savings in this concept. First of all, the energy required to liberate H2 from O can never be less than the energy produced by re-combining the two in combustion. Some energy will be lost during the electrolysis as heat, more will be lost in the less than perfect efficiency of the alternator.

Here's a thought experiment to illustrate what I'm trying to explain:

Let's say that we start with a quantity of gasoline having an energy content of 1000 Joules via combustion in an engine. Let's also assume that the engine is able to convert 40% of this energy into mechanical work for one minute with the rest yielding nothing but wasted heat. Without any electrolysis gimmicrky we get 400 joules to propel the car from the original 1000. Then let's divert 100 of those joules to drive an alternator who's output is used to separate hydrogen from oxygen. Let's use an alternator that's 90% efficient and estimate that the electrolysis itself is also 90% efficient. That means the energy content in the released hydrogen equals 100*.9^2=81 joules. Now we feed the H2 and O2 into the engine (the article didn't mention using the O2 but it can only help). Assuming the engine's efficiency isn't significantly affected by the type of fuel, we should get 40% of those 81 joules (.4*81=32.4 out as mechanical work/time. IOW with the addition of the "energy saving" electrolysis system we net 332.4 joules instead of the original 400 we'd get without it. And that's ignoring the extra weight of the electrolysis equipment and the needed pumps etc. get the H2 into the engine and feed the water to the electolysis.


The concept as described sounds an awful lot like chemical perpeptual motion to me.

Second, from what I've seen, electrolysis is not a very fast process so even if there was a net energy gain, the overall improvement would be small unless the cell was huge.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

You need to bicycle more...

;-)

Tour De France riders average 250 watts on 5 hour mountain stages.

Yes, but this was a *hand* crank. I'm sure I could have done a lot better if it was a bike.