OSU engineer: Hydrogen system in autos a scam (!)

www.gazettetimes.com ^ | 7-31-2008 | By Steve Lathrop

[norton]

Not just brush your teeth...anyone else remember [way back] those little frog-men, submarines, and battleships that you filled with baking soda and watched swimming around the bathtub?

[Red Badger]

Laws?...We don't need no steenking laws!.....................

[uglybiker]

That's what the spark plugs are for! DUH!

Now if you don't mind, I'm off to the auto parts store for a couple of muffler bearings and some blinker fluid.

[Brit]

Being a really really old person..I often wonder about what happened to something I actually saw on BBC TV many years ago.

A guy named Ferguson (he owned the Massey Ferguson tractor company) was showing off a car he had invented. The vehicle was powered by oil or similar fluid under pressure in a tank under the hood. Two hoses led to each wheel and the fluid was forced against an enclosed fan on each wheel. Then it was returned to the holding tank..when under braking the fluid reversed the jets and stopped the car.

There was a minimum of oil loss to the tank and it was just topped up every few months.

I was just a slip of a lad at the time..but I can still see the driver aiming for a brick wall and stopping easily.

You might think that this system would have had massive publicity..but I never heard anything else about it after that news flash. I would be interested to know if anyone else has ever heard of this?

What a tremendous thing if it worked!! No more engines or gas to worry about..oil companies going tits up all over the place!!

[TheWasteLand]

Badgers! We don’t need no steenking badgers!

[TheWasteLand]

LOL! I just realized your FReepname is Red Badger.

[Toddsterpatriot]

Sounds like something Enron, an evil real estate agent/broker or mortgage banker/broker would do.

[wildbill]

This article http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/31/energyefficiency.energy

was posted shortly after this one.

Personally I like the solutions proposed by the boys on RedStateUpdate.com.

Windmill powered cars are sponsored by the Democrats while the Republican favor autos powered from the pelts of endangered species.

[Bob]

Point here is there IS excess energy being produced from the alternator.

And where does that energy come from? Could it perhaps be from the mechanical energy being put into it from the engine?

If the alternator really were capable of putting out more energy than is being put into it, one could connect the alternator's output to an electric motor and have the electric moter drive the alternator. Voila, instant perpetual motion!

[norraad]

Oh, but that's not what I'm referring to, High Pressure Fuel Injection assures that every molecule of hydrocarbon is properly surrounded by air for complete & much more powerful combustion, sort of like the dust explosions in the old grain elevators.

If one could climb down to Jimminy Crickets scale of molecular viewpoints, todays engines are lacklusterly tossing clumps of logs on the fire like wasteful locomotives in an old western.

We would still be breathing wasted combustion byproducts of these "loco ~ motives" just like China is today, were it not for the little heat engines called catalytic converters clinging to our tailpipes under our a$$$es.

But, that's another story of corruption and control I'm not at liberty to reveal.

[untrained skeptic]

I always believed that energy isn't created its converted, its the efficiency and the by-product of the conversion that matters.

Very true.

However, we know how much energy can be gotten from burning the hydrogen and how much energy it takes to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen. It takes more energy to split the molecules than you get from the hydrogen.

If there were some catalyst used to reduce the energy to split the molecules, that might help explain it, but there doesn't seem to be any catalyst in these kits.

The internal combustion engine isn't 100% efficient, but adding hydrogen to the gasoline isn't going to suddenly make it more efficient or make either burn with dramatically greater efficiency.

So where does the energy come from to increase the efficiency?

My guess? They are charging up a battery, using the battery to power they splitting of the water in to hydrogen and oxygen, but not recharging the battery. Your system is actually less efficient, but you're ignoring one of the energy sources.

[Wuli]

I often see theoretical scientists that are looking at the hole and not the donut when it comes to applied science; they are often over-optimistic or over-pessimistic when pronouncing what MUST happen when theories move to application.

Without looking at cost, simply the engineering of the application, I would tend to take the word of regular people who are actually using something as opposed to an academic who claims what those people say they are experiencing cannot possibly happen.

[CMAC51]

I guess that this means it doesn't work after all................

I don't know if it works or not, but this idiot is full of BS.

Of course the second law of thermodynamics would apply in a waste free system. However, the alternator on your car is turning whether the battery is being drained or not. The load on the engine is lighter when the alternator is not charging the battery, but the load does not go to zero. This is lost energy. If this energy is captured by increasing the throughput of the battery, and fed back into the engine in the form of hydrogen, you have not created more energy in the system, you have simply reduced waste.

If this smartass want to shoot his mouth off, he should construct a true scientific experiment with controlled variables and present the results for peer review. Anything less is crap and he should shut up. We don't need educated idiots mucking up the water.

[bamaintx]

He is correct in this statement,
It takes mechanical power to turn the alternator (kW) The alternator in turn makes electrical power, which also can be measured in kW. In general a standard automotive alternator has an efficiency of about 40%. They do consume more power than they can make. He clarifies his statement by saying that the alternator uses more power that the hydrogen process can produce.

[bamaintx]

Bingo!
Automotive alternators in general are about 40% effecient.
The big generator heads your see on standby gen-set are approx 92 - 94% efficient.

[calex59]

Try an experiment. Sit in an old (1964) Volkswagen with the engine at a low idle and turn on headlights. You can audibly hear the pitch of the engine change.

Or just turn the air conditioning on in any car with 4 cylinder engine and see what happens, even driving down the road you will feel the power drop and have to compensate by pushing down on the accelerator, which is why you get less gas mileage(regardless of engine size)with an air conditioner on than when it is off.

[CowboyJay]

"If this smartass want to shoot his mouth off, he should construct a true scientific experiment"

'Nuf said. The guy could be a world-class physicist, and still be 90% ignorant about automotive engineering.

[Neidermeyer]

This isn’t exactly true. In fact the alternator DOES produce “excess power”. It produces MORE energy that is used in MOST vehicles to 1) power lights, radios and so forth and 2) keep the battery charged completely. (Not all cars have high duty alternators).

Point here is there IS excess energy being produced from the alternator.
********************************************************
The vast majority of cars have alternators that are computer controlled/on demand types that do not run continuously as the first generation ones in the 1960’s and 1970’s did ... They have very short duty cycles and high output.

If you want to save fuel ...

1.) reduce your miles driven if possible
2.) reduce friction losses , windows closed if at more than 40 mph , tires inflated properly , light engine oil ..
3.) lean out your mixture ,, most cars are about 20% richer than they should be for max mpg (rich for emissions) ,, retune using an exhaust gas temp guage and adjusting mixture by manipulating the O2 sensors signal.

[RightWhale]

guess that this means it doesn't work after all................

Guess it is still possible, but the mechanism would not be what this engineer thinks it is. Got to solve the given problem not the one you make up because you know how to solve it.

[bert]

I don’t think you are correct. Your statement violates the law of conservation of energy.

While the watts produced by the generator may be more than the system can use or store, the watts quantity transmitted through the belt to the alternator is greater by a significant margin. A 60 % effieiency would be good, meaning that there is a 40% loss.