Posted on 07/08/2008 12:45:19 PM PDT by Red Badger
Greg Raleigh of Elk Mound gets nine miles more per gallon of gas from his 2002 Ford Escort after installing parts that help the engine run on hydrogen.
ELK MOUND - Greg Raleigh is spending less time at the gas pump and saving money thanks to technology and a quart-size canning jar.
Raleigh has installed what is called hydrogen injection technology - or hydrogen on demand - in his 2002 Ford Escort, improving his gas mileage by 29 percent.
The car was getting 31 miles per gallon and now gets 40, Raleigh said.
"I'm saving about $20 a week at current gas prices," he said. "That's $1,000 a year. It will take me about four or five months to get a return on the investment."
Raleigh learned about the technology on the Internet, where he bought the plans and tools. The total cost was about $400.
A quart-size container under the hood is filled with water and a quarter-teaspoon of baking soda, along with some electrical components. Vacuum and electricity from the car engine produce hydrogen and oxygen gas. The gas is sent through the intake manifold.
"The mix of hydrogen gas increases the volatility or explosiveness of the fuel," Raleigh said, noting it is like using a higher-octane fuel. "You're adding energy to enhance that octane value."
An extra computer circuit board makes sure the car's computer understands the exhaust is cleaner than regular gas to ensure mileage increases.
The process also cuts emissions, including soot, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxides, said Raleigh, 43, who is operations manager for Extrusion Dies, a tool and die company in Chippewa Falls.
In Korea these types of systems are being required for large diesel trucks to cut emissions, Raleigh said.
About every four to five days he has to add more water and baking soda, which takes him about a minute.
It took him about 80 hours to understand the system and install it. He also installed one on his father's car, and it took about 12 hours.
"I did it because I have a series of projects I want to do," Raleigh said, noting his goal is to become greener and protect natural resources.
Raleigh in December also installed a wind turbine in his yard to help cut his electrical energy consumption by about 26 percent.
His next project is to encourage convenience stores to provide reusable stainless steel mugs for filtered water and cut the use of disposable plastic bottles.
Jo Hayes, a neighbor of Raleigh's, plans to have him install hydrogen on demand in her 1995 Jeep Cherokee in the next month.
"It will be a way to save gas and a way to save money," she noted. "I am tired of the high gas prices. I think this is really going to help."
She gets about 18 miles per gallon from her Jeep. "Greg figured in eight fills I'll have paid for it," she said.
Installing hydrogen on demand may not be for everyone.
"You can damage your car if you don't know what you are doing," Raleigh said.
The catalytic convertor could melt, and in rare cases the valves could burn out.
The origin of the technology dates to the 1980s, Raleigh said.
In late July and early August, a group called JONAH will hold educational events at Joel's Water Street Auto in Eau Claire to show people the hydrogen on demand in Raleigh's car and explain how to get the plans and parts.
JONAH, which stands for Joining Our Neighbors Advancing Hope, is made up of eight Chippewa Valley churches. One of the group's goals is to discuss environmental issues.
"Our intent is to be educators, not installers," Raleigh said.
Powers can be reached at 715-235-9018 or pamela.powers@ecpc.com.
I don’t know if it’s similar to what I had, but back in the 80’s I bought a 1968 Chevy Bel Air that had a unit installed that put water vapor into the air or gas intake (I can’t remember which) and that car got real good mileage on a 327 V-8 and the tailpipe stayed cotton white. My B-I-L who works on cars said the water vapor increased the burn efficiency of the gas/air mix and made the engine burn the gas more completely. It never made sense to me and I don’t know if what this guy has installed is the same thing or not, but I know in my case the engine performance and MPG was better.
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That is a more plausible setup than this guy has...
You were allowing water to be sucked in and turned to steam which has something like a 1600/1 expansion ratio ,, sure the water absorbed some of the combustion heat but it was being put to use in driving those pistons down as it converted to steam... The loss of heat to the cooling system would be reduced by the amount absorbed by the water vapor. It would probably have reduced your NOX emissions at the same time.
Yeah, that does sound like what I had. I wonder if there was any downside to it?
Step 2. Now attach your hydrogen generator and see how much your mileage drops. Since you are taking power from the engine to produce the hydrogen, your mileage will have to drop when compared to the hydrogen tank method.
I can see a few reasons for the increased mileage.
1. Injecting hydrogen gives a better burning characteristic to the fuel (when it detonates, how quickly it burns, etc) so more energy goes into pushing the piston and less into heat and noise. If so, then you've got something.
2. The hydrogen is a ruse. You're just running the engine lean so it gets less power and burns less fuel. If so, maybe you would be happier with a 4 cylinder engine instead of a 6 running lean with a few thousand dollars of BS attached.
3. The hydrogen is providing extra energy. Not a real option because it takes more energy to perform electrolysis on the water than you get back burning the hydrogen. Perhaps something else is happening like you're taking exhaust heat to heat the water so while the total energy put into splitting the water is greater than the energy you get from burning it, but if you only count the electrical energy you are coming out ahead.
Water in the oil, causing foamy brown gunk on the dipstick and filler cap. But it was an old car, so it didn’t much make a difference in engine life. I had a 81 Ford F-100 at one time that had a cracked engine block. Had water in the oil all the time. It was still running good when I sold it at 150k+ miles...................
So does this method increase fuel efficiency like I thought it did at the time, and is there any pitfalls caused by this set up? I did not notice any problems at the time.
That has been said by some who get it.
Neither he nor the reporter know what they’re talking about. Diesels use water injection to cool the compressed air charge coming into the engine and thereby produce a cleaner burn and more power.
Another variant of the “hydrogen as miracle fuel” scam.
Why not just raise the rear of the car up so it’s always going down hill? That would work as well as the water bottles.
Apparently, it does work, but it is hard to configure the cars computer. A co-worker of mine is attempting to add this to his Suburban. Just google “hydrogen fuel enhancement”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fuel_injection
Isn't that why we did that with air shocks and put those big fat tires on our cars back in the 70s?...............
Mythbusters....those guys wouldn’t know scientific methods if it kicked them in the ass. I’ve seen grade experiments have better controls.
None of these “miracles” work, and most of them damage the engines to the point of shortening the engine life to a few thousand miles. Messing with the fuel mixture and timing will increase your mileage for a while, until your engine burns out.
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Huge mileage increases can be had with alterations to the timing and fuel maps ... every car is adjusted to
1.) meet emissions requirements
and
2.) avoid warranty claims...
Manufacturers build in very cautious settings ...
as for the cooling system they test in Death Valley ,, in summer ,, with a full load!
Ignition timing is often set for 85 octane fuel (lowest octane sold at Sunoco) and they assume that fuel is weaker than 85 ...
Fuel is often set slightly rich for emissions (the converters don’t like it lean)...
If you retune and don’t tow through the desert you’ll be fine ... you can usually get 10-15% better mileage in a car that is retuned for economy ,, 25% better for most light trucks (the manufacturers build in a bigger “cushion” on trucks as they expect you to overload the vehicle). My neighbors 99 Dodge 1500 w/318 V8 went from 13 avg to an easy 16+ and this is a heavy vehicle that has been abused and poorly maintained.
I would recommend any of the “water wetter” products that increases heat transfer from your coolant .. good stuff
So does this method increase fuel efficiency like I thought it did at the time, and is there any pitfalls caused by this set up? I did not notice any problems at the time.
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It probably helped some ,,, especially if the timing was adjusted to take advantage of the cooler intake charge.. This would work best on slower turning motors to get the most out of the steam expansion (like the Korean diesels someone else mentioned).. The only downside would be water getting into the oil and even that isn’t too bad .. water doesn’t really hurt the lubrication and it’ll burn off as steam and be ingested by the motor through the PCV system if the engine is good and hot,,, water in oil is more of an indicator of a problem than a problem itself... if you used “mist heads” from the garden center you could probably rig up something workable... The question is how much to inject and how to vary the quantity appropriately. You could probably just allow engine vacuum to do the work for you.
No, that was so no one would notice those lime green triple knit leisure suits. And it helped short guys reach the pedals. Somehow. It’s technical.
This might work better if you were to use a cheap electric fuel pump and an aux tank for the water ... get a used fuel injector or two from the junkyard from the same type of car as yours so you don’t have compatibility issues with mixing high or low impedance injectors ,, rig the fuel pump so that it cuts off when water runs out (could be as simple as relaying the pump with one of the trigger leads split and immersed in the water tank ,, water=electricity ,, no water =relay off.
If anyone looked at the btu content of hydrogen they would see that it contains only 270 btu/cubic ft. while gasoline contains nearly 3,100 times as much. So to save one gallon of gasoline the device would have to produce 3,100 gallons of hydrogen gas.
But the sellers of this junk operate on another planet where the physics are different, I guess.
Bump to read later
Mark
There are engine solutions which have been around for years, allow us to beat Islamic dominated OPEC at their own game.
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