DIY Hydrogen convesrion for petrol & diesel engines

[dilbert]

renrut said:

dilbert said:

renrut said:

This is another one of those perpetual motion machines. Basic thermodynamics laws say this is a stupid idea. You're splitting water into H and O, a not 100% efficient process as noted by the heat also generated. Then you are taking the H and O and burning it to give you water again. Also a not 100% efficent process. But somehow you have a net gain of energy released?

It would only be useful if the hydrogen came free which it doesnt. Having to generate it makes it pointless.

As noted by several previous posters turbocharging is the solution you want as that takes the most efficiently usable heat from the exhaust and doesnt require huge amounts of extra equipment and weight or strangle the engine.

The sooner people start getting off the hydrogen bandwagon the better IMO. Hydrogen is great in nuclear fusion research and fuelling space rockets but a dead end as far as automotive fuels go.

There was a guy on the news the other week who is (allegedly) saving thousands of pounds a month now he has fitted a hydrogen injection system to his fleet of diesel HGV tractor units.

The techy bloke was saying that it improves the efficiency of the burning diesel, by more than the cost of the hydrogen. I'm guessing this is similar to those who use Propane in the same way.

Free energy it is not, but cheaper than before, it would seem to be. Hydrogen is simply a more practical product to obtain than Propane, I guess, and presumably cheaper.

Admittedly I'm also guessing that said tractor units are/were already turbocharged.

Edited by dilbert on Thursday 7th August 03:56

I'm confused by these claims. I'm open to the possibility of hydrogen being a catalyst in a reaction but if this really was a successful method for improving efficiency wouldn't the shipping industry be using it? Or the airline industry? Obviously someone would have to start but this sort of thing has been going on for years so if they still havent started using it then there really must be something wrong with the idea.

Good ol wikipedia to the rescue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen#Applications

The interesting bit is where it talks about it being an energy carrier or in fact not as they quite rightly state.

I don't know. But I have often heard of people using propane with diesel, like nitrous. For me it's not a huge leap that hydrogen may offer similar benefits, but I could never accept the idea of "free energy". Catalysts have always been poorly understood, and I'd not be at all surprised if many industries were reluctant to take on the additional complexity. Think how long it took for people to adopt exhaust catalysts on cars.

Chemistry is not my thing, but certainly if I had the time to experiment with this I would, even if it was just to find that it couldn't offer anything useful.

Engineers like myself spend a lot of time saying that simpler is better, and I suppose it is, but there is no substitute for a scientific evaluation of advancement, and it's benefit.

http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/news/2005/11/6952...
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServ...

Edited by dilbert on Thursday 7th August 15:27

[renrut]

I don't doubt it could give you more power in a similar way to nitrous injection but I suspect it doesnt pay out in terms of efficiency.

Chemistry is not my strong point either (B at GCSE and that was a long time ago) but from an energy conservation point of view it doesnt add up unless it is working to reduce losses in addition to generating the power directly by burning.

But you are right a lot of industries are often tied up in not trusting new technology. Just look at how long its taking regenerative braking to break into the automotive scene, something decades old and still manufacturers are wary of it, not helped by the public and media reactions to cars like the Prius and Insight.

[Tpfkalm]

Compressing hydrogen in bottles!!!!

They must be mighty large bottles.

Now, as far as I understand, hydrogen doesn't liquify, which means that you need to have big bottles if you want to actually make it out of your drive.

I like the idea of using eco power to split water.

I would have thought the H&S gang would have been on to him bigstyle.

I like the idea in theory, but realistically, it would be more sense to have a hamster wheel turbine running the car.

Consider the efficiency of a petrol engine, then consider the efficiency of a wind turbine. Consider the costs of compression. He is going to need an awful lot of wind to make fk all progress.

A great idea, but st when you give it a fag packet calculation.

[Pigeon]

There are two main aspects to adding a flammable gas to the charge of a diesel engine.

One is a straightforward power boost by using up the excess oxygen which is always present in a diesel, even at full throttle it's about 50% lean. For this purpose propane is better than hydrogen as it is much more energy-dense due to its carbon content - carbon releases much more energy in combustion than hydrogen does.

The other is improving the thermodynamic efficiency of the engine by assisting the combustion process of the diesel fuel. It doesn't improve the "efficiency of combustion" as such - all the chemical energy in the fuel is converted to heat anyway as long as the engine isn't chucking out black smoke. What it does is speed up the rather sluggish process of vaporising and burning the diesel, so the combustion is faster and you are closer to the thermodynamic ideal of heat addition at constant volume.

[knighty]

Tpfkalm said:

Compressing hydrogen in bottles!!!!

They must be mighty large bottles.

Now, as far as I understand, hydrogen doesn't liquify, which means that you need to have big bottles if you want to actually make it out of your drive.

I like the idea of using eco power to split water.

I would have thought the H&S gang would have been on to him bigstyle.

I like the idea in theory, but realistically, it would be more sense to have a hamster wheel turbine running the car.

Consider the efficiency of a petrol engine, then consider the efficiency of a wind turbine. Consider the costs of compression. He is going to need an awful lot of wind to make fk all progress.

A great idea, but st when you give it a fag packet calculation.

there is two ways to take the Hydrogen power route

1) liquid Hydrogen
2) Gas hydrogen

the liquid route will give you about 4 times the distance, but storing and transferring liquid hydrogen is big grief, hence Honda are only making 200 of their new liquid hydrogen car

Regarding wind turbines and compressed cylinders, there was this chap doing it on the isle of sheppey, believe me it looked quite safe and professional and it worked, they have PLENTY of wind on the isle of sheppey, hence he had about 50 cylinders worth of hydrogen in stock, he used the car for around town driving and it worked a treat.

The University iof Herfordshire have also just built and raced a hydrogen gas car, yes they cylinders were big, but it worked a treat.

The main trouble with Hydrogen is it scares the st out of all the oil companies, hence they are holding guns to the manufacturers heads, and it will prolly never happen in mass production until "someone" can take a bigger gun to the oil companies heads.

[Huff]

The other big problem with hydrogen is that commercially all of it is made from ... natural gas & oil stocks.

Given that renewable energy (eg wind) are only just coming into mainstream use for primary generation there's no 'free' capacity to make electrolysis a worthwhile operation. So hydrogen, for a long while yet, will remain essentially not a renewable so much as a displacement activity.

[GreenV8S]

knighty said:

The main trouble with Hydrogen is it scares the st out of all the oil companies, hence they are holding guns to the manufacturers heads, and it will prolly never happen in mass production until "someone" can take a bigger gun to the oil companies heads.

That sounds very similar to the stories that went round after the war of the new improved carburettors being suppressed by the nasty bad oil companies. Have you got any evidence to support your claim that this is happening? It's hard to see what form the 'gun' would take.

[renrut]

Surely the oil companies are actually all for hydrogen? The total efficiency of a hydrogen fuel from source to final usage is very poor compared to petroleum and poor even compared to electric battery cars. And as pointed out already the oil/gas companies would be providing the fuel to generate the hydrogen as renewables (currently) will not be able to support the demand for a petroleum replacement alone. So the oil/gas companies would have to sell more oil and gas to produce the equivalent amount of hydrogen, so more money for them.

[annodomini2]

renrut said:

Surely the oil companies are actually all for hydrogen? The total efficiency of a hydrogen fuel from source to final usage is very poor compared to petroleum and poor even compared to electric battery cars. And as pointed out already the oil/gas companies would be providing the fuel to generate the hydrogen as renewables (currently) will not be able to support the demand for a petroleum replacement alone. So the oil/gas companies would have to sell more oil and gas to produce the equivalent amount of hydrogen, so more money for them.

Yup, it takes 35x the energy to move your car with Hydrogen than it does using petrol.

Also they go on that only water vapor out of the exhaust, i.e. no CO2, two points to this:

1. You will produce CO2 (if the power is sourced from the grid) making the Hydrogen in the first place.
2. Water Vapor is a bigger contributor to Global warming than CO2.

[knighty]

GreenV8S said:

knighty said:

The main trouble with Hydrogen is it scares the st out of all the oil companies, hence they are holding guns to the manufacturers heads, and it will prolly never happen in mass production until "someone" can take a bigger gun to the oil companies heads.

That sounds very similar to the stories that went round after the war of the new improved carburettors being suppressed by the nasty bad oil companies. Have you got any evidence to support your claim that this is happening? It's hard to see what form the 'gun' would take.

I currently work for a company financed by a truck load of oil money, we are developing fuel saving technology.....not hydrogen technology.....work it out.

[GreenV8S]

knighty said:

I currently work for a company financed by a truck load of oil money, we are developing fuel saving technology.....not hydrogen technology.....work it out.

Work what out?

You're saying that the oil companies are researching ways to reduce oil consumption, which isn't unreasonable for them to do. What does this tell us about what other research they may be doing, and whether they are applying pressure to other companies to stop them doing their own research?

[knighty]

GreenV8S said:

knighty said:

I currently work for a company financed by a truck load of oil money, we are developing fuel saving technology.....not hydrogen technology.....work it out.

Work what out?

You're saying that the oil companies are researching ways to reduce oil consumption, which isn't unreasonable for them to do. What does this tell us about what other research they may be doing, and whether they are applying pressure to other companies to stop them doing their own research?

ok its like this, oil companies are not researching ways to reduce oil consumption......they are working out ways to prolong the use of oil, they are effectivley protecting their investments......oil companies are inter-twined with all major motor manufacturers, just as much as they are inter-twined with the major governments around the world, particularly the US and UK.......their clout is massive, to the point that they can and do heavily influence the motor industry.

[quattrophenia]

I think the main issue most people are concerned about is not how to get energy for nothing or what my emissions will be or even how effectively my engine is working.
For me it's how much money can I avoid paying the robbing government in tax. If as a by-product my emissions save a few icebergs then I'll probably sleep a little better at night as well.

[GreenV8S]

knighty said:

oil companies are inter-twined with all major motor manufacturers, just as much as they are inter-twined with the major governments around the world, particularly the US and UK.......their clout is massive, to the point that they can and do heavily influence the motor industry.

So you say, but frankly I don't see it. I just don't see how an oil company can apply any significant influence over a car manufacturer. The total oil/plastic cost in a car is not huge in the scheme of things and the oil suppliers don't have a monopoly. Toyota, for example, haven't suddenly found themselves having to nip down to Halfords to buy their oil, just because they did some research on hybrid technology. The car companies' sales are massively sensitive to market pressures and if they could get a commercial advantage by developing technology that made cars cheaper to run, I am absolutely certain that they would go ahead with that. I don't see anything that the oil companies could do to stop them, and in fact I doubt that the oil companies would *want* to stop them.