Very interesting thread guys.
It will be interesting to see what developes in the next 20 or 30 years,
tho I wont be around to see it.
I also expect to be back to using a horse and sulky in my older age.

My offering for an alternative fuel engine, would have to be a 2 stroke
running on compressed soap bubbles !
Replace the spark plug with a PIN and there ya go.
Cheers.

__________________
Robert Dunn.
Mackay. Qld.

1992 Discovery V8 i.
R.I.P. 62 Series. Purchased new.
plus 3 other series kept to 1988.
R.I.P. LJ 50.
R.I.P. 73 Patrol. Had to try it . Found it bulletproof.

Growing old is good while it lasts.

Ive seen some "frequency adjusted" water splitters that make a fair bit of browns gas off of a 12v battery, obviously no where near enough to actually run an engine but I wonder if you couldnt get enough to achieve the same effect as the Diesel gas LPG fumigation kits......

__________________
Dave

"In a Landrover the other vehicle is your crumple zone."

Big Red '03 D110 Extreme (TD5manual chipped)
Fozzy, 2.25D SIII Ex Telecom Highside Ute (bye Kermit)
T4 Diagnostics (sorta)

For spelling call Rogets, for mechanicing call me.

Hi Dave,

I believe this is what this guy I know has on his 130. He is claiming under 10l/100 and that is towing . He does have a 4BD1 with a turbo and intercooler, LT85 and 33"s etc and says his fuel mileage is up by around 15% at least.
I'll maybe trial his system on my RR, he has mentioned that he wants more 'test' vehicles...
JC

As posted early, hydrogen may one day be a viable alternative to fossil fuels but at the present time, it is just not a cost effective fuel for a whole host of reasons.

Hydrogen is used in industry in things like Hydroxegen welders.

I saw a forerunner to this type of welder back in the 70s when a guy by the name of Brown ( can’t remember his first name ) made the front cover of Electronics Australia.

Mr Brown had his office and lab at Alburn and a mate and I were given a tour of his set up and one of the projects he was working on was his version of a Hydrogen - Oxygen electric welder. Very strange watching him weld copper rods to house brick, demonstrating what these welders could do without any special gear or chemicals.

30 years ago he was making statements that hydrogen cars would be the way of the future but now, as then, no one knows how far into the future we have to go before they become everyday commodities.

Having said that, there are now service stations in California that have Hydrogen on tap.

The use of hydrogen gas is being promoted to help reduce the amount of smog that plagues some of California’s cities. The problem is that in the USA something like 93% of all hydrogen produce, is done so using fossil fuels, which means California has just moved the pollution from one location to another.

One point, raised in Robin William’s move, “Man of the Year”, why are petroleum companies promoting hydrogen, when everything researched about it, to date, shows that it is highly unlikely to be a feasible alternative to fossil fuels for decades?

On a different line, someone else might be able to point in the right direction, but I remember seeing a news item, late last year where a term from either Sydney University or the University of NSW, were working on a new device that, once developed, looks like and sits on your roof like a solar panel but did a direct conversion of light to hydrogen gas. Anybody know more about it.

Contrary to what you may think of my posts on this subject, I would love to see hydrogen in common use to day and a good few years ago, I played around with the stuff and would love to be doing it again, but as I see it, there is no economically clean way, at this stage, to produce it for your own use.

__________________

Maybe I only just skimmed through this thread, but why is there so much opposition??!!!

Making hydrogen through simple electrolysis to provide an additive to the existing fuel system is simple. A supplmentary fuel supply dosent need mega power, the battery is sufficent.

It works, and is simple.

my 10c worth

Jim

I saw a video on the www a couple of years ago, but haven't been able to find it since.

There was a small motor (lawn mower motor I think) that was powered by hydrogen gas. The motor drove an alternator which powered a small welder and it turned an aluminium drum. The drum was submerged in a tank of water and the welder electrode touched the aluminium drum and arced. The spinning drum stopped the electrode from sticking to the aluminium. The arc bound O2 to the aluminium, falling to the bottom of the tank as an aluminium oxide residue, and the liberated hydrogen bubbled to the top and powered the motor.

Was it real? I don't know.

Was it real? Depends what you call real. But unless the inventor has found a way to repeal the law of conservation of mass-energy, then the engine was not running solely on the hydrogen produced.

Consider these facts:- Best energy efficiency of any internal combustion engine is about 40%, but no small engine such as described will do much better than 20%. Alternator energy efficiency is around 80%, and electrolysis efficiency around 80% at best.

So the overall energy loss in the closed cycle described is around 87%, which means that running the engine on the gas produced is simply impossible.

Use of hydrogen gas produced on board by electrolysis has the potential to improve combustion, and hence energy efficiency, showing up as increased fuel economy or power, along the same lines as gas injection. However, gas injection uses far more gas than can be produced from the total output of any standard alternator, so until I see properly documented, peer reviewed testing, I will remain sceptical.

This should not stop anyone who wants to try it, but don't expect any spectacular results, and beware of self-deception.

John

__________________
JDNSW
1986 110 County 3.9 diesel
1970 2a 109 2.25 petrol

What about putting the solar panels on the roof that connects to the Hydrogen making machine that then that powers the refrigeration thingy that compresses the gas into tanks while you are at work, get home, change cylinders and away you go. Wind generator at night!

CSIRO had a hydrogen fuel cell that worked along these lines but instead of burning the Hydrogen you made it into kind of a battery.

I also heard that those Hydrogen cars have trouble storing enough gas to make it worthwhile and that the hydrogen molecules can escape most storage canisters etc...

There are a few cars that run on Hydrogen, and as an LPG user I firmly believe in gas powered cars... mine's great!!!! Who cares about the tank....

I also see where WhiteD3 is coming from ;

using H2 to augment combustion in an ICE ( Internal Combustion Engine ) That technology is plausible ; and it works , people have installed them and are seeing the Benifits ;

Like Dave Blknight said earlier , it's like having an LPG infumigation system on a Diesel.

but a claim that ICE can run on purely on water alone,
as has already been said it requires an enourmous amount of
energy to seperate the Hydrogen and Oxyn Molecules to utilise the H2 in an ICE

__________________
300tdi Discovery 97 Man ,Tweaked. Maxi Rear,4.11's F/R
TRV=Toyota Recovery Vehicle
93 RRC Vogue "Shopping Trolley".

As I have posted elsewhere, I believe the Minute quantity of Brown's gas (H2O vapour + H2 + O2) which is generated and fed into the intake by these systems, would only produce a slight benefit, akin to water injection (which would be much simpler to install).

e.g. - have a read here: http://delphi.com/pdf/techpapers/2008-01-1190.pdf