Thread: hydrogen

Originally Posted by garrycol

Looks like this thread is going the same as all the others - bit of biffo, bit of wild claims, a bit of ridicule, testimonials vs scientific testing - anyone been banned yet .

Garry

No. I'm a little bit disappointed. This lot in this thread have been pretty tame so far.
Come on. Where's the right barmy? I want someone banned!

Originally Posted by Pinelli

No one here has suggested that. The concept is that the addition of a small among of hydrogen added to diesel/petrol improves the efficiency of combustion beyond the cost of creating the hydrogen. The claim is there is a net financial gain, not energy gain.

That is also the claim of LPG fumigation. However LPG fumigation is added at rates that are orders of magnitude higher.

However, a search of the literature reveals that there has been a relevant scientific paper published in the past few months:

Comparison of the performance of a spark-ignited gasoline engine blended with hydrogen and hydrogen-oxygen mixtures
Author(s): Wang, SF (Wang, Shuofeng)1; Ji, CW (Ji, Changwei)1; Zhang, J (Zhang, Jian)1; Zhang, B (Zhang, Bo)1
Source: ENERGY Volume: 36 Issue: 10 Pages: 5832-5837 DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2011.08.042 Published: OCT 2011
Times Cited: 0 (from Web of Science)
Cited References: 33 [ view related records ] Citation MapCitation Map
Abstract: This paper compared the effects of hydrogen and hydrogen oxygen blends (hydroxygen) additions on the performance of a gasoline engine at 1400 rpm and a manifolds absolute pressure of 61.5 kPa. The tests were carried out on a 1.6 L gasoline engine equipped with a hydrogen and oxygen injection system. A hybrid electronic control unit was applied to adjust the hydrogen and hydroxygen volume fractions in the intake increasing from 0% to about 3% and keep the hydrogen-to-oxygen mole ratio at 2:1 in hydroxygen tests. For each testing condition, the gasoline flow rate was adjusted to maintain the mixture global excess air ratio at 1.00. The test results confirmed that engine fuel energy flow rate was decreased after hydrogen addition but increased with hydroxygen blending. When hydrogen or hydroxygen volume fraction in the intake was lower than 2%, the hydroxygen-blended gasoline engine produced a higher thermal efficiency than the hydrogen-blended gasoline engine. Both the additions of hydrogen and hydroxygen help reduce flame development and propagation periods of the gasoline engine. HC emissions were reduced whereas NOx emissions were raised with the increase of hydrogen and hydroxygen addition levels. CO was slightly increased after hydrogen blending, but reduced with hydroxygen addition. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effects of hydrogen addition and cylinder cutoff on combustion and emissions performance of a spark-ignited gasoline engine under a low operating condition
Author(s): Wang, SF (Wang, Shuofeng)1; Ji, CW (Ji, Changwei)1; Zhang, B (Zhang, Bo)1
Source: ENERGY Volume: 35 Issue: 12 Pages: 4754-4760 DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2010.09.015 Published: DEC 2010
Times Cited: 2 (from Web of Science)
Cited References: 29 [ view related records ] Citation MapCitation Map
Abstract: Because of the low combustion temperature and high throttling loss, SI (spark-ignited) engines always encounter dropped performance at low load conditions. This paper experimentally investigated the co-effect of cylinder cutoff and hydrogen addition on improving the performance of a gasoline-fueled SI engine. The experiment was conducted on a modified four-cylinder SI engine equipped with an electronically controlled hydrogen injection system and a hybrid electronic control unit. The engine was run at 1400 rpm, 34.5 Nm and two cylinder cutoff modes in which one cylinder and two cylinders were closed, respectively. For each cylinder closing strategy, the hydrogen energy fraction in the total fuel (beta(H2)) was increased from 0% to approximately 20%. The test results demonstrated that engine indicated thermal efficiency was effectively improved after cylinder cutoff and hydrogen addition, which rose from 34.6% of the original engine to 40.34% of the engine operating at two-cylinder cutoff mode and beta(H2) = 20.41%. Flame development and propagation periods were shortened with the increase of the number of closed cylinders and hydrogen blending ratio. The total cooling loss for all working cylinders, and tailpipe HC (hydrocarbons), CO (carbon monoxide) and CO(2) (carbon dioxide) emissions were reduced whereas tailpipe NO(x) (nitrogen oxide) emissions were increased after hydrogen addition and cylinder closing. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Accession Number: WOS:000286343000032
Document Type: Article
Language: English

The above suggests that adding H2 or H2+O2 does indeed improve efficiency [i.e. if you are adding the additional fuel from gas bottles]. However it is practically impossible that any efficiency gains are greater than the electrical energy needed to produce the hydrogen yourself.

The research also seems to be focussed on low load conditions, suggesting that any efficiency gains may not be across the whole rev range.

It will take me a while to get copies of the articles. I won't comment further until I have read the full study, as the abstracts are poorly worded.

Originally Posted by isuzurover

um, OK.

Rather than insult me. Instead explain how you can take electrical energy from an alternator, use it to perform an electrolysis reaction, then recombine the products of the reaction and have a net +ve energy output.

And once you have explained the above, tell me why you aren't now able to power the world from free energy???

The problem with discussions like this on a forum is you don't know who has tried what and who is more experienced at what, and who is aware of the placebo effect...

No insult intended, as you would know it's hard to convey vocal tones and humour in a thread. The paragraph in questions was intended as a general ribbing of the negative people with little evidence of their own claims on the subject and not directed specifically at you.

I've made no such claim as "creating" free energy and as I stated above I was paid to develop a system by another company, they own it not me. I also said in my first post that the key to a workable HHO system is the efficiency of the unit, this is the way you reduce energy losses to a substituable level.
Since that company and others also sell mineral fuels with millions of stock holders that want a big dividend each year it's in their best interest to withhold what they own until it suits them.

In my experience they will normally wait until technology advances past the current statis quo so they can make just as much money out of it as they do their current product.

For instance - Smorgans Fuel (BioMax) lobbied heavily for a mandated bio-diesel quota to be sold in VIC. The state government agreed on a progressive percentage to be rolled out over 5 years of 5% (at the time) of the total volume of diesel fuel sales in Victoria. Similar to the UK's 20%, which it isn't.
Since it is ownly mandated and not legislation the fuel companies can basically ignore it, which they do because they don't make as much money from it.

(off topic)
Another reason why bio-diesel is so hard to get retail is there is no tax rebate for commercial users (business's) for anything above a B5 blend. The tax break for commercial consumers of diesel is huge! and therefore makes it more economical than bio for the consumer. Supply and demand.

To draw another more direct comparison of why you can't get a good HHO system off the self is the most long term viable feedstock for the production of bio-diesel is algae, all other feed stocks either compete with a food market or destroy the farmland for any other crop. For the manufacturer of algae bio-diesel (and other feedstocks) the resultant by products are other high demand things like ethanol, methanol, ethal-acetate, bio-char and bio-oil to name a few. So as you can see there is money to be made.
The reality is it cost more to make the core product from algae, in this case bio-diesel, than it does to buy mineral diesel from the depot so it's simple the companies that try to manufacture and sell it go broke.

That doesn't mean that algae bio-diesel doesn't work! All it does mean is the product isn't financially viable.


Thats my last word on the topic as it never seems to go anywhere when people are of different opinions on forums.

HTH

Im confused now..

what the hell has the retail availability of biodiesel got to do with the fumigation of a diesel from a self powered H(HO) electrolysis cell?

for relevance the 2 quotes from Isuzu rover relate to a petrol engine but nowhere in there does it state that the hydrogen and oxygen came from a generation cell that the engine being tested was powering. It kind of implies that it was from tanked gas as the gasses had to be maintained at 2:1 ratio, If you were making the gases from splitting water wouldnt they already be at the correct 2:1 ratio?

Originally Posted by isuzurover

....

The research also seems to be focussed on low load conditions, suggesting that any efficiency gains may not be across the whole rev range.

It will take me a while to get copies of the articles. I won't comment further until I have read the full study, as the abstracts are poorly worded.

I now have a copy of the Wang et al. (2011) paper.

To summarise:
They used a 1.6L Hyundai petro9l engine, rated at 82 kW@6000 rpm and 143 Nm@4500 rpm.

The engine was operated at 1400 rpm, and fed with bottled H2 and 2H2 + O2.

Thermal efficiency of the engine increased by a maximum of ~1.5%, when injecting H2 or 2H2O2 at rates of 1.0-3.0% (relative to petrol injection rate).

CO production INCREASED slightly (~5%) for H2 injection and decreased slightly (up to ~20%) for 2H2O2.

NOx production INCREASED by 10-25% for both cases.

Note that the study used bottled gases, and the gains in thermal efficiency were of the same order as the rate of additional fuel injection.

Interesting stuff. But from what that report is saying, it doesn't seem worth the effort to inject either gas at our current economic / technological level considering the minuscule improvement in engine efficiency it provides?

Back in 1990, I did 2 weeks of work experience at Esso Research's laboratories between Steventon & Harwell in Oxfordshire. (I was on the BTEC OND in Engineering at the time).
As you can imagine, it was a fascinating experience.
However, the relevant thing to this discussion is at the time, Esso had formulations for petrol that would give 100mpg. Now, consider how far engine technology has been refined since then. And who knows what further improvements the fuel co's have made in that time as well?
So I doubt that we'll be running out of oil as quickly as we assume, and I suspect that we also have longer than we think before the cost of alternative fuels will drop below that of fossil oil based fuels. Call this cost 'x'.
The reason we can't buy 100mpg petrol at the pumps is simply that it costs far too much for us consumers to consider buying it. Let's face it - how many of us use Vortex or Ultimate or whatever if our vehicles can run 91?
Of course, that same cost then reduces the time before cost 'x' is achieved. But I still suspect it's further off than we might like to think.

Well bugger me all I wanted to know was whether someone has used one of the bloody things on a TD5,??????Think I will just continue to play with my disco [try to fix the oil leaks] and wave to other landy drivers
have fun you lot