Hydrogen Generator

Like I said you do not have the power on board a Prius to generate enough usefull amounts of Hydrogen to make a difference, so you might as well just just shove a tank of Nitrous, or Hydrogen into the Prii's butt, plumb it up and ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM.

You want to tow an external generator to produce the power required to make the gas, great. But don't forget to fill the generators Diesel tank!!

Besides Mythbusters already tried this ......BUSTED!!

KK6PD

 

Your attitude suggests that you didn't even bother to read the JPL research. Okay, fair enough. Since you're so certain that you're right, why don't you tell it to Steve Woodruff at autobeyours.com/OxyHydrogen/OxyHydrogen.htm--he should probably stop using hyrogen in his Prius.

 

From the Article...

1-The 2nd law of thermodynamics is a likely source of those doubts.
2-If the aim is to create hydrogen by electrolysis to be burned as a fuel, the concept is ridiculous.
3-Relatively small amounts of hydrogen can dramatically increase horsepower and reduce exhaust emissions."

OK DEFINE A QUANTITY!!

4-The J.P.L. concept has unquestionably demonstrated that the addition of small quantities of gaseous hydrogen to the primary gasoline significantly reduces CO and NOx exhaust emissions while improving engine thermal efficiency

OK DEFINE A QUANTITY!!

5-The addition of some hydrogen to the methane, speeds up the rates of initiation and subsequent propagation of flames over the whole combustible mixture range, including for very fast flowing mixtures.

GREAT, ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS EAT A LOT OF BEANS AND COLLECT FARTS!!!

6-On average, the exhaust manifold temperature was 65°F lower during the second trip when the Hydrogen Generating System was switched on. The fuel consumption with the unit off was 5.1325 km/li. and 7.2481 km/li. with it on, giving a mileage increase of 41.2% and a fuel savings attributable to the unit of 29.18%

In English ...3.2 miles per .264172 gal vs 4.5 miles per .264172 gal
so .7 mile increase per liter... .

So on paper it seems great, lets come up with a DAILY DEPENDABLE unit to acheive this effect and what is the extra cost for this magic box?


7-And guess what, the site this paper is posted on also sells units ..
Hydro Fuel Solutions

Price $389.00

We'll jump right on this one!!!

KK6PD

 

I would like to see a comparison of using the OxyHydrogen generator + O2 sensor modification (which is illegal, BTW) vs. just doing the O2 sensor mod by itself. On a dyno, to avoid any placebo effect.

 

In parallel to the electrolysis system, Steve is running an O_{2} sensor trick box and that will give an improvement by itself. I was about to discuss the effects of leaning an engine mixture and the impact on nitrogen oxide emissions. One of the reasons the Honda Insight is no longer sold is the 'lean burn' combustion could not be cleaned up.

If you want to ignore the O_{2} sensor hack, fine by me, but take it to Freds House of Pancakes. It has nothing to do with Prius technology and a lot with how to burnout a catalytic converter and fail emissions testing.

Bob Wilson

 

That's not the kind of English I'm used to. Try ... 12.07 mpg vs 17.03 mpg
so 4.96 miles increase per gallon. Not too bad for a vehicle originally getting 12.07 mpg. At least in my opinion.

I'm not saying we should go out and buy the friggin $389 hydrogen generator. All I'm saying is we should look into this hydrogen thing without bias.

I'm surprised that the Prius crowd isn't more interested in this. I caught a lot of flak from the Corvette, Challenger, SUV crowd when I was the first to bring home a Prius at work and in my neighborhood. And now, it seems like the Prius crowd is acting the same way about hydrogen . . .

I guess it's just some sort of pecking order or something.

 

I think this is part of why these products are so tantalizing. There is enough truth in it to make it plausible.

For what its worth the JPL study referred to uses a Hydrogen reformer to create Hydrogen gas chemically from the gasoline itself. This is a vastly more efficient process than electrolysis. Its also capable of producing much more hydrogen flow. The previous mentioned reformer was claimed to divert 25% of the gasoline flow into making hydrogen. Thats way more than you're getting out of a 100W electrolysis cell. There is nothing I can see in this paper (of course I can only see the abstract, not the whole paper) that backs up the efficiency gains claimed by using an electrolysis cell to inject a very small amount of hydrogen. By taking parts of this paper out of context, the website links seemed to imply it does just that.

The other papers and studies appear to be similarly editted and out of context. Hydrogen is a very clean burning fuel. It should not be particularly surprising that adding it makes an engine run cleaner and use less gasoline. Much the same is true of CNG. The more CNG you inject, the less gasoline you use and the cleaner your emissions. However, this says nothing about where the hydrogen comes from, and the relative efficiency of using gasoline to drive an alternator to drive an electrolysis cell to make a tiny amount of hydrogen to inject resulting in some efficiency improvement vs. just burning the gasoline in the first place.

I think that is exactly what makes pretty much anyone with a technical background suspicious of these products. They take a plausible sounding technical explanation that is way over the heads of most people, throw in a bunch of research quotes to back it up (while conveniently deleting any actual technical details from those quotes that might be used to confirm or refute their claims) and use that to mass market a product. In a climate such as this, where people are highly inclined to believe such claims particularly when you throw in a few conspiracy theories and some untraceable claims of real world success you have a perfect recipe to make come bucks regardless of whether your product works or not.

From what I can tell adding this small an amount of Hydrogen does nothing. The results that are achieved are due to tampering with the O2 sensor and making the car run lean. This is illegal, and probably greatly increases emissions. The studies showing that hydrogen can reduce emissions in lean burning engines seem to be talking about much larger amounts of Hydrogen and are only saying emissions are better relative to a lean burn engine w/o hydrogen, which is to say could still be very high. To me this is heading in the same direction as the diesel guys who cut off their filters and retune their engines to smoke like crazy because it save them a few bucks in gas while giving everyone around them cancer.

Is it possible this works? Yes. Does it seem possible to get this to work without breaking the law? No. Has anyone shown any real proof that it does what it says and doesn't jack up emissions? No. Does this bear all the traditional hallmarks of snake oil? I'd have to say so.

Rob

 

It's not that we aren't interested in technology, or new ideas, but many of us are good enough engineers and scientists to have already looked at these devices and dismissed them as not effective. No matter how many times a new person brings them to the table, they still don't work. If anyone is able to bring some real data I'll take another look.

Tom

 

Hi Rob,

Thanks much for your very thorough answer. You've raised some great points.

-Cheers

 

I have a lot of respect for Steve, so I will assume what he is seeing is real. I would still suspect it has more to do with tweaking the O2 sensor and running lean than anything else. This is of questionable legality, and may have a negative impact on emissions and longevity due to high temps. I will assume that someone of Steve's reputation is aware of these issues/concerns and keeping an eye on all that. Still, Steve's observation of 3-5mpg improvement on a 50mpg car with a commercial kit plus an EFIE and his substantial technical knowledge and resources is a lot more believable than the OPs hopes of going from 44 to 60mpg with some hardware store parts or many of the kit sellers claims of doubling your mileage.

I'll admit a lot of this is bias on my part. I'm an EV guy, not a Hydrogen guy. A friend of mine is a big Roy MacAlister groupie (I guess he's local) and I can't help roll my eyes every time he starts talking about all the great things Roy is working on and how the Government and big oil is keeping him down Of course I'm perfectly happy to believe that Texaco/Chevron has been sitting on NimH patents to keep EVs from being practical for the last 10 years.

Rob

 

There is no question about the legality. It is a violation of Federal Law.

http://www.epa.gov/air/caa/caa203.txt

 

I read the whole 91 post thread before responding. There were maybe 5 worthwhile posts in my opinion. Priuschat has really gone downhill since the early days. Repeated insults and attacks based on no knowledge or little knowledge of the concepts being discussed show a lack of class that did not exist here in earlier years. I believe FHOP was the beginning of the end of enlightened and open-minded discourse on this fine website.

If you believe that the second law of thermodynamics or the first for that matter make this strategy impossible then you do not understand the proposed concept and should stand down.

The concept involves improving the thermal efficiency of the engine by utilizing the fuel more thoroughly. There are of course many engineering and manufacturing challenges to this as has been stated in one of the few relevant posts.

My friend, Mr. A. Jewell has built a few versions of this system and suffered much verbal abuse from me in the subject including a lecture on the laws of thermodynamics and a "no such thing as a free thermodynamic lunch" argument. He was very patient with me.

A Prius would be the last vehicle I would try this with as the low hanging fruit of engine inefficiency has already been harvested.

Mr. Jewell's system now creates a healthy amount of hydrogen gas and seems to have given him an increase of 3-4 mpg in his Honda Odyssey minivan. He has yet to get the sensor issues worked out, but he and it are works in progress. AJ is 71 years old and has invented a few things in his life that have given him a VERY comfortable retirement and have given the world of extreme rifle accuracy, the gold standard in a few of the necessary accoutrements.

I am still skeptical that his success is legitimate and verifiable because one vehicle in a fairly uncontrolled test proves nothing to me. I remain openminded and interested in the discussion of these things.

This thread would be much easier to read if all the posts that poo poo the concept without adding to the discussion could be deleted.

I will now withdraw and holster my wagging finger.

 

Ray, I think we all understand the concept. You'd have to be nearly brain dead to not understand the underlying claim.

As for being verifiable, that's the real catch, isn't it? If this process had any glimmer of actually working, it would be falling off a log simple to put it on a dynamometer and demonstrate that it works, at least in a controlled environment. The reason that it isn't demonstrated in this fashion is that the only way to show results is to have them obfuscated by noise.

I'm willing to be convinced, as strange things sometimes work, but given the suspicious nature of the claims and the lack of any real data, I'm not hopeful. Show me the data, then have someone else repeat the experiment with the same result, and then I might be interested. Otherwise it's just another drop in a sea of snake oil.

Tom

 

I'm with you on the skepticism, but those that talk about it violating the laws of thermodynamics or talk about the hydrogen being used as a fuel source are missing the concept. Some have insinuated it is a claim akin to perpetual motion and others have claimed it belongs to the tin hat crowd, so I don't think, as you claim, that "we all get it."

I also don't think that jumping to conclusions and failing investigate the claim before responding to it makes someone "nearly brain dead." I just think it is a waste of bandwidth.

My biggest argument would be that for it to work, it would need to take advantage of an inherent flaw in the combustion process in a way that is substantive enough to overcome the inherent energy losses involved in creating the hydrogen and show measurable results. I think that we have efficient combustion in ICEs figured out well enough that there is not that kind of low hanging fruit left to harvest. That is just idle speculation on my part but I'd put real money on the bet.

 

Ok, ignore the part about the thermodynamics of creating HHO (aka Brown's Gas, OxyHydrogen, et al. ) on board the vehicle.

I have only seen one plausible explanation on how injecting Hydrogen is supposed to improve combustion. Supposedly the injected H2 acts as an accelerator, greatly increasing the speed of combustion so that the charge burns almost instantaneously and more energy can be extracted during the power stroke. Ok, let us assume that is true.

Then:

Wouldn't you have to modify the ignition timing to take advantage of this? No one with the internet kits seem to address this.

How much H2 do you need to produce? Wouldn't the amount change as rpm changes because of the increased volume of intake air? How do you control the flow rate of H2? None of the homemade kits seem to address this in a quantitative way.

How about modifying the O2 sensor data? Most of the people doing the homemade kits find it necessary to "spoof" the sensor data to get it to (supposedly) work. What is happening with the production of NOx? If you look at how a 3 way catalytic converter works, it is necessary to keep the O2 levels within a narrow band in order to reduce the NOx in the cat. Are any of the homemade kits monitoring and addressing this issue? Not that I have seen. They are ignoring this issue.

So, even if this concept can theoretically work, it is still "snake oil" as implemented by the various hucksters on the internet. At best, it is only random chance that makes it appear to work. At worst people are unknowingly increasing NOx emissions and possibly damaging their vehicles.

 

Has anyone reported on changes in catalytic converter temperature when one of these things is in operation? While the exhaust gas itself is warm, I believe that energy release from combustion of unburned hydrocarbons is a significant heater of the device.

If the claimed mechanism of improvement in overall performance is more complete combustion in the engine, this can only mean less is left for the converter to handle, and it must necessarily run cooler. Does it? And does it run so much cooler as to impair its function? (a major reason that conventional cars run hideously dirty right after start up is that the converter is very ineffective until it warms up enough)

 

Ray: You can't give people too hard a time for mentioning thermodynamics, because earlier messages in the thread indicated that there were people who thought you got the hydrogen "for free", ie. at no thermodynamic cost.

There isn't much unburned fuel left in the exhaust, and what's there is needed to provide sufficient reduction of the pollutant NOx- otherwise you'd run the engine leaner to eliminate it. When you say "increased combustion efficiency", you mean "less unburned HC and CO in the exhaust".

If you were deliberately running the engine leaner, then injecting hydrogen or other reductants ahead of the catalytic converter to reduce the NOx (since you'd have more NOx and less unburned HC), perhaps you'd have something. Though I don't have the data at hand, I suspect it would take quite a lot of H2 to do that- a few hundred to a few thousand ppm on a raw inlet air basis probably aren't going to cut it. And the thermodynamics of on-board hydrogen production kick in: it takes quite a bit of energy to satisfy all those conversion losses. It wouldn't be such a simple mod as what is suggested, either.

By the way, no disrespect intended to your colleague, but lots of people "invent" stuff. Some even patent it (I'm co-inventor on four (granted) myself, one being for a "plasmatron"). All that does is grant you (or your employer in my case) exclusive right to make and sell it- whether the claims are real, or not. I trust none of it. As an engineer I believe in test data, collected under controlled conditions, underlain by plausible theory that goes at least part way toward explaining the data. And I've seen none of that for fuel economy improvements via hydrogen addition at tiny concentrations to IC engine inlet air. I've seen LOTS of blatant hucksterism in relation to anything to do with hydrogen, though.

 

You have just provided a missing link:

From EPA.GOV:

Emissions Certification Standard: LEV-II SULEV Standards
(grams per mile)


NOx 0.02 CO 1.0 NMOG 0.01 PM 0.01
There is not enough unburned, reactive elements in the existing car for any hydrogen to do anything with.

Bob Wilson

 

Actually, this isn't just true for the Prius. According to the gentleman (an engine development engineer) at this website:

Fuel saving gadgets - a professional engineer's view

it is true of all modern cars that only 1 - 2% of the fuel is unburned prior to entering the catalytic converter.

He also addresses hydrogen generators:

Fuel saving gadgets - a professional engineer's view

 

I'll take that bet. Before we had gasoline, electric cars were the norm for powered transportation. After the gasoline engine was made practical (because of the electric starter motor) hybrids were a logical combination of the two technologies. Basically, we've had electrics and hybrids as long as we've had automobiles. The whole EV thing just took quite a bit of time off during the "too cheap to meter" oil party.

Right here is the beauty of electric propulsion. There is no "magic box" to make it better. You can't put additives in your electricity. You can't inject it with something, or use magnets to make it burn better. There is no torque curve, no sweet spot. You use just as much energy as you need to go the speed you want. The only improvements to be made (beyond battery chemistry and energy density) is in weight and aerodynamics. Something that everybody can at least understand.

And if I had a dollar for everybody who's asked me why I don't put generators on the wheels...

Off my box.