truemagellen

http://www.canada.com/montreal/montr...1200e96&page=1

Sounds too good to be true but it is on a legit website, with legit companies veryfying it...WOW

Smaller than a DVD player - small enough to sit comfortably under the hood of any truck or car - it could be big enough to solve the world's greenhouse gas emission problems, at least for the near future. In fact, it could make the Kyoto protocol obsolete. Basically, the H2N-Gen contains a small reservoir of distilled water and other chemicals such as potassium hydroxide. A current is run from the car battery through the liquid. This process of electrolysis creates hydrogen and oxygen gases which are then fed into the engine's intake manifold where they mix with the gasoline vapours.

It's a scientific fact that adding hydrogen to a combustion chamber will cause a cleaner burn. The challenge has always been to find a way to get the hydrogen gas into the combustion chamber in a safe, reliable and cost-effective way.

Williams claims he has achieved this with his H2N-Gen. His product, he said, produces a more complete burn, greatly increasing efficiency and reducing fuel consumption by 10 to 40 per cent - and pollutants by up to 100 per cent.

Most internal combustion engines operate at about 35 per cent efficiency. This means that only 35 per cent of the fuel is fully burned. The rest either turns to carbon corroding the engine or goes out the exhaust pipe as greenhouse gases.

The H2N-Gen increases burn efficiency to at least 97 per cent, Williams said. This saves fuel and greatly reduces emissions.

It also means less engine maintenance and oil changes. The only thing the vehicle owner has to do is refill the unit with distilled water once every 80 hours of engine use.

Tests show the unit itself should lasts for at least 10 years, Williams said.

It can be attached to any kind of internal combustion engine: diesel, gasoline, propane/natural gas.

Also, because the H2N-Gen manufactures only enough hydrogen to feed the engine at a given time, there is no dangerous onboard storage of hydrogen gas and no hydrogen under pressure.

Perth11

It would be very good to see someone -- at an Auto Club perhaps -- do a long term test with an eventual teardown.

truemagellen

great idea

on another side to this...
I wonder how well this unit works with a Rotary?

djgiron

10-40% increase in fuel consumption would definately be nice.

TheColonel

I think you mean a 10-40% in fuel efficiency... A 40% increase in fuel consumption would have me getting around 12mpg... that would not be nice... lol.

djgiron

uh . . . yeah what he ^ said haha.

therm8

the article keeps saying, exceeds the manufacturers blah blah blah. We all know how accurate those are. I want to see actual before and after results.

babylou

Lets see here; Triple the combustion efficiency but the fuel efficiency increases by no more than 40%?

PoorCollegeKid

I think that the author of the article had a hard time understanding all of the numbers and efficiencies that he or she was writing about.

First, the author mentions a 35% efficiency number, which is then explained as the amount of fuel that is fully burned. He then explains that the rest is turned into carbon residue or greenhouse gases. What he does not understand is that carbon and greenhouse gases (CO2 in particular) are the chemical byproducts of combustion or the result of combustion at very high temperatures, not the result of incomplete combustion. I believe that he meant to say that the engine was 35% thermally efficient, which is fairly close to the efficiency numbers of gasoline engines (25%-30%) and diesel engines (35%+ IIRC, depending on the application).

After reporting the thermal efficiency of the engine, however, he goes on to tell us that the burn efficiency of the engine with the device is 97%. This is probably a real, observed number obtained through testing and given to him by the inventor. However, not having the original value of the burn efficiency to compare it to, we really don't know if this is a large or miniscule improvement in burn efficiency and thus can't draw conclusions on the effectiveness of the device from this single value.

I'm not a chemist so I can't comment on how hydrogen would reduce emissions or improve burn efficiency. From what I can tell, this effect does not come from combusting the hydrogen. You can burn hydrogen to make water and get energy out of this, but in order to split water to get hydrogen and oxygen you must put the same amount of energy into the system in the first place, meaning you can't end up ahead unless you've found a good catalyst or have invented a perpetual motion machine. Maybe oxygen from the water is being pumped into the engine along with the hydrogen? This would cause the engine to run leaner (assuming the computer did not adjust for this condition) which could affect emissions.

Again, I don't know enough chemistry to really have a handle on how this would work, and a simple article written by someone who doesn't quite understand what's going on isn't enough information for me (or anyone not highly familiar with the subject) to say that this device will or will not work. What I do know is that if the numbers and figures the reporter wrote about were given to him by the inventor of the device, chances are high that the inventor was either misunderstood or is merely a scam artist trying to hype his creation. Since this comes from a respectable website and the invention is supported by respectable companies, I'd have to say that I'm leaning more toward the first explanation than the second. Maybe someone else who has a better grasp on this subject than I do can comment on the feasibility of such a device or give us more details.

s13lover

I noticed that to.

Isn't a rotary engine's thermal effiency only 12% to 15%.

PoorCollegeKid

I don't think it's quite that low, but it is a good bit lower than that of a piston engine. I don't know the actual number, though.

playdoh43

whao, nice to see PoorCollegeKid is still around

Bigdog6060

Im not sure i understand the effiency stuff but when it comes to the combusting of gas a perfect burn would result in 100 % conversion to water. Which is where the 0% emmissions comes from. Also the electrolysis of water that causes the release of hydrogen is not effient if you are trying to create electricty by burning hydrogen. The point of adding hydrogen is not to give you more power, but haveing more hydrogen atoms for the free carbons to attatch to instead of Oxygen creating green house gasses. I could be completely wrong here but this is what i gather.

rx8wannahave

If it's true......this is great, but time and many test will confirm or deny this. So...we have to wait...

PoorCollegeKid

It's nice to be remembered

BigDog6060: The perfect combustion of gasoline would result in CO2 and H2O, not just water.

Heptane (most of gasoline): 1 C7H16 + 22 O2 = 7 CO2 + 8 H20
Octane: 1 C8H18 + 25 O2= 8 CO2 + 9 H2O

When you combust gasoline at high temperatures and pressures, however, you get other nasty compounds being formed with the nitrogen in the air, sulfur in the gas, and incomplete combustion leaving unburned hydrocarbons (like heptane and octane) floating around, among other things.

If by "gas" you meant hydrogen gas, then you're absolutely correct. Burning H2 leaves only water as a byproduct and I've just wasted a few minutes typing stuff out.

Bigdog6060

well then, that makes sense. So what do you think they mean by o% emissions? if its still producing CO2 then that doesnt really help anyone

PoorCollegeKid

They probably mean that its SOx, NOx, CO, and HC emissions drop pretty close to zero. CO2 emissions aren't nearly as harmful as the other stuff, so if they could create perfect combustion then this would be a big deal when it comes to limiting the nasty stuff spewing out of the tailpipe.

BaronVonBigmeat

If you can insure a more complete combustion...well, that would be especially good for the rotary wouldn't it? I mean that's the problem with elongated combustion chambers right?

Also, a cleaner more complete burn would give the factory some leeway on catalytic converter design, I would think. Maybe you could move it further away from the engine to keep it cool, but still keep startup emissions in an acceptable range for the first few minutes of driving (startup emissions are the most difficult part of reducing emissions further; once the cats are warmed up it's easy to make a car run clean).

How does adding hydrogen improve the burn or make it cleaner, anyhow? It has been "well known for a long time" but I've never heard the theoretical explanation behind it before.

tuj

Normally if you run a petrol engine lean, there is still imcomplete combustion resulting in NOx and other gases. These gases then have a hard time being removed by the catalyst because the catalyst works best at stochiometric ratios. Lean burn also increase the temp of the cat, which is a bad thing.

Adding hydrogen to the charge allows for complete combustion because the flame propegation of hydrogren is quite good. The problems are:

-exhaust gas temps are still high, which could be damaging to the cat.

-ultra-lean burn results in a large loss in power. This is also where the gain in fuel efficiency comes from.

-the hydrogen is being produced by a combination of electrolysis and chemical reaction, resulting in more load on the alternator and need to replenish other chemicals.

The advantage is not that significant over current lean-burn strategies. I doubt this will really be all that beneficial.

Georgia8er

I would seriously doubt this increases the thermal efficiency of the engine, since that is a property of the combustion process more than anything else. Essentially the heat is an unusable by-product of making CO2 and H2O from gasoline.

tuj

I could see a gain in thermal efficiency due to the very lean ratios being used. This would result in less heat being imparted to the engine surfaces. Its similar to how decreasing the surface-area to displacement ratio will raise thermal efficiency.

alcimedes

In theory though if you installed this device wouldn't you be able to rip out all the cats (assuming it worked as advertised) and still pass emissions?

It would be interesting to see if the loss in power in the combustion process would be offset by the increase of a wide open, non-cat exhaust system.

tuj

I doubt this system will work at anything but light loads.

Georgia8er

I'm not sure being lean would make it more thermally efficient. When an engine runs too lean your exhaust gas temperature goes up, which can lead to a catastrophic failure of your exhaust headers.

Also, your car might pass emissions without the cat right now, if you could get the O2 sensor to work correctly without it, but give it 100k miles or a few years and it might not then.

globi

Actually I'd argue that the reason why the engine is more efficient is because the leaner you can go the higher the chance that you burn all the gasoline. Also especially at partial throttle settings there's a certain point where you can't go any leaner otherwise the air/fuel mixture would just not ignite anymore. If you can go leaner you can reduce the amount of injected gas without having to lower the throttle setting (less pumping losses). Also by adding hydrogen you might be able to add more exhaust gases back to the engine (EGR) and therefore also reduce pumping losses.
Of course if you like Chrysler deactivate cylinders then you can inject less gasoline without having to go leaner because you cut the effective displacement in half.

Btw a diesel engine doesn't have the pumping losses to same extent because it doesn't have a throttle and it can go as lean as just having one single diesel-molecule in the combustion chamber and it will still burn.

Anyway in general I also agree that there are better ways to increase efficiency without having to add hydrogen.