http://www.gas4free.com/?hop=bpmchale

My mate put me on the trail of the link above. It's basically suggesting that using electrolysis, you can seperate the hydrogen from water using your car battery and use that as an additive to your own fuel supply. Suggesting better fuel consumption, and even more power.

I thought it was bullshit when I first read it, but am now having second thoughts. I know hydrogen is in fuel, but in the form of hydrocarbons.. would adding more hydrogen to your fuel make a better burn? Also, it will be in the form of gas, as opposed to a vaporised liquid.. would this be different?

I haven't read it all yet, but I'm not sure what to think. Some of the ideas seem to make sense to me, but other things they say suggest that these people are bullshitting.

Like where they say "A car running on water runs cooler which helps the overall effect of global warming due to the heat emitted by running machinery each and every day".. this kind of contradicts what they say alot.

Anyway, what do you guys think? How similar is this to 'hydrogen fuel cell' technology, which has apparently been about for a while..

Would be great to hear what those who know more about this kind of thing have to say.

You can power many things on hydrogen now,anything that runs on batteries - TV remote,radio control car,you name it. The equipment is simple and looks like a coffee maker with its water reservoir and magic box with a 13amp plug on a lead sticking out of it. Literally a domestic rechargable battery charger,only using hydrogen instead of ni-cad.

So applying this device to a conventional petrol engine seems possible - until you realise how much hydrogen you'd get from the water per minute,compared to how much hydrogen you'd need per minute to be of any use whatsoever

If the car could suck enough hydrogen from the atmosphere to power itself as it travels,that'd be far more useful. But we know the latter is imposible - and i think the slightly less optomistic idea you've been put onto is only slightly less impossible of reaching its goal also.

Wow i never knew this. When you say you could never have enough hydrogen.. do you mean if the car was to run on hydrogen alone? Or even just as an 'additive' to petrol?

I think the idea is that the hydrogen gas is sucked in with the air, and so less hydrogen needs to be included from the fuel, so less fuel is included. I'm not sure whether this would still technically make the engine run lean, though? You would have a lower ratio fuel-air (not sure on figures) but extra hydrogen, would this hydrogen burn and make up for the lower fuel ratio?

Would the engine still run hotter because there is still less liquid (fuel) going in to cool the pistons? This is where their comment about 'it running cooler because it's running on water' makes no sense to me..

And basically the whole idea seems very similar to the recirculation of fuel vapour from the fuel tank, and hydrocarbons from the hot oil in the crankcase (not sure what these systems are technically called), except the engine doesn't rely on this supply as a replacement for some fuel.. and of course in these instances they are actual hydrocarbons, not just hydrogen gas..

where this falls down is that it'd consume more energy to actually produce the hydrogen through electrolysis than you'd get from the hydrogen produced.

You can power many things on hydrogen now,anything that runs on batteries - TV remote,radio control car,you name it. The equipment is simple and looks like a coffee maker with its water reservoir and magic box with a 13amp plug on a lead sticking out of it. Literally a domestic rechargable battery charger,only using hydrogen instead of ni-cad.

So applying this device to a conventional petrol engine seems possible - until you realise how much hydrogen you'd get from the water per minute,compared to how much hydrogen you'd need per minute to be of any use whatsoever

If the car could suck enough hydrogen from the atmosphere to power itself as it travels,that'd be far more useful. But we know the latter is imposible - and i think the slightly less optomistic idea you've been put onto is only slightly less impossible of reaching its goal also.

Its the technology/engineering i work in

Not as simple as it sounds though lol.

we have a hrdogen track buggy that runs a 250cc pit bike engine, ran off compressed hyrdogen with a m24 eaton,

Running 120bhp

You can power many things on hydrogen now,anything that runs on batteries - TV remote,radio control car,you name it. The equipment is simple and looks like a coffee maker with its water reservoir and magic box with a 13amp plug on a lead sticking out of it. Literally a domestic rechargable battery charger,only using hydrogen instead of ni-cad.

So applying this device to a conventional petrol engine seems possible - until you realise how much hydrogen you'd get from the water per minute,compared to how much hydrogen you'd need per minute to be of any use whatsoever

If the car could suck enough hydrogen from the atmosphere to power itself as it travels,that'd be far more useful. But we know the latter is imposible - and i think the slightly less optomistic idea you've been put onto is only slightly less impossible of reaching its goal also.

Its the technology/engineering i work in

Not as simple as it sounds though lol.

we have a hrdogen track buggy that runs a 250cc pit bike engine, ran off compressed hyrdogen with a m24 eaton,

Running 120bhp

Would you say the hydrogen could be broken down by excess battery power once the car is running and the battery fully charged?

Either way, Max would you say that hydrogen could be added with petrol as an additive as per what they are getting at? As you have said it can work when run as the only fuel, but what if added with petrol and air?

We did some trials with adding hyrdogen to a common rail diesel engine, thus leaning out the fuel mixture.

There isnt much of a benefit doing it this way, You can argue that less diesel is needed meaning have a more economical burn but this has to be balanced with compressed hyrdogen, Which has to be generated, which isnt eco friendly nor is it cheap.

Adding hyrdogen to the mixture also showed that it hindered combustion of the other fuel (diesel) , so CO2 emmsions did not improve either. I'm sure there is a better way of burning them in harmony, But we lost interest.

The only benficial way of running engines on hyrdogen is to have it either on hyrdogen or gasoline. Burning on 100% hydrogen produces no C02 , only H20.

A friend of mine has just built one of these himself. Very simple to do. He doesnt use water though, it uses something else which is available from te chemist and produces sprising amounts. Not any where near what you would need for it to be cost effective or to see any relative gains, but it was an interesting experiment. He's still going to plumb it into his car and see if it reduces emissions on the CO meter...

electrolysis is simple (I remember doing it in pre-GCSE science lessons), bath of water, couple of bits of metal, DC power source....jobs a good un. However, producing it without actually using more energy than is held in the hydrogen produced currently has the worlds top scientific researchers stuck so I can't see some Internet "snake-oil" seller has managed it. Their nobel prize must be in the post :)

a mate of mine tred to run a mk3 golf on hydrogen it was very crude, it involved a tupperware box (the projects downfall) with electrodes in etc to make hydrogen he then drilled a hole in the inlet manifold poked a hose in and started her up and she ran for about 5 seconds then cut out he tried again ran for a few more seconds then a deafening bang as the tupperware became supple with the heat and collapsed making the electrodes touch and bang goodbye tupperware and ear drums. the point is the tupperware box was around 500ml and around 500ml of hydrogen ran for 5 secs, my polo has a 40l tank 40 litres of hydrogen = less than 7 mins running you can not make the majority of journeys in that time so to just make some and drive off isn't practical yet although it does work in a electric car like the honda fcx clarity where the car uses less hydrogen powering the electric motor than it would in an internal combustion engine.

(this probably makes no sense)

We did some trials with adding hyrdogen to a common rail diesel engine, thus leaning out the fuel mixture.

There isnt much of a benefit doing it this way, You can argue that less diesel is needed meaning have a more economical burn but this has to be balanced with compressed hyrdogen, Which has to be generated, which isnt eco friendly nor is it cheap.

Adding hyrdogen to the mixture also showed that it hindered combustion of the other fuel (diesel) , so CO2 emmsions did not improve either. I'm sure there is a better way of burning them in harmony, But we lost interest.

The only benficial way of running engines on hyrdogen is to have it either on hyrdogen or gasoline. Burning on 100% hydrogen produces no C02 , only H20.

I'm not normally one to pick up on spelling mistakes but how did you spell hydrogen wrong so many times in one post, considering it's your specialist subject? :p