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Hi all, has anyone had one of these Hydro cells fitted, they claim good fuel savings, but if the waste product is water, will they do more harm to an engine than good? Brockley.
If you are talking about the cells that claim to generate hydrogen from water and feed said hydrogen into your inlet to boost power then there was a long discussion on here some time ago.
To put it in a nutshell I think the consensus of opinion was "Snake Oil". The cleverer members on here, Boff in particular, showed that the system would extract more power from your engine via the alternator than it could produce back.
In other words you can't cheat physics - you can't get owt for nowt.
Well thanks for that Wizzo, I think. For an invention patented in 1916, wouldn't you think there would be more conclusive data around by now for closer scrutiny? Particularly the claim of marginal fuel savings? Was the claim that soot emisions are greatly reduced ever discussed here? Brockley.
To be honest I can't remember soot emissions being mentioned. I think the primary concern was the potential to save the vast amounts of money that better mpg brings. I don't remember anyone being too troubled about saving the planet.
My second thought is, if this Hydrogen is so explosive, why don't we just use it as fuel in a as near as normal car engine instead of petrol.
In fact this has been investigated thoroughly by several car manufacturers. And there have been several experimental hydrogen car projects. There are however two reasons why it is not (yet) done on a large scale, both having nothing to do with the Hindenburg disaster:
1. While hydrogen in chemical compounds (mainly as water) is quite abundant, it is practically non-existing in its "free" form, as an H2 molecule. And the free molecule would be needed for a hydrogen-powered engine. To obtain the free molecule from compounds, at least as much energy has to be invested, as can be received back later when burning it. And in practice even much more. So hydrogen is not an energy source, but merely an energy carrier.
2. Of all chemical energy carriers, hydrogen has the highest energy-to-weight ratio. So in areas where weight is paramount, hydrogen is already used, e.g. space travel. It does however hav a very poor energy-to-volume ratio, even if you store it in the most efficient way currently known, which is cryogenic storage at -253 degrees C. So apart from the practical difficulties - and safety concerns - with providing permanent -253 degrees cold storage in an ordinary car, hydrogen-powered cars have similar, or even worse, range restriction as current electric cars.
This is the current state of hydrogen automotive technology. Maybe there will be a breakthrough in the future, but I would not bet on it. In my personal opinion (as a physicist) I think that electric propulsion will win.
About the "hydropower" gizmos I have said more than enough in earlier threads.
Best Regards,
Gerhard
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