That’s right, we are idiots when there are scads of people out there doing just that. They are cracking Hydrogen from water on the fly to inject into the intake system of their cars and getting amazing results. Okay, I’m sold, what do I need to do? Well, first let’s break down what has to be done and also see if there are any ramifications.
First, I need electricity to crack the Hydrogen. Ultimately that’s the job of the alternator. I see a problem already, it’s only about 50% efficient. Our good hearted friends correct this discrepancy and throw a PWM, Pulse Width Modulated, power supply into the circuit. It’s job is to increase and regulate the energy being sent to the cracker. Yes, they call it a “booster”, but on my site I call it what it is. This results in a greater voltage which results in greater total energy delivered to the cracker, double the voltage, quadruple the power. But wait, what about that pesky 50% loss in the alternator? If you were using say 50 watts of energy to crack the Hydrogen at 14 volts, it would jump to 200 watts at 28. Oh, yeah, but now you’re using 400 watts of mechanical energy to get that 200. “But what about the PWM regulator? That will raise efficiency”. Wrong, it consumes it, of the 200 watts it delivers, only about 190 makes it to the cracker.
Next, we need to get our Hydrogen into the intake manifold so it will be delivered to the cylinders to be burned. In it’s simplest form, you just let it “flow” into the intake system. There’s all kinds of other gadgets that they add, computer controlled stuff, which itself consumes even more energy, but in the end it just gets dumped into the combustion chambers. That’s simple, let’s role with that. Okay, let’s do. I can see a small issue right here, gasoline requires a 14.6:1 air/fuel ratio. That means for every gallon of fuel you will use 14.6 gallons of atmosphere, if it were liquid. Hydrogen, however needs a 2:1 Oxygen/fuel mixture. Our atmosphere is composed of, rounded off, 20%. So, for an engine that is engineered for 100% Hydrogen fuel, you need about a 10:1 air/fuel ratio. Oh how sad, the engine management and intake system were engineered for 14.6:1, now you are dumping Hydrogen in that needs 10:1, what happens to the Hydrogen. Here, let me make it short and sweet; Nothing. I it gets shoved right out the exhaust manifold unburned because there was only a 14.6:1 ratio and not 10:1. Oh, it does do something, it gets burned in the catalytic converter and is expelled as water vapor, just what you started with in the first place.
So, you used valuable petroleum fuel to generate electricity that was use to crack Hydrogen from water, send it into the intake of the engine just to be piped into catalytic converter to be converted back into water. Slick move there Johnson, now you’re showing Big Oil who the genius is.
There’s some other very viable options to more efficiently crack the Hydrogen, maybe even to be able to run the vehicle on 100% Hydrogen. First we’ve got to work on that efficiency think though. Remember, hydrogen needs a 10:1 air/fuel ratio and gasoline needs 14.6:1, round up to 15:1. That means it will take, ignoring the fact that Hydrogen has a much lower thermal efficiency, 15 gallons of Hydrogen for every 10 gallons of gasoline.
Okay, what is the cool “other viable options”? Simple, radiation. Radiation will crack hydrogen from water without using electrodes and other lossy gadgets. So how much are we talking about? I’m not a nuclear physicist, but seeing as how some modest, say what you’d find at Three Mile Island only produces it as a by product, something about that size would be sufficient. Oh, how sad, you need a huge reactor to crack enough Hydrogen to drive your care around on. Uh, why not just use the electricity from it to charge a battery in the vehicle instead?
Then you’ve got the real geniuses. They proclaim that you can use the magnetron from a microwave oven for the radiation source. Uh yeah… no. That is a different kind of radiation there, Einstein. The kind found in a nuclear reactor is called, wait for it… Ionizing Radiation, much more energetic. The magnetron in moms oven you want to cannibalize only produces Radio Frequency Radiation. All it will do is boil the water in the cracker. So, what are you going to do with that, burn the steam that results?
Now, I’m not some big bad Big Oil free energy shooter-downer debunker. I’m just some guy with a web log, and a brain. And, I know how to use it. So, what’s behind all this Free Hydrogen Energy bullcrap. Here, let me help you again, Money. The same thing as Big Oil. But at least Big Oil sells something useful, albeit at a high price, no thanks to the near 50% total taxes we pay on it. But at least gasoline actually has a purpose after making the oil companies rich, these Free Hydrogen Energy schemes serve no purpose other than making the people selling it rich with no returns to the “customer” whatsoever. And if you think you see some kind of a positive improvement, I can tell you how. You see it because you want to. You spent valuable time and money on something with the promise of “sticking to the man”, and by God it works because you did it. This is what is known in medical parlance as a Placebo Affect and in this case with a very heavy dose of arrogance.
Finally, your car that you’re jacking around with trying to make it run on Hydrogen at some level, already does. Hydro-car-bons, that would be Hydrogen atoms bonded to Carbon atoms. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Now, go ahead, call me a “hater”, I could frankly give a ratts ass. I’ve been called worse, far worse by my drill instructors 30 some odd years ago and I survived that. But if you believe in this Hokus-Pokus Free Energy Ripoff, you may not be a hater, but you are most definitely a moron.
Palomar Jacks Notes 