Thoraiya DyerWhy you CAN’T Convert Your Car To Run On Water
June 29th 2008 21:53
Had enough of skyrocketing petrol prices? Desperate for a way out of this fossil fuel hole we’ve dug for ourselves? Everyone’s heard about this or that conspiracy theory where the oil companies have stifled new technologies that are easier, cleaner and cheaper. Wouldn’t we all love to convert our cars to run on water?
Do I think oil companies have stifled new technologies? Absolutely!
Do I think I can convert my existing car to run on water? Absolutely not!
Website Spirit of Ma’at ( Really Long Link ) is not the only place where I can download plans to, “use water instead of gasoline to run your car.”
While it’s very considerate of them to recommend that I, “use an old car that doesn't represent a loss of value if you can't make it work. And leave everything intact so that you can always reconnect back to gas if you have to,” I would rather they admit the truth: You can’t PRODUCE significant amounts of hydrogen in your existing engine, you can’t BURN hydrogen in your existing engine, and even if you could, you couldn’t get any kind of net energy gain out of the cycle.
Let’s find out why. Here’s an outline of the downloadable so-called plan.
“The Plan:
Build and install a low-cost alternative method for running your vehicle (internal combustion engine) on tap water, using off-the-shelf components.
This is simply an efficient way to convert ordinary tap water into gaseous hydrogen and oxygen, and then burn these vapors in the engine, instead of gasoline.
This "minisystem" runs easily from your existing battery and electrical system, and it plugs into your carburetor with simple off-the-shelf fittings.
You will be installing a plastic water tank, a control circuit, a reaction chamber, a hi-pressure carb/FI fitting, and 3 gauges, and then hooking into your existing carb/FI.
The simplicity comes from its being an "on-demand" system requiring no fancy storage or plumbing. You crank the gas pedal or throttle, and you electrically create more vapor for immediate consumption, on demand; low-high flow rate as needed, from idle to maximum power. The only real change is that you are using tap water as fuel, instead of the traditional petroleum-based fuel.”
Oh. My. God.
Did he say turn tap water into gaseous hydrogen and oxygen? And then burn them?
For starters, to “burn” something is to combine it with oxygen. Ask the Free Dictionary ( Really Long Link ):
“Burn, v. 1. To be on fire; undergo combustion. A substance burns if it is heated up enough to react chemically with oxygen.”
Oh, dear. Looks like you won’t be able to burn that oxygen… because it’s already combined with oxygen.
Hahahahahaha.
*wipes away tears of laughter*
Well, suppose we just burn the hydrogen, then. Hydrogen can be burned. In fact, lots of car companies are lining up to produce cars that contain hydrogen fuel cells, and some are already available, according to Hydrogen.org Really Long Link ):
“A fuel cell is fed hydrogen and air and puts out electricity, heat, and … pure water in the exhaust. An excellent animated graphic of an operating fuel cell can be found at: Really Long Link ”
And here’s the lovely Honda model (taken from: Really Long Link
What I’m taking exception to is the suggestion that you can convert water to hydrogen and oxygen in your existing engine…that you can burn hydrogen in your existing engine…and that you can somehow get a net increase in energy this way.
Problem 1: Electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen, using “a plastic water tank, a control circuit, a reaction chamber, a hi-pressure carb/FI fitting, and 3 gauges.”
I’m not really aware of any “off the shelf fittings” that look like this:
That’s a Stuart Energy trailer-mounted refueling system. It plugs into mains electricity and produces hydrogen and oxygen from water by electrolysis (passing an electric current through the water).
The point is, if you tried to do this with your car battery, it would be flat in about 10 seconds, and you’d have produced less gas than a gopher fart.
And you need more than that to run a car with.
“The Stuart Energy hydrogen fueling station … will generate approximately 120 kg of clean hydrogen fuel per day…Each bus in the project will require about 40 kg of hydrogen per day.” ( Really Long Link )
You don’t need as much as a bus, but you need more than a gopher fart. So, good luck with that. In the future, we’ll have solar and other methods for producing hydrogen ( Really Long Link ), but that’s in the future.
For now, not only does electrolysis require more electricity than a car battery is capable of providing, but it also requires catalysts – either platinum, in the case of acidic electrolysis (cha-ching! More expensive than gold, people!) or nano nickel and iron particles (that doesn’t sound off the shelf to me).
Problem 2: Pumping gaseous hydrogen and oxygen into the carburetor of a normal petrol engine and expecting the car to work.
Take a look at this simplified model of an internal combustion engine:
It’s from rkm.com.au ( Really Long Link ), which explains:
“INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES are mechanical devices that use controlled explosions (combustions) of petrol (gasoline) and air mixtures to rotate wheels. The reciprocating (back and forth) engine explodes the mixture (of fuel air) in a cylinder that forces the contained piston to move. This movement of the piston is transmitted (via the connecting rod) to a rotating device (crankshaft shown as a simple red disc) which is ultimately connected to the wheels (via gears, usually).”
Right. So, in a normal engine, petrol and air get mixed in the carburettor, they go to the cylinders, and a spark ignites them inside the cylinder, causing the controlled explosion that drives the piston.
Is hydrogen gas going to ignite and explode in the same way?
Nicholas P Cheremisinoff ( q=ignition" target="_blank">Really Long Link temperature 92 octane fuel&source=web&ots=Z8-QZv4Bk 5&sig=3yuhnJ-d-S82fQpN7F0lFSa tagw&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_resul t&resnum=7&ct=result ) assures me that the ignition temperature of gasoline is 315 degrees Celsius.
This is echoed on the Hydrogen Now website ( Really Long Link ) which also mentions that:
“Hydrogen is less flammable than gasoline. The self-ignition temperature of hydrogen is 550 degrees Celsius.”
Well, the spark produced by your existing spark plug will probably still ignite hydrogen. That’s IF there’s a great enough concentration of hydrogen (it’s a very small molecule that can leak out of unimaginably small spaces) and IF the pressure is high enough (which is debatable). BUT, if it does burn, it’s certainly not going to burn with the same characteristics of the fuel for which your petrol engine is best suited.
And what happens then?
“Under ideal conditions the common piston internal combustion engine burns its fuel/air mix in the cylinder in an orderly and controlled fashion…This ignition advance allows time for the combustion process to develop peak pressure at the ideal time for maximum recovery of work from the expanding gases.”
What does that mean, exactly?
“In normal combustion, this flame front moves throughout the fuel air mix at a rate characteristic for the fuel-air mixture. Pressure rises smoothly to a peak, as nearly all the available fuel is consumed, then pressure falls as the piston descends. Maximum cylinder pressure is achieved a few crankshaft degrees after the piston passes TDC, so that the increasing pressure can give the piston a hard push when its speed and mechanical advantage on the crank shaft gives the best recovery of force from the expanding gases.”
Here’s the really fun part:
“When unburned fuel/air mixture beyond the boundary of the flame front is heated and pressurized by the advancing flame front for a certain length of time, detonation occurs. It is caused by an instantaneous, explosive ignition of pockets of fuel/air mixture. The cylinder pressure rises sharply beyond its design limits, and if it is allowed to persist, detonation will damage or destroy engine parts. The deleterious mechanisms range from particle wear caused by moderate knocking, to holes punched through the piston or head caused by serious knocking.”
Awesome! Destruction of engine parts! Holes in the pistons!
Wheeeeeeeee!
No wonder they want you to try it on an old, crappy car that you don’t love.
Problem 3: How to overcome the fact that the energy required to split water into hydrogen and oxygen is exactly the same as the energy gained when oxygen and hydrogen are combined again.
There’s nothing much more to say about Problem Number 3. Storing chemical energy is like putting money in a money box – you can’t take out more than you put in.
So, even if this scheme actually worked, even if you got 100% of the water to split, even if it was all perfectly insulated so that no energy was lost as heat and no gases escaped, you would still have a car that goes nowhere, because energy input would be greater than or equal to energy output.
Try not to cry. I know it’s a great disappointment. Until we start swapping petrol stations for hydrogen stations and buying purpose-built hydrogen cars, we just can’t have emissions-free travel.
But hopefully that day is not too far away.
Do I think oil companies have stifled new technologies? Absolutely!
Do I think I can convert my existing car to run on water? Absolutely not!
Website Spirit of Ma’at ( Really Long Link ) is not the only place where I can download plans to, “use water instead of gasoline to run your car.”
While it’s very considerate of them to recommend that I, “use an old car that doesn't represent a loss of value if you can't make it work. And leave everything intact so that you can always reconnect back to gas if you have to,” I would rather they admit the truth: You can’t PRODUCE significant amounts of hydrogen in your existing engine, you can’t BURN hydrogen in your existing engine, and even if you could, you couldn’t get any kind of net energy gain out of the cycle.
Let’s find out why. Here’s an outline of the downloadable so-called plan.
“The Plan:
Build and install a low-cost alternative method for running your vehicle (internal combustion engine) on tap water, using off-the-shelf components.
This is simply an efficient way to convert ordinary tap water into gaseous hydrogen and oxygen, and then burn these vapors in the engine, instead of gasoline.
This "minisystem" runs easily from your existing battery and electrical system, and it plugs into your carburetor with simple off-the-shelf fittings.
You will be installing a plastic water tank, a control circuit, a reaction chamber, a hi-pressure carb/FI fitting, and 3 gauges, and then hooking into your existing carb/FI.
The simplicity comes from its being an "on-demand" system requiring no fancy storage or plumbing. You crank the gas pedal or throttle, and you electrically create more vapor for immediate consumption, on demand; low-high flow rate as needed, from idle to maximum power. The only real change is that you are using tap water as fuel, instead of the traditional petroleum-based fuel.”
Oh. My. God.
Did he say turn tap water into gaseous hydrogen and oxygen? And then burn them?
For starters, to “burn” something is to combine it with oxygen. Ask the Free Dictionary ( Really Long Link ):
“Burn, v. 1. To be on fire; undergo combustion. A substance burns if it is heated up enough to react chemically with oxygen.”
Oh, dear. Looks like you won’t be able to burn that oxygen… because it’s already combined with oxygen.
Hahahahahaha.
*wipes away tears of laughter*
Well, suppose we just burn the hydrogen, then. Hydrogen can be burned. In fact, lots of car companies are lining up to produce cars that contain hydrogen fuel cells, and some are already available, according to Hydrogen.org Really Long Link ):
“A fuel cell is fed hydrogen and air and puts out electricity, heat, and … pure water in the exhaust. An excellent animated graphic of an operating fuel cell can be found at: Really Long Link ”
And here’s the lovely Honda model (taken from: Really Long Link
What I’m taking exception to is the suggestion that you can convert water to hydrogen and oxygen in your existing engine…that you can burn hydrogen in your existing engine…and that you can somehow get a net increase in energy this way.
Problem 1: Electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen, using “a plastic water tank, a control circuit, a reaction chamber, a hi-pressure carb/FI fitting, and 3 gauges.”
I’m not really aware of any “off the shelf fittings” that look like this:
That’s a Stuart Energy trailer-mounted refueling system. It plugs into mains electricity and produces hydrogen and oxygen from water by electrolysis (passing an electric current through the water).
The point is, if you tried to do this with your car battery, it would be flat in about 10 seconds, and you’d have produced less gas than a gopher fart.
And you need more than that to run a car with.
“The Stuart Energy hydrogen fueling station … will generate approximately 120 kg of clean hydrogen fuel per day…Each bus in the project will require about 40 kg of hydrogen per day.” ( Really Long Link )
You don’t need as much as a bus, but you need more than a gopher fart. So, good luck with that. In the future, we’ll have solar and other methods for producing hydrogen ( Really Long Link ), but that’s in the future.
For now, not only does electrolysis require more electricity than a car battery is capable of providing, but it also requires catalysts – either platinum, in the case of acidic electrolysis (cha-ching! More expensive than gold, people!) or nano nickel and iron particles (that doesn’t sound off the shelf to me).
Problem 2: Pumping gaseous hydrogen and oxygen into the carburetor of a normal petrol engine and expecting the car to work.
Take a look at this simplified model of an internal combustion engine:
It’s from rkm.com.au ( Really Long Link ), which explains:
“INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES are mechanical devices that use controlled explosions (combustions) of petrol (gasoline) and air mixtures to rotate wheels. The reciprocating (back and forth) engine explodes the mixture (of fuel air) in a cylinder that forces the contained piston to move. This movement of the piston is transmitted (via the connecting rod) to a rotating device (crankshaft shown as a simple red disc) which is ultimately connected to the wheels (via gears, usually).”
Right. So, in a normal engine, petrol and air get mixed in the carburettor, they go to the cylinders, and a spark ignites them inside the cylinder, causing the controlled explosion that drives the piston.
Is hydrogen gas going to ignite and explode in the same way?
Nicholas P Cheremisinoff ( q=ignition" target="_blank">Really Long Link temperature 92 octane fuel&source=web&ots=Z8-QZv4Bk 5&sig=3yuhnJ-d-S82fQpN7F0lFSa tagw&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_resul t&resnum=7&ct=result ) assures me that the ignition temperature of gasoline is 315 degrees Celsius.
This is echoed on the Hydrogen Now website ( Really Long Link ) which also mentions that:
“Hydrogen is less flammable than gasoline. The self-ignition temperature of hydrogen is 550 degrees Celsius.”
Well, the spark produced by your existing spark plug will probably still ignite hydrogen. That’s IF there’s a great enough concentration of hydrogen (it’s a very small molecule that can leak out of unimaginably small spaces) and IF the pressure is high enough (which is debatable). BUT, if it does burn, it’s certainly not going to burn with the same characteristics of the fuel for which your petrol engine is best suited.
And what happens then?
“Under ideal conditions the common piston internal combustion engine burns its fuel/air mix in the cylinder in an orderly and controlled fashion…This ignition advance allows time for the combustion process to develop peak pressure at the ideal time for maximum recovery of work from the expanding gases.”
What does that mean, exactly?
“In normal combustion, this flame front moves throughout the fuel air mix at a rate characteristic for the fuel-air mixture. Pressure rises smoothly to a peak, as nearly all the available fuel is consumed, then pressure falls as the piston descends. Maximum cylinder pressure is achieved a few crankshaft degrees after the piston passes TDC, so that the increasing pressure can give the piston a hard push when its speed and mechanical advantage on the crank shaft gives the best recovery of force from the expanding gases.”
Here’s the really fun part:
“When unburned fuel/air mixture beyond the boundary of the flame front is heated and pressurized by the advancing flame front for a certain length of time, detonation occurs. It is caused by an instantaneous, explosive ignition of pockets of fuel/air mixture. The cylinder pressure rises sharply beyond its design limits, and if it is allowed to persist, detonation will damage or destroy engine parts. The deleterious mechanisms range from particle wear caused by moderate knocking, to holes punched through the piston or head caused by serious knocking.”
Awesome! Destruction of engine parts! Holes in the pistons!
Wheeeeeeeee!
No wonder they want you to try it on an old, crappy car that you don’t love.
Problem 3: How to overcome the fact that the energy required to split water into hydrogen and oxygen is exactly the same as the energy gained when oxygen and hydrogen are combined again.
There’s nothing much more to say about Problem Number 3. Storing chemical energy is like putting money in a money box – you can’t take out more than you put in.
So, even if this scheme actually worked, even if you got 100% of the water to split, even if it was all perfectly insulated so that no energy was lost as heat and no gases escaped, you would still have a car that goes nowhere, because energy input would be greater than or equal to energy output.
Try not to cry. I know it’s a great disappointment. Until we start swapping petrol stations for hydrogen stations and buying purpose-built hydrogen cars, we just can’t have emissions-free travel.
But hopefully that day is not too far away.
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Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
Comment by Thoraiya Dyer
Demented World
I don't know how many have tried, but even fake journalist shows like current affair and today tonight are running stories on saving petrol using water. They show a range of people with unsealed salsa dip jars full of water and electrodes strapped under the bonnet and make no comment on the mechanism or anything evidence-based.
Sigh.
Comment by charles
ZCars
Ponderous
Meanwhile, people can do what Prince Charles did with his Aston Martin - converted the car to run on white wine!
No, I kid you not!
Comment by Master Lee
This technology has been around for over 40 years, Tesla himself tried to promote it from some of his ideas and of course was told otherwise like sad lil sites like this.
So it doesn't work - well, shows you never tried it have you - I myself being an engineer sought to try it and was impressed with the results. my suv get's a 54% step up from before, thus my mpg is 11mpg more than before.
Say what you wish, but you are simply ignorant and have no clue - and seems they master's know more than the naysayers.
(spraying a large "L" on your foreheads)
Comment by sandstar
You need to reread this post. There was NOTHING in it condemning fuel cells. She/he was referring to hydrolysis, which is completely different than how a hydrogen fuel cell works. Hydrogen fuel cells DO NOT separate water into O2 and H2. This is as simple as I can make it:
Your thoughts: H2 produced by (???) feeds cell, produces power.
Article intent: H2 produced by electrolysis feeds internal combustion engine, produces power.
See the difference? Perhaps you should read articles before slamming them. It would make you look like less of a complete idiot.
And, finally, based on your last comment, either you are an "aspiring" engineer (God save us all) or you bought your degree. Or maybe my expectations for humanity are simply too high. I really hate to think of anyone with a BS, MS, PhD in Chem. Engg. that's 24 yrs old still using the high school "loser" symbol as an insult. I found it immature in High School, thankfully never saw it in college, and I sure as hell would be surprised if I saw it at work (I work, by the way, for an engineering international design firm specializing in oil and gas....yes, I am one of the evil ones).
On a final note, I am a huge promoter of Hydrogen fuel cells. The biggest problem we're facing is how to cleanly produce enough hydrogen to meet demand (1) and then how to distribute it (2).
(1) The energy consumption to produce hydrogen would require more fuel than we currently burn in all power plants, totally defeating the purpose. The one plan that the government is actually aware of to reduce dependence on foreign oil that I've seen that makes good business sense is this one:
Really Long Link
Its going to take baby steps. We can't make every car in America with fuel cells tomorrow AND replace all the gas stations in America with fuel. Its the old adage "which came first, the chicken or the egg?". Fuel companies don't want to put in a Hydrogen station if there's no cars to use it and no one wants to buy a car if there's no fuel availiable in a close proximity.
(2) Our infrastructure here in America is huge compared to say Great Britian (based purely on size of land mass). Its going to take a looong time to get the infrastructure for transportation and distribution of hydrogen set up to the same extent that gasoline and deisel are today. Picken's plan seems practical enough to me to actually implement immediately while that infrastructure is under development.
My 2 pennies.
Hope you have a great day
Comment by sandstar
Comment by Thoraiya Dyer
Demented World
(I was too lazy to make that correction, especially since it seemed like Master Lee had not read more than the title of the blog post.)
What an excellent link. Hooray for Picken's Plan I have high hopes for wind power, which can also be used to generate hydrogen for fuel.
Cheers,
Thoraiya
Comment by Really friggin Irritated with all this
Comment by Thoraiya Dyer
Demented World
Thank you for your comments. Your points all seem valid, especially the turbocharging comparison, and I'm interested to hear them because I'm neither a mechanic nor an engineer, just someone with rudimentary research skills.
I don't doubt that existing engines can be improved.
If you're clever enough to milk extra energy out of a petrol engine with varous modifications, that's fantastic, but it's not what I'm contesting, which is the ability to CONVERT your car FROM running on fuel to RUNNING on water.
ie. you STOP putting petrol in, and ONLY put water in. Surely you can agree that that's not feasible?
I think it's pretty cool that you're using wood to run your pickup, if that is true - although it doesn't really help with the environmental problem, eh?
Cheers,
Thoraiya
Comment by Anonymous
and could anyone please direct me to any web-sites about this topic?? if so, please send them to my address, i'm very interested in this subject, thanking you in advance,
Peter
Comment by Thoraiya Dyer
Demented World
I also look forward to advances in the cheap production of hydrogen.
Thoraiya
Comment by power steering pumps
Comment by Thoraiya Dyer
Demented World
Comment by Anonymous
Or is it that they combine after the hydrogen has exploded? This seems to put the pressure of the energy used for fusion outside our closed system and into the world. It would make your exhaust pipe cold, cold and filled with water, right? If everyone did this, we'd have a scare of "Global Cooling."
Aside from that, assuming that we can find some shelf with miniature Stuart Energy refueling system parts, your source says we can get a 3:1 ratio of output hydrogen to input. That input is for the electricity to run the electrolysis, right? I think I'd just plug my electrolyzer into my home power until I get that threshold of hydrogen to do it indefinitely in the car.
Please tell me what is wrong with my assumptions.
Comment by Anonymous
Always remember to think Bunnies and Trees.
See, life is a little better now.
By the way as a Master Automotive Technician I have enough time, experience and knowledge to know an average vehicle can run on a large amount of H2 (compared to a gophers fart) for a short amount of time. Issues regarding pre-ignition and detonation are huge factors. Ignition timing can be controlled by mechanical or electrical means, but these are just prolonging the inevitable failure of the combustion chamber. The majority of the engines made now a day have an aluminum block, head and pistons with a steal sleeve in the bore. The aluminum is a great dissipater of heat, however the steal bore and aluminum are obviously 2 different materials that expand at different rates. This causes these items to warp and hot spots to form which increase the pre-ignition and detonation events, thus destroying the engine in due time. Traditional cast iron blocks cannot dissipate the heat as easily causing even more ignition issues. On the subject of turbo chargers / superchargers, they give the engine the means to produce more energy than they use… i.e. more fuel, air and pressure, the more power. For an example, the blower on a nitro funny car that puts out 2,000 hp (for a very short amount of time because of pure force, pre-ignition and detonation, much like what would be seen in a car running H2) will use 1000 hp just to run the blower (at high rpm’s), which means the engine total output is 3000 but only 2000 is usable. Current cars cannot be retrofitted to run on H2 with the current mechanical engines and endure.
P.S. Bunnies and Trees
Love,
Damnoodle