Car that runs on distilled water?

Nick M

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Distilled water huh?
 

born2drv

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Nov 1, 2005
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Actually, I read about it some more and really started to learn a lot about it... it's the real deal. I'm going to call their company Monday for more infromation, but this is basically how it works.

13amps of power is required from the battery. This is fed into their proprietary "box" that has has 2 sections; one which contains electrolyte (never needs to be refilled) and the other part that has distilled water. The box then uses the incoming current and the electrolyte to seperate the water into oxygen and hydrogen (on demand, so there is no storage of hydrogen, it's fed into the engine as its created).

The car is modified simply by hooking it up to the battery, and routing a hydrogen pipe to your intake. So you still put gas in your car and drive it like normal.

The combustion of the hydrogen with the gas provides for a very and much more complete burn, raising the efficiency of your gas engine from around 35% to about 45% which produces less heat, very little carbon deposits in the engine, and much less emissions, and as well it's been tested and proved to raise fuel efficiency by up to 30% in cars and 10% in heavy transport trucks.

Basically it's a mini-hydrogen generator under your hood designed to increase the efficiency of your gas engine. And about every 500-600 miles or you so you will need to fill up the tank again with more distilled water. They are working on a new model however that distills water vapor from the air and that will not require being refilled at all.

Like I said, the technology was featured in Popular Science, they wouldn't put it there if it wasn't legit, I even linked to PopSci's website. The company only "discovered" this thing around July/Sept of last year, they've tested it in cars and trucks and have had indpendant tests certifying their claims, and are working on a smaller compact unit they can mass produce and sell geared towards passenger vehicles.
 

born2drv

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Nov 1, 2005
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fine laugh at me, it's all good... when i'm running with hydrogen rich air intake getting 40mpg in a supra that burns clean like high octane fuel we'll see who's laughing ;)
 

Jaguar_5

It's ALIVE!
Feb 7, 2006
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Sure you can bust H2o into 2 H's and an O, but i want to know the output of that thing!

Anyone seen the mythbusters where they tested all sorts of MPG increasing gimmmicks? The one they were most excited about was a big cylinder with a rod inside, a hydrogen generator like this one... it created a very small amount of tiny bubbles, of course it wasn't enough to run the car

However, they did prove (with a big unlit hydrogen torch pointed at the carb) that a car can run off of pure Hydrogen... If this unit can create a consistant enough amount (which i doubt) to supplement gas, i want one lol
 

Supracentral

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Mar 30, 2005
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born2drv said:
fine laugh at me, it's all good... when i'm running with hydrogen rich air intake getting 40mpg in a supra that burns clean like high octane fuel we'll see who's laughing ;)

Go learn some basic chemistry & physics and then you'll understand why I am laughing.

Hydrogen can't yield the power you need in the density you are delivering it.
 

Supracentral

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Mar 30, 2005
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Nevermind, I'll just hand it to you.

The only way you can make it worthwhile is to run completly on H (without the gasoline), and that's a tall order. Gasoline is massively energy-dense material and you are going to be hard-pressed to find something that can compete with it.

In order for you to be driving down the road laughing at me in my primitive gasoline powered Supra, your hydrogen fuel must offer the power, vehicle range, convenience, and affordability that everyone takes for granted with gasoline.

This places tough requirements on the vehicular hydrogen-storage system. One kilogram of hydrogen provides about the same chemical energy (142 MJ) as 1 gal of gasoline (131 MJ). Factoring in the greater efficiency of PEMs, we need to store about 1 kg of hydrogen for every 2 gal of gasoline on a similar internal-combustion-engine vehicle. It is estimated that the entire onboard hydrogen fuel system—which includes the weight and volume of the hydrogen and its required fuel-delivery support such as the tank, pipes, pumps, and heat exchangers—must provide a volumetric energy density of at least 6 MJ/l and a gravimetric energy density of at least 6 MJ/kg energy equivalent of hydrogen to be even close. We will need about double those values to completely replace gasoline internal-combustion engines at any reasonable level of performance.

The hydrogen density, calculated from the weight and volume of the hydrogen alone (hydrogen basis) must be considerably higher to compensate for the weight and volume of the support hardware. Similarly, incorporating a hydride into an onboard storage system will substantially reduce its effective hydrogen density. There is no rule of thumb for the degree of reduction; it depends on the choice of storage medium and the required system design.

Compressed gaseous storage is closest to technical feasibility and is fundamentally appealing because of its familiarity and conceptual simplicity. The major difficulty with compressed hydrogen is its volume. One kilogram of hydrogen stored in common laboratory gas cylinders at 2,200 psi occupies 91.2 l (1.6 MJ/l, hydrogen basis—the effective energy density in a storage system will be substantially lower). For comparison, a mere 8.2 l of gasoline carries the same energy. Hydrogen tanks of 5,000 and 10,000 psi are being developed, but even at 10,000 psi, the volume of hydrogen is 27 l/kg (5.3 MJ/l, hydrogen basis).

At high pressures, deviations from the ideal gas law are large. The hydrogen gas density at 10,000 psi is only two-thirds that of an ideal gas. Doubling the pressure to 20,000 psi, if that were technically feasible, would increase the gas density by only about 50%. High-pressure tanks are complex structures containing multiple layers for hydrogen confinement, rupture strength, and impact resistance. High-pressure storage is most appealing for large vehicles, such as buses, which have more available space—on the roof, for example. I'm not sure where you plan to store your 20' long hydrogen cell on your Supra? Maybe a trailer?

Demonstration fuel-cell vehicles have been built using liquid-hydrogen storage. Here, the volumetric situation is somewhat improved compared to compressed gas because liquid hydrogen occupies about 14 l/kg (10 MJ/l, hydrogen basis). But hydrogen vaporizes at –253 °C, which necessitates an exotic superinsulated cryogenic tank. Inevitably, heat leaking into the tank will produce serious boil-off, and the tank will begin to empty itself in days in undriven vehicles. Liquid hydrogen seems best suited to fleet applications, where vehicles return nightly to a central station for refueling. Advanced tank designs may extend the boil-off period to perhaps a few weeks. Proposals that combine high-pressure and cryogenic capabilities in a single tank design could also mitigate boil-off.

Also, there is a large energy penalty for hydrogen compression (equal to 10% of the energy content of the gas compressed) or liquefaction (30%). Although this affects the storage economics, it does not impact the on-board storage system because the penalty is paid before the hydrogen is delivered to the vehicle.

Simply put, you aren't going to run your Supra on hydrogen anytime soon. And the gas density power requirements problems don't go away even if you are just trying to create a hydrogen rich intake system. Remember an engine is an AIR pump. You are OXIDIZING fuel. You want to displace the o2 with a new fuel (H). It's not going to work the way you think and the simple mathematics don't work out.
 

mdr40z

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Mar 31, 2005
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http://www.h2fc.com/news/index.shtml
Don't think for one minute it isn't here to stay or that it is not the fuel of the future, minor hurdles to climb are development of infrastructure and mass production to bring down fuel cell cost... I don't believe tho that you will ever successfully, cost effectively convert internal combustion to operate competitively on it
 

Supracentral

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mdr40z said:
I don't believe tho that you will ever successfully, cost effectively convert internal combustion to operate competitively on it

Exactly, hydrogen fuel cells for hybrids are a realistic possibility. Internal combustion is a different story.
 

born2drv

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Nov 1, 2005
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Woah Woah There Nelly.

First of all I have better then a basic grasp of physics and chemistry. I'm a mechanical engineering major + I taught physics back in the day.

Second of all, no one is storing hydrogen here. If you cared to read what I wrote earlier, you would see that the way this product (supposedly) works is by converting distilled water into H2 and O2 gas. This mixture of gas is then fed to the intake of the car pre-turbo. (They have it installed pre-turbo on big rigs). So you're just enriching the mixture of air with Hydrogen (and Oygen too).

Now granted this thing looks to carry about I dunno, 1 gallon of distilled water...? ....from H20 would be 2/3rds of H2 gas. They say this is enough water to run about 500-600 miles. So when you fill up your gas, you'll want to fill up the water.

This DOES NOT REPLACE the gas fuel. I suppose my title was a bit misleading, therefor I apologize. It just increases the efficiency of the gasoline combustion and makes the car burn the fuel more completely, cleanly with less energy losses (heat, etc).

They're selling this product for about $6-7000 for the heavy vehicle trucking unit. The truckers that have been using say they've saved about $500+/mo in fuel (they spend about $5000/mo... .or a 10% savings) and their vehicles run much cooler which puts less strain on the motor, not to mention that they have seen contamination in oil to be much less. So in a year or so, they've paid for the cost of the product, and they seem to be very happy with it. The company claims to have retrofitted over 300 trucks so far. The truck models hold much more water I believe, not sure how much. They claim efficiency in cars/SUV's to be much more, in the 30+% range.

Now granted there is an extra fuel here (the water)... so it may be misleading to say the vehicle gets 30% more MPG --- when the gallons (of water) have been increased by adding to the fuel. ...and there is a drain of 13amps on the charging system... however once they make their model that supposedly distilled the water out of the air which wont' require refilling, then I think you have a winner.

Again I'm not taking anything here for face value, I'm going to do my research, but they're not the only company that has made this thing. Apparently there are 3-4 of them competing to patent this thing and bring it to market first, with another couple dozen companies trying to make similar products. I don't think it's rocket science.

There's a video clip actually that explains it more in detail, I'll find it for you...
 

CRE

7M-GE + MAFT Pro + T = :D
Oct 24, 2005
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True, using a simple electrode to split H2O is terribly inefficient when using a car's alternator (current technology anyway). From the sound of it they're using some sort of catalyzing agent.

It's a great idea, but it's not a new one. If they prove this unit's effciency I'll be all over it... until then, I don't consider it anything more than vaporware (no pun intended).
 

Supracentral

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Mar 30, 2005
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born2drv said:
Second of all, no one is storing hydrogen here. If you cared to read what I wrote earlier, you would see that the way this product (supposedly) works is by converting distilled water into H2 and O2 gas. This mixture of gas is then fed to the intake of the car pre-turbo. (They have it installed pre-turbo on big rigs). So you're just enriching the mixture of air with Hydrogen (and Oygen too).

I did actually read the original. However I dragged myself off on running 100% on hydrogen as an example of how poor a fuel hydrogen is. Sorry 'bout that - I was about 1/2 asleep when I wrote that (was up all night, slept all day kind of thing..)

CRE said:
It's a great idea, but it's not a new one. If they prove this unit's effciency I'll be all over it... until then, I don't consider it anything more than vaporware (no pun intended).

Yea, that was my point. I probably could have written all of that a little better. I don't function well on a lack of sleep - lol.
 

Nick M

Black Rifles Matter
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Hippie: hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe

realist: but it is available in compound form, namely hydrocarbons where it is easy to harvest, and water where it is difficult to harvest.

Hippie: well George Bush lied.