Hydrogen Fuel Cell

[Jeremiah]

...it does take energy to make as stated above but so does gas...

Yes... but no.

Gas already has energy stored in it, so it just needs a little energy to release the energy in gasoline. Because gas already has lots energy stored in it, it's able to more-than-replace the energy needed to spark it.

[Skyman]

Disclaimer.. it's explosive, hot and dangerous...it could burn you blind you or explode you, not my fault if you hurt yourself.

Ok, take a glass jug. I use a glass coke bottle, or a jones soda bottle. Now get some Lye (I use pure soap making lye), some tin foil, and some big balloons. Put a very tightly rolled up length of tin foil as round and as long that will fit in the mouth of the bottle, pour lye into the bottle, cover the tin foil about half way.

Now slowly pour some water into the bottle dissolving the lye and letting it react with the tin foil. One it starts to react and get hot cover the coke bottle with the balloon(careful not to get burnt (it's hot) or spill any on your skin - I use rubber gloves). The balloon will expand, and fill by itself.

Once it's full enough, take it off and tie it in a not. You now how a balloon filled with hydrogen, it's highly flammable and it will float high.

Use your imagination. Exploding UFO's have come to mind before.

SO tin foil, lye, and water make hydrogen with no battery needed.

[ack]

My 2 cents:

An aquaintence recently tried to convince me that he could build a vehicle that could run on water by simply setting up an electrolysis-based hydrogen generator that would be driven by a battery which was, in turn charged by the engine that burned the resulting hydrogen as fuel.

The problem with this design is the fact that more energy is required to keep the system running than is generated by the system itself no matter how much water you inserted into the system.

It all boils down to this -

Millions of years worth of action on plantlife through the laying down of sediments - driven by the heat engine that is Planet Earth - have given us today's petroleum resources.  Petroleum is "free" in the sense that we, as a consuming lifeform, did not have to lift a finger to create it. Mother Nature has done all the heavy lifting over literally eons of time.  All we have to do is extract Mother Nature's handiwork from the ground and run it through a distilling process.

Creating hydrogen to burn in an internal combustion engine as a replacement for gasoline, requires far more energy than the same amount of gasoline - despite the fact that the basic material used to create the hydrogen (water) is abundant - UNLESS it is produced on a massive scale using an wildly-inexpensive power source.  Even then, the hydrogen equivalent to a gallon of gas may still cost more to use due to the costs involved  in containing hydrogen, transporting hydrogen and designing vehcles to use it.

The point I am trying to make here is that I don't see the average Joe building his own cost-effective hydrogen generator for his own hydrogen-converted G10-powered Metro as long as there is a cheaper alternative (even at $150 a barrel!), namely Petroleum.  Texas Tea.  Black Gold.  Now everybody said "Jed, move away from there! Californy is the place you oughta be!  So they packed their bags an moved to Beverly.  Hills that is.  Movie Stars.  Swimmin' Pools...."   

Yours in Non-sequitorism,

President of the Independence, MO Zippy the Pinhead Fan Club,

[viking]

My 2 cents:

An aquaintence recently tried to convince me that he could build a vehicle that could run on water by simply setting up an electrolysis-based hydrogen generator that would be driven by a battery which was, in turn charged by the engine that burned the resulting hydrogen as fuel.

The problem with this design is the fact that more energy is required to keep the system running than is generated by the system itself no matter how much water you inserted into the system.

It all boils down to this -

Millions of years worth of action on plantlife through the laying down of sediments - driven by the heat engine that is Planet Earth - have given us today's petroleum resources.  Petroleum is "free" in the sense that we, as a consuming lifeform, did not have to lift a finger to create it. Mother Nature has done all the heavy lifting over literally eons of time.  All we have to do is extract Mother Nature's handiwork from the ground and run it through a distilling process.

Creating hydrogen to burn in an internal combustion engine as a replacement for gasoline, requires far more energy than the same amount of gasoline - despite the fact that the basic material used to create the hydrogen (water) is abundant - UNLESS it is produced on a massive scale using an wildly-inexpensive power source.  Even then, the hydrogen equivalent to a gallon of gas may still cost more to use due to the costs involved  in containing hydrogen, transporting hydrogen and designing vehcles to use it.

The point I am trying to make here is that I don't see the average Joe building his own cost-effective hydrogen generator for his own hydrogen-converted G10-powered Metro as long as there is a cheaper alternative (even at $150 a barrel!), namely Petroleum.  Texas Tea.  Black Gold.  Now everybody said "Jed, move away from there! Californy is the place you oughta be!  So they packed their bags an moved to Beverly.  Hills that is.  Movie Stars.  Swimmin' Pools...."  

Yours in Non-sequitorism,

President of the Independence, MO Zippy the Pinhead Fan Club,

This is exactly what I've been trying to tell people for a long time, splitting H2O into H2 and O gases is energy intensive, even with solar because of the cost of the system would have to be figured into when it would produce more energy than what it cost for the panels, controls and storage systems.

[ZUKIMON]

  So they packed their bags an moved to Beverly.  Hills that is.  Movie Stars.  Swimmin' Pools...."  

"So they loaded up the truck, and moved to Beverly. Hills that is. Swimming pools, Movie stars....." 

Sorry, I love that tune and I felt I had to tell you the proper way.

[ack]

"So they loaded up the truck, and moved to Beverly. Hills that is. Swimming pools, Movie stars....." 

Sorry, I love that tune and I felt I had to tell you the proper way.

OOPS again!

[freewheelin]

Well for what its worth A friend of mine made one of these....it actually produced hydrogen(not much, but it did work)
He put it on a dodge dakota that was getting 13mpg.he also changed his driving style(became much more conservative) Drove it about 80miles and got 17mpg. As a test he removed the unit for the drive home.....he got 20mpg with it off.. 

So i'd say save your money and just drive with a ligther right foot.   just my .02

[ZUKIMON]

Hmm, this is puzzling to say the least. There was a guy on the local news the other day that put this on a Civic and is getting something like 70 mpg.

[viking]

At least putting one of these things together isn't going to break your pocket book and it might just work, especially on vehicles that don't have all the computer control over all aspects of the engine.  The thing is this system makes hydrogen and oxygen in a gas form so for computer controlled engines this may be a major hiccup, by just having a little extra oxygen going through the engine the oxygen sensor may be throwing signals to the fuel control computer to enrich the fuel to air mix.

[ZUKIMON]

That's the key though, it's wanting the o2 sensor to tell the computer that it's running rich due to the extra hydrogen fuel coming in, thus making it lean out the gas going to the cylinders. This is what's supposed to make it use less gas, and more hydrogen.   You're right, it's not going to cost too much to make one, and if you have connections, you can get the wallplates and PVC pipe for free.

[Jeremiah]

At least putting one of these things together isn't going to break your pocket book and it might just work,

Doubt it - I have yet to see a working prototype that didn't:
1) Require electrolysis to get any significant HHO & therefore drainage of the battery (or bank of batteries) to be re-replenished via overnight charging (expensive for batts & charger)
2) Some kinda chemical (usually lie or salt) and water that doesn't produce NEARLY enough HHO fast enough to make a difference. Cost of materials has always outweighed any benefit.

I get the temptation, I really do. I was sucked in myself. With rising gas prices, when I ran across something that looked like it could be fabbed cheaply to get good gains in MPG, I was all over it...

I've spent way too much time digging into this. Even had plans written up for wiring, HHO piping, HHO engines w/ ultra-low-pressure caching containers (act like capacitors for when doing hard acceleration), and even an electrical circuit that would regulate how much current would go to the HHO engines (accelerate = higher current = higher HHO output and visa versa). I had redundant safety blow-off valves through the system.

If you want to play around with it, and get the same results everyone else has - that's fine.

CAUTION: This stuff gets very unstable & explosive even at moderate pressure. I highly recommend accounting for SAFE (nowhere near ignition source) relief valves thought the system. Beware of placement in case you get in a collision, or a part on your engine fails / gets hot. Just look up "HHO" or "Brown's Gas" on youtube - you'll see people playing with this stuff in open air (NO pressure) and how explosive it is. It's WAY worse when compressed. be safe, and enjoy - it can be a fun science experiment.

If you succeed with this, congrats, you'll have been the first to disprove the laws of thermodynamics. Remember me when you're a millionare, and send me a Kicker 3 

[viking]

Doubt it - I have yet to see a working prototype that didn't:
1) Require electrolysis to get any significant HHO & therefore drainage of the battery (or bank of batteries) to be re-replenished via overnight charging (expensive for batts & charger)
2) Some kinda chemical (usually lie or salt) and water that doesn't produce NEARLY enough HHO fast enough to make a difference. Cost of materials has always outweighed any benefit.

I get the temptation, I really do. I was sucked in myself. With rising gas prices, when I ran across something that looked like it could be fabbed cheaply to get good gains in MPG, I was all over it...

I've spent way too much time digging into this. Even had plans written up for wiring, HHO piping, HHO engines w/ ultra-low-pressure caching containers (act like capacitors for when doing hard acceleration), and even an electrical circuit that would regulate how much current would go to the HHO engines (accelerate = higher current = higher HHO output and visa versa). I had redundant safety blow-off valves through the system.

If you want to play around with it, and get the same results everyone else has - that's fine.

CAUTION: This stuff gets very unstable & explosive even at moderate pressure. I highly recommend accounting for SAFE (nowhere near ignition source) relief valves thought the system. Beware of placement in case you get in a collision, or a part on your engine fails / gets hot. Just look up "HHO" or "Brown's Gas" on youtube - you'll see people playing with this stuff in open air (NO pressure) and how explosive it is. It's WAY worse when compressed. be safe, and enjoy - it can be a fun science experiment.

If you succeed with this, congrats, you'll have been the first to disprove the laws of thermodynamics. Remember me when you're a millionare, and send me a Kicker 3 

  Have you looked at the Smacksbooster pdf on this?  Is your battery near an ignition source?  Ever see or have a battery blow up?  The electrolyte is Potassium Hydroxide or Caustic Potash.  This system is set up to run only when the engine is running and is best used in conjunction with an oil pressure switch.  It is noted that the with the proper electrolyte mix the system should be drawing about 20 amps, so it would definately need a larger alternator than a stock Samurai, such as a GM.  The reality is that this system probably has no more H2 and O at any given time than a charging battery.  So my thinking is that the same care needs to be observed with this system as with a battery.  By the way I have had a battery blow up and my first thought was that someone was shooting at me.

[ZUKIMON]

  By the way I have had a battery blow up and my first thought was that someone was shooting at me.

Sounds like a 12 gauge shotgun doesn't it?

[viking]

Sounds like a 12 gauge shotgun doesn't it?

  That's for sure, I had to look over myself to see if I had wounds that I didn't feel.  Thankfully I was far enough away and the way the battery was mounted in my tractor provided a shield, also I was wearing coveralls.  The angels were definately looking out for me.

[ack]

Hmm, this is puzzling to say the least. There was a guy on the local news the other day that put this on a Civic and is getting something like 70 mpg.

Oh dear!

There is someone in the Television Journalism business reporting "Amazing Discoveries" without supporting independent proof of the claims???

Or were you watching one of those informercials on the cable/satellite channels?

Yep. I work in TV.  You would be amazed at some of the boneheaded reporting that goes on - mostly in the smaller markets because somebody did not thoroughly check their sources.

My apologies if this sounds like a personal attack, zukimon but it really isn't.  As much as my Ego hates to admit it, I work in an industry full of folks who, like the rest of you, occasionally screw up on the job.  The big difference is that those screwups often turn into urban legends. 

Then there are the infomercial snake-oil sellers playing the "something for nothing" game...