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Post by rckrdyxj on Jan 17, 2009 12:59:01 GMT -5
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Adam
Member #36
Posts: 1,528
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Post by Adam on Jan 17, 2009 13:12:00 GMT -5
A guy at my company made one of those himself for less than 50$. I don't have a fucking idea how it works, but I saw it demonstrated when we had a company car show. Said he got 55mpg on the highway in a VW passat.
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Post by Dr. Thunder on Jan 17, 2009 13:29:29 GMT -5
It works.
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XJLI
The Nina, The Pinta, The Santa Maria.
Posts: 6,923
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Post by XJLI on Jan 17, 2009 14:48:58 GMT -5
sure does, but the question is- is it efficient enough (in YOUR vehicle) to be a benefit. most ppl with 4.0s who have done this, at least ive read, break even or go just over. that was with homemade stuff.id be willing to give this a shot, the container is the hardest thing to make really.
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Adam
Member #36
Posts: 1,528
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Post by Adam on Jan 17, 2009 15:00:48 GMT -5
sure does, but the question is- is it efficient enough (in YOUR vehicle) to be a benefit. most ppl with 4.0s who have done this, at least ive read, break even or go just over. that was with homemade stuff.id be willing to give this a shot, the container is the hardest thing to make really. That guy I mentioned had what looked like a 4" diameter clear PVC tube with two water tight covers on either end. There was some stuff inside of it and a few lines coming out the top. It was mounted somewhere in his fender well with two small brackets around it.
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Post by CumminsJeep on Jan 17, 2009 15:13:56 GMT -5
does it incease smiles per gallon as well?
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Post by Dr. Thunder on Jan 17, 2009 15:15:04 GMT -5
does it incease smiles per gallon as well? That's the whole point
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Post by CumminsJeep on Jan 17, 2009 15:47:30 GMT -5
gotta love them smiles
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Bucket-O-Karma
Pirate in need of a bigger ship![F4:bucketokarma]
Posts: 2,072
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Post by Bucket-O-Karma on Jan 17, 2009 15:52:17 GMT -5
Ask Mr Blaine from JF is this works
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Post by xjeeper on Jan 17, 2009 17:15:19 GMT -5
ill make one and try it out on my car and let you know what my results show.
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Post by Dr. Thunder on Jan 18, 2009 0:02:56 GMT -5
ill make one and try it out on my car and let you know what my results show. I have a full set of plans for one, something close to 100 pages of them with diagrams and stuff. I was close to embarking on the journey, not sure why I stopped. Remind me and I'll see if I can dig them up.
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Post by ProHorn CompMetal on Jan 18, 2009 12:49:10 GMT -5
There's only one problem with this, it violates the laws of thermodynamics. Think about it: you can't get energy by breaking water apart and then putting it back together again, which is exactly what you'd be doing here.
An engine extracts work from chemicals with high potential energy (gasoline, diesel, propane, natural gas, vegetable oil, hydrogen, etc) by converting them into other chemicals with lower potential energy (water and carbon dioxide) and turning the resultant heat and pressure into mechanical energy.
An engine can't run on water alone because there's no energy to be extracted by splitting it. In fact you have to put energy in to water in order to split it (hence the electrodes, this device uses electrical energy to perform electrolysis to split the water into its components).
So this device uses mechanical energy from the engine to spin an alternator to make electrical energy to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen to burn in the engine which makes water and creates the mechanical energy to spin the alternator, etc, etc, etc.
A good thought experiment is to imagine an engine running on this system alone (i.e. start the engine, then switch off the gas so it runs on electrolyzed water alone). If this actually worked you would have a perpetual motion machine, which can't exist. In fact this would be even better than a perpetual motion machine because you would have to overcome the waste that occurs every time you convert one type of energy to another (the waste heat that occurs when you move the pistons, spin the alternator, and electrolyze the water is all lost energy) and still have gobs of energy left over to move your vehicle around.
Now in the real world we would still be running gas in the engine all the time, but what the thought experiment shows is that performing the convoluted electrolysis process should result in a net loss of energy, and worse gas milage.
If this actually results in a milage increase (and that's a big if) I suspect what's really happening here has more in common with nitrous oxide injection than anything else. The atmosphere is about 20% oxygen so when your Jeep engine sucks in 4.0 liters of air it's really only getting about .8 liters of oxygen, and any more fuel than will burn with .8 liters of oxygen is wasted. Nitrous works because a nitrous oxide molecule is 33% oxygen. If your engine sucked in 4.0 liters of nothing but nitrous you would have 1.3 liters of oxygen in there, and could burn a similar amount of extra fuel per stroke, resulting in more power and efficiency. Well, water is also 33% oxygen, just like nitrous. Splitting water molecules and dumping the resultant gas into an engine should have the exact same effect as bleeding nitrous into the intake, except you're still wasting energy performing the electrolysis process on the water. I'll bet a controlled experiment where a measured amount of nitrous oxide and electrolyzed water were bled into 2 engines would show that the nitrous engine has better power and efficiency if the nitrous oxide is provided in a tank and the water is electrolyzed on-board, and the performance would be identical if both gasses were provided in tanks. Depending on how much energy is wasted in the electrolysis process it might be cheaper to just use nitrous, or do nothing at all.
In the end this all comes back around to another thread I posted about how many miles you'd have to drive in a hybrid to make up for how much extra money you spent on it (upwards of 500,000 miles). In the grand scheme of things gas really is cheap. Even if you spend a few hundred bucks on a kit like this and get a few extra MPG as a result you're going to have to drive thousands of miles to make that money back. It's just not worth it.
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Post by Jeep Creep on Jan 18, 2009 20:13:56 GMT -5
There's only one problem with this, it violates the laws of thermodynamics. Think about it: you can't get energy by breaking water apart and then putting it back together again, which is exactly what you'd be doing here. An engine extracts work from chemicals with high potential energy (gasoline, diesel, propane, natural gas, vegetable oil, hydrogen, etc) by converting them into other chemicals with lower potential energy (water and carbon dioxide) and turning the resultant heat and pressure into mechanical energy. An engine can't run on water alone because there's no energy to be extracted by splitting it. In fact you have to put energy in to water in order to split it (hence the electrodes, this device uses electrical energy to perform electrolysis to split the water into its components). So this device uses mechanical energy from the engine to spin an alternator to make electrical energy to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen to burn in the engine which makes water and creates the mechanical energy to spin the alternator, etc, etc, etc. A good thought experiment is to imagine an engine running on this system alone (i.e. start the engine, then switch off the gas so it runs on electrolyzed water alone). If this actually worked you would have a perpetual motion machine, which can't exist. In fact this would be even better than a perpetual motion machine because you would have to overcome the waste that occurs every time you convert one type of energy to another (the waste heat that occurs when you move the pistons, spin the alternator, and electrolyze the water is all lost energy) and still have gobs of energy left over to move your vehicle around. Now in the real world we would still be running gas in the engine all the time, but what the thought experiment shows is that performing the convoluted electrolysis process should result in a net loss of energy, and worse gas milage. If this actually results in a milage increase (and that's a big if) I suspect what's really happening here has more in common with nitrous oxide injection than anything else. The atmosphere is about 20% oxygen so when your Jeep engine sucks in 4.0 liters of air it's really only getting about .8 liters of oxygen, and any more fuel than will burn with .8 liters of oxygen is wasted. Nitrous works because a nitrous oxide molecule is 33% oxygen. If your engine sucked in 4.0 liters of nothing but nitrous you would have 1.3 liters of oxygen in there, and could burn a similar amount of extra fuel per stroke, resulting in more power and efficiency. Well, water is also 33% oxygen, just like nitrous. Splitting water molecules and dumping the resultant gas into an engine should have the exact same effect as bleeding nitrous into the intake, except you're still wasting energy performing the electrolysis process on the water. I'll bet a controlled experiment where a measured amount of nitrous oxide and electrolyzed water were bled into 2 engines would show that the nitrous engine has better power and efficiency if the nitrous oxide is provided in a tank and the water is electrolyzed on-board, and the performance would be identical if both gasses were provided in tanks. Depending on how much energy is wasted in the electrolysis process it might be cheaper to just use nitrous, or do nothing at all. In the end this all comes back around to another thread I posted about how many miles you'd have to drive in a hybrid to make up for how much extra money you spent on it (upwards of 500,000 miles). In the grand scheme of things gas really is cheap. Even if you spend a few hundred bucks on a kit like this and get a few extra MPG as a result you're going to have to drive thousands of miles to make that money back. It's just not worth it. short version?
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XJLI
The Nina, The Pinta, The Santa Maria.
Posts: 6,923
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Post by XJLI on Jan 18, 2009 22:09:43 GMT -5
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Mike
No, I don't tip, why?
Posts: 3,928
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Post by Mike on Jan 18, 2009 22:14:41 GMT -5
how do you prevent the water from freezing
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