using hydrogen fuel cell to improve gas consumption

[Alan Wheeler]

Yes. It is a simple law of physics. Simply put, you can not make something from nothing. When you change one thing to another, it takes energy to do so. This energy is lost from the final component/s that we then try to convert back to an energy once again. The one time it makes real economic sense to make hydrogen from something else, is when it is a byproduct of another process and would be produced as waste. If the quantity of hydrogen produced is usable, then it could be run off and feed to help power an engine or better yet, a stirling engine like as in a whisperGen. But the issues of economics remain. We can make very economic power systems, but the price of such far outwiegh the economic savings. So the requirement of such systems have to be wanted more than the cost. The Space Station comes to mind. Need out wieghs cost.

[Talbot]

There is a lot of misunderstanding in this thread. A Hydrogen Fuel cell is a means of creating electricity - the hydrogen is fed into the cell and electricity is produced.

That is the simple part.

Here is a part explanation:
In principle, a fuel cell operates like a battery. Unlike a battery, a fuel cell does not run down or require recharging. It will produce energy in the form of electricity and heat as long as fuel is supplied.
A fuel cell consists of two electrodes sandwiched around an electrolyte. Oxygen passes over one electrode and hydrogen over the other, generating electricity, water and heat.
A fuel cell produces electricity.
The fuel cell is similar to a battery. It produces electricity using chemicals. The chemicals are usually very simple, often just hydrogen and oxygen. In this case the hydrogen is the "fuel" that the fuel cell uses to make electricity.
Another very important difference is that fuel cells do not run down like batteries. As long as the fuel and oxygen is supplied to the cell it will keep producing electricty for ever.
The oxygen needed by a fuel cell is usually simply obtained from air.
Although the majority of fuel cells use hydrogen as the fuel, some fuel cells work off methane, and a few use liquid fuels such as methanol.
Fuel cells that use hydrogen can be thought of as devices that do the reverse of the well known experiment where passing an electric current through water splits it up into hydrogen and oxygen. In the fuel cell hydrogen and oxygen are joined together to produce water and electricty.
Fuel cells can be made in a huge range of sizes. They can be used to produce quite small amounts of electric power, for devices such as portable computers or radio transmitters, right up to very high powers for electric power stations.

Now for the more complex bit.

How do you create the hydrogen.

You could fill a tank with it, but it needs a fair bit to run. The most sustainable way is to create the hydrogen, and in large installations, this is done from diesel.
Researchers in Germany and Switzerland invented a way of transforming liquid diesel fuel into a vapor and converting it into hydrogen gas in a reformer. The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) in Germany, together with a Swiss engineering company, developed a patented process.
These reformers are big at the moment and only work with really large fuel cells, but future miniturisation of the process will open it to use in smaller vehicles.

[Efraim]

Here's the the latest is fuel technology, the fuel cell powered flashlight.
I don't even want to guess how much these things would cost.

Angstrom Power Inc.

[Alan Wheeler]

Talbot, quite correct, but unless I have misunderstood, I don't think we are talking about the Hydrogen fuel cell are we? Wasn't the question in respects to a guy making hydrogen by electrolysis in his car?

[Talbot]

Alan,

While you are correct, the thread title is Hydrogen Fuel cell . . . . . . .

[Hud3]

Originally Posted by phorvati

...As the engine runs we all have extra amps to spare, at least at some point, especially during long motoring, say 20amps at 12V or so, but a lot of us probably get more than 20amps to spare.
Put those amps via cathode and anode through a sealed cell with seaweater or rain water or RO water...

...Stable state meaning you need lots of energy to split the molecules. I can spare those 20amps and see what happens...

Petar,

It will cost you more energy to make the Hydrogen and Oxygen gasses than you can get back out of burning them in your engine. Using the "extra amps" to run the electrolysis reaction puts extra load on the alternator, which in turn puts extra load on the engine. The alternator itself is only 50-60% efficient, i.e., it wastes about half of the energy transferred to it from the engine in the form of heat. Your gasoline engine is 25-30% efficient at best. So you're talking about an overall system efficiency of maybe 15%. The numbers don't work.

[Ex-Calif]

I saw this really cool documentary from the BBC called Coast. The only episode I saw had a segment about the most northerly inhabited islands of the UK. They claim to be making hydrogen from wind power and powering cars and other island services and are energy self sufficient.

BBC - Coast

I don't know if it is 100% true but I think it does bode well for future transportation devoid of fossil fuel.

[Alexei]

Originally Posted by sweethe

Hi guys, I recently visited your site.I'm doing a Chemistry project and was wondering if HHO is a viable source of energy?
Does it waste more energy than it uses?

Thanks.

In a word......no.

HHO is a scammer's way of selling something to people who don't have physics, chemistry, or engineering knowledge.

O2 and H2 will burn, yes, but as others have pointed out you won't get the energy out that you put in to split them in the first place.

As for HHO....HHO is an incorrect way of spelling H2O: water. Doesn't burn or give off energy. Sorry.

[Alexei]

Originally Posted by Alan Wheeler

The real trick I reckon, lies within the Atom itself. In Fusion, two atoms fusing together produces about 17million electron Volts. Now if we could find away to take those actual Volts straight from the Fusion Process, Wow. But I think we will have to wait for the Startrek Enterprise to come out of the future before we get to play with that kind of stuff.

Careful there. Electron Volts are not Volts as you'd normally think of them. Nothing electrical there.

I'm not sure about the fusion side of life, but I know there has been research done on making direct energy conversion fission reactors. The concept is to forgo the whole steam plant and simply generate electricity directly in the core. This would elminate a number of thermodynamic inefficiencies intrinsic in using the Rankine Cycle.

Unfortunately, the research has so far yielded nothing that is practically useful any time soon.


Has anyone managed to sustain fusion for more than a few seconds, and actually put out any useful power? The last I'd heard it took more power to maintain the process than they'd been able to get out.

[GordMay]

Fusion's promise as an energy source comes from its practically inexhaustible fuel supply, and from its potential for almost negligible environmental impact compared to the environmental costs of competing energy sources.
Unlike nuclear fission, which tears apart atoms to release energy and highly radioactive by-products, fusion involves combining two "heavy" hydrogen atoms, called deuterium and tritium together so they fuse, producing harmless helium and vast amounts of energy.

See the ITER project: http://www.iter.org/a/index_nav_1.htm

The connection Einstein discovered between energy and mass is expressed in the equation E=mc² ; where E represents energy, m represents mass, and c² is a very large number, the square of the speed of light.
Albert Einstein explains his famous formula (in his own voice):
Einstein Exhibit -- Voice of Einstein

[David M]

Google "energy density" You will find that compressed hydrogen takes up much more volume than gasoline or diesel for the equivalent amount of stored heat energy.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by David M

Google "energy density" You will find that compressed hydrogen takes up much more volume than gasoline or diesel for the equivalent amount of stored heat energy.

And you'll also find that Hydrogen has a 2.7 times higher energy density per unit mass, than does gasoline - which makes it great for rockets.
Gasoline 14 KWH of energy per Kg of weight
Hydrogen 38 KHW / kg

[denverd0n]

Originally Posted by Alexei

HHO is a scammer's way of selling something to people who don't have physics, chemistry, or engineering knowledge.

Exactly! HHO is nothing but a code word that the scammers use. If you do a search on the internet for HHO (PLEASE DON'T!!!) you will get lots of hits, every site is just a hoax, and they are all trying to generate traffic at their websites so that they can charge advertisers and in the hope of fooling a few uneducated people into buying their plans and/or instruction books.

It's really pretty simple: Water is not a fuel, and cannot ever be used as a fuel. You ALWAYS need some outside source of energy to extract the hydrogen from the water. Bottom line is that you have to burn about three liters of hydrogen in order to generate enough energy to extract just one liter of hydrogen from water. I would hope that everyone reading this can see the problem here!

[scotty]

from what i have read yes its a scam, but how they get around the alt running losses is they say you can lean the gas ratio out and the hho mix will make up for it by allowing the frame spread to be much better ie a better burn.

i got into a long discussion about this on a car site, the best systems produce about a liter of gas a min, or 60 per hour. take a 2.5 liter gas engine doing 3000 rpm, thats 1500 intake cycles per min. or 1500 times 2.5 liter = 3750 liters per min of air intake. so will a ratio of .016 % of HHO gas to the air intake make any difference

[Pblais]

Yes. It is a simple law of physics. Simply put, you can not make something from nothing.

Perhaps you can. You cook up a fuel cell plan add a few schematics and sell it on the Internet. You then take the money and buy gasoline to fuel your go fast boat. You have indeed made enerygy from nothing. There is no energy lost converting nothing to money back to energy. Yule Brown may actually have beenn quite corerect. You were distracted by the science part. The rumors that he was bought out by the oil companies strikes of Urban Myth along with the carburator that gets 100 miles / gallon. You can still buy the video for $19.99. even the talk makes money.