"High mileage carburetor"

[GeekGuyAndy]

So I met a guy that was talking about "High mileage carburetors" like crazy. He bought a water filter canister and added stainless steel plates which fizz when power is added splitting water to make hydrogen. He said it pumps the h2 into the fuel going through the engine and I've heard of hydrogen injectors helping for power, but he planned on running this straight off his battery and claimed it would get his Jetta from a current 50mpg up to 70mpg with this device. And he went on about how people that try to patent it have been silenced and all this stuff. I hadn't heard about DIY h2 modifications before. Is this really legit? I'm always super skeptial about anything like this, but since I have heard of hydrogen injectors before maybe this is just a method for that without needing to store the hydrogen?

By the way, this was at a permaculture festival and he was amazing everyone with the techonology, and I asked him some question about hypermiling, and then people kept asking me questions like crazy when I said that I drive 50% over EPA with *gasp* no modifications! It was great

[GasSavers_Ryland]

I haven't heard of anyone dissapearing, or web sites dissapearing that have information on doing this kind of thing, and because patents are part of public record you could find out if someone has already patented an idea like this, and if that is the case it would meen that people who tried to make them to sell were sued, but even that doesn't meen that it works, just that someone was infringing on a patent.

[DRW]

"And he went on about how people that try to patent it have been silenced..."

Yeah, silenced by the deafening laughter!
Sorry, there's no way to get more energy out of a system than you put into it.

[Spencyg]

It is legit technology when utilized correctly. Look up "hydrogen enriched gasoline" on google....SAE engineering papers are available from decades ago discussing this issue in depth. The key thing to realize here is that current fuel injection is smart enough to negate any potential improvements which may be realized from injection hydrogen. The improvements realized from hydrogen injection are focused around the fact that a modern ICE (internal combustion engine) uses gasoline at around 30% efficiency. To improve the efficiency of combustion in the engine is to directly improve the efficiency of the entire system (i.e. MPG). Hydrogen infused with gasoline in the combustion chamber causes the flame propagation speed to increase by a factor of 4. A faster flame = faster complete combustion. Faster combustion means that you'll meet a maximum cylinder pressure faster in the cycle, causing higher pressures to be available to the piston top just after TDC. This is directly related to the amount of power available at the crankshaft for a given amount of fuel which is inserted into the equation. As I previously mentioned, modern EFI takes into account the amount of oxygen in the system, and combusting hydrogen and gasoline produces an oxygen rich exhaust mixture. The oxygen sensors will note this and call it "lean", adding more fuel. The only way to get around this is with either programmable EFI, or an oxygen sensor interrupter such as the "EEFI" sold by Eagle Research (www.eagle-research.com). There has been varied success with the interrupter as some feel the EFI "learns" around it. I would be skeptical of a stock fuel injected car seeing any serious gains with a hydrogen booster without addressing the necessary electronic bits and pieces.

In the end, hydrogen boosting allows you to run a more retarded timing without power loss (more efficient), and higher compression ratios. I am working on combining this technology with water injection to allow for extremely lean(18:1-20:1) AFR's while maintaining available power output and engine longevity.

There are already hundreds of patents on this technology, so nobody is going to get rich on it....but that shouldn't stop the research on the independent level. There are hundreds of Gigabytes available on the net for those who want to learn more.

www.oupower.com
http://www.panaceauniversity.org/


Spence

[bones33]

Originally Posted by Spencyg

...combusting hydrogen and gasoline produces an oxygen rich exhaust mixture.
Spence

Spence please explain this one if you could please. I didn't understand this when I first read this at eagle-research, and I still don't.

Seems to me that more complete combustion would consume MORE oxygen leading the O2 sensor to see less O2 in the exhaust and the ECU to think it is a rich mixture (oxygen deficient), then the ECU would lean it out accordingly. I'm ready to try a HyZor system with my EFIE and want to pencil this out to my satisfaction before expending $ and time.

[Spencyg]

When the hydrogen and oxygen gas (Hydroxy) combusts with the gasoline the resultant mixture contains high levels of water vapor. The water vapor from the combusted hydroxy fools the O2 sensor into sensing the mix is too lean (too much uncombusted oxygen, ie not bound with carbon), which triggers the ECU to richen the A/F ratio. O2 sensors read ALL oxygen in the system that isn't combined with carbon or nitrogen molecules. H2O contains dissolved oxygen (and other gases) as well, besides that which is bound with hydrogen, so these can affect the O2 sensor as well. There are also far fewer nitrogen oxides produced from combustion with hydrogen enriched gasoline, so the oxygen that would typically be combined in that gas is also free to leave the exhaust ports of the engine. Hope that helps.

Spence

[Bill in Houston]

Originally Posted by GeekGuyAndy

And he went on about how people that try to patent it have been silenced and all this stuff.

I think that these are the same kind of folks who think that "X-Files" was a documentary. :-)

[bones33]

Spence, I'm enjoying this. Please entertain some more questions to help my understanding, and please comment on my paraphrasing to correct any mistakes:

Originally Posted by Spencyg

When the hydrogen and oxygen gas (Hydroxy) combusts with the gasoline the resultant mixture contains high levels of water vapor.

Got that, the result of hydrogen/oxygen combustion is ONLY water vapor. When added to gasoline/oxygen it would increase the water vapor in direct proportion, or a little more if an additional percentage of gasoline/oxygen combustion occurs.

Originally Posted by Spencyg

The water vapor from the combusted hydroxy fools the O2 sensor into sensing the mix is too lean (too much uncombusted oxygen, ie not bound with carbon), which triggers the ECU to richen the A/F ratio.

So this means that the additional oxy contained in the hydroxy is not all used, and correspondingly there is unused hydrogen?

Originally Posted by Spencyg

O2 sensors read ALL oxygen in the system that isn't combined with carbon or nitrogen molecules.

Now that's a new one. If this is true, this might be the key to my understanding. Can you point me to where to where this information comes from?
If this is the case, H2O injection during closed loop would cause the engine to run pig rich, correct?

Originally Posted by Spencyg

H2O contains dissolved oxygen (and other gases) as well, besides that which is bound with hydrogen, so these can affect the O2 sensor as well.

At the temperature of the H2O vapor at the O2 sensor the dissolved O2 would be nil unless my dissolved oxygen in water curves reverse somewhere above 100F. To what total effect would the dissolved gasses have anyway, I'm guessing very low relative to the O2 sensor being affected by H2O.

Originally Posted by Spencyg

There are also far fewer nitrogen oxides produced from combustion with hydrogen enriched gasoline, so the oxygen that would typically be combined in that gas is also free to leave the exhaust ports of the engine. Hope that helps.

Spence

OK, so this would be because the peak temperature is lower, correct?

So to sum up significant points:
1)Not all the hydroxy is combined with itsself (burned). Creating additional O2 in the exhaust stream.
2)Hydroxy creates more O2 in the exhaust which is not carbon or hydrogen bound. Because the O2 is bound by hydrogen it is still read by the O2 sensor.
3)Hydroxy burns cooler leading to reduced combustion temperatures reducing NOX levels.

[Spencyg]

You pretty much have it....it would be more educational for you to read up on the following pages, as I'm probably just going to confuse you. At the end of the day, you need to just start playing with it. I won't say this is a "surpressed" technology, but not many people have done much with it.

http://www.sae.org/technical/papers/2003-01-0630

http://www.chechfi.ca/pdfs/hydrogen_injection.pdf

Cheers.

Spence

[bones33]

Thanks for the start Spence. I'll take a look at the links.

If the additional safety risks and hassle of producing hydroxy can be ironed out and the additional energy requred to make the hydroxy can be reliably less than the gain in gasoline useful energy extraction, this would be a logical step forward.

Guess it's time for one of us to iron out these kinks. Hopefully I'll be able to give it a go soon.