Hi diamondlarry -?Hydrogen is supposed to cause embrittlement of the metal in the engine.?
I-C. I guess thats what rh77 was meanign when he said caustic.
Had my brain rattling for a while thinking about how burning hydrogen could make an accidic compound ...
But burning hydrogen and causing embritlement is a plausible theory.
Usually hydrogen embritlement affects very high strength steels and to a far lesser extent alluminium alloys.
The hydrogen usualy gets into the metal at extremly high temperatures , like when welding.
The hydrogen causes air like bubbles which can lead to a crack forming and a failure of the part.
Hydrogen can also get into metal at room temperatures but its affect is not exactly the same and not viewed as a problem.
Remember that nitrogen is present around us at all times and not just when we are burning it from a gas bottle.
As wiki says ?Nitrogen is the largest single component of the Earth's atmosphere?
As there has been experiments in this for many years now and a few have run with it for 10 or more years without an engine problem I think that the embritlemt issue is not worth worrying about.
Probably it does damage engine parts in the long term , but if it hangs together for 20 years then thats more than long enough.
For the rich and paranoid , ceramic coating will do the trick., but I wouldnt bother to do that unless it was a brand new engine., where I may see some lengthening of its life. (maybe)
My experiments into hydrogen are not actually for automotive purposes.
I would like to build a cheap to run home heating system., but if I can get a lot of gas output from my cells I may of course try it on the car and see what it duz.
I think there is lots to be done with gasoline type powered cars , and next year i'll probably start do some experiments in that.
Linear Mode
