Gas bubbler?

[Mightyfordranger]

Has anyone heard of useing a gas bubbler to increase mpg I see videos of people doing it but I'm not sure how well it would work the concept of it is to vaporize the gas and run your engine on fumes I bear wild accounts of 100 mpg but I doubt that very much.

 

[The_Epsicle]

Yep, they're bogus. I've heard them called HHO generators and stuff like that. They "work" by separating hydrogen and oxygen in water and piping the fumes to your intake. The contraption uses the electrical current generated by your alternator. Assuming 100% of the kinetic energy put into your alternator is converted to electrical energy and that 100% of that electrical energy is converted into chemical energy (which is a laughably high efficiency for all of these processes) Newton's third law would suggest that the gas can only ever recoup the loss in energy that was given to the alternator from the engine (again, assuming 100% efficiency).

However, some guy around my town built a gasifier so he could run his farm truck with a diesel engine on wood.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

agreed, bogus.

 

[pjtoledo]

Yep, they're bogus. I've heard them called HHO generators and stuff like that. They "work" by separating hydrogen and oxygen in water and piping the fumes to your intake. The contraption uses the electrical current generated by your alternator. Assuming 100% of the kinetic energy put into your alternator is converted to electrical energy and that 100% of that electrical energy is converted into chemical energy (which is a laughably high efficiency for all of these processes) Newton's third law would suggest that the gas can only ever recoup the loss in energy that was given to the alternator from the engine (again, assuming 100% efficiency).

However, some guy around my town built a gasifier so he could run his farm truck with a diesel engine on wood.

how many fields per cord does it get? does he take into account the gas used by the chain saw?

 

[The_Epsicle]

how many fields per cord does it get? does he take into account the gas used by the chain saw?

No clue, honestly I think the only reason he built it was for bragging rights. I've only occasionally run into him at the auto shop. You can google wood gasifiers and there's tons of information on them going as far back as World War II.

Heck, here's the wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas_generator

 

[pjtoledo]

Has anyone heard of useing a gas bubbler to increase mpg I see videos of people doing it but I'm not sure how well it would work the concept of it is to vaporize the gas and run your engine on fumes I bear wild accounts of 100 mpg but I doubt that very much.

one would think that propane and natural gas, each being a vapor, would also get 100 miles-per-whatever in converted engines. but they don't .

 

[pjtoledo]

No clue, honestly I think the only reason he built it was for bragging rights. I've only occasionally run into him at the auto shop. You can google wood gasifiers and there's tons of information on them going as far back as World War II.

Heck, here's the wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas_generator

no doubt they work, but the efficiency must really suck.
ask any firefighter how volatile the gaseous emissions are in a room on fire. that's why fires seem to explode.

 

[RonD]

These types of things, gas bubblers and pre-vaporizers, get peoples attention because they use an incorrect premise that people believe is correct.

That incorrect premise is that the 14.7:1 air/fuel mix used in gasoline engines is a volume ratio.

i.e. 14.7 cubic inches of air to 1 cubic inch of fuel.

So the more you vaporize the fuel the better.

Correct air/fuel is by WEIGHT, 14.7 pounds of air/1 pound of fuel
So doesn't matter if you separate/vaporize fuel in to molecules you still need 1 POUND of those molecules for every 14.7 pounds of air.

A carburetor didn't mix the air and fuel that well and you also ended up with a coating of that air/fuel mix from the carb down to the intake valves, so a waste of fuel that just evaporated after engine was shut off.

Fuel injection has higher pressure and is closer to the intake valves, so does a better job spraying fuel for a better mix, but head ports and intake valves still get a coating of air/fuel mix.

Dual intake valves do a better job creating a swirl effect in the cylinder for a more complete mix and even burn.

Direct fuel injection does an even better job, no coating anywhere.


Pre-vaporizing fuel........................please, put it with the muffler bearings on the top shelf, and then sell it to the tourists when they stop in