why all "water car/hydrogen generators" are scams

[MAKG]

How can you have an "intelligent conversation" with someone who insists he knows everything, but screws up on the absolute basics?

It's like teaching someone to drive who insists it can be done from the trunk, with no fuel and no batteries.

When one doesn't understand thoroughly basic concepts like energy conservation -- or what the various terms being thrown about mean (like "catalyst" and "activation energy"), intelligent conversation is only possible if one is open to that.

If you don't like my technical advisor tag, ignore it. I'm not paid for this, and I don't have nor need infinite patience with stupidity.

 

[gwgramas]

You have to remember people, Rome was not built in a day, we are at the beginning (for us) of HHO (and by the way the HH is from H2 (2parts) and O (1part)). When Gasoline was first made, took many years to get it balanced, then Regular was found to be bad due to Lead. It is a 100+ year old fossil fuel that never really did us no good. Gives off bad emmissions which caused us to mine Platinum for the catalytic converters and then making them a law. I for one would like to have a more effiecent motor that gives off no bad emissions so I can straight pipe if I want.

And what about you "Global Warming" freaks? Gasoline is now the cause, before it was Freon, R-12 to be exact, seems like you tree huggers should be fond of a "new" found energy source and hoping with enough people experimenting and testing it will completely replace fossil fuels as we know. We must keep looking forward. Remember "We are going to the moon" and people laughed? There are still the weird ones out there that believe it never happened. No new invention that hit main stream was ever good enough, everything gets refined in time and becomes more effecient, just takes that one person to discover a new way,release it,then along comes someone else improving the improved method.

in addition there, lead was an additive in the refining process, just an fyi for you.

http://www.runet.edu/~wkovarik/ethylwar/

this website briefly touches on the history of leaded gas and has plenty of works cited/references for you.

 

[rboyer]

There is actually one thing that has been bugging me. I know that lately alot of people have been playing around with using peltiers for thermoelectric power generation. Now alot of energy is lost by heat that your engine gives off. If you were to take some of that heat and convert it to electricity then couldn't that essentially be used to produce hydrogen? I know that the one reason these hydrogen setups don't add up is because of the energy output required exceeding the amount going in. The only problem I see is that you would need to achieve a wide temperature differential for the peltiers to make use of the excessive heat coming from your engine but given the proper outside temperature (around freezing) wouldn't it be possible?

 

[Beanmachine7000]

No...
1st Law of Thermodynamics states
"Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms."

Therefore, the energy that is burned from the gasoline is the only amount of energy you will get... You can't just spontaneously get energy from somewhere...

 

[rboyer]

Apparently you didn't read my post or you would know that this has absolutely nothing to do with the 1st law of thermodynamics. I am talking about taking the waste energy coming from your engine and turning it into electrical energy by using a peltier. Since it violates no laws of physics then the question would be is it feasible? How much energy could be generated by wasted heat?

 

[Beanmachine7000]

Apparently you didn't read my post or you would know that this has absolutely nothing to do with the 1st law of thermodynamics. I am talking about taking the waste energy coming from your engine and turning it into electrical energy by using a peltier. Since it violates no laws of physics then the question would be is it feasible? How much energy could be generated by wasted heat?

Sorry bout that, I don't have any idea about those things or how efficient they are... You have to think about the energy losses from that thing and the wires used, and the system used to transport it back to the engine... It might work, but more than likely wouldn't be efficient enough to make a difference... Plus, the little bit of gain you might get from it would probably be counteracted by the weight of the system...

 

[Jspafford]

Gawd, who brought THIS back up!

 

[Psychopete]

Apparently you didn't read my post or you would know that this has absolutely nothing to do with the 1st law of thermodynamics. I am talking about taking the waste energy coming from your engine and turning it into electrical energy by using a peltier. Since it violates no laws of physics then the question would be is it feasible? How much energy could be generated by wasted heat?

I guess the question is, what kind of variance in heat would it need to create enough current to split the water effectively? I can see where you're going with this, heat off the engine is enegry that is wasted, but I suspect the amount of power from the peltier that you would get (it would be hard to not use any enegry to keep the other side cool enough - intake charge?) might not be enough to make a significant amount of power. But I really don't know much about them except the little reading I did out of interest. Do you have any specifications on a peltier that you had in mind?

Pete

 

[rboyer]

I don't really have any specs on them because most of the ones on the market today are calibrated more towards heat transfer driven by electricity compared to generating electricity from a variance. I have heard of people making self-sustaining cooling systems out of them by using the heat generated from one to power the fan that cools the "hot side" but of course that has it's limits depending on the temperature of the atmosphere on which it is in. That's why I was thinking something along the lines of using it mostly in the winter time because with freezing outdoor temperatures i'm sure a pretty good variance could be achieved. Honestly I only brought it up because I thought of it a while back and figured that I wouldn't be the only one to think of something like that and hoped that someone out there has tried it already because i've been curious. I actually planned on picking up a few peltiers sometime so that I could try out another idea that I had. I want to create a computer system that is contained within a "dust-free" environment by using the peltiers to transfer the heat to the outside of the case. This way I could have externally mounted cooling fans which would make it so much easier to clean.

 

[AllanD]

Apparently you didn't read my post or you would know that this has absolutely nothing to do with the 1st law of thermodynamics. I am talking about taking the waste energy coming from your engine and turning it into electrical energy by using a peltier. Since it violates no laws of physics then the question would be is it feasible? How much energy could be generated by wasted heat?

While a Peltier junction can be used as means of making electricity
you need more than a hot side, you also need a cold side.

years ago the military had a widget they used to power a satellite radio.

It was a ~24" diameter panel that folded in quarters for transport.

In use it formed a disc with legs that you could place over a fire heating one side, you were supposed to pile snow on the other side and the temp difference created the electrical energy from heat.

it produced enough power to run a satellite communications radio...

Using the "waste heat" from an engine is nice in theory, but where are you going to get the "cold" to create the temperature differential that makes a peltier work?

Each Peltier combination has different "Hot side" and "cold side"
temperature to make them work, they don't respond well to
temperatures outside their design range.

AD

 

[Frank The Tank]

Why are their so many nay-sayers? uhm... ever try college, or mechanical theory practice? it's nothing more than ideas tossed up, that form ideas... that fail or succeed. If ideas continue to be tossed up and "idiots" don't shoot them down, while smart people try them.... maybe something as amazing as hmmm.............. computer software can be created, argue that one.

Frank

 

[Beanmachine7000]

While a Peltier junction can be used as means of making electricity
you need more than a hot side, you also need a cold side.

years ago the military had a widget they used to power a satellite radio.

It was a ~24" diameter panel that folded in quarters for transport.

In use it formed a disc with legs that you could place over a fire heating one side, you were supposed to pile snow on the other side and the temp difference created the electrical energy from heat.

it produced enough power to run a satellite communications radio...

Using the "waste heat" from an engine is nice in theory, but where are you going to get the "cold" to create the temperature differential that makes a peltier work?

Each Peltier combination has different "Hot side" and "cold side"
temperature to make them work, they don't respond well to
temperatures outside their design range.

AD

You could, in theory, cool the cold side with the A/C system, but that's just using more energy to make energy...

Why are their so many nay-sayers? uhm... ever try college, or mechanical theory practice? it's nothing more than ideas tossed up, that form ideas... that fail or succeed. If ideas continue to be tossed up and "idiots" don't shoot them down, while smart people try them.... maybe something as amazing as hmmm.............. computer software can be created, argue that one.

Frank

Computer software doesn't break the laws of thermodynamics

 

[rboyer]

I was thinking more along the lines of cooling it down with moving air while driving at highway speeds. Of course it brings up aerodynamic concerns but it was just an idea that popped into my head.

 

[BlackDogSociety]

I was thinking more along the lines of cooling it down with moving air while driving at highway speeds. Of course it brings up aerodynamic concerns but it was just an idea that popped into my head.

That's exactly what BMW is doing with their EFFICIENT MOBILITY - THERMOELECTRIC GENERATOR research. Watch this for starters:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sMZD6iK3m4

With these Peltier devices you just need a temperature difference between the plates. You can, as shown, heat one side and dissipate the heat on the other with the air moving under the vehicle to recover energy from the exhaust. In BWM's case they use this power in their hybrid vehicles and I think was even talk of using this technology to do away with the alternator all together.

I also agree with idea of using this method to make H2 and O2 from water and burn it to get more MPG out of your vehicle. I really just a matter of tuning the engine and computer to work with the additional H2 and O2…

 

[BlackDogSociety]

More Fuel to the fire (pun intended )

In a document titled “HYDROGEN USE IN INTERNAL
COMBUSTION ENGINES” published by the US Dept. of Energy in 2001 it states:

3.10 Hydrogen Gas Mixtures
Hydrogen can be used advantageously in internal combustion engines as an additive to a hydrocarbon fuel.

{…}

For hydrocarbon engines, lean operation also leads to lower emissions of carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons. As more oxygen is available than required to combust the fuel, the excess oxygen oxidizes more carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide, a less harmful emission. The excess oxygen also helps to complete the combustion, decreasing the amount of unburned hydrocarbons.

As with hydrogen, the drawback of lean operation with hydrocarbon fuels is a reduced power output. Lean operation of hydrocarbon engines has additional drawbacks. Lean mixtures are hard to ignite, despite the mixture being above the LFL of the fuel. This results in misfire, which increases un-burned hydrocarbon emissions, reduces performance and wastes fuel. Another disadvantage is the reduced conversion efficiency of 3-way catalytic converters, resulting in more harmful emissions.

To some extent, mixing hydrogen with other hydrocarbon fuels reduces all of these drawbacks. Hydrogen’s low ignition energy limit and high burning speed makes the hydro-gen/hydrocarbon mixture easier to ignite, reducing misfire and thereby improving emissions, performance and fuel economy. Regarding power output, hydrogen augments the mixture’s energy density at lean mixtures by increasing the hydrogen-to-carbon ratio, and thereby improves torque at wide-open throttle conditions.

It would seem that adding H2 to a hydrocarbon based fuel engine improves the efficiency of the burn thereby improving fuel economy. Maybe there is something to these H2 generators? I’ll agree there are a lot of bogus claims but I can’t agree that they are all scams…