Warm fusion = free clean energy!

[Doggle Avaddit]

[quote=eeyore;604885]


I'm not being disingenuous and you are both setting out to personalise the debate and to willfully misunderstand what i am saying - I am aware that the idea is that it acts as a catalyst to more efficient burning , but what I am saying is that even if this were true (and you yourself admit that there is no evidence that it is) it would be a physical imposibility for this catylisation to release more energy from the fuel than would be spent on generating the hydrogen and oxygen mixture in the first place - and therefore overall it is impossible for the injection of this mixture to increase fuel efficiency in toto


You are being disingenuous AGAIN by snipping my post and quoting your edited version to suit your own agenda.

Here is my post again:

HHO products may act like a catalyst and a combustion improver, not as a "free" fuel source.


"Combustion Improver" means that combustion becomes more efficient, meaning more energy out.

[Jim Ford]

'Eeyore', 'thunder' - you're wasting your time!

I'm reminded of what the late, great Carl Sagan said:

"Some people drink deeply from the fountain of knowledge - whilst others just gargle."

Jim

[Doggle Avaddit]

Originally Posted by thunder

I'm not saying that lack of evidence in one outcome almost certainly means that the other outcome must be true. I'm saying that lack of evidence of one outcome is almost certainly because that outcome does not occur. Read my post again!

henrya

You can apply that arbitrarily to either of the outcomes, you are not making any logical sense.

[pressld2]

Originally Posted by Doggle Avaddit

HHO products may act like a catalyst and a combustion improver, not as a "free" fuel source.


"Combustion Improver" means that combustion becomes more efficient, meaning more energy out.

Leaving aside potential damage to engines not designed for it, adding hydrogen to the fuel / air mix in your engine might very well improve it's efficiency and give you better mpg or power or both. This is because hydrogen itself is a fuel that burns in the presence of oxygen just like petrol does. We don't need to do any alboratory experiments to prove this - we've been using hydrogen fuel for years, usually in rockets but recently in hydrogen powered cars too.

But where are you getting your hydrogen from?

a) It can be mass produced, transported and sold in the same way that petrol is which would mean two things:

1. You'll have to pay for it so your extra mpg will cost you more money
2. When deciding how "green" it is you have to factor in the energy cost of producing, bottling and transporting it. I'm not pre-judging that. If you are using renewable energy to produce the hydrogen then it may very well be a green fuel source.

b) You can fit a device to your car that uses electricity generated by the engine to split hydrogen out of water and then inject the hydrogen back into the engine. But as has been said before, doing this will decrease the efficiency of your engine because every time you convert energy from one type to another you lose some along the way, usually as waste heat radiated into the environment. If the extra energy you get out of the engine with hydrogen in the mix is greater than the energy needed to split the hydrogen from the water in the first place then you will have broken the law of conservation of energy and the second law of thermodynamics and also invented a perpetual motion machine. Once again, no laboratory experiments are needed to prove that this cannot be done.

Dave P.

[Doggle Avaddit]

Originally Posted by pressld2

Leaving aside potential damage to engines not designed for it, adding hydrogen to the fuel / air mix in your engine might very well improve it's efficiency and give you better mpg or power or both. This is because hydrogen itself is a fuel that burns in the presence of oxygen just like petrol does. We don't need to do any alboratory experiments to prove this - we've been using hydrogen fuel for years, usually in rockets but recently in hydrogen powered cars too.

But where are you getting your hydrogen from?

a) It can be mass produced, transported and sold in the same way that petrol is which would mean two things:

1. You'll have to pay for it so your extra mpg will cost you more money
2. When deciding how "green" it is you have to factor in the energy cost of producing, bottling and transporting it. I'm not pre-judging that. If you are using renewable energy to produce the hydrogen then it may very well be a green fuel source.

b) You can fit a device to your car that uses electricity generated by the engine to split hydrogen out of water and then inject the hydrogen back into the engine. But as has been said before, doing this will decrease the efficiency of your engine because every time you convert energy from one type to another you lose some along the way, usually as waste heat radiated into the environment. If the extra energy you get out of the engine with hydrogen in the mix is greater than the energy needed to split the hydrogen from the water in the first place then you will have broken the law of conservation of energy and the second law of thermodynamics and also invented a perpetual motion machine. Once again, no laboratory experiments are needed to prove that this cannot be done.

Dave P.

No you won't. By using the hydrogen to increase engine efficiency, more power is diverted to driving the pistons from otherwise dissapearing down the exhaust pipe or wasted as heat. You are not simply transferring the energy of the burnt hydrogen to the pistons, you are altering the whole combustion dynamics, which may well yield a greater amount of extra power than that from the burnt hydrogen.

You can increase combustion efficiency simply by redesigning the airflow so the combustion is more turbulent. This gives you extra power with no extra energy input at all. This is not contravening the laws of thermodynamics either.

[Doggle Avaddit]

Look, say you have a 500 Watt engine with poorly designed airflow. If you machine the pistons and cylinder head to create areas where the air can swirl around more during combustion, the efficiency may well be increased, since the flamefront burns quicker and cooler, so less heat is transferred to the cylinder walls and down the exhaust pipe, and thus more energy drives the pistons and the engine has an increased output power for the same fuel used.

Likewise if you inject Hydrogen or HHO, or whatever, this will also (dramatically in the case of rather explosive Hydrogen so you don't need much) affect the wavefront propagation speed and the combustion speed, again possibly resulting in less heat lost and more power to the pistons for the same amount of fuel PLUS the additional energy from the burning hydrogen. (or maybe not if if takes the place of the normal fuel instead).

Anyway, your 500 Watt engine may see, say and increased efficiency of 10% which is 50 Watts. As long as it doesn't take 50 Watts to produce the very small amounts of Hydrogen required, you are going to have more power for free.


So, why haven't we seen engines on the bench under controlled experiments to see what these figures actually are in the real world?

[pressld2]

Hmmm, I think I see where you're coming from. Because petrol engines are a long way from 100% efficient to start with then if all you are doing is improving the amount of chemical energy that is converted to kinetic energy and reducing the amount that is wasted as heat and noise then you have a more efficient engine without affecting the net energy in or out of the system. But it's probably best not to say things like "you are going to have more power for free" - that will always wind physicists up! Probably better to phrase it as "you are going to waste less of the power you have already bought and paid for".

Given the billions that the motor industry has been investing in trying to make cars more energy efficient I would guess that there are good reasons why they haven't gone down this route. But I don't know what those reasons are. Could be that it doesn't work, could be that it does work but significantly reduces engine life, could be something else.

Dave P.

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by Jim Ford

'Eeyore', 'thunder' - you're wasting your time!

I'm reminded of what the late, great Carl Sagan said:

"Some people drink deeply from the fountain of knowledge - whilst others just gargle."

Jim

yeah i agree jim - doggle et al have either just made a huge leap forward in automotive technology ( not to mention revising humankinds understanding of the periodic table with the discovery that Hydrogen ions can make as many bonds as you need to support whatever theory you have at hand) and we'll be able to say "we argued with them when..." when they are awarded the nobel prize

or alternately they arent correct (which is my suspicion - yes hydrogen injected into an engine might well act as a catalyst and combustion improver, but as DA himself said this is only a nett gain if the power required to generate the hydrogen is less than the extra power generated - given the inefficiency of drawing off power to an alternator then using the electricity generated to electrolyse water to generate the hydrogen I dont think it will be - and i also suspect that the reason we havent seen bench tests is that it is similarly obvious to automotive engineers that it is impractical)

either way i'm not going to waste any more of my time debating the issue further

[Jim Ford]

Originally Posted by eeyore

either way i'm not going to waste any more of my time debating the issue further

It's a bit like 'conspiracy theorists':

They feel that they are privy to Special Knowledge, known only to those few that have the wisdom and intellectual powers to understand and appreciate it. They feel it sets them apart from the common herd - and they interpret 'apart' as being above. Science professionals and Nobel Peace Prize winners are too intellectually weak and crippled to understand the sheer brilliance of their ideas. The knowledge is so advanced and potentially civilisation changing, that there is a conspiracy of politicians and other power wielders to suppress it.

The amusing thing is that they gainsay any proven and well put scientific argument, with an argument that carries as little weight as (as I've mentioned before): 'Yeahbut, my mate puts this special powder in a cup of water and his Cortina will run for a hundred miles on it'!

Jim

[Doggle Avaddit]

Originally Posted by pressld2

Hmmm, I think I see where you're coming from. Because petrol engines are a long way from 100% efficient to start with then if all you are doing is improving the amount of chemical energy that is converted to kinetic energy and reducing the amount that is wasted as heat and noise then you have a more efficient engine without affecting the net energy in or out of the system. But it's probably best not to say things like "you are going to have more power for free" - that will always wind physicists up! Probably better to phrase it as "you are going to waste less of the power you have already bought and paid for".

Given the billions that the motor industry has been investing in trying to make cars more energy efficient I would guess that there are good reasons why they haven't gone down this route. But I don't know what those reasons are. Could be that it doesn't work, could be that it does work but significantly reduces engine life, could be something else.

Dave P.

I dunno, judging by the hostile reactions you get the moment you mention "hydrogen" or "HHO" , together with the hands over the ears "La, la la, I'm not listening, its all a load of tosh", I am really not that surprised. This may not be good PR for your average car company right now.