Journal CauseWithoutARebel's Journal: Oh, man, did you hear about that car that runs partly on... 4
...water!?
This car tends to confuse the hell out of people. Half the people think it's some fantastic breakthrough, the other half think it's a scam for reasons ranging from the supposed impossibility of splitting the water up to violating the fiercely-misunderstood Second Law of ThermoDynamics.
The car works, thusly: you fire up the engine, which is internal combustion, like any other motor. However, this car has a trick up its sleeve: a fourth grade science project.
Supposedly, this Ronn Motors car will use this simple little trick to split the hydrogen atoms off from oxygen, then ship the hydrogen to the combustion chamber where it will mix with regular petrol.
The claim is that you get better MPGs because you're using less fuel. Where they came up with their ridiculous BHP claim, I don't know.
So, what's the deal, can you really do this? Is this the green car of the future?
Well, yes, you can do it, no, it's certainly not the green car of the future.
The confusing part is the smokescreen about the hydrogen mix. There's no technical reason you can't mix hydrogen and petrol and blow it up in an appropriate chamber with an appropriate spark to produce useful power. In fact, it's not fundamentally different from how a combustion chamber works now.
Gasoline isn't nearly as volatile as people think. It takes a substantial amount of energy to light it on fire, it takes some ridiculously specific conditions to make it explode. Those ridiculous conditions are exactly what the combustion chamber of an engine produce: a high energy spark sets off a combustible mix of oxygen and gasoline to cause an explosion that propels a piston which is then transferred through a series of rods and gears and a little bit of magic to make your wheels turn.
However, before that energy gets through your transmission to your wheels, it has to get out of the motor through the flywheel (or through the torque converter in an automatic), and before it gets there, a few things get dibs on it: your AC, your alternator, your water pump, etc.
That's where the hydrogen splitting comes in. This car basically just has an extra accessory, just like any other accessory already on your car, that takes some of the power produced from the combustion and uses it to split up the hydrogen and oxygen to prepare more hydrogen for the next cycle.
And, there's the kicker.
First of all, let's think about it. Say we produce 100HP in our motor. The A/C saps 3, the alternator 1, and the water pump 1... then our hydrogen splitter saps 1 to split the next round of hydrogen atoms off... wait a minute... which is better, take our useful power from 95 to 94 so we can make more hydrogen, or just let the 95 through in the first place?
In other words, what it comes down to is this: you have to sap some amount of energy from the motor to power the hydrogen splitter, and a portion of that is going to be lost. Even if the splitter were somehow 100% efficient, it would just mean no net gain in power - you'd put 1 HP into the splitting and get 1 HP back so you'd lose out because of the weight of the accessory*.
Yes, the claims are probably bogus (short of a scientific breakthrough or some sort of exotic power source for the splitter.. and if that's the case, why not just power the vehicle with the exotic power source?), but not for the reasons most people think. The car's design is technically sound - simplistic even.
It's just pointless.
* One other thing you have to understand is that hydrogen only carries about a quarter of the energy of a same volume of gasoline (but is a very high energy fuel by weight). Since we're mixing the two fuels together, they're at the same pressure, and at a pressure that is meaningful enough to cause gasoline to explode, so the gasoline is far more efficient (otherwise, they'd be using a high-pressure chamber for the hydrogen, and if they could do that, they could just run the whole car on hydrogen).
Ob. Robert Heinlein quote - "TANSTAAFL" (Score:2)
Now if the device were to be based on the idea of injecting water into the combustion chamber to be converted to steam, to extend the power strokes' duration, they might have something (but then the combustion chamber would be to cold for the next load of fuel ... oh well, back to the drawing board).
Re: (Score:1)
Back in the day, we used water injection to reduce detonation. Mostly in the old piston engine bombers and airliners, and the early jets, but for a different reason. And it does a wonderful job of cleaning the combustion chamber by loosening the carbon deposits.
Re: (Score:2)
Water for carbon deposits, automatic transmission fluid for lubing sticking valves.
For those of you who don't know how to do it, rev the engine by yanking the throttle cable with one hand, and pour the liquid of your choice slowly down the intake with the other.
Just don't do the trans. fluid thing in a garage - you won't be able to see your hand in front of your face ...
Re: (Score:1)
I have drive-by-wire you insensitive clod!