My boss was talking about systems one installs into a regular gasoline-burning car that electrolyzes hydrogen from water, and adds the hydrogen to the fuel/air mix, allegedly increasing gas mileage.
My first thought was that this is a scam, whatever energy gain you get from the hydrogen would be less than the energy it took to pull it out of the water. But then I thought that perhaps the hydrogen burns with some component of the fuel/air mixture that normally would not combust, perhaps extra O2 that normally is wasted.
That’s uninformed ignorant speculation on my part, obviously. Is there a way this can actually improve gas mileage, or is my first impression of it being scam correct?
As I understand it, the tentative conclusion of the thread was that there might hypothetically be some improvement in the combustion of the main fuel by adding a bit of hydrogen and/or oxygen (and that this improvement in use of the main fuel could outweigh the energy cost of cracking the water), but not nearly in so significant a way as being claimed - the verdict was somewhere between deluded optimism and outright chicanery.
Think about it this way. Hybrid automobiles are so desirable that they are selling at sticker price. Car companies are making a killing on this technology. If there were some other well documented technology that would allow other cars to significantly improve their gas mileage, how quickly would you expect the automotive industry to adapt it for their own vehicles?