I like to tell my students that water is the ashes of hydrogen burning. Water’s already burned, so to speak. Ever try to burn ashes? All the energy’s been removed in the first reaction.
The other proof that water is very low energy is that there’s so darn much of it. If it were more energetic, it would be reacting with more things (it’s touching every sort of thing in the world).
Recently, I’ve been on a forum attached to a local newspaper. I clicked on a link to a hard-right website, and it had five ads from water-as-fuel scams. I guess they targeted their audience very well.
I do believe that it’s possible to burn water. You just need an even stronger oxidizer than oxygen. For example, fluorine gas. That’s the solution to our energy problems, fill the atmosphere with fluorine!
Just for the record, this ‘water as fuel’ business isn’t just on the internet. I’m quite sure I saw an ad on TV for this when I was in the DC area last weekend.
“Wouldn’t you like to save 30% over gasoline costs?”
I don’t think anyone was implying you can burn water directly - I think they were talking about somehow introducing water into the overall gasoline combustion process.
I’ve been researching the HHO fuel additive idea and there are a number of serious tinkerers out there working on it. Some of them appear to be getting results with their system but it’s no panacia.
There is no free lunch in this process as it is impossible to add power to a process and get more power out. But from what I can gather it works along the lines of a water injection system with the added benefit of hydrogen gas in the combustion process. It doesn’t appear to work if other chemicals are used to produce the hydrogen. Most of the systems appear to draw water vapor in the process.
When I say its no panacia it’s because these things are easy to make but hard to tweak. The car’s computer has to be tweaked and the system itself requires a lot of trial and error to get a good HHO gas to watt return. That process involves mixing chemicals to produce an electrolytic solution and also a solution that won’t freeze in the winter. Depending on the efficiency of the system there will be heat generated which needs to controlled by changing the mixture used or adjusting the amperage/voltage.
In addition to the above there is the real possibility of explosion with these things as a number of people have found out. A flash suppressor is mandatory.
For the record, I don’t think the systems I see for sale would work because of what is involved. If there is any advantage from water injection and hydrogen in the combustion process it would have to involve the mechanical advantage of water flashing to steam at the end of the burn cycle or a controlled extension of the normal fuel/air burn.
You can tweak it till you’re blue in the face and you’re still going to have a net power loss. Period. Unless someone else is electrolyzing the water for you and you’re not counting their energy usage, it cannot be otherwise. We’ve been over this before.
If you read what I said I already acknowledged that burning hydrogen in this process would not have a net gain. However, as a water injected process you have the ability to lean the motor and recoup energy.
From Wiki: In a piston engine, the initial injection of water cools the fuel-air mixture somewhat, which increases its density and hence the amount of mixture that enters the cylinder. But the greater effect comes later during combustion when the water takes in significant amounts of heat energy as it converts from liquid to gas (steam). This increases piston pressure (torque), reduces peak temperature and resultant NOx formation, and reduces the amount of heat energy absorbed into the cylinder walls. The duration of combustion is said to be longer, preventing detonation. In aircraft engines the cooling effect allows the mixture to be run leaner at its best-power setting.
Since I’ve gotten good results from water injection on performance engines in the past I see no reason why adding hydrogen to the combustion process would hurt this in any way and may very well add something to the mechanical advantage of of water as described above.
There appears to be a number of papers on the subject of augmenting a fuel burn with hydrogen.. From Wiki
Mine must need adjustment - it rings at odd hours and sometimes several times a night.
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