I've never been a big fan of the electrolysis in cars thing, honestly because I've never seen anything that I thought was conclusive enough to show that it even remotely works, ceterus paribus.
My biggest issue with it is that you are NOT going to get enough hydrogen or oxygen in any combination out of such a small, car mounted tank of water to effectively do anything in a chemical sense- remember, in (for example) a 2.0l engine (assuming 100% volumetric efficiency) you are moving 2.0l of air PER REVOLUTION through the intake. That's several thousand litres of atmosphere every minute and I'm not going to be simply convinced that a handful of oxygen or hydrogen atoms from a bucket of water in your trunk is going to have any noticeable, practical impact on that.
Notwithstanding this, some people actually do get extra MPG with these setups, but as Kerry Phillips said earlier in the thread I'd be more inclined to believe this is a result of the setup doing something that makes the engine computer freak a bit. I guess the ultimate test in this case would be to test it on a carburated vehicle with no engine computer.
Not trying to be a buzz kill or anything but that's my perspective.
Quote:
Originally Posted by seanfromnh
Its true that it requires more energy to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen but in contrast an alternator works backwords...( almost defies physics...) an alternator can produce a massive amount of energy/amperage with very little usage of energy- makes up for the lack/excess use of electrolysis and hydrogen..
|
Eh, no. This stood out to me because I was just working a problem involving dual alternators...
As far as usable power is concerned, you get remarkably little out of an alternator because most of the power that goes into turning it is lost to heat from normal mechanical friction and magnetic friction caused by the eddy currents due to operation.