Alex wrote:
> Dave,
> Very interesting discussion. Question though.......if the energy to split the
> water is carried out within the recharging system of the car.........hence no
> recognizable lost or cost and the hydrogen enters the fuel system
> unobstructed, where is the lost of benefit?
To understand why this is of very limited value, one has to understand
energy balance equations. Simply, the charging system of the car isn't
"free" energy. It takes some power from the engine to run the
alternator, and, further, there are transmission losses from the engine
to the alternator. That means that the current to enable electrolysis
is made from fuel expenditure--at a fairly low efficiency. Add it all up
and the benefit is negligible. I would guess that simply modifying the
fuel maps is the greatest contributor to any savings, rather than the
introduction of hydrogen to the fuel mixture. The addition of hydrogen
actually may be necessary to get the likely very lean mixtures to ignite
at all.
This, in fact, was the principle behind early Honda CVCC engines. That
engine used two combustion chambers--one, a very small pre-chamber that
used the spark plug to ignite a very small volume of mixture at
near-stoichiometric proportions, and that burning mixture was used to
ignite a very lean mixture in the main chamber.
It's just a given function of Otto-cycle engines that fuel metering and
air flow at idle is very inefficient--and even more so with fixed cam
timing. That's why the small hybrids perform as they do--because most
will shut off the engine when it's not being used to actually move the
vehicle. So, the answer to the problem is not to spend money tinkering
with a system that will likely produce mechanical problems down the road
(particularly valve erosion from higher combustion chamber
temperatures), but, rather, to invest in newer technology that addresses
the idle problem through a systems approach and achieves much higher
overall mileage improvements.
Cheers.
--
Michael Porter
Roswell, NM
Never let anyone drive you crazy when you know it's within walking distance....
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