How To Make An Engine Run On Water

Media Platforms Design Squad

From a startup snagging headlines to DIYers posting plans, h2o-powered cars have been all over the Web recently--non to mention stuffing my email inbox.

Yes, yous tin run your car on water. All it takes is to build a "water-burning hybrid" is the installation of a elementary, often home-fabricated electrolysis cell under the hood of your vehicle. The key is to take electricity from the auto'south electric system to electrolyze h2o into a gaseous mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, oftentimes referred to as Brown's Gas or HHO or oxyhydrogen. Typically, the mixture is in a ratio of 2:ane hydrogen atoms to oxygen atoms. This is and so immediately piped into the intake manifold to supervene upon some of the expensive gasoline you've been paying through the nose for these last couple of months. These simple "kits" will increase your fuel economic system and decrease your bills and dependence on foreign petroleum by anywhere from xv to 300 per centum.

There's even a Japanese company, Genepax, showing off a prototype that runs on nothing but water. On June 13 Reuters published a written report on the prototype, complete with a now much-blogged-nearly video even showing an innocuous grey box in the Genepax vehicle'strunk supplying all the power to bulldoze the machine. All you have to practise is add an occasional bottle of Evian (or tea, or any aqueous fluid is handy), then drive all over without ever needing gasoline.

And so what do I think about all of this? Why haven't I tested and written virtually this stuff? It's certain to Alter the World As Nosotros Know It ... correct?

Rubbish.

The merely existent definitive claim Genepax makes on its Web site is that its process is going to save the globe from global warming. (A request for comment was not returned at press time.) Their H2o Energy System (WES) appears to be nothing more than a fuel prison cell converting the hydrogen and oxygen dorsum into electricity, which is used to run to a motor that drives the wheels. Fuel jail cell technology is well-understood and pretty efficient at irresolute hydrogen and oxygen into electricity and water, which is where we came in, right? Except the hydrogen came from water in the offset place--something doesn't add upward here.

Here's the bargain, people: There ain't no such thing as a costless tiffin.

There is free energy in h2o. Chemically, it's locked upward in the atomic bonds between the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. When the hydrogen and oxygen combine, whether it's in a fuel cell, internal combustion engine running on hydrogen, or a jury-rigged pickup truck with an electrolysis prison cell in the bed, there'southward free energy left over in the form of rut or electrons. That's converted to mechanical free energy by the pistons and crankshaft or electrical motors to move the vehicle.

Problem: It takes exactly the same corporeality of energy to pry those hydrogen and oxygen atoms apart inside the electrolysis prison cell equally y'all get dorsum when they recombine inside the fuel prison cell. The laws of thermodynamics oasis't changed, in spite of whatever hype y'all read on some web log or news aggregator. Subtract the losses to heat in the engine and alternator and electrolysis prison cell, and you're losing energy, not gaining it--menstruation.

Simply enough about Genepax, which is sort of tangential to my main thesis here, and on to a more common topic in my postal service que: HHO as a ways of extending the fuel economy of conventional IC engines.

HHO enthusiasts--from hypermilers to Average Joes desperate to salvage at the pump--suggest that hydrogen changes the way gasoline burns in the combustion bedroom, making it burn more efficiently or faster. Okay, in that location have been a couple of engineering papers that suggest a trace of hydrogen tin change the combustion characteristics of ultra-lean-called-for stratified-charge engines. Properly managed H₂ enrichment seems to increase the fire rate of the hydrocarbons in the cylinder, extracting more than energy. However, these studies only suggest increases in fuel economy past a few percentage points and don't apply unless the engine is running far also lean for decent emissions. That'south a long way from the outrageous claims of every bit much as 300-percent improvements in economy that I run into on the Internet and in my mailbox.

At that place'southward no reason to believe that fifty-fifty more pocket-size increases claimed by some of the ads could be accomplished by a conventional, computer-controlled automobile engine running under airtight-loop driving--that is, the computer'south ability to sample the oxygen output of the engine'southward exhaust in real time and slew the fuel/air ratio for large mpg and small emissions. The combustion chamber events are far unlike in the type of ultra-lean-burn engines where hydrogen enrichment has been seen to assist. Ultra-lean means there's a lot of actress oxygen around for the hydrogen to have something to react with--far more than than the very modest amount we're sucking in from the typical homebrew hydrogen generator made from a Stonemason jar. And recollect, these studies deal with hydrogen enrichment under closely-controlled lab conditions, not spraying an uncontrolled amount of hydrogen-oxygen mixture into your air cleaner.

I'm building a h2o-electrolyzer car--right now. The electrolysis cell associates is on my workbench and ready to install, and so stay tuned for the examination results shortly. If information technology works, then y'all can believe the hype.