Hydrogen - 40 miles per gallon
 

This is a new thing to me. A guy was just telling me how he installed a Hydrogen set up on his truck and is now getting 40 miles per gallon on his Dodge diesel.
He said the truck is running a lot cleaner, you can't smell the diesel exhaust as bad, not more power, but a lot better gas mileage.

Need more information please:

Cost to install?

Where to purchase?

Side effects?

Pros and Cons?

Why aren't more diesel owners doing this?

I was looking a little at thermo1.com . So far they seem to have some good info.

Thanks,

Jason

It's being discussed over here.... https://www.dieseltruckresource.com/...ad.php?t=81058

MikeyB

going through the 30 pages about killed me. I'm not really digging into the science and chemistry - I'm just looking for a few simple facts. Maybe they aren't so simple and do need deeper digging.

I know nothing about these systems and I'm certainly not informed but I would imagine one major draw back is storin hydrogen on your vehicle.

It is VERY volatile!

remember the Hindenburg?

If there is s system that allows a truck to get 40 mpg, it would be no secret. Whoever was doing it would be selling it on a worldwide market. You would not have to ask about it. Especially with fuel prices going up and up every day.

I can assure you if it were true, Banks, Bully Dog, etc would have allready found developed, and had it in the pages of Diesel magazines worldwide.

My buddy just put it on his Escort ZX2. I'm interested to see mileage results.

He used 4" PVC with two caps. Its maybe 15 or 18" long. Then put some stainless plates inside it and used some 6 or 8 gauge amp wire and hooked it up so its on when the key is on. He used distilled water and piped it into the air intake.

I'm not sure if you would be able to to do on a turbocharged vehicle.

I would think you would have to have the same pressure as the boost or greater. Not sure if pressurizing it to 35 psi is a good idea.

I wonder how this would compare to propane injection? Seems to me that hydrogen cells ARE a little too new and volatile???

It has been working well for those with gas engines and no turbo. I have been considering it for my Jeep. Also, some have reported better gains with gas engines that also have modded intakes.

GlennRMK - can you get pics of your friends install and details of where he got his equipment? That would be very helpful to everyone with gas powered vehicles.

CD

I can try to get pics. He went to the local hardware store for the PVC. Bought the stainless plates from a local steel supplier. Just bolted them all together. Just got the amp wire from an auto parts store.

Like I said, I'm a little skeptical about it. Especially in a diesel and turbocharged application.

The reason it will not work is simple physics. Diesel has about 140,000 BTU per gallon and Hydrogen has about 300 BTU per cubic foot. Now going down the highway with my normal truck (20 MPG @ 60 MPH), I will be consuming 3 gallons per hour. The miracle Hydrogen truck will be need the same BTU but only half from diesel. So 3 gallons per hour = 420,000 BTU, diesel will be 1.5 gallons (210,000 BTU). You will need to be burning 700 Cubic feet of Hydrogen per hour to make up the other 210,000 BTU. I think that the normal 5' tall tanks have about 270 cubic feet of gas storage. So the miracle Hydrogen truck will need lots of electricity to get the Hydrogen from water or he will need at least (2.5) Hydrogen tanks for every hour he drives. I generalized some but the numbers are what they are, I didn't even figure in the change in combustion air required to actually keep the truck running properly with diesel & Hydrogen. But you know the old saying (Figures never lie & liers always figure) [laugh]

Since hydrogen is no more a source of energy than electricity is, the 50-70% efficiency of producing hydrogen has to be combined with the vehicle efficiency, so for example a hydrogen vehicle which gets 27 MPG is actually getting only about 16 MPG.

Good Post Foxborough. I've asked a few people who know something about energy, none of them have totally explained how hydrogen is created (WITHOUT using fossil fuels). I hope for everyones sake (cept for middle eastern oil tycoons that is) That some new fuels take off. Ethanol sure has been a big disappointment so far.:(

Its not a big deal , basically its the same as using propane in diesels , for decades , not as a fuel [ very small amounts ] , but to help the diesel burn better .
Like a lot of things , this is mostly a do it your self , plans / kits , with the general lack on knowledge & skills , that most show , a good set of plans / kits do not work as well as they could , so a lot of bad results / stories .
As for the lack of knowledge , as an example , you do not need any petroleum products to make Hydrogen , all of these systems that I have seen , are using electrolysis , putting electrical current into water , to break the bond between H & o2 .
Its not being stored , it is made on demand , so very little of a storage / safety issue .

Do you know what unit he's using? That's a significant increase especially if he's using one of those small pvc tube cells. I can't see that it will produce enough hydroxy to give that much gain. Most gains I've read require a ecm fooler, optimizers. I don't think any diesel shops do this and if he's running mechanical IP, He would need to tune it to get that incredible gain.

I'm building a smacks 16 plate cell. I very curious about this. I hope to be able to run it soon. I would hold off on the commercial kits. They are too expensive for what they do, if they do work. I have about $79 in my cell with SS plate being the majority of cost. The commerical jobs wants you to jump in without really researching. I don't think I've read anyone that bought one for a diesel worked.

Edit: John F beat me too it. Good reply.

Eugene

I read some scuttle but that the hydrogen increases the efficiency of the combustion or some such nonsense. But energy is energy and mass is mass. You only get so much energy with combustion and that is by converting only a very slight immeasurable amount of the mass to energy in the combustion process. To get more energy out of a fuel would require converting more of the mass which is impossible without resorting to temperatures high enough to make plasmas and actually transmute elements. Such is not possible in an IC engine and very difficult to do in a controlled fashion. It usually requires a nuclear reactor or an atom bomb to reach the temperatures/energies required.

How efficient is the combustion of diesel? Well if there is no smoke and no unburned hydrocarbons going out the tailpipe then the combustion is 100%. Some of the energy pushes the pistons down the rest goes out as heat or friction (heat).

To reduce heat loss you raise the temp of the engine but because this causes durability problems designers are usually conservative. Try a 190 degree thermostat and I'll bet you get better mileage increase that any hydrogen generator. (This is thermodynamics 101)

Edwin

It is also being talked about here https://www.dieseltruckresource.com/...d.php?t=207471
So someone is saying he gets 40 mpg with one of these. What year truck? If it is one of the new trucks I really doubt it. The problem with the new trucks is they have a multi injection per cycle. I think it has 2 or 3 injections per stroke. Hydrogen burns about 38000 feet per second so the pilot injection would burn the hydrogen and the main event would go unassisted. The cell on the site mentioned above is a single cell device and will get very hot, so will the one GlennRmk talked about. They will make a little hho and a lot of heat and most likely some steam. You only need 1.23 volts and a lot of amps per cell to make hydrogen. A multi cell (7 cells in series) will do OK with temperature and make more gas but still won't make enough hydrogen. I also see that thermol1.com had a link to a video on YouTube of Roy McAlisters conversion of a 5 hp motor to run on hydrogen. I have the whole video, it's a shame they didn't watch the whole thing. Roy and Steve who made the video joked about the little canister hho generators. They were using a compressed tank of hydrogen to run that engine.
For the record hydrogen, propane, or natural gas will all work, it all comes down to economics. I don't know the percentages of the other gases but hydrogen is 4% to 7%. You only need enough gas to accelerate the burning of the fuel. The efficiency will go up, so it will take less fuel to do the same work and there will be less unburned fuel going to the catalytic converter. Here is a better explanation of this process with propane, natural gas and hydrogen are similar. http://www.mrsharkey.com/lpg.htm