Can a device be mounted in a car that can use water and electricity to seperate the hydogen and burn it?

Question

It seems viable to me. A set of electrodes in water creating hydrogen gas and then piping the Hydrogen gas into the intake manifold to increase mileage or decrease fuel consumption.

Impossible doesn't seem like a reasonable answer. I think it must be possible, And if we can figure it out, maby someone will patent and build it.

Answer 1

absolutely would work like a champ.. .course if you had an accident you would have large volumes of hydrogen and oxygen floating free around  metal and sparks.. which means you would first blow things up then burn em...

so you are going to need large sealed and highly protected tanks...

and since you want to careful control the hydrogen/air mixture you are going to need some method of separating the hydrogen and the oxygen... eventually the whole thing becomes bigger then the car!!

Answer 2

It's already been done and patented but the government and national security is not disclosing it for fear of upsetting our economy too quickly.  Stop wondering about it and do it and save yourself tons of  money at the gas pumps.  You don't have to store the hydrogen gas, you use it on demand.

If a guy in the Philippines ran his car only on water for four years, then somebody has this knowledge and not sharing it with the rest of us.  It's so easy, any one with some smarts will figure this out soon.  Please share it here when you figure it out.

Answer 3

Absolutely!   You can build that.   And it will do what you think.

But it won't improve your economy.  

Why? Because your engine has to work harder to spin the alternator to make the electricity to make the hydrogen that you burn as fuel to get more power.  It ends up being a lose in the end.  

Now as for patents, read this:  http://www.tinaja.com/glib/casagpat.pdf

Patents are the WRONG thing to use when you want to spread a good idea.   Instead publish it, put it in the public domain.  But the public is ruthless, they will test your idea and if it sucks, you will become a laughingstock.  (like the "cold fusion" guys from the 1980s).  I'll tell you now - your idea sucks and will get nuked.  Already has been.

Now if you want solar panels on the roof, that works.  But it doesn't work enough to run the whole car.  And again, don't "make electricity to make hydrogen to burn in a piston engine" - just use the electricity to run an electric motor, done.

Answer 4

Nothing is 100% efficient, so you would have to power the water-to-hydrogen converter with something.  Not to mention, separating hydrogen molecules takes a lot of energy.  This definately does not seem like a cost effective method.  People need to understand that hydrogen cars aren't going to work.  There are just too many things wrong with the idea.

Answer 5

Sure--if you had that kind of money. But it's pointless.

Why? Because it takes exactly as much energy to separate the hydrogen out of water as you get back when you burn it--so the net energy left over to power the car is zero (assuming you had zero losses in the process, which is itself impossible--2nd Law of Thermodynamics).

This "water as fuel" scam has been around since the 1950s--yet people still bite!

Go learn some basic physics and chemistry, will you? Especially the law of conservation of enrgy.

Answer 6

Currently there is no technology that would create the amount of hydrogen necessary to power a car through an on demand electrolysis process.  Conceivably you might be able to supplement a gas engine with hydrogen, but that technology doesn't exist either, and probably the weight gain from the equipment necessary to perform the electrolysis (and don't forget the additional weight of the water) would negate any gains.

Answer 7

You can mount a device that will separate water into hydrogen and oxygen, it won't increase your mileage. I have a long post showing you why it can't and won't work, post an edit and I'll post it again.

It's a con that been around a LONG time I remember it from the 1970's.

Save your money and I'll tell you how to increase you fuel mileage for FREE

Take all the junk out of the car, extra weight means less mileage.

Make sure your tires have the correct air pressure.

Drive a little slower, driving 60 vs 70 will add 10 minutes to your trip for every 70 miles driven but you save fuel.

Anticipate stops and slow down before you have to stop. Running up to a stop light or sign costs you a lot of fuel.

Combine your trips whenever possible.

Walk if it closer then a few block. Driving a car a few blocks wastes a lot of fuel.

There I just saved you more fuel then you'll ever save with that silly little device, and it didn't cost anything.

Answer 8

What you are proposing is a simple system.  It can easily be built.  The question you have overlooked is, where would you get the electricity?  

If you going to use electricity to separate hydrogen and oxygen and then burn the hydrogen and oxygen to drive an engine, you would be better off just using the electricity to drive an electric motor.  

Each step in which energy is converted, mechanical, chemical, electrical, or other, has a measure of "efficiency."  That means that with each step of conversion there is a loss of energy from the process.  That energy goes into making lost heat, noise, etc.  

Using an intermediate step to convert the electricity into motion will cause some wastage.  It is more efficient to eliminate the intermediate steps.

On the other hand, you can have filling stations that pump hydrogen and oxygen into cars in the same way that gas stations do with gas today.  Those stations could generate and accumulate the gases.  In that way, the cars would not need to generate hydrogen gas.  

There are certain practical considerations also.  Remember, the Hindenburg was filled with hydrogen gas.  It didn't turn out so well.