On-board electrolysis unit to generate hydrogen for injection to improve MPG
Global Energy Options and H to-go have developed a retro-fit device called the Hydro Fuel System Hydro-charger that is designed to help improve fuel economy. Texas based H to-go markets the system as MAPSOE (for Most Abundant Power Source On Earth). The device consists primarily of an on-board electrolysis unit to produce hydrogen from a water tank and a system to inject the hydrogen into a standard internal combustion engine. The company claims to have done testing on a variety of engines ranging from a Chevrolet pickup with a 5.3L V-8 to a Freightliner truck with Detroit Diesel engine and seen improvements in fuel efficiency ranging from 33 percent to almost 73 percent.
It makes sense that injecting hydrogen would improve fuel efficiency and clean up the emissions. Substituting an alternate fuel to replace some of the gas or diesel will increase the number of miles you can go on each gallon. However, producing the hydrogen on board via electrolysis requires electricity that must come from the alternator. That means a lot of extra load on the engine, which would be tough to make up from the hydrogen. The test results from the company don't give any details on the test procedures, so it's not clear if they were actually using power from the engine to drive the electrolysis unit. If they can actually produce hydrogen using less energy than the hydrogen produces, this could be a really benefit. Unfortunately, I'll have to see some real data before I put one of these on my car.
[Source: H To Go via GreenCarCongress]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
A.Brien 8:10PM (11/27/2006)
I think this is the future. On board hydrogen production with a regular cylinder engine or a fuel
cell. Even better in the not so distant future, we can make a system that recirculate the water exhaust
so we do not have to refuel at all or maybe just
once a while if there is a little leaks. So we can
buy the biggest and best engine and enjoy free fuel.
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John 9:15PM (11/27/2006)
http://www.google.com/search?q=conservation%20of%20energy&sourceid=mozilla2&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
This system would still have to be refueled, and its not getting the extra efficiency from the energy gotten from burning hydrogen as it takes more energy to electrolyze the hydrogen from water than is returned by burning it. The system works (presumably) by using the hydrogen to increase the effeciency of the already occurring reaction with gasoline.
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Andy 9:17PM (11/27/2006)
I am not holding my breath that the thing works. The energy produced from combusting hydrogen and oxygen will ALWAYS be less than the energy needed to split water into oxygen and hydrogen. If you don't believe me lookup something called "law of conservation of energy". Now gas engines do waste a lot of energy. I think an effiecient engine still waste like 75% of it's energy into heat. If the wast heat to do electrolosis then you could gain some of that loss back. Even then as a general rule every time energy changes form (heat to motion, motion to electricity etc) you loose a little. By the time the heat converts water to hydrogen, hydrogen into combustion and combustion into motion I bet you salvage maybe 20% of the 75%. In other words not much. Change your air filter and fill your tire. It will probably get you more milage than this thing.
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Rick 5:04PM (4/01/2009)
Andy,Andy,
You sound skeptical and use the old arguement of thermodynamics which THEY LIKE TO USE WITHOUT TELLING YOU THAT THE "HEAT IS WASTED ENERGY" THAT IS PRODUCED! I now get 50.9 MPG on a 4x4 subaru that the Co. says only can get 22 highway...and I got 189,000 miles on it! Your more than welcome to check it out yourself if you live close enough. Wish I could add pictures of the unit installed but it's basically 2 mason jars with my home made electrodes and a vaporizer bottle(water with bubbles to raise humidity) Truthfully It only gives me an extra 6 in town though.
Tim 9:20PM (11/27/2006)
Brown’s Gas from the electrolysis of water will never provide 100% power due to over unity. There is a lot of information on the internet about using it to enhance the combustion efficiency of other fuels. The arguments seem to make sense.
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Tim 9:45PM (11/27/2006)
I don’t know that Brown’s Gas from the electrolysis of water will ever provide 100% power due to over unity. There is a lot of information about using HHO Browns or Water Gas to enhance the combustion efficiency of other fuels. The arguments for HHO gas injection make sense.
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Tim 9:45PM (11/27/2006)
I don’t know that Brown’s Gas from the electrolysis of water will ever provide 100% power due to over unity. There is a lot of information about using HHO Browns or Water Gas to enhance the combustion efficiency of other fuels. The arguments for HHO gas injection make sense.
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Tim 9:55PM (11/27/2006)
Sorry. Having computer issues.
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Paul Y 10:08PM (11/27/2006)
This was covered on Mythbusters. It seems like a great idea, on the face of it. However, the amount of hydrogen that can be generated by a practical car's electrical system is too small to really do any good at all.
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I Want to Believe 10:57PM (11/27/2006)
It's definitely possible to increase power and reduce emissions with one of these devices - just check out this site, that makes these devices for big rigs and is marketing units for smaller cars:
http://www.chec-hfi.com/
If it merely added energy to the fuel mixing in the tank, while taking energy to perform the electrolysis, it wouldn't be a good idea. But the way it works is to mix at the intake and promote a more thorough burn in the combustion chamber. Hydrogen is more volatile than gasoline, and I can buy the idea that it will promote burning the regular gasoline more thoroughly than just gas.
In any case, it doesn't matter whether we believe that this particular unit works or not. There are already working units out there on a large scale. It works, the only question is how well it works on smaller cars . . . there is a lawsuit between CHEC-HFI and H2N-GEN, a guy who left the CHEC company and developed a "similar" product. Must be something in there to warrant a lawsuit . . .
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CM 2:12AM (11/28/2006)
Add this to the ever growing pile of phony energy savers and bogus milage increasers. Doesn't work.
The best electrolyzers are approx. 50% efficient, amature electrolyzers usually under 20%. Then figure approx. 15% efficiency of IC engines, and what you've got is a complicated expensive "electric motor" running at less than 7% efficiency. Pathetic. A standard car battery can't run it for long.
This device would noticably reduce fuel economy by loading the alternator if it produced large amounts of hydrogen, but it doesn't actually do much. Cars with this add-on really run on gasoline (or diesel) and any supposed fuel economy improvement is either deliberate deception or self-delusion.
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I Want to Believe 10:34AM (11/28/2006)
Please read the "Press/News" page of the CHEC-HFI site before continuing to comment, which contains articles such as this: (the important concept to remember is "you get more work from the same amount of fuel")
http://www.globaltech.ca/pdfs/Wired_news_TruckersChooseHydrogenPower.pdf
"HFI is a bolt-on, aftermarket part that injects small amounts of hydrogen into the engine air intake, said
Canadian Hydrogen Energy's Steve Gilchrist. Fuel efficiency and horsepower are improved because hydrogen
burns faster and hotter than diesel, dramatically boosting combustion efficiency.
"You get more work from the same amount of fuel," said Gilchrist. "
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Henri 12:18PM (11/28/2006)
Disappointingly another perpetual motion machine comes to light. Based on the laws of the universe this or any device cannot produce more energy than it takes to make the Hydrogen. Maybe we'll see refillable Hydrogen tanks, but on board generation will never make sense.
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Peter 6:41PM (11/28/2006)
Splendid! I shall challenge them to a drag race in my perpetual motion machine!
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Glynn 11:31AM (8/05/2007)
I have an idea what if you had a car with batteries and an on-board elctrolyser so you charge the battries at home using renewable electricity sources this would then run the electrolyser that would produce hydrogen to run the internal combustion engine. An electric car for the petrolheads!! of course the efficency would be low so lots of battries would be needed for even the most modest of trips. It would just be more efficent to buy an electric car. Thats why I think hydrogen won't work and electric vechiels are the only viable way towards greener motor. let me explain
Electric vechiel:- Grid to battreis to motor
Regular hydrogen car:-Grid to electrolyser to compresor to fuel cell to motor
my idea is even less efficent:-Grid to battries to electrolyser to ICE
so you can see electric cars are much more efficent and the way forward
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athomas 6:50PM (8/08/2007)
A lot of people refer to this technology as perpetual motion, which it is not, nor does it claim to be. The electrolosis of water does not produce energy but does release the hydrogen. The energy is contained within the hydrogen and is released by combustion. The energy released by the combustion of hydrogen can then be used to power a device such as a car or generator via a combustion engine. Some of the power released can be used to to generate electricity to provide more electrolysis of the water to hydrogen. As such, we are not actually producing the hydrogen, we are just converting existing hydrogen into a form that we can use. If done properly, this can be a viable source of energy given the abundance of H2O on earth. I think with further study, this could be a viable resource and should not be discouraged just yet.
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Chris M 1:51AM (8/09/2007)
Sorry, athomas, but you've missed some major points. How much energy is released by burning hydrogen? The same as the energy needed to split H2 off of the O. Theoretically, if electrolysis were 100% efficient, and IC engines were 100% efficient, it would be a wash, with exactly as much energy out as energy in. No energy source there.
Unfortunately, in reality, water electrolysis is only 50% efficient, half of the electrical energy is wasted as heat. IC engines are even worse, at 15% to 25% efficient. So, sorry, but this "electrolysis to H2 to IC engine" idea is not an energy source, it is an energy sink, an extravagant waste of electrical energy. Once again, reality rears its ugly head and squashes the pretty dream.
Now, water electrolysis could be used to store electrical energy in the form of H2 fuel, but it is very inefficient compared to standard storage batteries, and H2 is an extremely bulky and difficult to store fuel. Much better to just use batteries (85% efficient) and electric motors (95% efficient).
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Aion 8:17PM (10/08/2007)
Actually, you've missed the point entirely.
It's hilarious how some people will still deny a technology is viable when it has already been implemented in commercial fleets of vehicles.
Just goes to show just how far internet ego goes, and how you have to do your own digging, and not just take any old self proclaimed authorities word for it.
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Chris M 1:37AM (10/09/2007)
It isn't necessarily "viable" simply because it has been implemented in a fleet. People can be deceived, and can even deceive themselves, and that includes fleet owners and truck operators.
The only independent test on this that I am aware of, done by Mythbusters, did not support the claims.
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Mojo 5:04PM (10/25/2007)
Man, Mythbusters is not an independent test. Most of the stuff they do on that show can be proven or written off with simple calculations. Like remember the "can we cook a turkey with a naval radar, or radio tower?" episode. The guy who let them into the tower area told them exactly what would happen because he understood the difference between RF on a radio tower and RF in a microwave oven. Any RF engineer in the country could have told you exactly what would happen.
I can't believe I have to say this, but Mythbusters is NOT an independent scientific research body and does not do quantitative analysis in the strict sense that would be applied to the sort of technology we are discussing here.
Many people have already commented, and I will reinforce...hydrogen injection in this fashion is meant to augment, or, if you will, catalyze the combustion that occurs with gas and diesel, not replace it. Please understand what this particular device is attempting to do before you dismiss it as just another "intake vortex" serpent lubricant device.
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