Water-Powered Car: Breaking the Molecular Bond & Burning Hydrogen

[seacoastauto]

The purpose of this electrolysis device that splits water is to increase the fuel efficiency of the automobile, as also suggested by mrjeffy321. The electronic control module (ECM) controls many functions of how the car engine operates and makes modifications accordingly. In this case, the most important one is the amount of fuel that is injected into the cylinders. With the addition of hydrogen and oxygen, the combustion of gasoline is more efficient, so the ECM "tells" its attached components to inject less fuel into the cylinders because the car's energy needs are satisfied.

This is not entirely correct. For cars with ECMs, a MAP enhancer must be installed in order for the system to work (work as reported, that is).

When brown's gas is added to the air stream, additional O2 gas is picked up by the O2 sensors in the car's exhaust stream. The ECM responds by ADDING more fuel to the system. This actually decreases the car's efficiency. This is where the MAP enhancer comes in. The MAP enhancer is situated between the ECM and the oxygen sensors. They are usually adjustable and modify the signals (changes the voltages) from the O2 sensors such that the ECM thinks there is less O2 in the exhaust stream than there actually is. The ECM then responds by reducing the amount of fuel delivered to the engine in an effort to preserve, what it thinks is, the optimum fuel/air ratio.

The ECM is actually "blind" to the actual effiency of the car; it's just responding to false signals given to it by the MAP enhancer.

 

[TVP45]

The purpose of this electrolysis device that splits water is to increase the fuel efficiency of the automobile, as also suggested by mrjeffy321. The electronic control module (ECM) controls many functions of how the car engine operates and makes modifications accordingly. In this case, the most important one is the amount of fuel that is injected into the cylinders. With the addition of hydrogen and oxygen, the combustion of gasoline is more efficient, so the ECM "tells" its attached components to inject less fuel into the cylinders because the car's energy needs are satisfied.

This is not entirely correct. For cars with ECMs, a MAP enhancer must be installed in order for the system to work (work as reported, that is).

When brown's gas is added to the air stream, additional O2 gas is picked up by the O2 sensors in the car's exhaust stream. The ECM responds by ADDING more fuel to the system. This actually decreases the car's efficiency. This is where the MAP enhancer comes in. The MAP enhancer is situated between the ECM and the oxygen sensors. They are usually adjustable and modify the signals (changes the voltages) from the O2 sensors such that the ECM thinks there is less O2 in the exhaust stream than there actually is. The ECM then responds by reducing the amount of fuel delivered to the engine in an effort to preserve, what it thinks is, the optimum fuel/air ratio.

The ECM is actually "blind" to the actual effiency of the car; it's just responding to false signals given to it by the MAP enhancer.

This is not quite accurate. Oxygen sensors respond only to excess oxygen in the exhaust stream, no matter where that oxygen comes from. In general, auto ICEs, being presumed to have fairly complete combustion, should have nearly zero excess oxygen.

Brown's gas is a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen from the hydrolysis of water and has no excess; burning the hydrogen requires all the oxygen produced by the hydolysis.

The so-called controls put in series with the sensor merely bias the sensor signal so that the engine then runs lean. A lean engine often gets better mileage (you can do the same thing by just using a smaller engine), though the effect is not terribly large and has some undesirable side-effects.

Altering the signal thusly is not good for the engine and is illegal in many locales. At the least, you cannot pass an emission inspection with that bias in place.

I have built many multi-gas burners (including hydrogen) and have monitored them with this kind of oxygen sensor (generically called a Nernst cell) and they required no change in the bias to adjust for the type of fuel, provided that reasonably complete combustion took place. Obviously such things as coke ovens put out a lot of CO that burns poorly and doesn't always produce the optimal results at standard settings; this is not true of gasoline.

 

[buffordboy23]

With the addition of hydrogen and oxygen, the combustion of gasoline is more efficient, so the ECM "tells" its attached components to inject less fuel into the cylinders because the car's energy needs are satisfied.

Seacoastauto,

Your right that this statement of mine is incorrect. This was one of my initial posts where not all of my facts were straight. Many of my initial posts contained some poor logic.

When brown's gas is added to the air stream, additional O2 gas is picked up by the O2 sensors in the car's exhaust stream. The ECM responds by ADDING more fuel to the system. This actually decreases the car's efficiency.

I agree with TVP45. This statement is incorrect. If we assume that the hydrogen is combusted with 100% efficiency, then all of the oxygen produced from electrolysis will be used up as well, so the O2 sensors won't detect an excess.

Even if this combustion process were not completely efficient, the oxygen left over is likely to be small. Based on previous calculations taking into account the typical alternator output, it is unlikely that a 1% mass-fraction of hydrogen relative to gasoline can be produced. So with the good assumption that a car uses 1.5 grams of gasoline per second, we have 0.015 grams of hydrogen and 0.12 grams of extra oxygen at this mass-fraction-ratio compared with the 4.5 grams of oxygen available from the stoichiometric ratio.


TVP45,

I agree about the said consequences--better mileage and undesirable side effects--of running a car lean. Interestingly, research shows that hydrogen addition can permit a car to run leaner without being prone to these undesirable effects. For example, researchers at MIT have developed a microplasmatron fuel converter--which parallels the physics used to discuss the controversy behind the viability of the electrolysis devices--that appears to have very promising results in regard to emission reductions and engine efficiency (fuel economy) when used in conjunction with a turbocharger:

http://www.psfc.mit.edu/research/plasma_tech/pt_plasmatron.html

There is an informative pdf link on that page as well.



As I have been learning more about cars, I wonder if there is potential for a complimentary mechanism to exist. With one of my electrolysis cell setups, the water boils away rapidly as steam--3/4 quart in one hour. I've determined that I put about 0.2 grams of steam into the air intake each second compared with the 22 grams of ambient air. If the outflow from my electrolysis cell is after the location of the Air Intake Temperature sensor (IATs) (air filter box) and before the Mass-Air-Flow sensor (MAFs) (at the end of the air intake duct), I would expect there to be a "contradiction" between the IATs, MAFs, and O2 sensor at the ECM.

I think it makes sense to say that the IATs voltage reading is used to determine what the ECM interprets for the mass airflow from the MAFs voltage reading. Essentially, the hot-wire of the MAFs will be warmer due to the steam, so the voltage reading would indicate that there is less air present than in actuality, and perhaps, causing the ECM to shorten the pulse width for fuel injection, and thus making the car run slightly leaner. Of course, the O2 sensor would then detect this excess oxygen. If this effect is large enough, which I have yet to determine, does anyone have a clue as to how the pulse width of the fuel injection might change?

With this setup, I have obtained my best results by far. It could be solely due to the production of more hydrogen at a lower cost at this water temperature as shown by the Gibbs free energy equation, dG = dH - T*dS, or as many others would say, a perpetual placebo effect that I choose not to acknowledge. =)