wavingpine11
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- Central PA
tbburg--not trying to be negative or discourage experimentation, but I think that given all ofthe losses involved in the engine, that you can't come out ahead by decombining then recombining the same substance. I hear what you're saying about hydrogen injection being an excellent way to enhance ignition characteristics such as efficiency of the burn, but I guess I'm more with the crowd who believes that the way to do this would be to generate off the vehicle using wind, solar, donkey, or whatever. I guess I find it hard to believe that with such poorly efficient machines that you could come out ahead with this. This said, however, I am perfectly willing to sit, watch, listen, and be proven wrong. I'm not a naysayer as much as a skeptic with good reason to be skeptical, i.e. all these background issues with using mechanical energy to produce electricity to perform electrolysis to burn the electrolysis products back to their starting material losing efficiency once again but perhaps gaining efficiency in the burn characteristics. If not impossible, it seems at least like there would be a very steep barrier to likelihood of success.
But I think that I made a very valid point when I stated that the total amount of water being converted is the key to this. It is an absolute certainty that the amount of water being converted to hydrogen and oxygen will need to be accounted for. I would have a very hard time believing that there is not a threshold proportion of hydrogen required in the fuel charge to achieve any enhancement in combustion. If you're converting very little, then you're getting very little hydrogen to modify your burn, and the question is, is this enough. I don't doubt that Goodburton has been generating hydrogen, but unless I'm missing something, the initial data suggest that he is getting worse overall efficiency than he has ever seen with his test vehicle. My first thought to explain this is that my initial assertion that you are creating a net drain on the system was correct. If anything, I think that much more hydrgen needs to be generated per unit time, and then the question is, can the vehicle provide enough current to make this happen. I think that one approach to validate the likelihood of success would be to find out more about the hydrogen injection technology, determine the flow rate of hydrogen required to achieve the enhanced performance, then see what it would take to generate hydrogen at that rate from an on-board generator. I am not a master of engineering, but I think that if there are successful hydrogen injection systems, that they would provide a great model to determine what the flow demand is for the hydrogen, and then to determine what the flow of hydrogen from the current system is.
A fun test of whether H2 is being generated would be to route it into an old style thick coke bottle wrapped with duct tape, and then igniting the mixture (away from the generator of course) to make a nice mini-cannon blast. I don't doubt that H2 is being generated, but it would be a good control to prove it. And just think, if the efficiency enhancement isn't there on this scale of system, you could hook up the H2 to side-mounted potato guns for use on the trail or to punish bad drivers on the road. . .
Ultimately, I applaud Goodburton for taking it upon himself to actually do the experiement rather than just engage in speculation like myself. Like I said, I am skeptical, but perfectly happy to rethink things if the data leads us that way. It's this kind of ingenuity that makes the
crowd appeal to me. All of us who spend so much time thinking about, maintaining, and modifying our vehicles are a far different class of people than those who always want to leave their dirty work to someone else and then whine when the results aren't what they were expecting.
--wavingpine
But I think that I made a very valid point when I stated that the total amount of water being converted is the key to this. It is an absolute certainty that the amount of water being converted to hydrogen and oxygen will need to be accounted for. I would have a very hard time believing that there is not a threshold proportion of hydrogen required in the fuel charge to achieve any enhancement in combustion. If you're converting very little, then you're getting very little hydrogen to modify your burn, and the question is, is this enough. I don't doubt that Goodburton has been generating hydrogen, but unless I'm missing something, the initial data suggest that he is getting worse overall efficiency than he has ever seen with his test vehicle. My first thought to explain this is that my initial assertion that you are creating a net drain on the system was correct. If anything, I think that much more hydrgen needs to be generated per unit time, and then the question is, can the vehicle provide enough current to make this happen. I think that one approach to validate the likelihood of success would be to find out more about the hydrogen injection technology, determine the flow rate of hydrogen required to achieve the enhanced performance, then see what it would take to generate hydrogen at that rate from an on-board generator. I am not a master of engineering, but I think that if there are successful hydrogen injection systems, that they would provide a great model to determine what the flow demand is for the hydrogen, and then to determine what the flow of hydrogen from the current system is.
A fun test of whether H2 is being generated would be to route it into an old style thick coke bottle wrapped with duct tape, and then igniting the mixture (away from the generator of course) to make a nice mini-cannon blast. I don't doubt that H2 is being generated, but it would be a good control to prove it. And just think, if the efficiency enhancement isn't there on this scale of system, you could hook up the H2 to side-mounted potato guns for use on the trail or to punish bad drivers on the road. . .
Ultimately, I applaud Goodburton for taking it upon himself to actually do the experiement rather than just engage in speculation like myself. Like I said, I am skeptical, but perfectly happy to rethink things if the data leads us that way. It's this kind of ingenuity that makes the
crowd appeal to me. All of us who spend so much time thinking about, maintaining, and modifying our vehicles are a far different class of people than those who always want to leave their dirty work to someone else and then whine when the results aren't what they were expecting. --wavingpine
