ARCHIE H. BLUE Water Powered "Reactor" (for car use?)

[ghosthunter]

ser ghosthunter ang purpose po ba ng electoz mo ehh to seperate h2o atom, kasi sabawat terminal +/- ay may kasamang hose submerge para maseparate yung oxegen sa hydrogen..kung multiple plate ang design siguro multiple port din ang kailangan afaik..>>hehe

The purpose is simple: to extend the fuel milage I get from my car. Example, current with pure gasoline fueling my engine, I get 6km/L. I hope by adding hydrogen/oxygen from the electrolizer to the air intake charge to the engine, I could extend my fuel milage to 10km/L or more.

[Grailer88]

The Archie H. Blue patent is for a series wired electrolytic reactor. There are 8 circular plates or disks, mounted on a central hollow tube. Four of the disks are positive and four are negative. The central hollow tube has a hole in the center thru which air is pumped into the bottom of the jar. The pumped air knocks off the Hydrogen and Oxygen bubbles which cling to the disks.

What is important about the Blue design is that it a very safe way to make hydrogen/oxygen gas and supply it to a car engine. By pumping AIR into the mixture the gas is made much less explosive. I attached a double aquarium valve to a jar, with two aquarium stones in the bottom. I hooked this up to a vacuum line on the intake manifold of a fuel injected Ford F150 truck. That really works.

For electrodes I used 5" 1/4 x 20 stainless steel bolts and 3 2" washers fastened to on the bolts with nuts about 3/8" apart. I did not bother with the series wiring. One bolt is positive the other negative. Very simple and effective.

I also hooked up this arrangement to a 5HP Homelite Generator with a
Briggs & Stranton engine. I pumped the gas into the engine using a small $6.00 aquarium pumb. This also worked well. I was trying to establish that the Archie Blue device is safe and I think that it is.

If you type Archie H. Blue U.S. Patent Hydrogen Electrolysis into Google you will get three different sites with the whole patent including 3 nice color pictures of the design.

This one is a winner because:

1. It is very safe.
2. You can make your own version for $10.00 to $15.00.
3. It is easy to get the gas into an engine either by using a vacuum port
at the base of the carb or at the intake manifold. Or you could use a
pump.


3.

[JAYarc]

ahh, afaik hindi siguro since masyadong maliit yung quantity na generated by ur local electrz, unless stored yung gases w/decent volumemass

afaik if volumemass(hydrogen supply) is decent only hydrogen is required to help economized fuel consuption if o2 is mix w/Hydro ur system w/ petrol will get lean due to bypassing airmass sensor if hydro alone o2 sensor will conpensete and then will cut some fuel imho..hehe

[ghosthunter]

ahh, afaik hindi siguro since masyadong maliit yung quantity na generated by ur local electrz, unless stored yung gases w/decent volumemass

have you read my previous posts?

I want to economize my engine's gasoline consumption NOT replace gasoline with hydrogen/oxygen gas from the "cell". Hence, in theory, I do not need any stored hydrogen gas.

afaik if volumemass(hydrogen supply) is decent only hydrogen is required to help economized fuel consuption if o2 is mix w/Hydro ur system w/ petrol will get lean due to bypassing airmass sensor if hydro alone o2 sensor will conpensete and then will cut some fuel imho..hehe

I believe by adding H2/O2 (generated from the cell) will result in a more balanced burn than just adding H2 into the intake since the amount of H2 is proportion to O2. Also the volume of H2/O2 gas to be added in the intake will be relatively small so that it will not displace atmospheric air.

[mazdamazda]

btw... wouldn't H2 just pass through the engine unchanged?

if so... wouldn't it be better if you introduce PURE O2 to the engine (in small quantities)?

[ghosthunter]

btw... wouldn't H2 just pass through the engine unchanged?

if so... wouldn't it be better if you introduce PURE O2 to the engine (in small quantities)?

actually the "cell" will generate both hydrogen and oxygen gas and that will be fed into the intake. So the result is you have "extra" fuel to offset some gasoline.

Introducing pure O2 is similar to having a NOS system but with pure oxygen you will encounter detonaton problems.

[mazdamazda]

actually the "cell" will generate both hydrogen and oxygen gas and that will be fed into the intake. So the result is you have "extra" fuel to offset some gasoline.

sorry... I was thinking of N2.

are our existing fuel combustion engines adaptable to the use of H2?

AFAIK, only Mazda was able to come up with a prototype H2 & gasoline engine for the RX-8. even BMW dabbled only with pure H2 engines.

[ghosthunter]

sorry... I was thinking of N2.

are our existing fuel combustion engines adaptable to the use of H2?

AFAIK, only Mazda was able to come up with a prototype H2 & gasoline engine for the RX-8. even BMW dabbled only with pure H2 engines.

given what I have read, it seems normal gasoline engines can run on "pure" H2/O2 if the sparkplug is changed to a cold plug and the a/f ratio is on the lean side to slow down the flame front speed. Aside from that, running gasoline w/ h2/o2 is possible too.

[Grailer88]

The plates are wired alternately positive to negative (series wired). They are circular disks mounted on a central post with the + and - wiring comming down the sides. I made one with 3/8 stainless steen bolts 5" long. I mounted 2" flat washers with bolts on either side.

I just hooked up a battery charger on the 2 amp setting (10 to 12 amp's works too)to the bolts (wired in parallel). You get lots of gas if you add some baking soda to the water. Salt works too but it clouds the water up.

"It will be appreciated that the greater the concentration of electrolyte used in the cell, the lower the voltage which is needed to generate the current reqired for the electrolysis of water."

U.S. Patent No. 5,302,268

Archie Blue used a pumb to circulate the water (electrolyte) and knock the bubbles off the + and _ terminals. I hooked up an aquarium pump with plastic tubing and an air stone to do this. This dilutes the gas with air making it much safer to work with. Probably you intend to burn it anyway so mixing it with air in the container works out.

cya,

Grailer

[Flagg]

Wow... hindi ko na maintindihan but I hope you guys succeed.

[orly_andico]

i tried calculating the amount of current this scheme would take, way back when i was a kid with impractical ideas.

i don't really see how Dingle's contraption can work, because as mazdamazda has said, the amount of energy you get from burning the h2 + o2 is less than the amount you have to spend to split the water. however, if the aim is to improve efficiency of combustion (a la acetone) then perhaps that would work.

using Faraday's constant (not Faraday's Law -- that one relates to electromagnetism) we know that 96,485 Coulombs is 1 Faraday. And 1 Faraday is 1 Mole of electrons. It takes 2 Moles of electrons to produce 1 Mole of Hydrogen.

So, 192970 Coulombs to produce 1 mole of hydrogen.

Let's say you're aiming for a 1% (volumetric) mix of hydrogen in your fuel. If you have say a 2.0L displacement vehicle with 4 cylinders, at a nominal speed of 2000rpm, that's about 500mL * 2000rpm = 1000L of gases moving through the engine in one minute, or 17L per second. Your 1% hydrogen is 170mL of hydrogen per second.

At STP, a standard mole of gas is 22.4L (of course an engine is hotter than STP, but the pressure is also higher). Let's just assume STP for sake of argument.

170mL is therefore 0.0076 moles. Using Faraday's constant, we need 1465 Coulombs to produce this much hydrogen.

Remember that the ampere (current) is actually Coulombs per second. Since we need 170mL of hydrogen in one second we need a current through our electrolysis cell of 1465 amperes!!! Now where are you gonna get that much current?!?!?!

As an aside, you will note that what determines the speed of electrolysis is not the voltage -- it's the current. The voltage is irrelevant so long as you can get the current.

Now 1465 amperes is a huge amount of current. You cannot get that out of a car battery or alternator. The only way to get this much current is to step down the voltage to a very low value (say 0.5 volts). Since the car battery is DC, you have an additional problem there: energy loss in the DC-DC converter.

Also, it's better to use AC for electrolysis rather than DC (but low frequency). Because using DC, the cathode and anode get corroded really fast.

Anyway: how do you get anywhere near 1465 amperes of current?

1) You have to have the cathode and anode very close to each other -- that way the resistance of the water is low, and the current is very high. Also you should have lots of cathode/anode pairs in parallel, to reduce the resistance even further.

2) As I said, step down the voltage. If you can get the resistance of the cell low enough so that say 1.2V is enough, then your current requirement (from the battery) drops to 146 Amperes -- still a goodly quantity, but at least now it's in the realm of possibility.

You have to calculate the resistance of the electrolyte, to get 146A at 1.2V the resistance of the cell cannot be above 0.01 ohms. That's TINY. Your wiring alone would probably contribute more resistance. Practically, to get a resistance that low you would need a huge cell with very close tolerances, because large plate area + small plate separation equals small resistance.

You would need a pump to recirculate the electrolyte: you cannot use pure water, you have to add salt or baking soda to reduce the resistance. If you do this, crap/deposits will build up on the plates. If your plate separation is small, the plates will eventually short out. So you need a powerful pump to keep the electrolyte moving and prevent buildup of those solid deposits.

It would be better to somehow tap the AC output of the alternator right away (before the alternator regulator converts it to DC) so you bypass the DC-DC conversion which is very inefficient. Then you'd have a custom-built transformer to convert the ~100V AC from the alternator down to your 1V DC at very high current.

All in all, I don't know if all this is practical!

[ghosthunter]

Looks like someone had wayyyyyyyyy too much time when he was a kid.

i tried calculating the amount of current this scheme would take, way back when i was a kid with impractical ideas.

i don't really see how Dingle's contraption can work, because as mazdamazda has said, the amount of energy you get from burning the h2 + o2 is less than the amount you have to spend to split the water. however, if the aim is to improve efficiency of combustion (a la acetone) then perhaps that would work.

using Faraday's constant (not Faraday's Law -- that one relates to electromagnetism) we know that 96,485 Coulombs is 1 Faraday. And 1 Faraday is 1 Mole of electrons. It takes 2 Moles of electrons to produce 1 Mole of Hydrogen.

So, 192970 Coulombs to produce 1 mole of hydrogen.

Let's say you're aiming for a 1% (volumetric) mix of hydrogen in your fuel. If you have say a 2.0L displacement vehicle with 4 cylinders, at a nominal speed of 2000rpm, that's about 500mL * 2000rpm = 1000L of gases moving through the engine in one minute, or 17L per second. Your 1% hydrogen is 170mL of hydrogen per second.

At STP, a standard mole of gas is 22.4L (of course an engine is hotter than STP, but the pressure is also higher). Let's just assume STP for sake of argument.

170mL is therefore 0.0076 moles. Using Faraday's constant, we need 1465 Coulombs to produce this much hydrogen.

Remember that the ampere (current) is actually Coulombs per second. Since we need 170mL of hydrogen in one second we need a current through our electrolysis cell of 1465 amperes!!! Now where are you gonna get that much current?!?!?!

As an aside, you will note that what determines the speed of electrolysis is not the voltage -- it's the current. The voltage is irrelevant so long as you can get the current.

Now 1465 amperes is a huge amount of current. You cannot get that out of a car battery or alternator. The only way to get this much current is to step down the voltage to a very low value (say 0.5 volts). Since the car battery is DC, you have an additional problem there: energy loss in the DC-DC converter.

Also, it's better to use AC for electrolysis rather than DC (but low frequency). Because using DC, the cathode and anode get corroded really fast.

Anyway: how do you get anywhere near 1465 amperes of current?

1) You have to have the cathode and anode very close to each other -- that way the resistance of the water is low, and the current is very high. Also you should have lots of cathode/anode pairs in parallel, to reduce the resistance even further.

2) As I said, step down the voltage. If you can get the resistance of the cell low enough so that say 1.2V is enough, then your current requirement (from the battery) drops to 146 Amperes -- still a goodly quantity, but at least now it's in the realm of possibility.

You have to calculate the resistance of the electrolyte, to get 146A at 1.2V the resistance of the cell cannot be above 0.01 ohms. That's TINY. Your wiring alone would probably contribute more resistance. Practically, to get a resistance that low you would need a huge cell with very close tolerances, because large plate area + small plate separation equals small resistance.

You would need a pump to recirculate the electrolyte: you cannot use pure water, you have to add salt or baking soda to reduce the resistance. If you do this, crap/deposits will build up on the plates. If your plate separation is small, the plates will eventually short out. So you need a powerful pump to keep the electrolyte moving and prevent buildup of those solid deposits.

It would be better to somehow tap the AC output of the alternator right away (before the alternator regulator converts it to DC) so you bypass the DC-DC conversion which is very inefficient. Then you'd have a custom-built transformer to convert the ~100V AC from the alternator down to your 1V DC at very high current.

All in all, I don't know if all this is practical!

[orly_andico]

Looks like someone had wayyyyyyyyy too much time when he was a kid.

Yup. terminal geek. Who's that guy from ER who was in Revenge of the Nerds? he was my hero

[Grailer88]

Pretty much, Archie H. Blue triggered a new generation of Hydrogen on Demand (On Board Hydrogen Generation) devices. Rhodes & Brown et. al. discovered that hydrogen and oxygen could be mixed and commonly ducted.
Archie H. Blue discovered that the gas could be pumped out of the Electrolyzer using outside air. By mixing the gas with outside air he made the gas easy to use, and safe.

Archie H. Blue US4124463

http://www.freepatentsonlline.com/

This link provides the text of the Archie H. Blue patent. Just type in
the patent number, in the upper left hand corner.

It is much simpler and more workable to suck the gas from the electrolizer into the intake manifold by means of a vacuume line. This too mixes outside air with the Hydrogen and Oxygen Gas so it does not explode till it is sparked in the cylinder.

Such a system will improve milage around 25%. I have tested this on a 3HP
Briggs & Stranton, a 1973 GMC with a 350V8 & 1987 Ford F150 with a Slant
Six & EFI.

The hot wire (+) Red, has to be wired so the Electrolyzer is only ON when the engine is running. An aquarium Check Valve has to be installed in the top of the jar, to act as a preasure relief valve in the event of mal function.

The patent search link listed above has a feature that allows one to search patents that used the patent you are reading. This feature is used by clicking on the orange line that says:

Related View patents that cite this patent
Patents

In this list of about 6 patents that cite the Archie H. Blue patent, is one
called:

Gene B. Stowe US5231954 Hydrogen/Oxygen fuel cell

This patent says about all there is to say about assisting a gasoline car engine with Hydrogen/Oxygen. It not a big deal. Pretty simple actually.
The patents is from the early 1990's so the electrolyzer jar could be a lot simpler. Also, a lot more is known about on board electrolytic hydrogen
generation, with off the shelf parts.

[Trajano]

*Ghosthunter,

Any update?

[ghosthunter]

Nope.

[sirkosero]

kalburo lang naman yan water-powered ek-ek na yan.... parang kay dingel dati

[nap123]

How about this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IBw1DK8QWw&eurl=

[ghosthunter]

How about this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IBw1DK8QWw&eurl=

Klien's design is derived from welding equiptment using hydrogen/oxygen produced from electrolysis of water.

His "product" is available today if you want to purchase or lease it but the price isn't feasible for the typical car user. The website was mentioned in the water powered car thread...

[reym]

Guys, here's a tip...

It takes a lot of energy to decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen.
What you need is a catalyst.

The secret of Archie Blue design is not the electrolysis itself but the metal
he used.

He used aluminum which yields a lot of hydrogen when reacted with Naoh
He used a 12 volts system so to keep the naoh + al reaction, because at 12 volts, the electrolysis reaction would waste so much heat, the heat is not wasted in his system, but it is used to keep the naoh + al reaction going.

He used a bubbler to keep the liquid moving clearing the sludge.
The heater in his system starts up the reaction and the electrolysis keeps it going.

Hope this helps...