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

[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=

[orly_andico]

in my opinion, adding tiny amounts of hydrogen (or acetone..) to enhance combustion efficiency is the wrong way to go about it.

the "right" way to go about it is dual spark plugs. oh wait, honda already does that in their 1.3 i-DSI engine. :P

[ghosthunter]

in my opinion, adding tiny amounts of hydrogen (or acetone..) to enhance combustion efficiency is the wrong way to go about it.

Methods differ depending on what you are targeting or aiming for.

Hydrogen is meant to offset the fuel used. Hydrogen is proven to be a possible replacement for gasoline. The only problem is to produce hydrogen in an economical way.

Acetone mixed in gasoline is meant to change the surface tension of gasoline which would (hopefully) increase the combustion efficiency by providing better (smaller) atomized size of gasoline.

the "right" way to go about it is dual spark plugs. oh wait, honda already does that in their 1.3 i-DSI engine.

There is no right or wrong way as long as the targetted aims are reached without negative effects (like increased emissions of pollutants, excessive cost of technology passed onto consumers, etc).

BTW, Honda wasn't the first to do dual sparkplugs in their engines. Mazda already did it much earlier.