gsl-se addict

iTrader: (3)

The way that I see it is that it isn't so much a lack of O2 that gives us incomplete combustion. The biggest factor is the long/narrow combustion chamber. Not only this, but the combustion chamber changes shapes during the rotation of the e-shaft. Think about it like this. In a piston engine, you have a cylindrical chamber that does not change shape. You spark near the center of the pistion. The flame spreads equally in all directions (across the piston face). The gases continue to expand and push the piston downward. The only way it could be more ideal is if you could somehow detonate inside a sphere and turn that into mechanical motion. That is very difficult to do, so a cylinder is the next best thing.

If it was just a matter of not having enough O2 in the mix, we could just lean out the carb/FI and we would be set. It is not that simple, though.

1. gasoline likes to have a near perfect air/fuel ration to really burn completely. A little too much fuel or too much air, you won't get your full bang

2. flame front is very important. We only expand a little bit in one direction (rotor width), but look how far the flame has to spread along the rotor in the other direction. Way further than any typical piston engine. There just isn't time and the correct air/fuel balance to completely cover that much ground. This is why we have trailing to help out (emissions).

3. this goes partly into the step above..but since to rotor is moving and the combustion chamber is changing shapes, most of the air/fuel mixture gets pushed back to the trailing tip of the rotor. This creates an uneven AFR across the rotor face.

I have mentioned it before, but this is more than just the 2nd law of thermodynamics here. If we were saying to run the engine solely on the hydrogen produced from electrolysis, then no way. That would be perpetual motion..which cannot occur unless everying was friction-free and 100% efficient..certainly not the case for the rotory engine or electrolysis...or anything else on earth, really.

One big advantage of hydrogen is that it doesn't care much what the AFR is. It will burn over a wide range of conditions. I read that the stoich ratio of H2 is 34:1 (vs. 14.7:1 for gasoline). So you can have more than double the air per part of fuel. Not only that, they say that you can run a hydrogen engine up to an AFR of 280:1 (power output will be low, though). With gasoline, if you move only a little from 14.7:1, combustion will not be complete. Typically NA engines run 12.5:1 for best power (because some fuel is wasted), about 16 or 17:1 or so (lean burn engines) for cruising. Much more narrow range than H2.

Anyway, I think that if this device works at all, it will show on the rotary. If it does nothing for us, it certainly won't do anything for the more combustion-efficient piston powered cars.

evil_motors

iTrader: (3)

i love all the excess gas we waste.. makes for nice flamethrowers

NoPis10

iTrader: (29)

This is going to be an ongoing saga.....
I have been told that this device actually helps fuel mileage. This info is from a co-worker that installed one on his wifes SUV. He claims that her fuel mileage increased from 12 mpg to 19mpg. I am waiting on another friend who ordered the kit and will be installing it into his Honda Civic. He has a daily commute of 120 miles so his testing will be my decision maker.

L8R

JSmith0101

iTrader: (6)

It is a hydrogen powered vehicle. Like all true H2 powered vehicles, it stores the gas in a tank. The car produces no hydrogen, and if it did, it would negate anything the hydrogen did, anyway.

YOU CAN'T MAKE PERPETUAL MACHINES!

ray green

iTrader: (14)

But Kent has already pointed out that the efficiency of newer boinger vehicles essentially prohibits increased efficiency regardless of the means for obtaining it. It is theoretically impossible to get anything more than small and insignificant improvements for these vehicles using hydrogen or anything else.

The report of an SUV going from 12 to 19 mpg must either be wrong or attributable to something else (like a tune up maybe, or the placebo effect, or maybe a hydrogen generator salesman?)

Same with the Honda Civic - No Way. If there was, Honda would be doing it.

Now our rotaries, with their nasty habit of spitting out the fuel mixture before it has a chance to burn completely just might be helped a little bit by a little bit of hydrogen in the mixture to catalyze more efficient burning. Not much I would think, but maybe a little and every little bit helps.

But you are right lwnslw, this one will go on for ever, just like the creationists.

Jeezus

iTrader: (4)

Wait, now we can blow blue fireballs now?

JSmith0101

iTrader: (6)

My ***** have always been blue.

Jeezus

iTrader: (4)

Haha, touche!

driftxsequence

iTrader: (8)

my question is would this be a quick fix for people who are having trouble passing emissions tests?

just thinking cause you say it helps with the unburned fuel

xberserker

Very possible, I wish I knew somebody that could test it for me for free. I don't need to renew until Nov 08

bliffle

Where could I see that?

PercentSevenC

The thing about hydrogen is that it disperses quickly, burns extremely quickly, and burns in very lean ratios (like gsl-se addict mentioned). Combine these three properties, and you end up with a very fast-moving flame front to ignite the entire air/gasoline mixture far more quickly and effectively than a single spark plug (or two, in our case) could ever hope to do. The question is whether it does enough to overcome the losses from actually separating the hydrogen from the oxygen.

+1 to that.

Dulie

FINALLY, SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS HOW FIRE WORKS!!!

Now, using the O2 would help marginally, but the volume would be much more than that thing could give off. Baking Soda and Peroxide could give off enough, but then you have a lot of each to make anything decent, then the problem of extra heat (assuming u could produce enough O2)...clean fires burn HOT, think acetylene torch (dirty flame, incomplete ignition, lots of carbon and CO, and CO2 given off with a little heat) vs. oxy-acetylene torch (Water vapor, heat, and CO2 given off), night and day difference in heat output!!!

Now you'll have to fix the lean-burn problem (with probable detonation), otherwise you'll overheat, or you'll have to increase the use of oil to keep things lubed, then take the heat out of the engine, water, and oil fast enough...not very feasible. Alcohol fuel can help a little bit (because of the higher flash point), high octane gas can help (again, higher flash point)...alcohol is lower specific energy, requiring more fuel.

It's all a balancing act.

But back to this again...has anyone tried an alcohol (ethanol specifically) conversion? What would be involved? I know there's quite a bit of steel and aluminum, along with rubber on the way to the engine, so that would have to be taken care of because the alcohol would eat away at it all, but the engine itself can take it?

I ask because I'm in the upper midwest, and E85 is $1 per gallon than regular.

Oh, can u run 10% corn squeezin's in a rotary?

PercentSevenC

Incomplete combustion is more than just running rich. You'll find there's also a good bit of unused oxygen in the exhaust. The trick is to encourage the unused oxygen and the unused fuel to actually get used. One way of doing so is through ignition upgrades. However, traditionally you're still relying on a single point of ignition, which is where hydrogen-boosting supposedly comes in.

Hyper4mance2k

iTrader: (40)

The physics just do not lie. You use more gasoline to create the energy to seperate the hydrogen and oxygen than what you get from burning it. if it takes 10 hp from burning gas to turn the water into H2+O2 and you only get 1hp worth of HHO you're losing energy. How are you going to get the energy back? if you burn 10hp of HHO to just make more of it you're only going to get 1hp worth of HHO back from it. Put it this way, Ford, GM, and Chrysler are all dieing. They're laying off thousands of people and closing plants everywhere. If it worked don't you think one of those comapnies would be selling a car that used it? Now a days these companies would sell their grandmother to develop a car that gets more MPG. If all they had to do was add a water tank to the trunk to get more MPG every ***** Prius owner would trade their car in for one more mpg. And the big 3 would be in business again. Dude it's physics, it cannot work. I don't have the ecaxt numbers but it's been beaten to death. The info is out there. try looking on engineering forums they squash this myth to bits. water is near free but you have to use energy to get energy from it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water-fuelled_car
I get what you're saying but you're going to lose all of your power in an effort to save gasoline and in turn you have to use more gasoline to get the hyrdogen to burn and replace the gasoline you're trying to save. It's an endless negitive cycle. There is no wasted energy in a gasloine engine except heat. You have to use huge amounts of gasoline energy to create small amounts of hydrogen. Think about how much fuel and air your car has to injest just to to redline. Take a 13b it uses 4 460cc injectors at WOT with 2 at a 50% duty cycle and 2 at 100% duty cycle. so the car is using 1380cc of fuel every revloution. now at 7000rpm the car is using 9,660,000cc's per minute. since you're only at redline for say 1 second that's 161,000cc's of fuel being injected that's 4.25 gallons of gasoline being used per second at WOT on a 100% stock FC. now they say that you need 2 times the amount of hydrogen to make the same power as gasoline. so you're going to need 8 gallons of hydrogen per second to redline a 13b. now that's assuming that twice the amount is equal to gas, but Mazda's own numbers don't attest to that. it takes almost twice the amount of hydrogen to make half as much power and remember that the Rx-8 isn't making it's own hydrogen it uses hydrogen made somewhere else so there isn't a power loss from the production of it.


----------------Gasoline---------------------Hydrogen
Engine--------------RENESIS Hydrogen Rotary
Power--------154 kW (206 hp)-------------80 kW (107 hp)
Torque--------222 Nm-----------------------140 Nm
Fuel tank-----61 liters (16 gallons US)---110 liters@35 Mpa (350 bar)
Range---------549 km (341 miles)---------100 km (62.1 miles)


How is this system, made for someones theis for their doctorats :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNuExC8kVKE
going to get you that amount of hydrogen? even a tiny bit to supliment gas isn't going to make any power. you might as well just get smaller injectors. you're going to use extra gas to get small amounts of hydrogen that won't even give you any gas mileage back to supliment the wasted gas converting the water.

DelSlow

iTrader: (2)

^Ummmmm... I think your injector math is off a bit. I do agree with you that the laughable amount of hydrogen produced by these devices would be ineffective in changing combustion dynamics.

If your math was correct (and assuming mine is as well):
(125000btu/gal)(4.25gal/sec)(30% thermal efficiency)(90% combustion efficiency) = 159375btu/sec = theoretical energy content of 202,763 horsepower... I'm pretty sure an NA 13B isn't going to be making quite that much.

Also, you cannot really compare the energy content of gasoline vs hydrogen by volume(ie, gallons), as hydrogen displaces far more volume in gaseous form per unit mass than gasoline.

As for the hydrogen flame speed arguement, alcohol has a faster flame speed than gasoline as well, so according to you wouldn't using E10 or M10 give you better gas milage than 100% gasoline?

Jeezus

iTrader: (4)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroge...ogen_injection

xberserker

Ok, I've had my first fill up and the MPG is 19. Which isn't bad for a 24 Year old Rotary. Not amazing, but good. Sorry I never tested was it was before, so I don't have anything to compare it to.

I have 2 tubes coming out of the bottle, I only have one going to the engine now. Other is capped, I wanted to find a place to hook that up to the engine as well. Any ideas?

Since I'm carpooling to work now I don't drive the Rx-7 as much. Just about once every other week for about 50 miles. I'll let you know what my next MPG is at fill up.

blackdeath647

iTrader: (2)

^^ that's about how much people get with gasoline, and if it's better, it's not by much i'd say a mile, 2 miles tops.

HardPlant

Basic chemistry

2H2 + O2 (+ heat energy) ===> 2H2O

Split 2 water molecules via electrolysis and you get 2 H2 molecules and one O2 molecule.

Both enter the engine already in equilibrium, have heat energy applied, go bang and stick together again.

Now, it's worth noting at this point that hydrogen and oxygen together burn explosively. This is where the "extra" energy is coming from. It's that first shove when the HHO goes up that causes the lack of hesitation, and the improved throttle response. You would also have to retard the ignition timing to ensure that the faster moving flame front doesn't impede the smooth progress of the rotor cycle.

This is a slightly confused explanation at the moment. I'll tidy it up once I've had some coffee and my dinner...

Druken

I don't know... It might sound crazy but I'd say have water flow through the intake manifold holes in the engine and have it build up pressure. As the pressure builds on 1 side of the rotor, it will start to spin... due to the great design by Felix. Because our engine spins with momentum, similar but different cumbusion process from the piston engine, it should keep spinning as long as the water pressure is enough and present on all sides of the rotor. So instead of having the fuel burn to spin, it would be based on water pressure. This then eliminates the need for coils/spark plugs. But because nothing is going to waste, the internals must be sealed perfectly or something. And because all it would be is circulated water, instead of it going to the exhaust at the end, just have it looped back through a water filter and to the main water supply.
And since technology is so advanced now, I'm sure there is a way to manipulate the accelerator pedal to regulate the amount of water pressure so that one can control the speed that they are going.

TA-DA?

gsl-se addict

iTrader: (3)

Drunken,

Are you drunk? j/k In order to do that, you would need something driving the water (pump). Even then, water doesn't like to be compressed, so when the engine would try to turn, it would lock up (at least partially).

As for the H2, so far doesn't sound like it does much (if anything). Don't know for certain unless someone did lots of testing with and without the system connected, though.

feerocknok

No. Water won't compress enough to not mess many things up.

Jeezus

iTrader: (4)

I don't mean to be a dick, but if it works I will laugh at every one of you guys

EDIT: Even though I have strong beliefs against this thing ever helping the car at all.

ray green

iTrader: (14)

Stu you can't claim all the glory, I'm thinking there might be something to this catalyst idea after all.

Problem is, Berserker, who started this post and installed the device in his 7, is not collecting data. Didn't even check the gas mileage before he put it in.

George Bush has killed science in this country.

So OK Stu, it's you or me - whose gonna put one in and do the measurements?