hey i am rebuilding my 13b from a 1990 RX7. instead of just rebuilding it i am planning to make it run off of hydrogen. I know how to make my Own Hydrogen Fuel from water so that is not a problem. any tips on how to convert this would be great. i know it has been done by Mazda with the RX8 but not really that great. i am looking to improve this also i would love to know where to get a copy of the tear down rebuild video? If anyone would like to help on this project let me know. any input will be a great help.

THANKS GUYS

 

I have no idea how to do anything, but I just want to say, awesome. Good luck, keep us updated on your progress. I'd love to see this in completed form.

I wonder, does the 7 still have it's power with Hydrogen? I'd think not, but I don't know!

 

well what i plan to do is first test this on a lawnmower engine on my go kart. but no it will not have the power tho i am going to try a mix of windshield washer fluid as it is close to 80% alcohol. as a power additive using the injectors. and then the intake will have the Hydrogen and air mix coming in. that way u get power plus ur still burning clean and cheap fuel

 

I hope you have the proper facilities to produce and store your hydrogen, otherwise you might level your house...

 

GOGGIN I assume you're planning on the car burning hydrogen gas in the rotary motor. First off hyrdogen fuel cells don't work like that, they are used to strip hydrogen molecules of their electrons and run electric motors. Or if your were thinking of runing a current through water and pulling off the hydrogen that way you'll need a way to collect and compress it. Then you'll have to invent some sort of injectors and metering system to deliver it into the motor.

Also look into what Mazda did with RX-8, supposedly they had test fleet of hydrogen powered ones.You'll need to find out what those hydrogen fuel cars use to store the gas in.

 

yes i know this i will run electricity thru water and use an air compressor to compress it in a tank. it will not achieve the greatest psi but it will work for a small go kart engine.and i am working on acquiring a circuit to do that that i can implement into my ECU kinda to the extent of a AFC

 

I think if you actually had the knowledge, ability, and qualifications to do this, you'd at least have decent capitalization...

Electrolysis is not simply a matter of car batteries and compressors... plus the fact that it takes more electrical power than you gain in hydrogen fuel...

Mazda is spending millions of dollars on hydrogen rotaries. Don't even start to think you can do anything that works even half as well.

 

i realize what u are saying but i can run the power i need to make the Hydrogen using solar power. it is a matter of the more power the faster u obtain the hydrogen yes their is a limit to how little power u can use before it is a waste of time. and i did my reasearch the RX8 running off of pure hydrogen only makes 120HP now i am saying to add a lil Alcohol to the mix to give it that kick. it will be costly if done on a Manufacturing scale. i have looked around and can convert my Go kart engine to Hydrogen for about $25 not including the Hydrogen or the supplies to make it. but that is not bad. i will test on that. and put up my results. but any idea or suggestions would be nice

 

I think this is a great idea if you plan on doing it for fun or as an experiment, but not as a practical means of transportation.

It's actually quite easy to do. You'll need a hydrogen storage tank (ask your local gas supplier or welding store), a regulator (same place...) and a vaporizer, plus all the lines. The vaporizer is the only really "special" component but it's the same thing you would use to run propane so it may be easy to find at the wreckers if you can get parts off of junked city vehicles, cabs or police cars. You'll need a carb style manifold and the vaporizer will mount on top, with a throttle body on top of it. If you can't find one locally, there are online vendors like GotPropane.net which can help.

Now the real issue is that hydrogen has such low energy density that you won't go very far on a tank of compressed hydrogen in gas form at any reasonable and safe pressure. Less then 100 miles or so. Any more and that tank is huge an heavy.

If you intend to make a long range vehicle you need to HIGHLY compress it which requires an expensive tank (they're made of aluminum honeycomb and carbon fibre) or you need to chill it into a liquid (at cryogenic temperatures...-253 degrees C) which is not practical for several reasons.

Also, making hydrogen via electrolysis is VERY inefficient. It will cost much, much more then buying hydrogen from a gas supplier. And you won't have the proper equipment to compress it. Solar would take damn near forever to get even a few cubic feet....

You can order these from most of the vendors.

Compared to gasoline, hydrogen is very safe. The molecules are so small and diffuse so easily that any leaks are just going to harmlessly disperse in the atmosphere. It would be very, very unlikely to have a buildup large enough to cause an explosion.

It may work, but you will leak so much hydrogen out of the seals of your compressor that most of your fuel will end up in the atmosphere. Hydrogen will leak aggressively through most "sealed" substances because it's atoms are so small. Also a home air compressor doesn't have enough capability to generate the pressures needed to store a reasonable amount of hydrogen. Commercial hydrogen storage tanks start at 20,000 PSI and go up from there in capacities you need. And an air compressor heats the gas it compresses, making it less dense, thus you get even less actual hydrogen stored in the tank...

Ain't gonna' happen. No way, no how. The stock ECU is not even close to being capable of running this system. You need radically advance the timing and control a HUGE set of injectors if you intend to using EFI to run it. You'll need at least 4 1600CC injectors that are gas capable (see your nearest Ford dealer) and all hydrogen compatible rubber as seals. Don't consider rubber fuel lines as the hydrogen will go right through it.

A standalone is required and should be able to handle a gaseous fuel just like any other. It doesn't know or care that you are running hydrogen.

 

holy *****, you were paying attention in chemistry and physics

 

aaron knows everything

 

Except where to get a haircut...

 

lol....wow...but it also raises a question on a diesel rotary?? just plain smple would that even work?? y/n??

 

+1 for having payed attention in chem/phys/bio/calc.

Remember that time when the jocks said, "what the hell when im i ever going to use this!?!?"

The time is.. all the time.


Hope your project goes well.

=Ben

 

<--

 

n

 

^ok...enough said...

 

Goggin:

I like the idea (in theory.)

In practice, I would have to repeat what Aaron has said.

Having done that, I would suggest that you use a mixing valve (gas carburator.) This is what Aaron called the vaporizer. This is simple and far more possible than fuel injection.

Remember, if you are doing this on a budget, then extravagant, complicated fuel injection systems are not an option anyway.

Tolerance for a stoichiometric mix is very lax for hydrogen. In fact, there are few fuels that have a smaller functional A/F ratio than gasoline. A small amount of error in the mixing valve will be no big deal.

Ignition would need a lot of tweaking, but probably not outside the limits of the stock CAS adjustment.

It is possible, but as you said, not for large scale production.

A good number for efficiency of electrolysis is 20%. Meaning that if you burn the hydrogen in the oxygen that has been separated from the water you get 20% of the energy back that you put in. Combine this with a peak efficiency of the rotary engine around 32%, you get about 7% of the input wind energy out as forward propulsion (That is only if the Rotary is running perfect A/F ratio and full throttle.)

I think that you will find that you are better off with gasoline, practically speaking.

Still, for the sake of novelty this is an awesome project.

 

are you an engineer?

 

me? Yeah. (How did he know? I held the technical jargon down...)

 

Hydrogen has a low flame speed so you need to keep the rpms down or the rotors will move faster than the flame and snuff it out. Rotaries have a super low internal rpm (1/3 of the gauge rpm), which makes them ideal for a hydrogen powered engine. Even so, I don't think you'll be able to rev as high as usual. You can run a piston engine on hydrogen, but you won't be able to rev it at all without it dying. That's why Mazda has hydrogen powered internal combustion engine cars and the other companies don't. Even so, the hydrogen powered RX-8 makes less power than a Civic (unless you give it gasoline).

There have been experimental diesel rotaries, but it seems counterproductive to me. Being rotary makes the engine light, being diesel makes the engine heavy. Being rotary hurts fuel economy, being diesel helps it. In the end it seems like you'd have an expensive engine that doesn't perform much differently from a piston engine. Or, I dunno, it might be slightly lighter and slightly better on gas.

 

WOW thanks alot guys i see alot of you did ur HW that is good i am studying to be an engineer so i thought it might be a good project for school. i am currently attending ITT tech. i have 4 years expericnce in Autocad and Inventer. all of this is grealty helping me. i see this is going to be a bigger project then i thought. well if hydrogen is a no go and im not giving up just have to rethink a lil bit. but what about Alcohol injection? with the hydrogen mix? will that work to give it more power? if i need custom parts i can design them in inventor. and get them with a CNC machine so that wont be a problem. i am also doing a lil with electrinics so that il prolly need help in. What about running it off pure Alcohol?? i can design and make my own moonshine still. yes it is illegal but they wont know but is it doable. i am assuming it would be easier than hydrogen.

LOVING THE INPUT ON THIS GUYS THANK YOU VERY MUCH
also on the subject of deisel i dont think it is possible i dont think a rotory would be able to make that kind of compresion. put the word out on this im really hoping to get this thing going

 

so this can be done with a carbuerator. Say you had compressed hydrogen and metered flow into the carb and had propper jetting, adn the engine would draw in air and hydrogen gas with it. And if you got the propper a/f ratio, it would run. But, in the time it takes to get from the carb would the hydrogen vaaporize. I see that mazda injects the hydrogen halfway between the intake of air and ignition of the mix, through injectors at the top of the engine. But, BMW has made a piston hydrogen engine that draws in air and compressed into the intake and the hydrogen and air are mixed in the intake runners, then drawn into the cylinder. Im gonna convert my weedeater to hydrogen.

 

GOGGIN, I just found my February 1992 Vol. 240 No. 2 edition of Popular Science where the cover story is a Rotary Hydrogen engine, the Mazda HR-X. Good Luck.

 

sorry i couldn't resist...