It definitely qualifies for a "Darwin Award" or "Ignoble Prize."

Bob Wilson

 

Least we forget the Hindenburg disater.....H is very explosive when in the presence of O. I can see the Darwin award headlines now, "Crazed hybrid owner retrofits an old space shuttle engine under the hood of his Prius, claims clean exhaust is just water. 'Oh, the humanity!'......"

 

You know I live in Huntsville Alabama and if you aren't a rocket scientist, there is at least one in the neighborhood.

When I was looking at a Scion xB before the Prius, the salesman guessed, "I bet you want it for your RC airplane!" Actually, I wanted it for the homebuilt airplane I want to build.

Bob Wilson

 

Looks like it could also run on methane from a modified collection system located in the seat. In that case, a pulse jet would probably be the better propulsion choice.

 

A company is making a version for big-rig diesels. It's supposed to clean up the exhaust significantly and improve the fuel efficiency by increasing the burn rate and making the combustion more complete (hence cleaner exhaust). It's yet to be a totally proven system, but since it will be going into trucks then we'll be able to see some significant data.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006...e_begins_.html

 

 

Sorry for bringing up an old thread but I have been reading through and have a few things to add. Several years ago I spent a summer working in a lab at Penn State that is dedicated to ICE research. My work was mainly in the characterization of DI systems, but it so happened that there was another student like me who was doing some research on hydrogen injection along with conventional fuels. His method, which we all thought was insane, was just to connect a bottle to the intake while the engine was running and let the gas flow. We laughed at him pretty hard until the day he performed the experiment. The results were pretty astounding. Though I don't remember what happened to the work output the exhaust gas analysis showed unburned hydrocarbons and NOx emissions to be dramatically reduced. So there really is some science to these devices. Did I mention that he didn't blow anything up?

On safety, I went on to spend a solid year developing equipment so that we could run the new research engine at my own school on hydrogen. One of the properties that makes the stuff interesting is that it will burn when mixed anywhere from 4%-75% by volume in air. That doesn't sound like much, and the truth is that it isn't. But these generators don't even produce enough to bring the intake stream to 4% by volume. According to a quick hand calc I did earlier today, a 100W system would produce on the order of 1/4 of a liter of hydrogen gas per minute. By comparison, my 2.3L engine running at 750RPM can suck 432L/min if you assume a conservative 0.5atm vacuum (very conservative). Let's be conservative again and assume that the generator can produce 2L/min, which works out to a concentration of 0.4% by volume. That is 1/10th what it takes to ignite.

The generator is another story since it is a mix of hydrogen and oxygen. That is definitely flammable. However it is also at atmospheric pressure or slightly below when connected to the intake. That limits the explosive energy available, and could be relatively safe if open volume were restricted. Also keep in mind that much of the oxygen goes to producing other byproducts which prevents it from contributing to any combustion event and further limiting available energy.

I still would not recommend that anybody go and try, but it's not an absolute guarantee of destruction. Don't forget that gasoline explodes too, and it doesn't diffuse nearly as well when vented to the atmosphere.