Disclaimer: I can sometimes come across as preachy, know-it-all, and/or slightly harsh when discussing things that chap my hide or are really obvious to me. I mean no offense to those who have fallen for these types of hoaxes (although if you blew a bunch of money investing in one of these schemes I may be inclined to poke some fun at you). Sarah said this update is more bitter than my Bozeman bashing diatribe of 1/07, and she only proofed an early version…
Hey folks,
I've been stewing on this stuff for a while so look out. My dad and I have a tendency to catch what the advertisers and media in general spew forth as fact and dismantle it until it's shriveled innards are exposed. Global Warming hooked up with High Fuel Prices just before last call to produce our current media frenzy bastard child of alternative vehicles/low carbon footprint/Eco-friendly products. The best has to be the Dyson vacuum commercial where Mr. Dyson claims to be saving the planet via 'no carbon emission' vacuums that use "new" (but actually quite old) technology brushless motors. The carbon brushes in a common motor rub against the commutator and wear down over time releasing elemental carbon, which by the way is not the same thing as CO2 the gas implicated in global warming. Of course these 'fancy' brushless motors still require electricity to run so unless you're powering them via solar, wind, nuclear, or other non-CO2 emitting means running the Dyson vacuum still causes the same emission of CO2 from the power plant. No, it's not just you, it doesn't make any sense, it's clever advertising and it'll probably sell a million vacuums.
Along those lines, the current breed of hybrid cars are a joke. You heard it here first (unless you've previously been subjected to my ranting on the subject), and this is coming from what many would consider a 'greenie-hippie-left-wing-liberal-long-hair'. I want to save the planet, wean the U.S. of foreign oil, and stick it to the man as much as the next guy but hybrids are the wrong way to go about it. Oh they might give you a warm fuzzy feeling, up your cred with other faux hippies, allow you free reign of the carpool lane (even if you're wasting resources by commuting alone), and in Utah earn you a special 'clean air vehicle' license plate. Paradoxically, a few weeks ago cruising down I-15 in Utah at 70 MPH (to save fuel – I averaged 43 MPG which is down a bit from the 45-50 that I usually get but I had bikes hanging out in the breeze) burning biodiesel, lots of these 'clean air vehicles' flew by in the carpool lane with single drivers doing 80+ mph, spewing pollutants, and consuming substantially more foreign oil than I. I hope they were getting that warm fuzzy feeling, because I sure as hell wasn't. Don't even get me started on the required payload of heavy toxic batteries with unknown life spans and questionable recycling compliance. Our VW diesel at least matches and in some cases substantially beats the real-world mileage that folks are getting with their hybrids. Hell, I know two avid readers that drive Honda Fits and they get nearly the mileage of a Toyota Prius without the added complexity, cost, and environmental degradation due to mining/refining/manufacturing/shipping materials for the batteries! Here's the real truth on hybrids vs. other cars: http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/media/cars_on_different_fuels.doc. Note the Dodge diesel/electric hybrid. It's only a prototype now, but if you must have a hybrid why not power it with an engine that is at least 20% more efficient and burns clean renewable U.S. made fuel?
Another media darling and purported savior of the planet is hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. They are neat, no doubt, mostly due to very high efficiencies (compared to internal combustion engines) however they are not magic. A bit of basic background, the fuel cell portion of the vehicle produces electricity via a controlled reaction between oxygen and hydrogen gas. The electricity is then used to propel the vehicle via an electric motor. "Zero emissions" or "nothing but harmless water vapor" is the common claim. This may be true for the vehicle itself (although my dad brought up a valid point, especially applicable to hydrogen fueled internal combustion engines, about the oxygen source being the ambient air which is full of all kinds of other crap like NOx compounds which may react to generate other pollutants) but hydrogen doesn't just leap out of the atmosphere into the extremely explosive high pressure (5000 psi) tanks proposed for these vehicles. It takes energy (in the US the great majority of which is generated via burning coal or natural gas) to get H2. You have to look at the whole cycle. There's no free lunch, yet they'd like you to believe there is.
Recently the "water fueled vehicle" scam has reappeared, most noticeably via email forwards (I've received 10+ of these from various people). This miracle technology is nothing new, as my dad recalls first hearing about it 50 years ago (back when gas was $0.17 a gallon), and they made a brief reappearance during the fuel crisis of the 70s. If you're fortunate enough to have missed these try here: http://www.hasslberger.com/tecno/hydrogen.html and http://www.runyourcarwithwater.com/ (as seen on FOX News, so you know it must be true!).
These perpetual motion people like to use fancy words and lots of smoke and mirrors to buffalo people, and they're good at it too (not to mention the average Joe is more than happy to swallow such crap completely uncontested). Most of these are simply disproved by the fact that "energy out" cannot exceed "energy in". You can't magically (or by any other means for that matter) create energy. You can release stored up energy by burning things, splitting or fusing atoms, turning matter into energy, pushing something off a cliff, etc. That energy can be harnessed to do things (propel a car, heat your home, squash things at the bottom of the cliff, or whatever) and with judicious planning you can even convert it back into stored energy. HOWEVER, along the way some energy will be lost (not really lost…it all goes somewhere because you can't magically make energy disappear; it is dissipated as heat, friction, vibration, light, or via other means). Because of this 'lost' energy no process is 100.0000% efficient (most are dreadfully inefficient). So in the case of Denny Klein (Mr. "HHO") or Carl Cella (heavy metal madman and water powered car genius) they are using hydrolysis to generate H2 (hydrogen, a readily combustible gas) and O2 (oxygen) gas from H2O (plain old water). Read about it here. H2O is very stable (tried burning any lately?) so it takes energy (typically in the form of electricity) to break the chemical bonds between the O and the two Hs. O and H don't like hanging around alone so they quickly pair up as O2 and H2 (not the magical HHO gas that Denny Klein claims). Efficiency of the process is well below 100%, meaning that the energy stored in the H2(g) and O2(g) created via electrolysis is less than the amount of energy it took to create it. We haven't even started the vehicle yet and we've 'lost' at least 20% (probably much more though) of our input energy. Here's what some folks that are WAY smarter than me say about H2 generation via electrolysis: http://www.physorg.com/news111926048.html Be sure not to miss the google sponsored water fuel ads!! Hilarious. Sucker born every minute, right? If you want to read about the history of the shysters that have used this water fuel scam or delve into actual calculations look here: http://www.phact.org/e/bgas.htm.
But don't fret yet, things get much worse when we actually burn the H2 in an internal combustion engine. The typical family truckster gasoline engine loses about 80% of the energy generated from combustion via thermal and mechanical (mostly friction) losses. 80% loss!!!! Even a highly tuned race engine is less than 50% efficient. Read about it here: No wonder there's an oil crisis. Back to the miracle of Waterfuel; when we fuel our car with it we can only extract at best 50% of the energy produced. Genius Carl Cella says the motor will drive the alternator which makes the electricity to power the electrolysis. That's fine, but alternators aren't 100% efficient either (even the newest state-of-the-art ones are only about 70% efficient - ever put your hand an alternator that's been running for a while?) so we lose even more energy there. All of the 'lost' energy needs to be replaced or the vehicle won't continue to go. This is basic perpetual motion hooey.
As a recap, we lost 20% in the electrolysis process followed by 50% loss in the engine, and finally 30% loss converting the energy back to electricity. If we put in 100 arbitrary units of energy (supplied by the charged battery), we would end up with 12 arbitrary units of energy left to power the electrolysis and push the car around. Even if we neglect air drag, friction, and inertia (which, by the way, we can't in the real world) this dog won't hunt.
It's been my experience that whenever these or similar miraculous technologies are discussed folks immediately start professing how some big bad entity (oil companies, car companies, government, etc) will certainly squash/buy up/hide/deny said technology to protect profits, the economy, or whatever nefarious reasons they may have. A shining example of this is the rumored magical carburetor that will make vehicles get 100 MPG or better. The oil companies are supposed to have bought up the patent(s) and suppressed the technology. Patents are published public information so I challenge anyone to show me these rumored patent(s). I guess some people don't understand what a carburetor does or how it works. It ain't magic, and simple physics dictates that 99% of the cars on U.S. roads are not capable of getting 100 MPG without a bevy of fairies pushing them (due to their weight, high drag coefficient, and inefficient motors/transmissions/fuel). There are cars out there that do get incredible mileage (near 80 MPG!) but it's mostly measured in L/100 km where they exist (check the Euro VW Lupo and Audi A2). By the way they don't have carburetors (magic or otherwise), don't have automatic transmissions, aren't hybrids (see rant at top of page), don't have room for 8 bucket-size cup holders or fat American heinies, and they certainly don't burn an inferior fuel like gasoline. Turbo diesels all the way baby. I may be biased, but I have good reason for it.
There, I've said my peace.
Later,
Tony