water4gas

[drbrock]

A client of mine was talking about this water4gas system. He said it saved him a lot of money on his truck's fuel bill. Since my truck gets 9 miles to the gallon I was thinking of pursuing it.

does anyone know if this works?

water4gas.com

 

[996GT2]

Shens...

Mythbusters even did a show on this and busted the myth

The only "cheap" way I know of right now for running your car on a nonconventional fuel like gasoline or ethanol is to use used cooking oil...usually free from restaurants. 5th gear did a test on this, and it actually worked fine. Only works on diesel engines though...

 

[Zenmervolt]

Your friend is not very bright.

ZV

 

[PottedMeat]

That site burns my eyes.

 

[dpert1]

Might work in theory, doubtful in application

Either way, if you're REALLY interested, torrents are your friend

/just saved himself 97 bucks by switching to isohunt

 

[LTC8K6]

Even the used cooking oil free ride will end once a market forms for it when people realize it has value and the government realizes it's losing tax money. It will be sold and taxed like any other fuel.

 

[steppinthrax]

Originally posted by: drbrock
A client of mine was talking about this water4gas system. He said it saved him a lot of money on his truck's fuel bill. Since my truck gets 9 miles to the gallon I was thinking of pursuing it.

does anyone know if this works?

water4gas.com

I went to water4gas.com and even googled it. It seems like an organized scam as there are other sites named. water4gascam.com and when you go to them they talk about how it's not a scam but in fact is true and those site have links to water4gas.com

 

[compman25]

I have "special" water for you to use. I'll sell it to you for only $3.99 a gallon.



Let me get back from Wal-Mart so I can ship it to you.

 

[desy]

No! he should buy my 'fuel purification system' 'old hardrive magnets' which removes metalic impurities from the fuel ergo increasing efficiency.
Everything you need including installation manual, improper installation will void any potential gains to be made from my cutting edge system big oil and auto don't want you to know about!! for . .
what . . . . $69.95
too much?
$39.99
Too little ?
$199.97

 

[nakedfrog]

They used to use water injection in automobile engines.

 

[996GT2]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
They used to use water injection in automobile engines.

That was to cool the cylinders and allow increased boost to be run for short amounts of time...e.g. in WWII fighter planes. The engines couldn't run on the water alone...the water had to be mixed with combustible substances like ethanol or methanol in order for the system to work properly.

Today, a similar system is used in rally cars, but water is sprayed onto the intercooler instead of directly into the engine cylinders.

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: 996GT2

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
They used to use water injection in automobile engines.

That was to cool the cylinders and allow increased boost to be run for short amounts of time...e.g. in WWII fighter planes. The engines couldn't run on the water alone...the water had to be mixed with combustible substances like ethanol or methanol in order for the system to work properly.

Of course. I wasn't trying to imply otherwise, you'd have to be some kind of idiot to believe that

 

[jagec]

Why do people buy into this crap?

1)You can't "burn water". Water does not react with oxygen.
2)Sure, you can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and burn these two to create....water. Of course, you lose energy, since it takes more real-world energy to split the stuff than the recombination could ever yield.
3)"HHO" is not a gas, and I want to flip out and kill people every time I read that. It's hydrogen, and oxygen. Is air made of "NNOOHHOArCOONeCHHHHHeKrHHXedust"? No, that's just stupid.

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: jagec
Why do people buy into this crap?

Because they want to. And because it's easier to believe in a giant conspiracy by faceless, evil companies than it is to face up to the reality that people are doing the best they can given what the market is actually demanding. If we realise that the reason cars aren't getting better mileage is because we aren't buying cars with better mileage that means we have to blame ourselves, which doesn't give us a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

The giant conspiracy theory absolves us of guilt. "It's not my fault, even though I bought an F-350 but never tow or haul anything in it and everything that I actually do can be done by a Honda Fit just as well or better. No, it's the fault of the evil oil companies who are hiding these technologies from us." It's a way of having our cake and eating it too.

Now, to be clear, if someone wants an F-350 just to have one I'm fine with that. I believe strongly that people should be allowed to buy whatever car they can afford and desire. My sportscars are hardly paragons of fuel efficiency. But I know that I've made a conscious choice. I chose intentionally to forgo fuel efficiency in favor of the car being fun to drive. I admit that the additional consumption is my own fault. The people who want to believe in these fuel saving schemes want to believe that the extra fuel consumption is not the result of their own choice, but rather the result of some evil corporate entity. I do not begrudge people the option to make the choice of fun (and their idea of fun may differ from mine) over fuel economy, I just wish they'd be honest about it.

ZV

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: jagec
Why do people buy into this crap?

1)You can't "burn water". Water does not react with oxygen.
2)Sure, you can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and burn these two to create....water. Of course, you lose energy, since it takes more real-world energy to split the stuff than the recombination could ever yield.
3)"HHO" is not a gas, and I want to flip out and kill people every time I read that. It's hydrogen, and oxygen. Is air made of "NNOOHHOArCOONeCHHHHHeKrHHXedust"? No, that's just stupid.

I read the website and I didn't get it since it's such trash, but I think you're right. The scam involves having the alternator/battery in your car power a electrolysis machine so water can become hydrogen and oxygen gas and then "burning" that gas to burn water like you said.

2H20 + energy -> 2(H2) + O2
Then 2H2 + O2 -> 2(H2O) + significantly less energy

Due to the law of conservation of energy, energy cannot be created, though it can change forms, but due to this being the pesky real wold and all, there's no such thing as 100% efficiency so you won't even break even energy wise.

This whole conservation of energy is important enough to no just be ANY law of thermodynamics, but THE First Law Of Thermodynamics, so it's quite established and pretty much impossible to cheat/bend.

Every step that you have to convert energy from one form to another always come with inefficiencies attached. You always end up with less energy then you started with since some is lost as products of motion or heat or whatever in the process.

Gas engines are ~30% efficient(I'm being generous here, we're talking about high performance/efficiency motors). I'm not sure how efficient alternators are but I'll be generous and give it 75%. Lead acid battery charge/discharge efficiency is 70-92%, for automobile applications, I'll be generous and give it 85%. Now if I'm also very, very generous and give the electrolysis 90% efficiency and the gas engine once again burning it 30% efficiency, we end up with...just over 5.16% of the original energy content in the gasoline burned. That's right, you should get about 5% of the energy you spent back under my MOST optimistic predictions.

That's why people try to reduce as much as possible energy transfer, otherwise we'd all drive cars power by internal combustion engines, charging batteries to drive electric motors to electrolyte water to burn in another engine, and etcera for infinite mpg, but unfortunately the world doesn't work like that.

Whoever does figure out a way to break this law of conservation of energy is not going to be found on a website like this, but on the stage accepting a nobel prize and then flying back home to his manor, the size of a small country, constructed entirely of diamonds and employing Bill Gates as a butler.

 

[dpert1]

I'm gonna build one for shens and giggles, ill report back how much time it wasted

 

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: 996GT2

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
They used to use water injection in automobile engines.

That was to cool the cylinders and allow increased boost to be run for short amounts of time...e.g. in WWII fighter planes. The engines couldn't run on the water alone...the water had to be mixed with combustible substances like ethanol or methanol in order for the system to work properly.

Today, a similar system is used in rally cars, but water is sprayed onto the intercooler instead of directly into the engine cylinders.

Yep. Most often used on Subarus as they have top mounted intercoolers, or as some call them, 'Interwarmers' as it sits atop the motor. If you are doing a power run or a dyno test some owners empty a bag of ice onto it ten minutes before a run. Even better than water spray.

 

[thomsbrain]

Originally posted by: LTC8K6
Even the used cooking oil free ride will end once a market forms for it when people realize it has value and the government realizes it's losing tax money. It will be sold and taxed like any other fuel.

Technically you are required to pay the government fuel taxes for every gallon you get, regardless of cost. There might not be sales tax because it didn't cost anything, but there is still fuel tax. They actually expect you to keep track and mail them tax payments when you fill up. So it's taxed already, but I'm sure next to no one actually pays the tax without being forced by the IRS.

 

[PlasmaBomb]

The engines couldn't run on the water alone...the water had to be mixed with combustible substances like ethanol or methanol in order for the system to work properly.

Just a quick correction, the ethanol and methanol were used as antifreeze (to stop the water freezing at altitude), they still used high octane gasoline for fuel. The methanol and ethanol were present at sub combustion levels in the air mix. They tried propanol, but bad things happened as it exceeded its ignition ratio.

 

[MyThirdEye]

sounds like your friend, as well as the website designer, is about to board the failboat.

 

[prontospyder]

interesting report from a Fox News affiliate - apparently the company is in talks with the government and a US auto maker about the technology:

Link

 

[prontospyder]

more info on the Hydrogen Technology company:
MyFoxHouston

 

[Pacfanweb]

It's being talked about enough that people are starting to believe it with the onset of high gas prices. But it's bull. It takes more energy to work it than it produces. As configured, it can't produce enough hydrogen to matter.

This one ranks up there with the magnets on the fuel lines and the tornado thing in the intake tube. Snake oil. Except that there's a small element of truth to the hydrogen thing, but it won't work.

 

[Pacfanweb]

Originally posted by: prontospyder
interesting report from a Fox News affiliate - apparently the company is in talks with the government and a US auto maker about the technology:

Link

Nice...he says the flame turns right back to water. How can it do that when he's supposedly burned off the hydrogen?

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: prontospyder
interesting report from a Fox News affiliate - apparently the company is in talks with the government and a US auto maker about the technology:

Link

Probably Consumer Protection/Fraud Division.